Amber Beach (29 page)

Then Jake saw her eyes. He had been wrong when he told Archer that she was only ten feet away. The kind of distance he saw in her now couldn’t be measured.

“Who was the guy last night?” she asked calmly.

“I don’t know.”

She ran her fingers through her chin-length hair in an automatic fluffing gesture and didn’t say a word.

“I really don’t know”, Jake said angrily. “He didn’t exactly leave a business card.”

“Anything else?”

Her voice was like her expression, cold enough to leave frost.

“You said you have a sister in Hawaii?” he asked.

Honor spun toward him. “Why? Is something wrong with Faith?”

“Archer wants you to visit her. It’s one of the few things we agreed on.”

“Too bad. I don’t agree.”

“Snake Eyes is a professional killer.”

Her eyelids flinched. “All the more reason to keep Faith out of this.”

“All right. Take a vacation on Tahiti or Easter Island until this is over. Donovan International can hire some bodyguards to haul your luggage. If they don’t know anyone up to the job, I do.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“As you so cleverly pointed out, I should be around when
you find Kyle.”

“I won’t hurt him. You have my word.”

“That’s nice. I’m staying.”

Jake played his last card – the famous Donovan temper. “Just can’t get enough of me, huh?”

“Yeah, how’d you guess?” she said without interest. “Let’s
go fishing.”

For a few electric seconds Jake measured Honor. Everything he saw convinced him that fishing not only was the best offer he would get from her right now, it was the only one. She was fully capable of walking out and casting off in the boat herself, leaving him standing around with his fine intentions
hanging out.

He grabbed his clothes and started pulling them on.

The weather was better than Jake’s mood, which wasn’t saying much. Low clouds, lower clouds, fog, drizzle, rain, and choppy water could be seen along various parts of the strait. At one point there was a pool of sunlight glittering way out on the water, but it didn’t last long. Wind closed the hole in the clouds and a hundred shades of gray settled seamlessly over land and sea.

The
Tomorrow’s
blower was already on when Jake reached the dock. Before he had taken two steps the engine roared to life and settled into a muscular muttering. He went aboard fast.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, closing the cabin door behind him. Hard.

“It’s time I learned how to drive the boat.”

He grunted. “There’s no way you can learn enough to search the San Juans alone.”

Honor sat behind the helm and didn’t say another word until the SeaSport’s engine had warmed up to operating temperature.

“Cast off”, she said without looking at Jake.

“Not this time.”

Without a word she got out of the helm seat and went to the dock. She undid the bow line and the stern line, stepped on board, and headed for the cabin. Jake was already in the
helm seat.

“I meant it”, she said through the open door. “I’m
driving.”

“Use the aft controls.”

A moment later she put the gear lever in reverse and eased up on the throttle. The boat began backing away from the dock, out into the shallow cove. She started to turn the boat away from the dock the same way she had seen Jake do it, waiting until the bow was just clear of the end of the dock. Wind gusted, catching the
Tomorrow
full on the side. More quickly than Honor would have believed possible, the boat whacked broadside into the end of the dock.

Jake came out of the cabin carrying a boat pole. He pushed the
Tomorrow
off the dock. “Try again.”

She did. This time the bow banged against the dock. “Reverse”, he said.

She missed the gate for the shift. Before she could find it, wind had blown the stern back onto the dock. Jake shoved off. She went into reverse, but somehow the wheel position was wrong. Instead of backing away, the stern was sucked against the dock
again.

Honor set her teeth to hold back the kind of language her daddy said only men used. She tried
again.
The bow scraped against the dock. Even as she jammed the gear lever into neutral to kill spe
ed, she jerked the wheel as though
to turn the bow away. It didn’t do any good, of course. In neutral, the steering wheel was useless.

“Better”, Jake said, pushing the boat off the dock again. “It would have worked if the wind hadn’t stopped blowing the stern.”

She reached for the shifter again.

“No”, he said curtly. “Check your helm position first or we’ll ram the dock but good this time.”

After a few more tries, Honor got the
Tomorrow
away from the dock despite the unpredictable wind. Bleakly she admitted
to herself that it was more due to Jake’s instructions than to any of her own skill. She wouldn’t have believed how much a little wind could push around something a
s big as the
Tomorrow.
The thought of landing in a real wind made cool sweat break out on her spine.

“Now take the forward helm”, Jake said. “Head for that point of land.”

Honor looked where he was pointing and went into the cabin. He stood by the aft controls until he felt them respond to her hands. When he climbed into the pilot seat across from her, she didn’t so much as glance in his direction.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the marina to top off the tanks.”

The thought of docking the
Tomorrow
made Honor cringe. She knew that coming up alongside a dock was a lot more tricky than simply pulling away from it – and she had made a real hash of that.

She worried all the way to the marina.

“I’ll take the aft station”, Jake said. “If I tell you to let go of the controls, do it.”

She nodded and hoped her relief didn’t show. He went out on the stern and began calling directions to her. She didn’t argue or hesitate. She simply did what he said as best she could, even when she thought she should be doing the opposite.

The dock approached with unnerving speed. She missed the gate on a shift into reverse.

“Let go!”

Even before Honor lifted her hands, the control levers took on a life of their own. While she wiped damp palms on
her sweatshirt, Jake killed the forward momentum and tucked the boat alongside the dock with a few swift maneuvers.

Honor let out a shaky breath. The whole time the gas tanks filled, she thought about what she had done wrong on the landing. Besides missing the shift gate, she had been coming in too fast and at too steep an angle. Easy enough to figure out now, but at the time everything had happened all at once and yet had taken forever, like fast-forward on a video machine and slow-motion terror at the same time.

When she came back from paying for the gas, the blower was on and Jake was in the cabin. He killed the blower and
started the engine.

“Take the aft station”, he said, pulling the fenders aboard.

“I’ll cast off.”

She set her jaw and went to the controls. The wind was doing the same thing it had in the little cove, holding the
Tomorrow
against the dock like an invisible, relentless hand. She couldn’t back away and there was a boat blocking the
front exit.

Jake told her where to set the wheel before she engaged reverse. He gave the stern a shove, grabbed the bow, pushed hard, and swung himself up and over the bow railing. It took him only a few seconds to walk the gunwale and drop lightly into the stern well. The
Tomorrow
was well away from the
dock.

“Okay”, he said. “Take her out of the marina. Remember, no wake.”

They got out of the marina without incident. Once they were in more open water, Honor began to relax – until she noticed the clouds. In places they covered the water like draperies of dove gray muslin. Where islands appeared, they were low dark lines capped by mist.

“The weather report hasn’t changed”, Jake said, turning down the marine radio. “Drizzle and patchy fog in the early morning. Winds out of the southeast at ten to twenty knots.

Squall lines possible this afternoon. Haro Strait might be a problem, though. There are small craft warnings at the mouth.”

“Are we going there?”

“It’s the shortest way to the last route Kyle stored. At least, it’s the last route I can make the machine show me. He might have something hidden. If he does, I don’t have the code.”

Honor thought she did, but she wasn’t going to share that information with someone who had a grudge against Kyle.

“Put the route up”, she said.

Jake’s mouth thinned. “The place is ninety minutes out in good weather. It will be a lot longer if the wind gets strong enough to make us sneak along in the lee of the islands.”

Honor looked at the water. It wasn’t exactly smooth, but there weren’t any whitecaps. “Looks good to me.”

“The chop isn’t bad”, he agreed, “but adjusting to it will add time, unless you want to hammer your spine.”

“How much time?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Wind, tide, and visibility.”

“We have
radar.”

“You want to drive blind?”

Honor’s fingers clenched around the wheel. “Not particularly.”

“That makes two of us. In case you hadn’t noticed, some mighty big ships share those narrow passes between islands with us. On a boat this size, you bet your life on
radar
only when fog catches you short of land. You don’t just blithely fire up and head out into the soup for the hell of it.”

“I’m not doing any of this for the hell of it.”

She leaned over and pushed a button on the lower electronic unit. She had been watching him closely yesterday; she got the screen to switch from the depth sounder to the chart
plotter on the first try. She hit the menu button, scrolled down to the stored routes, and punched the last number on the list. A chart popped onto the screen.

“This the route?” Honor asked.

Jake said something savage under his breath.

“Right”, she said. “This is the one.”

She swung the boat around until she was headed for the first way point on the stored course.

“Do you remember the most efficient rpm for speed versus fuel efficiency?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Bring us up on plane.”

After several tries – and a few hair-raising zigzags caused by badly deployed trim tabs – Honor got the SeaSport up on plane. She could tell when she had done it right; if she lifted her hands from the wheel, the boat held a true line. She soon realized that, unlike a car, the boat did better when she left
it alone.

“That’s better”, he said. “You’re learning not to oversteer.”

Honor looked over her shoulder at the water they had covered. Even through the gloom she could see that the wake wasn’t as straight as when Jake drove. But it wasn’t all that bad, either. She was getting the hang of driving on a road that had no markings and didn’t stand still.

The computer cheeped. Honor flinched.

“It was just telling you that we’ve passed the first way point on our route”, Jake said. “Watch the radar screen. With the next sweep it will show what your new heading should be. So will the lower screen, but it’s not as easy to read.”

Saying nothing, she waited and watched the screen. A few seconds later she turned the wheel, adjusting course. Immediately the boat became harder to handle. It didn’t like taking the chop at this angle. Though the rpms hadn’t changed, the speed dropped.

“Bring the bow down two clicks on the left trim tab and one on the right”, he said.

The ride evened out. Adjusting the trim got back some of the lost speed, but not all.

Jake looked out the stern. The usual boats were pacing the SeaSport. He didn’t envy Conroy in the open Zodiac. Today the Coast Guard would be grateful for their bright orange dry suits. He looked at the sky and thought about their destination.

His thoughts were as unhappy as the set of his jaw. Kyle’s last fishing hole was almost on the invisible border between Canada’s Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands of the United States. Right now the SeaSport was more or less paralleling the weather front, but the front would overrun them before too long.

He turned up the marine radio. Even though it was after the hour, the forecast hadn’t changed. No small craft warnings had been posted yet, though advisories were out along the strait.

That didn’t make Jake feel much better. Forecasting weather was an art, not a science, especially in the San Juans. The islands were notorious for sudden winds and unexpected squall lines.