The Romanov Cross: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

in peace. There was a streak of crazy in those two—a streak that Harley liked to think he had avoided. That was why he was skipper now. But it didn’t mean he liked to be told what to do, much less by some college-boy deckhand who’d done maybe two or three seasons, max, on a crab boat. Harley stayed the course and waited for Lucas to dare to say another thing.
    But he didn’t.
    Down on the deck, Harley could see Kubelik and Farrell pulling up another pot—a steel cage ten feet square—this one brimming with crabs, hundreds of them scrabbling all over each other, their claws flailing, grasping at the mesh, struggling to escape. This was the first full pot Harley had seen in days, packed with keepers. When the bottom was dropped open, the crabs poured out onto the sorting counter, and the crewmen quickly went about throwing them into buckets,down the hole, or—in the case of those too mutilated or small to use—whipping them back into the ocean like Frisbees.
    Harley didn’t care how close to St. Peter’s he got. If this was where the damn crabs were, this was where he was going.
    For the next half hour, the
Neptune II
steamed ahead, throwing strings of pots and bucking the increasingly heavy seas. A chunk of ice broke off the crane and plummeted onto the deck, nearly killing the Samoan guy he’d hired in that waterfront bar. But every time Harley heard one of the deckhands shout into the intercom, “290 pounds!” or “300!” he resolved to keep on going. If this could just keep up, he could return to Port Orlov in a couple of days and not hear a word of bitching from his brother.
    And then, if things really went his way, maybe he’d be able to convince Angie Dobbs to go someplace warm with him. L.A., or Miami Beach. He knew that he wasn’t enough of a draw all by himself—ten years ago, Angie had been runner-up for Miss Teen Alaska—but if he could promise her a free trip out of this hellhole, he figured she’d take it. And maybe even give him some action just to be polite. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been around—Christ, half the town claimed to have had her, and Harley had long felt unfairly overlooked.
    “Skipper!” he heard over the intercom. Sounded like Farrell, probably about to complain about the length of the shift.
    “What?” Harley said, unhappy at the break in his reverie.
    “We got something!” he shouted over the howling wind.
    “Yeah, I’ve been watching. You got the best damn catch of the season.”
    “No,” Farrell said, “no, take a look!”
    And now, lifting himself up from his seat to get a better view of the deck, Harley could see what Farrell, the hood thrown back on his yellow slicker, was wildly pointing at.
    A box—big and black, with icy water cascading down its sides—was tangled in the hooks and lines, and with the help of a couple of the other crew members, it was being hauled over the railing. What the hell …
    “I’ll be right down!” Harley called before turning to Lucas andtelling him to hold the boat in position. “And do not fuck with the course.”
    Harley grabbed his anorak off a hook on the wall. As he barreled down the narrow creaking stairs, he pulled a pair of thermal, waterproof gloves out of the pocket and wrestled them on. Just a few minutes out on deck unprotected and your fingers could freeze like fish sticks. Yanking the hood up over his head, he pulled the sliding door open, and was almost blown back into the cabin by the driving wind.
    Forcing his way outside, the door slamming back into its groove behind him, he plowed up the deck with one hand clinging to the inside rail. Even in the gathering dusk, he could see, maybe three miles to starboard, the ragged silhouette of St. Peter’s Island sticking up out of the rolling sea. That one island, with its steep cliffs and rocky shoals, had claimed more lives than any other off the coast of Alaska, and he could see why even the native Inuit had always given it a wide berth. For as long as