Amber Beach (9 page)

“New recruit?” Jake asked, handing the registration papers over to Conroy.

“Somebody has to train them.”

While the two men remaining in the Zodiac kept their craft close to the
Tomorrow,
Conroy thumbed through the registration papers. To no one’s surprise everything was in order. He returned the papers to Jake.

“What is he looking for in here?” Honor asked from the cabin door.

“Compliance with regulations”, Jake said.

“Such as?”

“Fire extinguishers, Coast Guard-approved PFDs for everyone aboard, the proper bureaucratic placards reminding you that it’s illegal to put anything other than fishing gear into Puget Sound waters, that sort of thing.”

“So that’s why Kyle had that tacky red garbage sign pasted over the stove.”

“Don’t forget the tacky black sign about the evils of motor oil that’s pasted on the underside of the engine cover.” He turned to Conroy. “Want to look?”

“I’ll wait. Jimmy hasn’t seen one of the big new Volvos yet. He’ll get a kick out of it.”

“I’m always glad to help in the education of our youth”, Honor said, wide-eyed.

Jake snickered.

Conroy looked philosophical. As he had said, there were worse jobs out there.

When the time came to open the engine cover, it was Honor who conducted the magical mechanical tour with the detailed enthusiasm of a professor discussing the use of past participles in Shakespearean sonnets. She was especially careful to point out the dipstick, the leak-free fuel lines, and the flame arrester on the carburetor. She described intake, outgo, filters, ignition, water cooling, and the care and feeding of all four hundred and fifty-four cubic inches until even Jimmy’s eyes began to glaze over.

Jake stepped in before she began dismantling the engine so they could inspect every moving part and some that didn’t.

“Not today”, he said easily. “You start field-stripping this puppy and we’ll never get around to fishing.”

For a moment he would have sworn Honor looked disappointed.

“You sure?” she asked, looking at both Coast Guardsmen. “This is a really sweet hunk of machinery.”

Reluctantly Conroy smiled. “I know a few engineers who would love to show you around below decks.”

“Steam engines don’t count. Neither do nukes. I’m the true-blue, ail-American internal combustion type.”

This time Conroy laughed out loud. Then he gestured for Jimmy to get back into the Zodiac. The young man scrambled
to obey.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Ms. Donovan”, Conroy said. “I’ll never look at engines in quite the same way again.”

“Off to make more inspections?” Jake asked.

“You never know.”

“If you get bored”, he said, pointing over the stern, “there are two civilian boats back there. Or are they yours?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Going to inspect them?”

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow?”

Conroy’s mouth flattened. It was obvious that he wasn’t happy with this particular assignment. “When did you get back in town?” he asked.

“Not long ago. You off tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll buy you a beer.”

Conroy relaxed. “Sure. How about the Salty Log? Eighteen
hundred hours.”

Jake glanced at his watch. It was nearly five, or seventeen hundred to military types. He wouldn’t have time to do much
with the SeaSport before he had to head back for the dock. But he wasn’t complaining. Finding out whether the guy putting pressure on the Coast Guard was local, state, national, or international was more important than anything Jake could do on the water.

“I’ll be there”, he said. “Bring Janet if you like.”

“Not this time”, Conroy said in a low voice. “I don’t want her anywhere near this mess.”

That wasn’t good news, but Jake smiled anyway. “Right. See you at eighteen hundred.”

Enviously Honor watched while Conroy stepped up on the engine cover, down to the swim step, and into the Zodiac with a dancer’s grace.

“How does he do that in rough water?” she asked Jake.

“Carefully.”

He turned and headed back into the cabin. She stayed in the stern for a moment longer, watching the open
Zodiac
with a combination of horror and fascination. The four men had no cabin to retreat to when the wind drove spray into the boat, no shelter when black clouds turned to icy rain.

She wondered if the bottom of the
Zodiac
smelled like fish. Shuddering, she turned and hurried back inside the cabin, closing the door behind her. After the little Coast Guard craft, her brother’s SeaSport seemed like a haven of comfort and security.

Jake was already sitting in the chair behind the helm, watching the water and the boats around them. She stepped up into the pilot seat across the aisle from him. The bench seat was wide enough to seat two comfortably, three if they were kids.

“Since when does the Coast Guard wear orange uniforms?” she asked.

“Survival gear.”

“They expect to sink?”

“Regulations. Open boats and cold water equals survival gear.”

“Day-Glo orange for the coroner. Lovely.”

“They’re wearing dry suits. They could float for days and
stay alive.”

“Talk about diapers…”

Laughing, Jake hit the throttle. The engine growled happily as more fuel rushed through its lines and caught fire deep in the engine. The controlled explosion known as internal combustion slammed through machinery, turning the prop and driving the SeaSport across the cold blue water.

Smiling, Honor closed her eyes and listened to the bass music of a muscular, well-tuned engine. Though they were whipping along through the water at good speed, the sound of the engine told her there was power to spare. Right now only two of the four barrels of the carburetor were working. The other two were in reserve, waiting for the demand that would bring them to life.

“I’ll bet it sounds wonderful when the other jets kick in”, she said.

Jake glanced aside, saw her savoring kind of smile, and told himself not to think about how satisfying it would be to make her respond like that in bed. He told himself he was stupid to even think about her like that. This was business, impure and simple.

But no matter how hard he tried to control his thoughts, images kept sliding into his mind, the kind of images that made his pants fit tighter with every heartbeat.

“Listen up”, Jake said, increasing the gas feed. “Here goes
three and four.”

The boat surged forward. The sound of the engine changed, becoming both deeper and higher. It ran through Honor’s blood like hard liquor. Her smile widened until she
laughed out loud.

“Gorgeous”, she said. “Eat your heart out, Beethoven.”

Jake smiled, too, especially when he glanced over his
shoulder. The three boats following him were having to scramble to keep pace. He looked forward again, scanning the water ahead for floating logs, rafts of seaweed, or other navigation hazards. There was nothing in sight but clean, flat water.

“Might as well see what this puppy will do”, he said.

Better now than later, when lives might depend on it. But he didn’t say that aloud. He liked the smile on Honor’s face too much to remind her that she had a lot more to fear than cold blue water and the smell of fish.

Then it occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, she was too innocent to realize her danger.

Instantly he told himself that was ridiculous, of course she did. But he kept remembering that she hadn’t even noticed when Kyle’s cottage was under surveillance. Yet she was hardly stupid or unobservant.

That left innocent.

She certainly had sounded like it when she was talking to Archer. Her older brother had slammed the same kind of doors in her face that he had slammed in Jake’s.

Savagely Jake told himself he was a fool for even thinking that Honor might be as honest as her clear, amber-green eyes. Not that it mattered – honest or crooked, Honor was his ticket into the closed world of Donovan International. He didn’t have to love, respect, or even dislike the means to an end. He just had to grit his teeth and use it.

The
Tomorrow
fled across the flat, cold waters of Puget Sound. The widening white V of the wake spread out from the stern like a fan-shaped contrail. One of the pursuing boats fell back rather quickly. The other hung on. So did the Zodiac.

Jake eased the power up more. With a throaty roar of delight, the SeaSport hit thirty-four knots.

“I knew there was a reason Kyle is my favorite brother”, Honor said over the sound of the engine.

Jake glanced at her. She was smiling dreamily, eyes closed. Whatever fear she had of small boats and big water wasn’t as great as her pleasure in a powerful, well-tuned engine doing what it had been made to do. He couldn’t help
smiling back at her.

While he held the revs at four thousand, he divided his attention between the water ahead and the dials on the console. Nothing changed but the speed of the boat as it skimmed over currents and eddies caused by the slackening tide.

He nudged the throttle lever higher. The SeaSport had more speed to give. And then more. The motion of the boat became less predictable as a smaller and smaller fraction of the hull actually met the water. He held the boat with a light, relentless touch, finding out what it was made of, what it had in reserve, and where it would fail.

The gauges remained well within normal range. The
Tomorrow
sliced cleanly through the water. There were no sheets of spray fountaining on either side of the bow. Jake was too experienced a driver and the hull was too well designed for that kind of inefficiency in calm water.

Twenty minutes later, satisfied that the engine didn’t have any hidden weakness, he finished a wide loop around an island. As he brought the revs down to thirty-four hundred, he looked over his shoulder to see who was still with him.

The Coast Guard was hanging back, little more than an orange spot. Jake knew it was Conroy’s choice rather than mechanical necessity; the big engine pushing the light
Zodiac
could have kept pace with the SeaSport. One of the private boats that had been following was no longer in sight. The other was well behind and making hard work of it, bouncing and smacking down on the water, jolting sheets of spray into the air.

Jake wondered if the driver was wearing a kidney belt. He certainly needed one.

“Well?” Honor asked.

“Nice boat.”

“Mmm. I begin to understand the lure of fishing.”

“Fishing? In your dreams. At the speed we were going, you’d have to be trolling for flying fish.”

“Better and better.”

“Do you like to eat fish?”

“Yum!”

“Fresh fish?” he asked.

“There’s no other kind worth eating.”

“I’ll make a fisherman – er, fishersan – out of you yet.”

“No need. I’ve already buttered up my local fishmonger. He makes sure my fish are fresh.”

“Nothing is as fresh as when you catch it yourself.”

Honor gave Jake a sideways look that said she didn’t believe a word of it. “I’d rather learn how to drive the boat.”

His smile would have made Little Red turn and run. “Okay. First thing you need to know is that the owner always buys the gas.”

“Is that supposed to worry me?”

He eyed the half-empty gas gauges. “It will. Until then, listen up. Under good to fair water conditions, the most efficient ratio of speed to gas consumption for this boat is about thirty-four hundred rpm.
At that
speed, the boat is very responsive to the helm. There’s a direct ratio between speed, trim, and…”

Jake headed back for the dock at a sedate speed, talking the whole time. He kept at it long after Honor’s eyes
glazed
over, burying her in facts and figures and nautical terms, demonstrating with every relentless word how much he knew about the SeaSport and how little she did.

It was a lousy way of teaching her how to run the boat. But it was a great way of teaching even a stubborn Donovan female how much she needed one J. Jacob Mallory to help her do what she really wanted to do – find a fortune in stolen amber.

The Salty Log was an old hangout for the loggers, fishermen, and crabbers of Anacortes. The fortunes of the place had declined along with the local fish stocks, the discovery of the spotted owl, and the rise of Native American fishermen who worked according to tribal rules rather than federal or state regulations. Never an upscale place to begin with, the Salty Log could most kindly be described as “atmospheric.”

When Jake walked in the atmosphere was stale smoke and old complaints about know-nothing Fisheries bureaucrats, city-born tree huggers, and greedy Natives. The rants were as old as the reality of declining resources and much easier to understand. Jake had heard each of the arguments before, believed in some of them at one time or another, and now took a sour view of all of them.