“It has been heavily implied.”

Hannah sniffed. “I don’t like him.”

“Me either. Especially his muscles. Yuck.”

“There were definitely muscles,” Hannah agreed reluctantly. Then she hugged her middle and sighed, letting Piper know exactly whom she was thinking about. “He can’t compete with Sergei, though. Nobody can.”

Realizing her hands were greasy from the meat, Piper reached over to the sink, which was right there, thanks to the kitchen being all of four feet wide, and rinsed her hands. She dried them on a cloth and set it down, then went back to prodding the meat. It was getting pretty brown, so she tossed in the onion slices, congratulating herself on being the next Giada. “You’ve always gone for the starving-artist boys,” she murmured to Hannah. “You like them tortured.”

“Won’t deny it.” Hannah slipped off her hat and ran her fingers through her medium-length hair. Hair just as nice as Piper’s, but worn down far less often. A crime, to Piper’s way of thinking, but she’d realized a long time ago that Hannah was going to be Hannah—and she didn’t want to change a single thing about her sister. “Sergei is different, though. He’s not just pretending to be edgy, like the other directors I’ve worked with. His art is so bittersweet and moving and stark. Like an early Dylan song.”

“Have you talked to him since we got here?”

“Only through the group Zoom meetings.” Hannah went to the narrow refrigerator and took out a Diet Coke, twisting off the cap. “He was so understanding about the trip. I get to keep my job . . . and he gets to keep my heart,” she said wistfully.

They traded a snort.

But the sound died in Piper’s throat when flames leapt up from the counter.

The counter?

No, wait. The rag . . . the one she’d used to dry her hands.

It was on fire.

“Shit! Hannah!”

“Oh my God! What the fuck?”

“I don’t know!” Operating on pure reflex, Piper threw the spatula at the fire. Not surprisingly, that did nothing to subdue the flames. The flaring orange fingers were only growing larger, and the counter’s laminate was basically nonexistent. Could the counters themselves catch on fire, too? They were nothing more than brittle wood. “Is that the rag we used to clean?”

“Maybe . . . yeah, I think so. It was soaked in that lemon stuff.” In Piper’s periphery, Hannah danced on the balls of her feet. “I’m going to run downstairs and look for a fire extinguisher.”

“I don’t think there’s time,” Piper screeched—and it galled her that in this moment of certain death, she could almost hear Brendan laughing at her funeral. “Okay, okay. Water. We need water?”

“No, I think water makes it worse,” Hannah returned anxiously.

The meat was now engulfed in flames, just like her short-lived cooking career. “Well, Jesus. I don’t know what to do!” She spied a pair of tongs on the edge of the sink, grabbed them, hesitated a split second before pinching a corner of the flaming rag and dragging the whole burning mess into the pan, on top of the meat.

“What are you doing?” Hannah screamed.

“I don’t know! We’ve established that! I’m just going to get it outside of this building before we burn the place down.”

And then Piper was running down the stairs with a pan. A pan that held an inferno of meat and Pine-Sol-soaked cotton. She could hear Hannah sprinting down the stairs behind her but didn’t catch a word of what her sister said, because she was one hundred percent focused on getting out of the building.

On her way through the bar, she found herself thinking of Mick Forrester’s words from earlier that day. Boy, your dad had a great laugh. Sometimes I swear I still hear it shaking the rafters of this place. The remembrance slowed her step momentarily, had her glancing up at the ceiling, before she kicked open the front door and ran out onto the busy Westport street with a flaming frying pan, shouting for help.

Chapter Nine

Brendan went through the motions of looking over the chalkboard menu at the Red Buoy, even though he already knew damn well he’d be ordering the fish and chips. Every Monday night, he met Fox at the small Westport restaurant. An institution that had been standing since their grandfathers worked the fishing boats. Brendan had never failed to get the same thing. No sense in fixing something that wasn’t broken, and the Red Buoy had the best damn fish in town.

Locals came and went, calling hellos to each other, most of them picking up takeout to bring home to their families, greasy bags tucked under their arms. Tonight, Brendan and Fox were making use of one of three tables in the place, waiting for their orders to be called. And if Fox noticed Brendan glancing too many times at No Name across the street, he hadn’t mentioned it.

“You’re even more quiet than usual,” Fox remarked, leaning back so far in his chair, it was a wonder he didn’t topple over. He wouldn’t, though, Brendan knew. His best friend and relief skipper of the Della Ray rarely made a misstep. In that way, he lived up to his name. “You got crabs on the brain, Cap?”

Brendan grunted, looking across the street again.

If he didn’t have crabs on the brain, he sure as shit needed to put them there. In a couple of weeks, they would be making the journey to the Bering Sea for the season. For two weeks after that, they’d be hunting in those frigid yet familiar waters, doing their best to fill the belly of the boat with enough crab to support their team of six until next year.

Every crew member and deckhand of the Della Ray had year-round fishing jobs working out of Westport Harbor in addition to participating in the season, but king crab was their payday, and Brendan’s men counted on him to deliver.

“Been studying the maps,” Brendan said finally, forcing himself to focus on the conversation and not the building across the way. “Got a feeling the Russians are going to set their pots where we dropped ours last year, figuring it’s tried and true. But the season is earlier than ever this year, and the tides are more volatile. Nothing is surefire.”

Fox considered that. “You’re thinking of heading farther west?”

“North.” They traded a knowing look, both of them aware of the rougher waters that lay in that direction. “Can’t think of a crew that’s had much luck up toward St. Lawrence Island in several years. But I’ve got a hunch.”

“Hey. Your hunches have always made my bank account happy.” He dropped forward, clinked his bottle of Bud against Brendan’s. “Let’s do the damn thing.”

Brendan nodded, content to let the silence settle.

But he noticed that Fox seemed to be battling a smile. “You got something to say?” Brendan finally asked.

Fox’s mouth spread into the smile that made him popular with women. In fact, he hadn’t been at No Name on Sunday night because he’d taken a trip to Seattle to see a woman he’d met online. Seeing as he’d spent two nights there, Brendan had to assume the date had been . . . successful, though he’d cut his tongue out before asking for details. That kind of thing was better off left private.

For some reason, the fact that his best friend was popular with women was annoying him today more than usual. He couldn’t fathom why.