“Yeah, sorry. I’m usually much chattier in the morning when someone’s around. Like Paul,” Allan said quickly, not wanting Debbie to think he had been shacking up with all kinds of women. Why he felt compelled to explain himself, he had no idea.
He generally talked to Paul in the mornings when they were staying together on assignments. But this morning, he kept pondering the cases. Not to mention the situation between him and Debbie. He was perturbed with himself over it. He knew better than to get intimately involved with a human woman he really cared about, even if they’d only shared the sweetest of kisses. He hadn’t wanted to stop at that and had to use the utmost restraint not to pull her into his arms, hold her close, and kiss her the way he had really wanted. That was the problem. Not what they had done, but what he had wanted to do—and ensuring it didn’t happen.
“Ah, well, if you begin talking to me like that in the morning, I’ll hear you, but it might take a while to process and respond.”
He chuckled. “Truly? I noticed.” On a couple of other assignments when he’d run ideas past her and she had to be asked two or three times, he had been certain she wasn’t a morning person. After the beer last night, he believed she wasn’t a night person either. He knew it took Debbie a while to wake up in the morning, so he really didn’t think she’d notice he was being so quiet. He guessed then that he must normally talk more to her when they met to work on the day’s activities than he realized.
She sighed. “Sorry.”
“I don’t mind. As long as you’re not ticked off with me about something, I’m good.”
She laughed. “Okay. Same here.”
They’d already suited up before they arrived because it was too cold to put their wet suits on next to the lake. But when they got out of the lake, they would be in a rush to undress. They both had water parkas—long coats with soft fleece inside and a windproof and waterproof outer fabric that would keep the snow and frigid wind from cooling them down too much on the trek from the car to and from the lake.
This morning, it was a brisk seventeen degrees with snow showers on the way.
Off in the distance, a couple of men were getting ready to ice fish on the frozen lake. No longer was the venture like the old days when Paul and Allan would catch fish in the winter, sitting atop a fish bucket, hoping the trout would swim by and take the bait. Now the guys who were setting up had power augers—often used to dig postholes in the earth—to drill a hole through the ice. And they had brightly colored yellow-and-red portable shelters, underwater cameras, and sonar fish finders.
“Did you ever ice fish?” Debbie asked, making her pre-dive safety checks.
“Yeah, but not quite like that. Much more primitive.”
She nodded. “Me too, in the old-fashioned way. Did we catch anything? Sure. Once I caught a trout. Another time, a yellow perch.”
“Who did you fish with?” he asked. From what she’d told him, her dad hadn’t been there for her when she was growing up.
“My dive partner and mentor. I told you. He was like a father to me. Man, was it cold. I decided fishing in the summer was the only way to go.”
“Maybe we can go fishing sometime. In the summer.” He knew he really couldn’t do it and keep their relationship impersonal.
“Sounds good to me. But, hey, if you’re up to it, there’s a charity Penguin Plunge at the Winter Carnival in Whitefish in February. A hole is cut into the ice at Whitefish Lake and then participants take a dip to raise money for a great cause. Sounds like a Navy SEAL job to me.”
He laughed. “Are you doing it?”
“Every year.”
“If I don’t have anything else going on, I guess I could risk it.” He should have said he would be busy. Hell, he might be if Rose was having the babies and ran into trouble.
Debbie smiled at him, her cheeks and nose rosy from the cold, looking so pleased that unless he had something really pressing going on, he knew he’d be taking the Penguin Plunge with her. But maybe he could convince Rowdy to go along with them, just to stay out of trouble.
They finished their dive checks, then walked out on the ice to where the car had broken through. The ice had been so clear when the accident first happened, it was like walking on glass. They could see the vegetation on the bottom of the lake in the shallower parts. But now snow covered the ice.
They dove around the bottom of the lake where the car had rested, searching for any other evidence they could find.
Debbie pointed to some thick vegetation. Allan joined her as she took pictures of the location of a 9 mm gun buried in the plants. She bagged it as evidence and slipped it into her mesh diving bag. After looking for as long as they could and not finding anything else of importance, they returned to the surface. But Allan was glad they had found that much. Once they removed their face masks, tanks, and flippers, they threw on their parkas and headed back to the car.