Amber Beach (21 page)

“Why?”

Jake thought fast. “Logic. Would he bring it here if he couldn’t hide it?”

“How did he get it here, then?”

“Good question. I’ll be sure to ask him.”

“First we have to find him.”

“I’m working on that.”

“From here, it looks like you’re fishing. And not very well, I must say. Good thing I got some chicken for dinner.”

“I’ll bring the wine.”

Honor smiled and wished she knew Jake well enough to toss his hard cheekbone just above his beard. She had been hoping not to spend the evening alone, waiting for the phone to ring, wondering if it would be bad news, worse news, or Snake Eyes on the other end of the line.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, leaning close to the blue screen, needing to think about anything except the unnerving silence that came when she said hello and no
one answered.

Jake tried not to take an extra-deep breath, savoring the sweet smell of woman so close to him. Then he tried not to think how nice her chin-length hair would feel tickling his bare skin. Then he tried not to think about her lips doing the sarae thing, tickling so fine.

“Jake? What are you hoping to find?”

“I’m…” He stared at the screen for a few seconds while he tried to think of a nice way to say that he was looking for her brother’s dead body or a cache of stolen amber sunk to the bottom by the missing anchor. There was no nice way.

“I’m looking for fish”, he said. “That’s all. Just fish.”

“The screen looks blank to me.”

“It is.”

Jake hit one of the buttons on the bottom number pad. The view changed back to the chart. Trying to see more clearly, Honor shifted position until she was half standing in the aisle. He hit a few more buttons and the picture changed again. A new route was laid out.

“Steer while I reel in”, he said, sliding out from behind the helm seat.

There was no way he could avoid touching her quite thoroughly as he passed her in the narrow aisle. There was no way he could avoid noticing the way her breath broke and her lips parted at the contact. And there definitely was no he could help his elemental male response.

At least one thing was working well today, Jake thought ironically as he brought the fishing lines in. Rock hard all ready to go.

“What now?” Honor asked when he came back into the cabin.

“Now we find out if their gas tanks are as full as ours.”

Ten hours and fifteen fishing spots later, Jake still had what he had started out the day with: unanswered questions and an ache in his crotch.

It did nothing to improve his temper. He had pushed the speed hard getting to the sixteenth fishing hole, if only to watch the navy Bayliner scramble. Snake Eyes hadn’t made the cut. He had turned off to refuel at Fisherman’s Bay several hours before and hadn’t caught up
again.
The other Bayliner had dropped out for a time, but hadn’t had any trouble finding them again. A direct line to the Coast Guard no doubt helped.

The only good news was that Honor had gotten so restless he had talked her into learning a few basics of fishing. He started by teaching her the fine art of casting a lure and buzz bombing on the retrieve. The buzz bombing part of it didn’t particularly interest her. What did was casting. She had a natural sense of timing and leverage that made her casts long and accurate.

When Jake cut the speed back to an idle, Honor looked around. There were no other boats in sight. He had really burned up the water getting there.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Kyle entered a ‘hit’ in the log here. If the date is accurate – and I have no way of checking it – then this is one of the places he came to but didn’t record in his written log after he got back from Kaliningrad.”

“Date? What do you mean? I didn’t know the
Tomorrow’s
electronics recorded dates.”

There was a lot about the electronics that Honor didn’t know. Jake would just as soon it stayed that way. He didn’t want her to get any ideas about going off on her own if Ellen spilled the beans the next day. The way Honor had taken the helm and shot off over the water still haunted him. She had more guts than sense.

“Some programs record all kinds of things”, he said. “In any case, Kyle tinkered with this computer the same way he fiddled with your alarm clock. All I know for sure is that this isn’t like any other chart plotter I’ve ever used. I’m still trying to figure out half the stuff I find.”

That wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t entirely false, either. Jake supposed there was some kind of poetic justice in using a mixture of truths and half-truths, omissions and distractions on Honor Donovan. That was what a Donovan had done to him. There was no single thing that he could have pinned on Kyle, yet the proof surely was in the result: J. Jacob Mallory accused of theft and Kyle Donovan making off with the amber.

Jake went out on the stern and looked around, ignoring the rods waiting to be used. He didn’t feel like setting up the trolling gear again.

Honor slipped past him and grabbed a rod out of the holder. The rod tip bowed over with the weight of the lure. Once she had discovered that lures came in weights from a quarter of an ounce to sixteen ounces and up, she had gone right to the heavy stuff. Smiling like a kid with a new toy, she started casting.

“What are you aiming for?” he asked.

“Straight ahead of me, where that chunk of wood is
floating.”

She gripped the long rod with two hands, lifted the tip up and behind her right shoulder, then snapped the rod forward smartly. At the same time she released all restraint on the fishing line. The lure shot out straight in front of her, peeling off translucent line in a blur of speed.

As though it had been on rails rather than monofilament line, the lure dropped into the water near the floating wood. The distance was at least fifty feet.

Jake shook his head at the waste of talent – to cast like that and not care if you ever got a bite. In fact, he had the distinct feeling that Honor would welcome a fish like ants at
a picnic.

“Why are you shaking your head?” she asked. “I came
pretty close.”

“Pretty close? Hell, you’re better at casting right now than ninety percent of the people who ever picked up a fishing
rod.”

She reeled in as though there were a prize for highest
speed through the water by a lure. “Really?”

“Yeah. But your retrieval technique needs work. A lot of it.”

She ignored him.

He thought about setting up the trolling gear again and decided again that it wasn’t worth the trouble. They wouldn’t be there long; Kyle had marked only one “hit” on the chart plotter for this area.

“I’m not going to bother with the trolling gear”, Jake said.

“Fine with me.”

“Reel in. I’m going to take a few slow passes over Kyle’s
route.”

“It won’t interfere with my casting.”

“It would interfere with catching a fish.”

“Like I said…”

Jake gave up and went back into the cabin. He drove over the marked spot twice at idling speed. He saw nothing on the fish finder. Not fish, not bubbles, not even an interesting lump rising from the flat bottom.

“Wrap it up”, he called over his shoulder. “We’re heading out.”

Honor didn’t argue this time. She reeled in, put the rod in the holder by the door, and went into the cabin.

“Do you think we lost our escort for good?” she asked, looking at the empty little cove.

“No. Conroy never really lost me. He should be rounding the head any second now.”

“Then why did we race here?”

“If we’re predictable, we’re a lot easier prey.”

“I don’t like the sound of that word.”

“Little supermarket predator”, he said, smiling despite his edgy mood. “You’re one of a kind.”

“Wait until you meet Faith.”

Jake’s smile faded. All things considered, he didn’t think he would be meeting any more Donovans. Certainly not under friendly circumstances.

He picked up the binoculars and studied the shoreline. It didn’t take long. The islet was not only small and uninhabited, it was pretty much sheer rock except for a ragged crown of fir trees.

“Anything?” Honor asked.

“The usual.”

Switching his attention to the computer, he started punching instructions into the chart plotter. The picture on the screen changed and then changed
again.

Honor knew just enough to tell that Jake was looking at some kind of map – chart, she corrected herself silently. But she couldn’t figure out what kind of chart. It could have been the route back to Anacortes or it could have been the bottom
of the South Pacific colored blue with little black dash marks soing crazily in every direction.

When the screen changed she peered over Jake’s shoulder. As usual, nothing made sense. She bent over to see more clearly. Being so close to him reminded her of the time before dawn, when he had looked at the hem of her nightshirt and risen like a phoenix from the ashes of a morning erection.

Are you finished staring or were you planning to stuff money
in my jock strap?

Anger, embarrassment, and something hotter licked over Honor. She stepped back quickly and glanced around, trying to think of anything but Jake Mallory’s very male body.

He called up the last route to be checked – or at least the last route he could find stored in the modified computer. The route was well off the normal run of fishing or sailing places. It led to a waterless, uninhabited cluster of small islets, reefs, and rocks whose presence was known but not marked by warning
lights or beacons.

It wasn’t the kind of place he wanted to tiptoe through in the late afternoon on a falling tide. In any case, there wasn’t enough daylight left to get to the next route, check it over, and still make it back to the cottage’s little dock before full
darkness.

Jake reset the radar to reach farther out. A tiny blip was boring in from the east. The Zodiac, no doubt. He glanced sideways at Honor. She was doing everything but putting her head in the bait bucket to avoid looking at him with her speculative, hungry eyes.

He knew just how she felt. The more he looked at her, the better he liked what he saw. If something didn’t happen to lower the level of sexual heat in the boat real soon, he would do something really stupid.

He could hardly wait.

Jake hissed a disgusted word, furious with himself for not being able to get his mind off his crotch. He looked at the fish
finder. Nothing was showing. He switched to the chart and gauged distances. He looked at his watch and then the sky. Still not enough time to do anything useful.

Still plenty of time to do something really stupid.

On the other hand, he could go fishing. Real fishing instead of just dragging lures through the water no matter what the time or tide.

“I wonder if the kings are still running at Falcon Cliff”, he said aloud.

“Kings?” Honor asked. “As in royalty?”

“As in twelve to sixty-five pounds of pure dynamite waiting to bite on our freshly sharpened hooks.”

“Kings are fish?”

“Around here they are.”

“Are you saying that we’re really going fishing?”

“Right.”

“Merde.”

“Wrong answer”, Jake said, revving up the SeaSport, turning it about. “Enthusiasm, remember?”

“Oh, I just can’t wait. Can we go there right now, please pretty please with sugar on it, et cetera.”

“Your enthusiasm still needs work. But don’t worry, I’ll give you lots of chance to practice.”

The
Zodiac
closed in quickly as the
Tomorrow
retraced part of its previous course. Jake waved as they passed. Conroy didn’t wave back. He didn’t try to board them, either. Apparently he was getting as fed up with the game as Jake was.

Honor sighed and watched dark water whip beneath the
Tomorrow’s
bow. She tried not to worry about Kyle and the cold sea, missing amber, and a murdered man.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jake asked.

“What?”

“Whatever is making you look so grim.”

“No thanks. I’d rather talk about anything else.”

“Okay. Do you live alone?”

She looked over at him, startled.

“Well, you did say you’d rather talk about…” he began.

“… anything else”, Honor finished dryly. “Faith and I share a condo in Southern California, but one or the other of us is gone a lot of the time.”

“What does your sister do?”

“Turns my designs into breathtaking bits of art. While she does that, I’m usually on the road looking for new materials at gem and mineral shows across the country. When I’m home designing, she’ll take her turn rounding up raw materials.”