Windswept by Anna Lowe

perfectly, swinging on a line and slashing her way into the fray. Meredith, well, she’d be the quiet, dependable one at the wheel. The subtle differences between the two sisters were becoming clearer to him now. Mia had a lot of tomboy in her quick, assured movements, while Meredith was more cautious, like she’d learned a few life lessons the hard way. He had to wonder just what had done that to her.
    In any case, they were kind of endearing, both of them, each in her own way.
    “Why no motor?” he whispered to Meredith.
    “A spring in the oil pump rusted. The new one I ordered hasn’t arrived yet,” she said, twisting to glance astern.
    A woman who knew diesel engines. He nodded like he’d known that all along. Meredith was full of surprises. Just like Mia, who’d gotten the jib unfurled and the sheets trimmed, and then come to him to slide a gentle hand up his arm.
    “You okay?”
    “Okay,” he murmured, wondering if he’d ever get a chance to make things right between them again.
    She looked deep, deeper, nine-fathoms-deep into his eyes, searching for some truth. He hoped to hell it was there.
    “How’s the depth here?” Meredith asked, breaking the hush.
    Mia shook her head like she’d been far away in her thoughts. “We’re clear for the next couple of miles. Just stay well off the coast.”
    “No sign of that boat?”
    All three of them twisted to look back. It was still there but hadn’t detected their departure. At least not yet.
    Mia took a deep breath and turned to her sister. “What else did you hear about the sabotaged ship?”
    “Well, Celeste said—”
    “Who’s Celeste?” he asked.
    “A friend of mine,” Meredith said. “She’s a local doctor I met at the clinic.”
    He cocked his head.
    “Meredith’s a doctor,” Mia explained, and he could hear the pride in her voice. “She’s been volunteering at the clinic.”
    Meredith waved a hand in a gesture so like Mia’s when she wanted to divert attention from herself. “Except for the couple of years that she studied in Holland, Celeste has always lived here. She knows everyone.”
    “So what did she say?”
    “She said her cousin who works next door to the police station told her they had suspects in custody.”
    “Yeah,” Mia said glumly. “Us.”
    Meredith shook her head and went on, “Celeste said her other cousin the hairdresser said—”
    “The hairdresser?” Ryan blurted.
    “Hey, who’s always the first to catch local gossip?”
    He had to give her that one.
    “Celeste’s cousin the hairdresser said everyone suspects those developers.”
    His ears perked up. “What developers?”
    “That big international company that’s been petitioning to build a new hotel.”
    “Why would a hotel developer bomb environmental activists?” he asked, watching the low-lying coastline slide past as
Serendipity
picked up speed. Other than a few clusters of houses and the main town of Kralendijk, the island looked relatively undeveloped. An arid, windswept island, scoured by the trade winds. Did they really need more development here?
    “The hotel isn’t the issue. It’s the pontoon they want to build.”
    “Pontoon?”
    “Like a floating luxury hotel, right on the reef,” Mia explained. “Right on some of the best diving in the world, and on a fragile reef.
Neptune’s Revenge
was here to bring attention to that plan.”
    “Well, they brought attention to it, all right,” he muttered. “But would the developers really be that stupid to bomb them when they’d be the first suspects?”
    “Except we’re the first suspects, remember?” Mia said. “Or rather, you, Officer Hayes of the…bomb squad, was it?”
    “Dive squad,” he murmured, forcing himself to meet her eyes. “The underwater explosives stuff was with the Navy.”
    If Meredith looked impressed, Mia sure wasn’t.
    I’ll tell you everything, Mia,
he wanted to say.
Just ask, and I’ll start from the beginning and tell it to you right to the