Black Tide Rising (15 page)

They split up as soon as they reached the point where the roads diverged, four taking the northwest branch, and the remaining three heading south. Both roads led through deep valleys and up into the mountains, but side roads would take them almost as far as the trail itself. The island was over two hundred square miles in size, but they had traveled every inch of it, and using the old roads to cut across from their landing place made their journey easier than many they had taken previously. They would travel until it became too dark to see, and then they would rest till first light edged into the sky. With luck, they would reach the trail by nightfall the next day.

—

In Victoria, the wharves and floats that lined the harbor were crowded with yachts of every shape and size, and a clear sky heralded the start of the annual Swiftsure International Yacht race.

Claire Ryan would normally be one of the thousands of spectators lining the seawall, but this year she was too caught up in planning her departure for Kyuquot to worry about it. She had hauled her twenty-eight-foot Boston Whaler out of the water after it had passed its official inspection and loaded it onto its trailer. The boat and trailer were sitting in the driveway of the house she was staying in, waiting for her to hitch it up to her truck and start the journey up to Fair Harbour. She hoped that would happen on Wednesday.

She ran her hand through her short blond hair before shuffling through the stack of papers in front of her for perhaps the fifth time, checking them against a master list she had clipped to the inside cover of a plastic file folder. Every item on the list had a checkmark, except for two, and every checked item had the required dates, and the required stamps, and the required signatures at the bottom. The back pocket of the folder held two copies of every one of them. Tomorrow was Tuesday, the day she had been told she would receive the official certificate of seaworthiness for the boat, based on the tests it had been subjected to over the last few days. She would make the requisite two copies of that and add them to the file folder. Add another checkmark to the master list. That would leave one. In order to check that one off, she would have to present the whole lot of documents to the Pacific Maritime Research Institute and obtain its formal letter of acceptance. She expected to get that the following day, Wednesday, when she drove through Nanaimo on her way north.

It was time to go. Claire hadn't worked out on the water since the previous year, when the boat she had inherited from her father,
Island Girl
, had been sunk by a bunch of thugs up near Hakai Pass. She missed the boat and the memories it had held of shared time with her father. She missed the challenge and the excitement that her various research projects brought. She missed being out on the ocean every day, watching life unfurl around her as the tides rose and fell and the water advanced and receded. She missed the sounds and smells and movement the ocean provided. And she missed Dan Connor, the man who had helped Walker rescue her.

The realization made her smile. They were such different people. He was a man she would never have expected to like. She had spent all of her adult life, except for a brief and disastrous marriage to a bureaucrat, among fishermen and scientists. Dan was a cop—or at least he had been until a few months before she met him. He had even served in the anti-terrorist squad, surely one of the most dangerous and violent areas of a dangerous and violent profession. His friends were cops. She had met a few of them when they had been at the marina: big, serious guys who were quick to laugh but slow to relax. Men who hummed with a fine tension, drawn taut like a thin guitar string waiting to be plucked. Watchful men. Hard men. If anyone had asked her before last summer, she would have said that Dan was the last person she would have thought of going out with.

But she had gone out with him. Had even moved in with him on his boat,
Dreamspeaker
, where they had spent six very pleasant months together. And now she missed him. Missed his easy smile and easy conversation and the dark shadows that haunted his eyes every now and then when he thought she wasn't looking. She even missed Walker, and Walker was already out there with Dan, where she wanted to be. Three more days and she would be out there with them.

The mist formed again as Dan approached the entrance to Louie Lagoon, opaque ribbons caressing the rocky tidal shelves and twining wraithlike through the silent ranks of old-growth trees. The harsh sound of the motor echoed off the rocks, violating the stillness of the morning, and Dan reached back and turned it off, letting the tiny boat drift as he retrieved a pair of oars from their holders. The sudden return of quiet was greeted by the appearance of a mink foraging on the shore, and a bald eagle settled onto the top of a dead cedar tree. It peered down at Dan from its perch, watching with unblinking yellow eyes for several minutes before turning its head in a haughty gesture that appeared to bestow approval. A year ago Dan might never have seen it, but the short period of time he had spent on the water with Walker when they joined forces to find Claire had taught him much. More than that, it had awakened senses that had been dormant most of his life. Now he recognized the pale green scent of new leaves, and the soft murmur of feeding fish. He could feel the silken touch of air left by a passing bird or a swaying branch. He could hear the changing whisper of the sea as the tide pushed it into and over the shore. Those perceptions had opened up a new world, vastly different from the physical focus of his previous life as a police officer. He might never gain the knowledge or the sensory awareness that Walker possessed, but he had learned enough to see things through a very different lens.

Dan rowed slowly into the deepest part of the lagoon, gliding over the shallow bottom, with its clusters of orange and purple sea stars, and letting his senses absorb the movements and sounds and contours of this remote and secluded waterway. He knew there was no chance of finding Margrethe and her abductor here. They wouldn't have had time to make it this far even if Margrethe was a willing participant, which he figured was pretty well impossible. What he wanted to do was familiarize himself with the shoreline and get to know the area well enough that when he returned, he would be able to recognize things that were out of place. What he needed to do was find the entrance to the trail.

He found it at the very end of the lagoon. There was an opening in the trees where a glimpse of pale sky formed a line through the dark canopy. It was partially hidden behind a jumbled mound of driftwood. Anyone exiting the trail would have to scramble over the piled logs first and then wade out into the lagoon through a patch of weeds and grasses to a waiting boat or floatplane. It wouldn't be easy, and it certainly wouldn't be fast, which meant that a water-taxi operator or a floatplane pilot would have plenty of time to call in a description to the Tahsis detachment.

Dan scribbled a note to himself to check that both Tahsis and Gold River had contacted all the floatplane and water-taxi companies, and then he turned the motor on and headed out of the lagoon. There was another entrance to the trail at the bottom of Louie Bay, where it narrowed into a tidal channel barely wide enough for the dinghy to pass through, leading out almost to the open ocean.

The second entrance was easier to find than the first, but it would be harder for anyone using it. The rocks were jagged and wet, swept with sea spray, and huge logs thrown up by past storms were wedged into the crevices. Low tide might make it a little more accessible, but it would still be an awkward passage, and it too would be slow. Good. Time to get back to
Dreamspeaker
and call Markleson.

—

The call to Markleson took less than five minutes. The coast guard was out checking the beaches, and both Tahsis and Gold River detachments were on the alert. They, in turn, had called all the local floatplane and water-taxi operators. They had also talked to the people who ran the
Uchuck
, the supply ship for all the remote communities in the area, and to a couple of crew-boat operators based in Zeballos. No one had reported a request for a pickup, and the coast guard hadn't reported a sighting.

Dan put the microphone in its bracket and went back out on deck. It was not yet noon, the mist had completely cleared, and there was a small patch of blue sky off to the west. There was nothing more he could do except wait. He knew Walker would call him if he found anything—or if Jared and his group came across anyone.

He looked north, back toward the outer entrance to Esperanza Inlet and the northwest tip of Nootka Island, a point of land that formed Nuchatlitz Marine Park, where Claire would be spending much of her time once she arrived. She had told him it was one of the most important habitats for the sea otter population she was studying, and the islets and reefs surrounding it were home to numerous tide pools where she could observe intertidal life. They had talked about it over a glass of wine the evening before he left, and Dan had found himself catching her excitement, although his was directed more toward the archaeological sites that were a feature of the park. The Nuu-chah-nulth people had lived in the area for over four thousand years, and their story was written in the buried remains of their ancient villages and in the middens that surrounded them. A desire to understand their history was yet another thing Walker had awoken in him.

It was a quick trip across the open entrance of Nuchatlitz Inlet to the park, and the shallow draft of the inflatable let Dan navigate through the reefs easily. He didn't have a lot of time to spend here, but an hour couldn't hurt. As he dodged jagged pinnacles of rock skirted with seafoam, and wove through groups of tiny wave-washed islets, he suddenly realized he was following almost the same path Darrel's small body would have taken on its journey to Aktis Island. The thought sobered him, and he looked out across the water, seeking some sign of the current that had carried it. His brain conjured an image of a wide river surging north through the ocean, its surface smooth and dark, but in fact there was nothing except the oblivious march of the waves on their relentless passage from Japan.

He pushed the image from his mind. It was time to get back to
Dreamspeaker
and to reality. He needed to check in with the locals and find out what was happening. He steered the inflatable back in, closer to shore, and turned it south. A flash of light off to his left caught his attention, but he was too far away to see what had caused it. Probably a piece of glass on the beach. Nuchatlitz was getting to be a popular destination for kayakers and campers, and the beaches were no longer pristine.

The flash came again. And then again. Curiosity made him slow the motor and turn toward it. He thought the three flashes had been regular and fairly close together. Maybe something metallic or glass floating in the water, catching the light as it rose and fell on the waves. A fishing ball, perhaps, or a piece of flotsam from the tsunami in Japan rolling in the shallows.

Dan nosed the dinghy into a cluster of small islets that stood off the shore, and as he emerged on the other side, three more flashes winked out at him. These were regular too, but farther apart. He reached for the binoculars he always carried in his pack, but before he could lift them out, yet another three flashes winked in quick succession, and a surge of adrenalin coursed through his bloodstream, replacing curiosity with a sense of urgency.
SOS
. The universal call for help. Someone was in trouble.

The beach he had glimpsed was tiny, set deep into a cleft in the shore. It was also empty. Dan steered as close as he dared and scanned the rocks that surrounded it. The wave surge and the spray made it difficult to see anything, and the wet black basalt reflected the light and hid the rocks' contours. He was close enough to feel the undertow as the water surged, rebounded, then surged again, and he worked the engine to hold the boat as steady as he could. There had been no more flashes, but perhaps that was because his angle of view had changed.

The shoreline curved sharply east in a deep indentation, and the beach disappeared from sight. There was no way the signal could have originated from this side—the rocky cape would have hidden it completely. Dan reversed his course and motored back. He couldn't go any slower, and he couldn't get any closer. He would just have to hope that the change in angle allowed him to see whoever had sent that call for help.

He crept past the rocks, fighting the waves and the water, letting his eyes roam across the jumbled mass of rock as he searched for a sign of something alien: a shape, a flash of color, a movement. Anything. He was almost back to the beach when he saw it, and even then he wasn't sure. There was a hint of yellow. A narrow line of bright color that disappeared from view almost the same second he saw it. It hadn't looked natural.

He turned the dinghy again, focused on the area where he had seen it. There! Now that he knew where to look, it was a little easier to locate, but it was still impossible to identify. Was it where the signal had originated? Why were there no further flashes?

He tried to nose the little boat in closer, but the wave surge threw him back. There was no way he was going to be able to check it out from this side. He would have to go back to the beach and scramble out over the rocks. It would be dangerous, but not as dangerous as trying to go in by sea, and at least there was a chance of succeeding.

Once again he reversed direction, but this time he headed straight for the beach, increasing his speed until the dinghy was bouncing off the tops of the waves. The sound of the propeller dropped to a low growl as it dug into the water and rose to an ear-piercing whine as it spun uselessly in the air. He couldn't judge the dangers. If he came down in a trough and hit a rock, it would be all over, but he needed the speed. He could think of only one reason why the flashes would have stopped.

The beach was smooth, the crushed shell so white it was almost silver. Dan pulled up the prop just before it hit the bottom and allowed the shallow vee of the rigid hull to drive up and settle into the sand. He grabbed the emergency medical kit and a length of rope he kept on hand, and then stumbled over to the rocks. Thank God he had worn gloves. They protected his hands as he clawed his way up onto the outcropping and started across. He didn't dare stand up. If he slipped, or a rogue wave caught him, he wouldn't stand a chance. He crawled crab-like across the surface, his fingers searching for crevices to hang on to, his toes slipping as he pushed himself forward. He was soaked to the skin in seconds.