Troubled Waters

Tracie could feel the impact of the bullets as they hit him, knocking the air from his body. Yet in six strides, he had her across the yard and over the old stone wall. Heath shoved her against the far side of the wall, shielding her with his body. “Stay down,” he hissed, and she could hear him struggling to inhale.

She knew he was wounded—he had to be—but she couldn’t see where, and the cold damp of the snow beneath her began to seep through her clothing while she waited.

Silence. Even Heath’s labored breathing had eased, though his body was tense above her and he had his sidearm out, covering them, waiting. Tracie listened, not daring to move, wondering if the gunman would come after them, wondering who it could be. Her former partner’s killers? Or perhaps someone who didn’t want them to know the full extent of what Trevor had been involved in.

RACHELLE MCCALLA

is a mild-mannered housewife, and the toughest she ever has to get is when she’s trying to keep her four kids quiet in church. Though she often gets in over her head, as her characters do, and has to find a way out, her adventures have more to do with sorting out the carpool and providing food for the potluck. She’s never been arrested, or in a fistfight, or shot at. And she’d like to keep it that way! For recipes, fun background notes on the places and characters in this book and more information on forthcoming titles, visit www.rachellemccalla.com.

Troubled Waters

Rachelle McCalla

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

—Romans 8:28

To my parents, Brian and Kerry Richter, with love.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LETTER TO READER

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSSION

ONE

Something wasn’t right. Tracie Crandall eyed her new Coast Guard partner warily as they walked up the snowy path to her former partner Trevor Price’s house. She felt nervous, not just because of the flint-hard, steel-blue eyes of the man walking beside her, but because it was the first time she’d been near Trevor’s place since his death. Though she wasn’t sure how she’d react, the last thing she wanted was to show any sign of weakness with Heath Gerlach watching.

“You’ve got the warrant?” Heath asked in a low voice.

Tracie patted the breast pocket of her Coast Guard parka. “Right here.”

He nodded, his eyes flickering from her pocket to her face, and then quickly to the house and the woods surrounding it. Tracie felt as though he’d taken in every possible detail in those fleeting glances, and perhaps seen right through her tough exterior to her nervousness as well.

Heath’s features softened ever so slightly. “You’re all right coming here?”

“Of course,” Tracie swallowed back her fear. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He tipped his head dismissively, his attention already back on the house. As he turned toward the curtained living room window, his nostrils flared, reminding Tracie of the way Gunnar, her German shepherd mix, reacted when he scented danger.

With her hand raised toward the doorbell, she paused, her eyes narrowing. “Do you think—” she started to ask, but the words were ripped from her lips as Heath grabbed her, scooping her off the stoop as he leapt toward the woods.

“Down, get down!” he shouted, his voice lost amid the sound of rapid-fire gunshots and breaking glass. She could feel the impact of the bullets as they hit him, knocking the air from his body. In six strides he had her across the yard and over the old stone wall that marked the property line between Trevor’s lot and the woods beyond it.

Heath shoved her against the far side of the wall, shielding her with his body. “Stay down,” he hissed, and she could hear him struggling to inhale. “Are you hit?”

Tracie ripped the radio from her belt. “I’m fine,” she said, before hurtling a call for backup and paramedics. After hastily relaying their location and the situation, she clicked off the radio and looked back at her partner. She knew he was wounded—he had to be—but she couldn’t see where, and the cold damp of the snow beneath her began to seep through her clothing while she waited.

Silence. Even Heath’s labored breathing had eased, though his body was tense above her and he had his sidearm out, covering them, waiting. Tracie listened, not daring to move, wondering if the gunman would come after them, wondering who it could be. Trevor’s killers? Or perhaps someone who didn’t want them to know the full extent of what Trevor had been involved in.

With over six feet of solid muscle blocking her body and blocking her view, Tracie couldn’t see much, but as she eased her head to the side, she saw the growing puddle of red in the snow.

“You’re hit,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than a breath.

“Shh,” Heath cautioned her. Even in near silence, she could hear the pain in his voice.

She pinched her eyes shut, praying. The paramedics would come from the Bayfield volunteer fire association, which meant guys with beepers ditching whatever they were doing, calling in, and driving to the fire house for equipment before driving out to them. All those things took time. The roads were more or less passable after the latest snowfall, but still, she wondered if they’d be too late. She couldn’t stand the idea that she’d lose two partners in less than six weeks.

“Do you need a tourniquet?” Her voice was barely audible.

Heath’s head twitched slightly to one side. A quarter shake. Did he mean no, or was he fading already from the loss of blood? From the pattern of gunfire she’d heard, Tracie figured the gunman had been using some sort of assault rifle. Their standard-issue Coast Guard body armor wouldn’t stop a bullet like that. It would barely even slow it down. And Heath had to have been hit several times.

An engine revved behind the house, and Heath eased up from above her. “He’s getting away,” he muttered, though his movements were still cautious, his voice quiet.

“Do you want me to try to go after him?” Tracie offered as the sound of the vehicle began to fade.

“No,” Heath shifted his body and looked down at her. His face was so close she could see the tips of dark hairs starting to sprout into a five-o’clock shadow. “Your body armor won’t stop what he’s shooting.”

About to ask how he knew, Tracie realized Heath’s arm was wrapped around her torso, his hand beneath her, cradling her from the cold of the snow. “And what are you wearing?” she asked, shifting her body away from the close contact, more aware of him than she wanted to be. “Obviously not our standard-issue bulletproof vest.”

“No, obviously not,” Heath conceded, “or I’d be dead right now, and so would you.” He turned at the distant sound of sirens.

Tracie took advantage of his distraction to assess what she could of his wounds. The red puddle seemed to be coming from his sleeve—he’d apparently been hit on his upper arm. The back of his Coast Guard parka was riddled with holes rimmed by tufts of synthetic down that was blackened by the searing force of the bullets. She swallowed hard, wondering how many had made it through. The severity of his wounds would depend on the angle and point of entry, and most importantly, what kind of vest he was wearing.

She sat up higher and reached for his arm. If he’d been hit in a major vein, he could still bleed to death before the paramedics could save him. She said a silent prayer that they’d hurry.

Heath leaned back against her, pushing her down. “Don’t move until backup arrives.”

“But the gunman already left,” she protested.

“You don’t know that.”

Heath sat in the open back bay of the ambulance and tried not to wince as a medic wrapped the wound on his arm.

“I really think you should get an X-ray. You could easily have broken a rib.” Another paramedic held up the severely dented steel plate they’d pulled from the back of his body armor. Six mushroomed bullets had been hiding inside—one for each of the blunt force trauma wounds he’d sustained on his back.

“And if I did, what are you going to do about it? Put me in a body cast?” Heath’s eyes narrowed as he watched Tracie talking to the local sheriff across the yard. She’d stayed at his side long enough for the medics to survey his injuries and determine none of them were life-threatening. Now Heath wished he could hear what she was saying. His boss at the FBI was already bugging him for answers, but in the three days he’d been undercover as a Coast Guardsman, Heath had yet to get Tracie to talk much about Trevor Price’s death. “How much longer is this going to take?”

“I’m done,” the first medic said. “But I’m not letting you go until you sign these release forms. It’s not my fault you won’t go to the hospital.”

Heath quickly scrawled his name wherever the man pointed, then slipped back into his bullet-hole-riddled parka before heading back across the crime scene.

Sheriff’s deputies and his fellow Coast Guardsmen were crawling all over the house looking for clues. If there was anything to find, they’d find it. Still, he wanted to take a look around for himself. Though Trevor’s house was several miles back in the woods and therefore not traditional Coast Guard territory, the Lake Superior officer’s death, as well as the shady practices that had led to his death, made his house part of the Coast Guard’s ongoing investigation.

Heath caught Tracie’s eye and nodded to her, and she broke off her conversation with the sheriff and hurried over.

“They’re letting you walk around?” She pinched her mouth into a slight smile, but her eyes still looked worried.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m invincible,” he assured her, with a grin to tell her he knew he wasn’t quite.

Tracie’s smile inched a little closer to her eyes. Heath wondered what she’d look like if she really smiled. Beautiful? No, she was that already. She’d be simply stunning. For a moment, he found himself wanting to make her smile, to laugh even, but he quickly chided himself. He was here to investigate her in conjunction with her previous partner’s murder. That didn’t require making her smile.

He adopted a more serious expression. “What have they found?”

“Footprints. Size fourteen, or pretty close to it. Not too common, but not nearly rare enough. And snowmobile tracks.”

“That was the engine we heard?”

She nodded. “We followed them as far as Petersons’, but there are hundreds of tracks over there. He could have gone any direction—there’s no way to tell.”

“Right.” From what Heath understood, snowmobiles were as common as cars in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and far easier to navigate during the long winter months when traveling by road was often risky. Their gunman could be anywhere. “No other leads?”

“No sign of forced entry to the house, which seems a little strange. John and Mack had locked it up tight after their last investigation—Jim had issued them new locks. Ben and Clint are dusting for fingerprints, but in this weather, everyone wears gloves.” She looked down at Heath’s bare hands.

He flexed his fingers against the cold. If she was trying to nag him, she’d find she wouldn’t get far. “So what’s our next move?”

“It’s a pretty dead end.” She shrugged. “I’ll see Trevor’s brother, Tim, at church tomorrow and ask him if he knows of anyone who’d be at his brother’s place.”

“What time’s the service?”

Tracie raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’ll meet you there,” Heath explained.

“You’re on medical leave. You have a hole in your arm and blunt force trauma wounds all across your back. You’re not getting out of bed tomorrow.”

“Medical leave is voluntary.”

Tracie huffed impatiently. “Fine, you do whatever you want, but I’m not going to be part of it.” She turned and crunched away across the snow.

Heath watched her go. Interesting woman. She had a chip on her shoulder bigger than the bullet hole in his arm, which made it very difficult to get any information out of her. She was tight-lipped about her work and absolutely silent about her personal life. The tip about church was the closest he’d come to a break in the three days he’d been on the case. Which was why, even though he hadn’t been to a worship service in fifteen years, he was going to go to church the next morning.

Tracie spotted Tim Price the moment she entered the small country church, and slid into the pew next to him. He smiled a greeting and then looked back down to the Bible on his lap. She felt a grateful prayer of thanks rising in her heart at the sight of Tim reading his Bible—at the sight of Tim in church at all.

The younger man had been in a rough spot when she’d first met him. Between the drugs and alcohol, it was amazing he hadn’t died of an overdose long before. But when his brother, Trevor, had been shot six weeks earlier, Tim had immediately entered a treatment program and given his life back to God. She’d accompanied him to church in the city while he was in treatment, and was thrilled that he’d insisted on meeting her at church now that he was home.

Lifting her eyes to the dark wood-beamed ceiling, Tracie took a long breath and tried to clear her mind as she prepared to worship. Life had been crazy lately, and the attempt on her life the day before, though unexpected, seemed to fit all too well with her recent experiences. But here in the house of God she could be at peace, if only for an hour.

As she began to bow her head, Tracie glanced around the sanctuary at the familiar faces who shared this sacred hour with her nearly every Sunday. She stopped short when a man’s broad-shouldered frame entered the room, blocking the bright sunlight that streamed through the antique leaded-glass windows. Heath.

He’d found her. Tracie’s heart stopped, then started thumping in an irregular, nervous beat. Sure, the worship service time was no great secret—he’d probably called the church and listened to the message on the answering machine. But most people in the coastal village of Bayfield worshipped in the larger church in town. The little countryside chapel where Tracie attended services had been founded centuries before by Swedish settlers, and remained a small, tight-knit congregation largely unaffected by the tourists and transplants who’d changed the face of the larger village church. She’d have expected him to look for her in the town church, not here.

So Heath had scented her out. She tried to tell herself it was no big deal. Anybody could come to church. She knew she should be glad her new partner was a churchgoing man. Trevor had never darkened the doors of the worship space in the time she’d known him, though it would have done him a world of good, she was sure. He might even be alive today if he hadn’t gotten himself involved with diamond smugglers. Rather than allow thoughts of either man to disturb her, Tracie closed her eyes and tried to breathe in the peace she’d felt before she’d spotted Heath.

But peace eluded her. She watched warily as Heath made his way across the back of the sanctuary toward where she and Tim sat. Her back stiffened, and she instinctively turned as though to shield Tim as much as possible from Heath.

What was it about her new partner that upset her so much? Was it because he’d transferred in from elsewhere? When Trevor had been murdered, she’d figured she’d fall in with someone from among the existing crew. But Jake Struckman, the Officer in Charge at the Bayfield station, had shocked her when he’d announced they were bringing in someone new to work with her.

While that news had come as a surprise, Tracie knew it didn’t explain all of the unease she felt around him. She could have chalked it up to the fear she’d always felt around Trevor. Her former partner had bent a lot of rules, even broken some when he knew there was nothing she could do to stop him, and she’d learned to constantly be on her guard around him. It was possible she’d transferred her unease onto Heath.

It would have been an easy explanation, but Tracie knew that wasn’t it, either. If anything, she’d been relieved to have someone new to work with. Nobody could be as awful as Trevor. And so far, in the three days she’d worked with him, Heath had been a perfect gentleman. He’d even saved her life. So it didn’t stand to reason that she feared him simply because she’d feared Trevor.

No, there was something about him that made her pulse race every time she saw him. He was too quiet about himself, and too quick to ask her personal questions. He watched her too carefully. And though he’d definitely tried to downplay the difference, he was overqualified for the job, and overdressed. Nobody else in the Coast Guard wore steel-plated body armor.

To her relief, the worship service began just as Heath sat down, and Tracie was able to push her nervous thoughts away and focus on the minister’s words. Whatever the issue was with Heath, the next fifty minutes wouldn’t change anything. But it would change her heart, and she needed God’s peace more than ever now.

Heath watched Tracie out of the corner of his eye. Though she’d obviously seen him, she’d failed to be nearly as welcoming as the parishioners who’d greeted him when he came in. In fact, her body language said she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

Fine. Heath was a patient man. He’d been waiting for her to come around since he’d arrived for his undercover position in the Coast Guard. He wished he could tell her his true identity. Normally, he’d want those working closest to him to be aware of who he was and what he was up to. But not Tracie. She was the last person who’d be allowed to know. He was there to investigate her and her colleagues for their roles in Trevor Price’s murder, and to find out if anyone on the team had been involved with the diamond-smuggling ring.

The only person at the Coast Guard station who was aware of his status as an FBI agent was Jake Struckman, the Bayfield Officer in Charge, who’d helped establish his cover. All the Coast Guardsmen seemed to accept the explanation that he was a transfer from another station, brought in because of the recent trouble they’d been having, and his expertise gained during his previous experience as a Navy SEAL. So far, no one had caught on to his total inexperience with the Coast Guard. He’d memorized the handbook and leaned on his sharp instincts to fill in the cracks. It helped that the Bayfield team were a big-hearted bunch. They’d seemed more concerned about not disappointing him than checking for any holes in his story.

Except for Tracie. She still looked at him warily and had that chip on her shoulder he couldn’t yet account for. Did that mean Tracie was connected to Trevor’s diamond-smuggling friends, or involved in some way in Trevor’s death? If he’d read about her attitude in a report, he might have reached that conclusion. But having met her, he wasn’t so sure.

No, her eyes had gone a little too wide at the sight of blood, for one thing. She’d jumped a little too high when the bullets started flying. And she’d only been wearing a lightweight bulletproof vest when the tip of the rifle had peeked through the window curtains at Trevor’s. If she’d had inside knowledge, she’d have gone in prepared. But as it was, if he’d grabbed her a split-second later, Tracie would have been dead.

Heath replayed the scene through his mind in slow motion. He’d sensed something was wrong, but the gun had still taken him by surprise. His reaction had been pure training and instinct, no time to stop and think things through. Tracie had felt so light in his arms, and so delicate. He’d been surprised by the overwhelming need he’d felt to protect her.

He glanced over at her now, sitting quietly with her head bowed as the minister prayed, her bulky fisherman-style sweater doing little to disguise her slender frame. Underneath her tough exterior, he sensed that she was fragile—frightened, even. But she’d put up a thick wall to keep him out.

In order to find out what she knew, he’d have to break through that wall somehow. In the four days he’d known her, he’d figured out it wouldn’t fall easily. But if he could get inside to the timid woman underneath, he might be able to convince her to lean on him.

And then? Well, then he’d have his answers, which was the whole point of this assignment. His mission would be accomplished. So why did the idea of getting close to Tracie Crandall frighten him so much?

Tracie followed Tim to the fellowship hall after the final song. She wasn’t sure how to tell him what had happened at his brother’s house the day before. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Tim had already heard.

“I’m so glad you weren’t injured. The first I heard, nobody knew which Coasties had been involved in the shooting, but I had a sense you were one of them. I even called your house, but you weren’t home yet.”

“You could have left a message.” Tracie wouldn’t have minded the excuse to call and talk to him sooner.

“I didn’t want to bother you.” Tim clutched a cup of coffee without drinking from it.

“Don’t worry about bothering me,” she patted his free arm. “You’re my friend.”

“Right.” His eyes darted about the room. Though he’d been off drugs for weeks, he still had a jumpy, disjointed manner about him. He leaned a little closer and lowered the volume of his voice. “I’ve been asking some questions.”

“Questions?”

“Some of Trevor’s old buddies. Somebody has to have heard something.”

Though part of her didn’t want Tim doing any investigative work on his own, Tracie felt partly relieved he’d taken the initiative. Tim had contacts she had no other way of reaching, but she’d never feel comfortable asking him to get in touch with them for her. “And?” she prompted.

“Hello, Tracie.” Heath had snuck up on her.

Tim pinched his mouth shut.

Tracie could have kicked her new partner. “Hello, Heath.” She knew she needed to introduce Heath to Tim, but she didn’t know how to break it to Tim that Heath had replaced his older brother. “Tim, have you met—?”

“No,” Tim shifted his coffee to his other hand. “You’re Heath, right?”

“Heath Gerlach,” her new partner shook Tim’s hand. “And you’re Tim Price.”

“Yes. Trevor’s little brother.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your loss.”

“Thank you.”

The men maintained eye contact, and Tracie tried hard to read what passed between them. Animosity? No, Tim was too pure of heart since his conversion to sink to that. She didn’t even sense a competitive spirit. In fact, they almost seemed to share understanding. Sympathy. Tracie felt herself softening ever so slightly toward Heath. She didn’t nearly trust him, but he’d demonstrated a rare sensitivity toward her grieving friend. It was far more than she’d expected.

Now she just had to figure out how to get rid of Heath so Tim would finish telling her what he’d learned.

“You’re filling my brother’s slot on the force, hmm?” Tim raised his cup to his lips, his face curious, his tone without guile.

“He’s left me some pretty big shoes to fill,” Heath offered.

“Size fourteen, to be exact,” Tim offered.

Tracie chuckled along with them, her mind immediately latching on to Trevor’s shoe size. The same as the footprints they’d found at his house. But he’d been dead for over a month. Could the footprints have been that old? Impossible—far too much snow had fallen since then. Could their gunman have slipped on a pair of Trevor’s boots to throw them off his trail? It was certainly a possibility.