Dangerous Waters by Toni Anderson

she wore. Her lips parted, and he slowly lowered the zipper, wishing he didn’t have to stop there. But the barriers between them were thicker than cotton.
    He dropped the vest back into the boat.
    “Want me to walk you back to your hotel?” The memory of that kiss reminded him he was playing with fire. If she ever figured out he wasn’t immune, he was toast.
    “This wasn’t a date, Mr. Carver . I think I can manage.” Her tone aimed for frosty but quavered too much to pull it off. They both looked around at the large wooden structure with the big salmon motif out front.
    He had no doubt she could manage. “Sleep well, Sergeant Rudd.”
    She had to be dog-tired from her long day, and yet there was something in her eyes that told him she wouldn’t be getting sleep anytime soon. Not his problem. He pushed off from the dock and started rowing back across the inlet. He wanted her gone. He wanted the cops far from here and far from the people he cared about. And if he felt a little pang at the thought of never seeing Holly Rudd again, he ignored it. At least he wouldn’t have to lie to her anymore.

    Holly handed Jeff a fresh cup of coffee and waited for the next shot of caffeine to kick in. They’d spent the night running background checks on local residents and had turned up quite the colorful collection of misfits, ex-cons, and people searching for a little anonymity. Finn was probably right about them not talking to the cops, but you never knew when one piece of information could leverage another.
    Jimmy Furlong walked in the room, freshly showered and shaved. Corporal Messenger walked in a moment later.
    “Coroner get back to us yet?”
    Holly checked her watch. “I doubt he’s even started the post yet.” It was only seven o’clock. She and Jeff had been up all night.
    “What have you got?” Furlong asked.
    “Jeff finished entering witness statements. I’ve been running names to see what might pop up.”
    “Anything more on the guys who found the body?” Without an ID on the victim, Carver and Edgefield were still the most viable lines of inquiry.
    “A lot of stuff on both of them.” The others filtered in. She snagged a muffin out of the box Freddy Chastain carried. “Edgefield started coming out here in 1978 to conduct fieldwork for his PhD. He got a job in Edmonton but still came out every summer to teach courses for the university and do his research. His wife, Bianca, was murdered in 1982, along with their infant son. The body of his young daughter was never found, but they did find her jacket. The assumption was her body was dragged off by a wild animal.” Chastain grimaced as he bit into his second muffin. “Ever since, he’s been on a crusade to find the killer.”
    “Was he ever a suspect?”
    She shook her head. “Not that I can tell. He was teaching the day she disappeared. He reported them missing when they weren’t home for dinner that night.”
    She took a sip of coffee. It scorched her mouth. “He pretty much moved out here after that, teaching full-time at the marine lab and making the cops’ lives hell.”
    “He’d just lost his entire family. I can understand him going off the deep end,” Corporal Malone spoke up.
    Holly nodded. “Absolutely.” She was still trying to figure out Malone, to discover where his strengths lay. He was one of those enigmatic silent types who always seemed to think a damn sight more than they spoke—like Finn Carver.
    She checked her notes. “Carver went to live with Edgefield in 1989 after his older brother killed their father.” It had been shocking to read the case files. Photographs had shown a boy severely beaten, with a broken right ulna and radius. Three broken bones in his left hand, where he’d probably tried to ward off the blows, and several fractured ribs. She’d felt an emotional tug on her heartstrings to think about the tall, rugged, capable man she’d met and imagine him as that vulnerable child.
    Nothing about him seemed