Black Tide Rising (16 page)

Five minutes became ten. Ten became fifteen. He felt as if he'd run a marathon, yet he was only sixty yards from where he had started. But he was close to where he needed to be. Just beyond his fingertips, the rock curved down toward the water. To his right there was a dark shadow, duller than the surrounding rock, which might indicate a narrow cleft. If he was correct, that was where he had seen the flash of color.

He edged closer, his eyes narrowed against the salt spray, and peered over the edge. The sunlight only reached a few feet down, and sea foam filled the darkness below that, but there was something there. It wasn't yellow, but it was something.

A wave broke against the base of the rocks, sending a column of water shooting up into the cleft. Dan saw movement and realized he was seeing the flap of a jacket lifting. There was a quick flash of yellow—maybe a life vest or a sweater, and then a pale hand reached out and pushed against the rock.

“Hey!” Dan yelled, all discomfort forgotten. “Up here!”

The water sucked back down, and the darkness returned. It made a perfect backdrop for the white face that slowly twisted around to look up at him.

—

There was no way Dan could get down to whomever it was, and no way the man could get up, so the rope was the only possibility. Dan inched back a few feet to get away from the worst of the spray and then sat up and slid the braided nylon off his shoulder. His fingers were so cold they kept fumbling the rope as he tried to form a slipknot, but finally it was done. He lay down again and crawled back to the cleft.

“You still there?” he shouted.

The pale face appeared again.

“I'm going to drop a rope down. There's a loop in the end of it. See if you can get it under your arms.”

The hand that reached up moved in slow motion, and Dan knew there wasn't much time. He watched as the rope was pulled down, inch by agonizing inch, and fought the urge to scream in frustration at being a bystander unable to do more than watch. He knew that anything else he did now would only make it worse. Distract rather than enable.

With his free hand he reached into a pocket and removed his
VHF
radio. He needed to get help fast. Even if he succeeded in pulling this guy out of the crevice, he couldn't get him over the rocks and into the dinghy by himself.

Dan saw the rope slip under one arm, and he carefully moved the end he was holding in an effort to help the process. The other arm was going to be harder. The crevice was not perpendicular, and the angle meant that the man's body weight was pressed to one side.

Moving the rope to his left hand, Dan checked that the radio was set to Channel 16 and pressed the talk button.

“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is Dan Connor.”

He kept the radio close to his mouth and his eyes on the man struggling below.

“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday,” he repeated.

VHF
radio was line-of-sight. All he could see here was open ocean. Would anyone hear him?

“Dan Connor. This is the
Uchuck
.” The voice that boomed back at him was so clear Dan found himself looking around for the ship itself.

“
Uchuck
. This is Dan Connor.”

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

Dan explained the situation and described his location as well as he could. He didn't have
GPS
on the dinghy, but he knew this would all be familiar territory to the crew of the supply boat. They plied these waters seven days a week.

“We have notified the coast guard and will have someone out to you in about ten minutes.” The response was calm and confident.

Less than ten minutes later Dan heard the roar of an outboard, and an inflatable with three men aboard appeared around the point. He called the
Uchuck
again, and between them, they guided the dinghy in to the beach.

The
Uchuck
crew members knew what they were doing. One of them snapped on a harness, and the other two quickly lowered him into the crevice. In less than ten minutes they had lifted the unknown man out onto the rocks, wrapped him in a blanket, and were tending to his most obvious wound, a gash on the side of his head.

“The captain called the coast guard. They're sending out a chopper to medevac him to Campbell River.” The leader of the rescue team clicked off his radio.

“Think he's going to make it?” Dan asked.

“I don't have enough medical training to make a guess. He has to be pretty tough to have made it this long. I guess if he can beat the hypothermia, he should be okay.”

Dan nodded. “Be good to know how he got here.”

“Couldn't have come far. Water's too cold to survive for very long. Might have come overland from one of the coves or inlets. The whole park is riddled with them.”

“Any of you check his pockets for
ID
?”

“No. And we can't do it now either. That blanket's probably all that's keeping him alive. It's got a couple of heat packs in it. You lose the heat, you're going to lose him.”

—

The
Uchuck
crew left as soon as the coast guard helicopter arrived, and Dan left soon after. He would call Markleson as soon as he got back to
Dreamspeaker
to have him check for any reports of missing people and to ask him to put out a request for the public to keep a lookout for an abandoned boat. He also wanted to follow up with the hospital at Campbell River. He needed to find out who the man was and what had happened to him. It could have been just an accident, but there was something about that head wound that suggested otherwise. And the timing was suspicious too. Maybe it was just a coincidence—but Dan didn't believe in coincidence.

Deep in the old cedars, the only sounds were the rushing of the wind through the branches and the occasional scurrying of animals. The salal that had scratched and gouged her skin as she pushed her way through it had been replaced by sword ferns, most of them taller than Margrethe herself, and the ground where she crouched was soft and wet. She was exhausted, so tired she had actually fallen asleep standing up the previous night, her arms wrapped around a tree, but she hadn't slept long. The noises of the forest had woken her, and she had pressed herself closer to the damp bark, trying to become invisible, trying to disappear, willing herself to be anywhere but where she was.

It hadn't worked, of course. This was the third day of her nightmare. Three nights earlier she had returned to her room after taking a cup of tea down to the workshop, where Jens—dear, gentle Jens—was working on the repair of a piece of machinery. It had been late and she was tired, looking forward to bed, but there had been a bright moon pouring a river of light across the water, and she had stopped to look out the window. It was a view she loved, at least in the moonlight. The cove became almost magical at night when the moon silvered the water and darkened the trees, and she could forget that it was this same ocean that terrified her in the light of day. Forget the fear that grabbed her by the throat and knotted her stomach every time she went near it. Looking back, she remembered smiling as she looked out at it. Remembered the feelings of contentment and pleasure that had washed over her. And then, just before she turned away, a flash of light had caught her eye and drawn her back. There was someone on the bank, just above the beach. She could see movement, two figures, one bigger than the other, the smaller one wrapped in something patterned, light and dark, and the other all black except for a glimpse of pale face and hands. She thought for a minute they were hugging, or even dancing, but then the flash of light came again. And again. Always at the end of an arm lifted high into the moonlight and then swung down in a glittering arc. She stared at the scene in fascination for a few seconds, unsure what she was seeing, and then the smaller figure slumped to the ground. She gasped in shock as the realization hit. The glint of light had to have come from a weapon of some kind. Probably a knife. She had seen someone being stabbed. Horrified, Margrethe watched in disbelief as the larger figure moved away and up the hill, toward the path leading to the church and the cemetery, leaving the other lying inert.

Blind instinct had driven her to the door. She couldn't just turn away and go to bed. She had to check on that small, motionless form. Without stopping to think, she pushed her feet into a pair of boots and threw a jacket around her shoulders. She was almost at the middle of the walkway when she realized she hadn't told Jens what was happening, but it would take too much time to go back now, and she wouldn't be away long. If she wasn't too late to help, she would do whatever she could—use her clothing, her jacket, whatever was needed—to make that small figure comfortable, and then go back. She did pause to look for any sign of whoever had headed toward the path, but she saw none, and she knew that once she was down on the beach, she wouldn't be visible to anyone unless they were looking out from her bedroom window.

She was too late. She knew that the moment she turned the small body over. The ashen face was a face she knew, and as she leaned over it, her tears washed away the blood that smeared the smooth cheek. Her eyes stung even now as she remembered it.

She had checked for a pulse, but there was none. He was gone. Past any help she could give him. Her hands touched the slashed tatters of the red and white blanket he had worn draped across his shoulders, and she carefully folded them back around him, unconsciously patting them into place, knowing it was useless but needing to do it anyway. His name was Darrel. He had visited her a couple of times, watched her weave, helped her pick grasses and early wildflowers. He had reminded her of a young deer, curious but wild, always poised for flight. She was so immersed in her sorrow and her memories that she hadn't been aware of the man returning. Hadn't sensed his presence until his hard fingers closed on her shoulder.

A disturbance intruded into her reverie, and she crouched lower under the ferns. She hadn't seen the man since yesterday, but he could still be close by. Walking through the sword ferns was easier than stumbling through the salal, and while their dense fronds made concealment easier, that would be true for him as well.

She huddled against the wet earth, the smell of humus and leaf litter filling her nostrils, feeling her heart thudding in her chest, sure that the sound of it could be heard for miles around. The minutes ticked by, and she willed herself to stillness, letting her fingers rest on the earth to sense any vibration, straining her weak ears to pick up any sound. A bird fluttered down and landed close by, pecking for insects along the arching stems, and she let herself relax a little, but not for long. A shiver of movement in the fronds made her tense again. She knew what it meant. She had watched it happen around her as she pushed through the ferns, each arching frond pushing against its neighbor and setting up a diminishing shimmer of movement like the patterning of raindrops on water. But this was weaker. Barely there.

It came again, and then again, several more times in quick succession. The movement seemed more pronounced in one direction, but she had no way of telling where the source was, or how close. Maybe the man knew she was here somewhere and was taking care to move quietly, but that didn't make sense. Why would he stay in the same place yet move enough to create a disturbance? She scanned the plants around her, turning her head to try to pinpoint the source, but the fronds were still again. Had she imagined it? She reached out a hand and used the tip of her index finger to gently part the giant fronds just enough to allow her to peer out, but there was nothing to see except more ferns and, above them, the soaring cedar trees. If her tormentor was there, he must be crouched down as she was, perhaps planning to wait her out.

Margrethe stayed huddled under the ferns until her cramped muscles forced her to move. Her body was shivering with cold and with fear—although the blind panic she had felt in the first day of her captivity had somehow disappeared. There had been no further disturbance, and she had to move, even if it meant creating noise herself. She pushed herself up slowly, wincing with pain as blood flowed back to her torn skin and cringing with fear at the tiniest whisper from the fronds. The bird gave a sharp call of alarm, loud enough for her to hear, and flew off into the forest gloom. There was no other movement.

She took a cautious step forward. Then another. She felt a twig crack under her foot and she froze again, imagining a sound like the clap of thunder in the stillness of the forest. The ferns shuddered, and then there was a sudden blur of movement, and she caught a glimpse of swift gray forms flickering through the shadows. Wolves. She had often heard them from the lighthouse at night. She almost laughed as she let herself breathe again. Compared to the man she was running from, they were a welcome sight—although only a few days ago, they would have terrified her. Maybe, if she survived this, she would be able to tackle that ridiculous fear of the ocean she had had since childhood, and then she and Jens could go out fishing, and beachcombing, as she knew he would love to do. In any case, the wolves disappeared so quickly that she couldn't really be sure she had seen them. It was hard to believe they had been more frightened of her than she was of them, but that must have been so. She had heard there had been hunters on the island. Perhaps the wolves had thought she was one of them. Not that it mattered. They were gone, and she needed to move as well.

—

Walker pushed aside a low branch and turned his canoe into a narrow channel. On his previous visits to the island, he had explored many of the rivers and creeks that carried the rain from the top of the mountains down to the ocean, but not all of them, although that was unimportant. The twisting waterways were the lifeblood of the earth, and he was at home on all of them.

He had been born into the Raven clan, but his family crest, his
'na 'mima
, was the Salmon. It was Salmon who had emerged from the sea long before the great flood, taken off his mask, and transformed himself into the human ancestor of Walker's family. It was Salmon who had given his people their vast knowledge of the ocean, and the tides, and the rivers. And it was Salmon who had taught them their stories and their dances, and given them the masks they used to honor him, generation after generation, in the ceremonies of the Hamatsa and the potlatch.