Death Echo (24 page)

Emma loosened her grip on the wheel and eased the tension from her shoulders and legs. She quickly realized that if she didn’t try to anticipate every little motion of the boat, she felt more relaxed.

Not more in control, just less unhappy about it.

“Check the compass heading from time to time and save your real attention for watching the water ahead,” Mac said. “You can’t avoid the waves, but you can dodge rafts of seaweed and logs.”

“Yikes.” Emma narrowed her eyes and stared out at the water.

“I’d forgotten about the logs.”

“Seaweed will shut down your cooling system real quick. Hot engines freeze up. Bad luck all around.”

“God, Mac. All the sweet talk. Don’t know if I can take it.”

Smiling, he crunched into another cracker, this time with a slice of sausage and cheese.

As water rolled on beneath the hull,
Blackbird
and Emma reached a wordless understanding. She didn’t crawl all over the controls and the boat settled into doing what caused the least motion while still sticking to a route that would lead eventually to Campbell River. Like a horse trained to the western style of riding,
Blackbird
responded best to a light hand on the reins.

Mac reduced the plate of food to random crumbs before he looked up. “Did you eat?”

“The cracker you fed me.”

He stepped over to the galley, sliced, assembled, and threw in some potato chips and cookies for variety. Celery tasted fine when you’d been out on the water for a week and fresh greens had been scarce. But celery the first day of a trip? Not if he had a choice.

Mac went back to stand next to Emma and started feeding her crackers and cheese. He told himself that there was nothing sexy about giving a woman food from his fingers. Nothing sexy about watching her tongue lick away crumbs. Nothing sexy about the accidental touch of her lips. Nothing…

The hell with it.

He’d never been real good at lying to himself.

“Mac?”

“Yeah?” he asked absently, watching her tongue.

“This marked-off area…” She pointed to the computer chart.

“Whiskey Gulf,” he said without looking at the chart. “A Canadian naval firing range. I just called, and they’re not active until dawn tomorrow, so we don’t have to go around. Keep on this course until I tell you otherwise.”

“Okay. Er, aye, aye, Captain.”

Mac wondered if she’d take orders as well in bed. Or give them.

Hold that good thought until we—

The primary
VHF
radio resting in a holder by the wheel came to life with an update of the past weather report. Emma tried to listen, steer, and keep the speed up in the face of rapidly changing wind and water.

And eat.

When the radio stopped spitting words, she swallowed half-chewed food and said to Mac, “Translation?”

“Small-craft warning has been shifted to include Campbell River.”

“Meaning?”

“If I was in a small boat, I’d come about and run back to Nanaimo, just like them.” He pointed to their port side. Miles away, two small white boats raced along the shore.

“But we’re a big girl, right?” she asked, lightly turning the wheel, anticipating the next action of boat and water.

“You sure are.” He popped a chocolate cookie into his mouth.

Blackbird
rose to meet the choppy waves, slid through, and lined up for another round of whatever the strait delivered.

“Good,” he said simply. “You’re a natural on water.”

She looked pleased. “Thanks. Eat more cookies. It improves your sweet talk.”

“I’m not sweet-talking. People can learn navigation and rules, but a feel for the water can’t be taught. It’s there or it isn’t.”

“Like languages.”

“Or shooting.” He crunched into another cookie.

“About that sweet talk…”

“I’m practicing,” he said. “See? I’m eating cookies.”

“And I’m thinking it would take more than cookies to sweeten your tongue.”

“If we were on calm water, I’d prove how wrong you are.”

She looked at him, knew what he meant, thought about how good he’d felt when she petted him in her arm-candy mode. She took a breath and reminded both of them, “We’re not on calm water. Damn it.”

Then she shut up and concentrated on handling the boat instead of its captain.

STRAIT
OF
GEORGIA

2:28 P.M.

L
ina felt the increasing strength of wind in the action of the water. A meter high and occasionally higher, the steep-sided, unevenly spaced waves broke over whichever part of the
Redhead II
was handy. Even seated, with the wheel to hang on to, the open cockpit of the boat was an uncomfortable ride.

Wet, too, despite the cloudless sky.

Her only consolation was that Demidov had to be more miserable than she was. He wore the cheap slickers she used for clients who didn’t bring their own. She was in a medium weight Mustang suit and wore warm, waterproof boots. He didn’t. She was accustomed to being on the water. He wasn’t.

Never know it from looking at him,
she thought sourly.

Driving in circles waiting for Demidov to do something was even more boring than trolling in circles waiting for a salmon to bite.

“Where are they?” she finally asked him.

Despite her intentions, her voice came out sharp, demanding.

Demidov glanced at the small, bright screen of the cell phone. “Head five degrees more to the southeast.”

She looked at the compass, then at water.

“I’ll have to tack back and forth on that heading,” she said, “or I’ll take on too much water over the stern. My boat isn’t designed for following seas.”

“Just get us five degrees to the southeast.”

When Lina put the boat into a turn, she made certain he was the one who got whitewashed by the waves. A petty triumph, but with Demidov, she took what victories she could.

Why wasn’t he murdered? So many others were.

But Taras Demidov was still alive. She was stuck with the devil himself until he had no more use for her.

Rather distantly, Lina hoped he left her alive when she no longer served a purpose.

Kill him yourself. Shove him overboard and leave him for the crabs.

She rejected the thought almost as soon as it came. Even in rough water, scanning the strait through binoculars, Demidov had the balance and predatory awareness of a cat. It was unnatural. Unnerving.

If anyone went overboard, it would be her.

It infuriated Lina that she had grown older while he had grown more dangerous, but she wasn’t stupid enough to act on her emotions. In that, at least, she was his equal.

“That’s far enough,” Demidov said abruptly. “Turn off the big outboards and get on the little one.”

“Are you talking about the
kicker
?”

“Is that the small engine?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then do it.”

Lina bit back her objections. Her gear would keep her dry from the neck down—she hated hats and only wore them when the temperatures dropped below freezing. If she got a saltwater face wash and cold water down her back today, she’d still be more comfortable than the devil who had commandeered her boat.

She cut the big outboards and staggered back to the stern, thrown off-balance by the choppy, unpredictable waves. Not for the first time, she wished she’d replaced the little kicker with a bigger one that had an electronic starter. But she hadn’t. She would pay for that now.

As she reached for the pull rope to start the kicker, water slammed into the boat and spray slapped across her face. She yanked the starter rope once, and again, then again. On the fourth try the small outboard shuddered, belched a cloud of unburned gas and oil that wind swept back into the boat, and died.

Demidov looked sharply at her.

She ignored him and yanked on the starter rope again. This time the engine not only caught, it held. Bracing herself on the stern gunwale, she steered
Redhead II
with the kicker.

It wasn’t easy, but it could be done.

Barely.

Rather savagely she hoped that Demidov appreciated the uneven, sloppy, stomach-churning ride.

At least it isn’t raining,
she thought.
It shouldn’t take long for
Blackbird
to spot us.

STRAIT
OF
GEORGIA

2:31 P.M.

E
mma was comfortable enough with the wind and water that she had hopped up into the pilot’s seat behind the wheel. More a loveseat than a simple chair, the cushion was big enough for two to use. Once she sat down, the riding-a-horse analogy was even more apt. She let the motion of the boat go through her spine in an invisible wave.

Mac settled on the padded bench seat next to her, close enough for her to feel his warmth. She liked that almost as much as the fact that both of them were relaxed with the silence and one another.

The multitude of pleasure boats that had cluttered the water near Nanaimo had disappeared. The few boats she could see were well off in the distance, much closer to land, leaving white streaks on the water as they slammed from wave-top to wave-top in a run for whatever safe anchorage was within reach.

“How often do they change the weather report?” Emma finally asked.

“Depends.”

“On the weather?” she asked sweetly.

“On how bad they missed the forecast the first time.”

“I don’t know much about weather, and less about water, but…” Her voice faded into the hiss and smack of waves against the hull.

“Yeah.” Mac looked at the whitecaps, measured how much spray lifted into the air. “The wind looks closer to twenty than fifteen, much less ten. The gusts are at least twenty-five.”

“Still want to go to Campbell River?” she asked.

“Is your stomach kicking?”

Emma looked surprised. “No. Should it be?”

“Some people get seasick on a floating dock.”

“Guess I’m not one of them.”

“We could take a lot more wind than this and be perfectly safe,” Mac said. “Unless you’re uneasy—”

“As in puke green?” she said, smiling.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not.”

“So kick the throttles up a notch and keep going.”

“How much is a notch?” she asked.

“Take it up to twenty knots, more if the motion doesn’t bother you. We’ve got time to make up.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said, and hit the throttles.

The sound of the diesels deepened. The wake behind the boat churned out even more white. Surprisingly, the ride didn’t change much, neither smoother nor rougher. The fuel consumption sure shifted, though.

“We’re filling up the tanks in Campbell, right?” she asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“We eat a lot more diesel at this speed.”

“Wait until you see it above twenty-four knots. Sucks diesel like water flushing down a head,” he said.

“Expensive.”

“If you can afford
Blackbird,
the cost of the fuel it takes to run her is small change.”

As Mac spoke, he reached across Emma for the binoculars that were held snugly in a grip near the pilot station.

“Looking for logs?” she asked.

“If I have to use glasses to find them, the logs are too far away to worry about.”

“Good to know. I’ve been wondering.”

He grunted.

After a moment Emma straightened in the seat and leaned over the wheel, staring into the water ahead.

“Is that a boat out there?” she asked. “Just to the left of the bow.”

Mac was already watching the shape through the binoculars.

“Twenty-eight-foot motorboat. Red gunwale stripe. Fisherman’s special. You want to see something suck fuel? Try opening the throttles on those two big Yamahas strapped to the stern of that boat. Probably go twenty-two knots, maybe twenty-four. Hell of a butt-breaking ride, though. Especially in this chop.”

“Is that why the boat is going so slow? It’s barely moving.”

“I noticed.”

Mac refocused the glasses.

Redhead II
all but disappeared as a wave broke against its side. Someone with wild, wet red hair was hunched over the steering arm of the kicker, getting whitewashed as often as not.

The boat wallowed like a half-beached log.

“They’re on the kicker but no fishing gear is out,” Mac said. “Steer an intercept course.”

Emma started to ask about kickers and fishing gear, but Mac leaned across her and lifted the radio microphone out of its cradle. Before he could use it, the radio crackled to life.

“...calling the black-hulled yacht off Nanoose,” said a man’s voice. “I have a visual of you.”

“Blackbird
here. I didn’t catch your name. Switch to six-eight.”

A few seconds later, on the new channel, a man’s voice said, “
Blackbird
, we’re having trouble with a fuel filter or the electrical system. Hard to be certain in this water. Can you assist us?”

It wasn’t a request Mac could or would refuse. He was the only boat within sight, he had the skill and the means to aid the smaller boat, and the weather was going downhill. Marine law—and simple decency—insisted he do what he could to help.

He focused the glasses on the stern of the pitching boat, where her name was written in bold script.

“Redhead II
,” he said, “stand by for assistance. Can you turn her into the wind?”

“I think—yes, the captain says we can.”

“That will make it easier. Stand by on six-eight, please.”

“Thank you.”

Staring at the boat ahead, Mac held the microphone, then said, “I’ll take it from here.”

“Good.”

Emma shot out of the pilot position. The thought of steering
Blackbird
close to another boat in this water was enough to lift the hair on the back of her neck. Mac, on the other hand, seemed to take it for granted.

“Call Faroe,” Mac said as he took the wheel. “Have him check the registration on a Canadian pleasure boat, about twenty-eight feet, called
Redhead II
.”