Amber Beach (44 page)

“Their chopper is at Sand Point, twenty minutes away. We’ll be long gone by then.”

“Won’t they look for us?”

“Clouds, wind, and night are on our side. We’ll run without lights in the lee of the islands and hope the Coast Guard doesn’t find us.”

The SeaSport lurched as it dropped down off a wave. Though Jake wasn’t going as fast as usual, he still wasn’t exactly crawling. Honor had to brace herself on the bulkhead to stay in the seat.

Switches clicked and the windshield wipers rushed to clear salt water from glass. Not that it mattered. Without a moon or even the bow floodlight turned on, there wasn’t much to see.

The cry of wind and the smack of waves on the hull became a kind of silence that ate at Honor’s already frayed nerves. The more her eyes became accustomed to the dark, the more she realized how much white water there was.

“What about logs?” she asked finally.

“You see any?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

More noisy silence. The cabin was dark but for the chart plotter’s screen and the eerie green glow of the radar screen showing islands and the occasional bright spot of navigation markers.

“What’s that way off to the left?” Honor asked.

“A tugboat with a barge in tow.”

She looked at the radar screen. “How can you tell?”

“Look out the window. See the lights on the ‘Christmas tree’?”

“The what?”

“The tall mast. All tugs have them. The number of lights tells you how long the towrope is. The color of the running lights tells you whether it’s coming or going. This one is starboard to, headed out. We’ll cross well behind it and whatever it’s towing.”

Honor turned away from the
radar
screen and looked out over the water. Sure enough, the boat had a vertical line of lights. “Not my idea of a Christmas tree. Too skinny.”

Without answering, Jake adjusted the radar screen to maximum range. Other than a big oil tanker on its way to March Point, there was nothing on the water but wind, waves, and islands. He settled in for a long, bumpy ride.

“Any lights behind us?” he asked after a time.

“Not the last twenty times I looked.”

He smiled briefly.

“What does the
radar
show?” she asked.

“Nothing following us.”

“Do you think we got away clean?”

He grunted.

The ride went from lumpy to rough as the
Tomorrow
emerged from the lee of a small island.

“Looks like we got away”, Jake said, smiling at Honor. “If anyone but the Coast Guard spots us now, we’ll look like vacationers who decided to weigh anchor and find a calmer
spot to sleep.”

“How long will it take to get to Seal Rock?”

“I don’t know. Depends on the wind outside the islands.” Her hands locked on the bulkhead as the boat slid sick-eningly down the side of a wave. She was certain the waves were bigger than they had been.

“Jake?” she asked.

“It’s all right, honey. If I thought the ride was more dangerous than leaving you behind, I would have tied you up and stuffed you in a closet.”

“You wouldn’t have.” But even as she protested, she knew that he could have done just that. “Why didn’t you?” she
asked, curious.

“I knew you wouldn’t forgive me. But if I’m wrong and anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Everything that happens isn’t your fault. I’m a functioning adult, fully capable of making my own decisions and living with the results.”

“I’m sure your brothers will see it that way”, Jake said
ironically.

“That’s their problem.”

“As long as it’s my ass they’re after, it’s my problem too.”

Honor opened her mouth and then closed it again. Jake
was right. The Donovan males were very protective of their sisters. Sometimes it was endearing. Most of the time it was a pain in the rear.

“Go into the V berth and try to sleep”, Jake said. “It could be a long night.”

“Sleep? In this?”

Honor braced herself as the
Tomorrow’s
bow bit into a wave and shot through to a sudden downward swoop on the other side.

“This looks worse than it is”, Jake said. “You should see what it’s like in the Aleutians when storm winds are blowing and the sea runs forty to eighty feet high. Of course, the boats are a lot bigger, too.”

“Eighty feet!”

“And up.”

“Why does anyone go out in that?”

“Money.” He checked the
radar
screen closely, watching it through several sweeps. The blip he thought he had seen didn’t reappear. “Go ahead, get some sleep.”

“I’d rather see the waves and worry than not see them and worry even more.”

Besides, it was better than thinking about Kyle and his sexy, forlorn fiancee, the woman who had unintentionally damned him with every word she spoke.

I believed him. I betrayed my family, my people, my country. All of them. For him. May God forgive me, I still love him. I still believe he will telephone me…

Grimly Honor clung to the console and stared out into the churning darkness, trying to think of nothing at all.

Honor awoke the instant Jake started to ease out of the V berth beside her. Not far above her face, the transparent hatch cover showed nothing more than the silver torrent of moonlight that had made the last hour of their journey easier for Jake and more terrifying for her.

She really would rather not have known how wild the sea became before he finally anchored in the lee of an island and let the gale blow on without them.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “It isn’t even dawn.”

“Just checking the boat. Go back to sleep.”

“Oh, sure. ‘Go back to sleep’”, she mimicked. “Next time I go to a tennis match, I’ll know how the ball feels.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“It was worse.”

“Next time I’ll stuff you in the closet.”

“Next time I’ll let you.”

His smile flashed in the moonlight as he bent down and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Thirty seconds after Jake left the berth, Honor began to get cold. The sleeping bag they had been using as a blanket was plenty warm as long as he was beside her, radiating heat. Without him the berth felt like a pie-shaped slice of refrigerator. Even fully dressed in shoes, leggings, jeans, sweater, and sweatshirt, she wasn’t really warm.

She inched past the electronics toward the cabin. The tension in her body, the feeling of having to remember to breathe, was so much a part of her now that she almost didn’t notice it. The dreams she was having were different. She couldn’t get used to them, the raw fear and the feeling that no matter what she did nothing got done, that Kyle was calling her name and his innocence into the darkness and wind, slipping farther and farther away from her with every cry….

The door to the head opened and closed behind Jake. Shivering, she eased past him in the narrow aisle. “Remember how to use it?” he asked. “Yes. I particularly remember how cold the seat is.”

“Never noticed.”

“Try sitting down when you pee.” The door slammed, leaving Jake alone but for the muttering of the radio. He smiled slightly; she really wasn’t
a
morning person. The middle of the night, however…

He turned up the radio, tuned to the marine weather station, and listened while he put coffee water on to boil. He was still listening when Honor emerged from the head, shivering. He handed her a bright orange float coat. It would be too big for her, but it would help to warm her.

“What’s the weather like?” she asked, pulling on the coat.

“SSDD, until the high breaks up.”

“What does that mean?”

“Same shit different day, until the weather changes.”

“Goody”, she said sarcastically.

“You bet it is. As long as the wind holds, we won’t need to worry about being overrun by the Tupperware navy.”

Honor blinked.

Despite the urgency and impatience gnawing at him, Jake smiled at her look of sleepy confusion. “Pleasure craft”, he explained. “Made of cheap plastic.”

The effort it took for her to smile told him just how edgy she felt. Underneath her forced calm, she was vibrating like a wire too tightly stretched.

And so was he. He had shared the good news about the wind, but not the bad: diving wouldn’t be any fun, for either of them.

He changed to the hailing band on the radio and listened. Nothing. He surfed through the other channels several times, listening. Nothing. For all that he could hear on the radio, they had gotten away clean.

He wished he believed it.

They washed down salmon sandwiches with hot coffee. Dawn was barely a hint of gray on the eastern horizon. Jake hit the blower. A few minutes later he started the engine. While it came up to operating temperature, he went to work on the chart plotter
again.
Nothing new there, either.

“Seal Rock?” Honor asked.

He grunted.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic”, she said.

“I’m not. It will be cold, rough, and windy.”

“Isn’t there a lee side?”

“Only if you’re a seal and it’s low tide, when the rocks
are above water.”

“Then why are we going? Kyle won’t be there.”

“You have a better idea?” he challenged.

She bit her lip and shook her head, not trusting her temper enough to respond. It wasn’t Jake’s fault she felt like she was breathing nettles.

He sighed and cursed under his breath. He really didn’t want to point out that on Seal Rock they were looking for something that didn’t have to breathe oxygen – like amber or
a dead body.

“Sorry”, he said, pulling Honor close. “Right now I’m not any happier about this mess than you are.”

“He’s not your brother”, she said against Jake’s flannel
shirt.

“But you’re his sister.”

While Honor tried to make sense of Jake’s words, he went out on the bow and pulled up the anchor. Before she had time to get nervous about being adrift, he was back in the helm seat. Anxiously she looked to the east, needing dawn in a way she couldn’t explain. If only there was enough light, surely she would be able to see where Kyle was, wouldn’t she?

Dawn hadn’t arrived yet. The wind had. It caught them as soon as they left the lee of the island. But by the time they hammered through the waves to Seal Rock, it was light enough to see everything.

There was nothing to see except foam.

Even though her head had known it would be this way, disappointment broke over Honor in a long, cold wave.

Kyle, where are you?

“He can’t be dead”, she said hoarsely. “He’s my brother…”

Jake saw a tear slide down her cheek. He had tried to prepare her for the bleak reef. Obviously he hadn’t done a very good job.

“You believe he’s dead, don’t you?” she demanded. “A thief and a murderer and
dead!”

“It’s one explanation for his disappearance”, Jake said in a neutral tone.

“He isn’t dead”, she said, her voice ragged. “What else is around here?”

“Water.”

“You know what I mean!”

“This may surprise you”, Jake said bitterly, “but I didn’t come here just to rub your face in the most probable explanation for Kyle’s disappearance. This is the last place Kyle recorded on the chart plotter. Period. No hidden agenda.”

“If Kyle can’t be here, why bother?”

“Because there’s a chance, just a chance, that a panel from the Amber Room is tied to the bottom somewhere around Seal Rock.”

“And if you find it, you’ll be back in business.”

Jake didn’t say a word.

For a time Honor tipped back her head and closed her eyes as though to stop tears from falling. It didn’t work. “How long will it take you to search for the amber?”

He grimaced. There was nothing in her voice, no color, no life, like a room with no light in it.

“Not too long”, he said. “There are only a few places where it would be safe to stash the panel.”

She blinked hard and looked out at the ragged rock and white water. “What are you talking about? You could hide the Queen Mary out there.”

“If something is down there, it has to be safe from tides, currents, and storms. We get some pretty steep tides around here, so you’re looking at least fifteen feet down.”

Unwillingly Honor turned and faced Jake. His expression was intent, his eyes like hammered silver as he stared out over the nasty-looking rock.

“Kyle was limited by the amount of air in his tank”, Jake continued, “even if he had a spare. I’m betting that he free dove to check out possible hiding places. I doubt that he went much deeper than twenty-five feet, because it gets real dark in these waters and the breath is squeezed right out of you by pressure unless you’re used to free diving.”