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Back Deception Cove
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

She was still making like she was annoyed with him, but there was something playful in her eyes, and a warmth besides that Mason hadn’t seen before. She tilted her head up toward him, and this time he knew that she wanted to be kissed. He kissed her, slow, rolled over and pulled her closer to him.

Beside the settee, Lucy grumbled, stood up, and retreated down into the fo’c’sle—but at that point neither Mason nor Jess had any inclination to care.

Forty-Six

Forty-Six

Kirby Harwood stared at the helicopter and wondered yet again how he’d taken so many wrong turns in his life.

Okafor’s man, Joy, had been waiting when Harwood and his men had finished filling out the paperwork for the Shelby Walker shooting. There was a shit ton of it too, took Harwood until dawn to get things squared away. And then Joy was waiting outside the detachment in that Suburban of his, spinning some yarn about Jess and her boyfriend had escaped on a boat.

There was no good way to spin what had happened last night. Harwood had sent a statement to Sheriff Kirk Wheeler in Neah Bay, and he knew there was a better-than-good chance that the state police would get involved, investigate the whole deal. Harwood had talked to the neighborhood, run through the official account—Shelby shooting first and all—and the neighborhood, by and large, had taken his word as gospel. Harwood had decent dirt on just about everyone on the block, and he knew for a fact there were a couple of households with outstanding warrants in Clallam County next door.

Nobody would cross the sheriff’s chief deputy, not to stick up for some tramp and her invalid mom. But if they did, Harwood knew he was screwed. And just that thought alone was giving him a bad case of situational acid reflux.

And now the goddamn helicopter.

They were standing on an airfield near Port Angeles—Harwood, Joy, Cole Sweeney, and the pilot, a stocky man in a leather jacket and a big, bushy mustache who looked more like a cop than anything else. They’d left Dale behind in Deception Cove to keep order, though if a Whitmer boy ever kept order in his life, Kirby had yet to hear about it.

Mostly, Harwood figured it was because Joy had spattered Bryce Whitmer’s brains all over the family kitchen. The shooter probably didn’t trust Dale not to do something silly in the aftermath, and justifiably so. If Kirby knew his deputy, Dale would find a way to make things right—even if it fucked the whole lot of them with the Nigerians.

“They sailed west,” Joy was saying. “I watched them go. You and your men were occupied, but no matter. We’ll find them.”