Last Day by Luanne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

looked out the window at the ocean below. They flew over the Elizabeth Islands—Naushon, Pasque, Nashawena, and Cuttyhunk.
    “You comfortable?” Conor asked Pete.
    “No. I’m not freaking comfortable,” Pete said. “How could you think that I could have done anything to Beth?”
    “We’ll get to that,” Conor said.
    “Should I have a lawyer?”
    “That is absolutely your right,” Conor said.
    “ Right ,” Pete said. “What a joke. You haven’t even read me my rights.”
    “That’s because you’re not under arrest. This is just a courtesy ride.”
    “But you just accused me of murdering her!”
    “Was she giving you grief about your girlfriend?” Conor asked.
    “You have no idea about Beth and me. We loved each other one hundred percent. We were devoted to each other.”
    “I bet she loved the fact you have someone else.”
    Tom watched the burning intensity in his brother’s face, the cold fear in Pete’s.
    “You’re going to arrest me because I had an affair?”
    “I wonder how Nicola would feel to hear you calling it an affair . Doesn’t she think it’s a whole lot more than that? Didn’t Beth? But no, I’m not going to arrest you.”
    Pete’s eyes widened as he took that in. He looked surprised, then relieved: a pinched smile, as if he was getting away with something. His eyes were pale, more gray than blue, the color of spit. Tom glanced at Conor. His younger brother was staring at Pete with laser focus.
    Tom loved when he and Conor crossed paths on a case. Two, including this one, were related to the Woodward family. Twenty-three years ago, when Tom was a USCG lieutenant and Conor was in his first year as a Connecticut state trooper, the shoreline had been rocked by the violence and brutality of what had happened to Helen, Kate, and Beth at their family’s fancy art gallery in Black Hall. The fact that their husband and father had paid people to commit the crime had made it all the more horrific.
    Conor was new to the Connecticut State Police after a stint as a town cop. Tom was a relatively seasoned Coast Guard officer after four years at the Academy and six years climbing the ranks. The crime scene swarmed with town and state cops, but very quickly the FBI took control of the case. The Coast Guard never would have gotten involved if, the same night as the gallery heist, Tom’s vessel hadn’t performed what had seemed to be a relatively random boarding operation.
    It was a Monday in mid-November, just before dusk. The sea off Montauk was dark and calm, the sky the color of a black pearl. Most of the New England yachts going south for the winter had left weeks earlier. Winter in the north Atlantic was nothing to mess with, and decent skippers knew that.
    Tom was aboard Nehantic , a 270-foot cutter. Just a week before they’d had a successful narcotics operation and were still riding high from it. With a USCG helicopter hovering overhead, they had tracked a narco-sub, a semisubmersible reported to be stuffed with fifteen tons of cocaine. Nehantic had gone to battle stations, deployed two raid boats,and gotten to the sub just in time to catch the crew preparing to scuttle. They’d arrested six smugglers and confiscated the coke and a cache of weapons before the vessel sank, and they’d become cartel-busting heroes in the media.
    Then it was back to regular patrol. With a lull in November’s often stormy weather and no reports of smugglers, they had a run of easy days. Cruising off Montauk Point, Tom stood on the foredeck looking west and saw the orange line of sunset just above the horizon. When he turned east, the sky was darkening from slate gray into night, and for just a moment, he thought he glimpsed the silhouette of a large sailboat.
    He raised the binoculars to his eyes. There it was again—backlit by the loom of Block Island. It was completely dark, no running lights. The mast was bare, no sails hoisted. He had a good look and estimated the boat’s length at sixty feet