Safe Harbor (41 page)

"Sam," she said, turning to him. "What do you think?"

"We can find her if she's running with nav lights on."

"What if she's not?"

"We come back and let the big boys go out later on."

Holly turned back to her father. "Dad! We can do it!"

"Nothing doing," he said flatly. "You're not risking your neck for a boat." Even as he said it, the rain began letting up.

"The Robalo's fast and can handle this weather," Holly argued. "Look—the squall's passed over already! And we'll be in open water; I promise we won't chase her into Woods Hole. D
ad, please! Let me have the Ro
balo," she pleaded. "We'll be right back with it."

She sounded as if she were begging for the keys to the van to dash off for ice cream. It was the perfect note to strike, and it helped that it was no longer raining.

"The Petersons are aboard the
Saracen,"
father said. "I'll be there, monitoring channel sixty-eight. Make sure you stay in touch. I mean it, Holly. Just because you grew up on boats—"

"Keys, keys!" she said, trying not to jump up and down with impatience.

He fished them out for her and repeated, "I mean it, Holly. You will stay in touch."

"Yes, yes, come on, Sam, let's
go
.
"

She was on fire for the chase and she had no idea why. Because of Eden, Sam, her father, her mother? Because she already loved the Steadmans and wanted them to live long and happy lives?

Yes to all of it, but especially because of
Eden
.

I want to catch her. I don't want to see her get away with this.

It was an unfair world; Holly knew that. But if she
could do anything to tweak the scales of justice to weigh a little more evenly, then by God
...

"You should see the expression on your face," Sam said as they passed the breakwater and she opened the thro
ttle. "You look like Charles Bro
nson."

"I do not," said Holly, embarrassed. She altered course for the number four nun. "I was just concentrating, that's all. I think Robby keeps some spare jackets in a locker somewhere," she added. "You want to take the helm while I look?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Sam said, grinning. Holly knew the buoys like the back of her hand—but Sam knew how to ride a fast boat.

The worst of the weather seemed to have passed; visibility was distinctly improved, and the seas were dying down. Holly saw a star or two peep through the scudding clouds overhead. It was exhilarating, being on a boat with Sam at night on the Sound. If he'd ask her to sail to the ends of the earth with him just then, she'd say yes without thinking twice. How unlike her mother she was that way.

I don't care. I'll go with him around the world or around the corner, as long as I can go with him.

"Nice boat," said Sam with a boyish grin. "We'll have to get one of these. You like fishing?"

Or, I'll go fishing. As long as I can go with him.

"Sam, you
still haven't told me where she hid the money on the
Vixen,"
Holly said after she'd found rain jackets for each, of them. "Where could she hide it where my dad wouldn't
see
it?"

Sam steered with his knees as he zipped up his jacket. "It's just a theory, of course, but the fact that she had to take the whole damn boat away from the marina makes me feel more confident about it. You remember how she stuck to the boat in
Portsmouth
? I went up there and found the boatyard
that did the repairs. The yard
hands all remember her—"

"Gee
, I wonder why
."

"Not only for the usual reasons. They said she was fascinated by the fiberglass repairs they were doing to the engine bed. That amazed them; it's a messy, smelly job with very little glamour to it. I'm reckoning that before Eric returned to
Portsmouth
from his trip to
Providence
, she fiberglassed the money—protected, of course—to the inside of the hull."

"You're right, you're right! It's obvious to me now. But—she'll need to chisel or ax it out."

"And if you're trying not to be noticed, the best place to do that—assuming you have a careful hand—is at sea."

"Oh, my God; could she actually sink the
Vixen
trying?"

Sam said grimly, "Let's hope not."

The mood became more somber then; Holly couldn't quite recapture the illusion that they were on a starlight cruise. In the open runabout, she could feel that the air had turned damp and chill again. Definitely, the wind was picking up; the seas were getting choppier. She zipped up her jacket, then pulled up the hood, then tightened the drawstring around her bottom, all in an escalating effort to keep warm.

The binoculars were good ones. Even in the dark, she was able to identify a variety of marine traffic, nearly all of it commercial, plying its way across the Sound: the last ferry of the night, headed for the Vineyard from Wood's Hole; a tug, towing a barge; a fishing boat with booms extended; a luxury yacht steaming for
Nantucket
. As for smaller craft, they seemed to have heeded the marine warning and run for cover; there were none around.

"Either that, or
Eden
is
running without lights."

"Wait, I see—no; it's just a little cabin cruiser," said Holly, disappointed. She let the binoculars hang around her neck as she rubbed her eyes, then scanned the sky overhead. No stars, and lowering visibility. Damn it. She'd been overconfident about the weather. Flashes of lightning to the north and west told her what she didn't want to know: that the squalls, like a gang of marauding bikers, weren't done with them yet.

"Maybe we should think about heading back," she ventured as she returned to scanning the near-empty waters with the glasses.

Sam glanced at her, and she knew he was disappointed. But he said, "No problem. Raise your father on the radio and let-him know. He'll feel better."

"Ohmigosh, my father. I forgot all about him." She was touched that Sam had not.

She was about to put down the binoculars when she spied a dim red light close to the water, bobbing up and down. She snapped into a state of high alertness. "Sam," she said.

"Where?"

"Head fifteen degrees more west."

He altered direction. She said, "There. A sailboat, dead in the water. Sam, I think it's the
Vixen
. Hold this course," she said, barely able to contain her excitement. "What time is it?"

He punched the light button on his watch. "Eight after eleven."

She made a mental note of it and said, "Let's kill the nav lights; we'll be okay for a little while."

He did, and they began closing in on the stolen vessel. A few minutes later, Sam slowed down the Robalo, minimizing the noise of its engines as well.

"The dinghy is tied alongside, ready to go," said Holly. Her arms were aching from holding the binoculars so long. "She must be planning to abandon the
Vixen
and head for the nearest shore in the tender after she retrieves the money."

"Then she isn't watching the sky," Sam said. Clearly he was.

Holly couldn't get over
Eden
's fierce determination to come out of this with cash. "What a risk she took, fiberglassing the money to the hull," she said. "What if she hadn't been able to talk my father into taking her back after the mess she got him into with the state police?"

Sam said wryly, "As you can
see,
Eden
always has a Plan B. Okay, no more talking. Voices carry."

Their approach was slow and wary and, it seemed to Holly, ear-splittingly obvious. (She was convinced that Horatio Hornblower would have swum out from the nearest point of land, breathing through a bamboo reed.)

Still, what could
Eden
do, once they descended upon her? Holly's greatest fear, her only fear, was that she would hurl the money into the ocean from spite.

They could see the
Vixen
clearly now, even without binoculars. Small bars of light shone through the cabin portholes where the curtains were poorly drawn. Sam cut the engines still more, but there was a look of concern on his face. Holly interpreted it to mean that he was worried that
Eden
would hear the Robalo pulsing through the water; she was in the bilge, after all.

But that wasn't it. He pointed to the western sky, and it looked, even in the current murky visibility, positively evil. Another squall loomed, and this one had their name on it.

The flashes of light and rumbles of thunder quickly became bolts of lightning and cracks of gunfire, and a gust of wind unlike any other so far rolled over them like a bowling ball, sending their small runabout reeling to starboard. Holly clung to a grab rail while Sam goosed the engine and headed up into the wind, presenting the smallest possible target to the brutalizing force of the squall.

Rain pelted them at a horizontal angle, making hearing and speaking impossible. The horizon, the sky, the sea, the
Vixen—
all gone, lost in the fury of nature at her bitchiest. Holly hung on with wordless trepidation, barely able to open her eyes. There was nothing they could do now but try to ride it out. They had power enough, if Sam had skill enough; and he seemed to know instinctively what to do. They bowed their heads, as much in humble submission to the awesome power of the screaming banshee who ruled over them as to the pounding, biting, savage rain that did her bidding.

The
Vixen,
too, was taking it on the chin. Through the pummeling rain, Holly could see a big bright square of light in the hull, issuing from the cabin below. The boat was lying beam to the wind, being pushed eastward and sliding on its ear in helpless response to the ruthless beating it was enduring. No one was climbing on deck, rushing to the boat's defense; the boat was on its own. Holly waited and wondered how
Eden
could bear to be below with all hell breaking loose outside.

They were within a hundred yards of the
Vixen
when a figure clad in a white foul-weather jacket popped up in the companionway of the boat, holding the hood from blowing back off her head. As if on cue, the rain began to abate and the wind dropped, if only slightly. The squall was running its course.

"Sam!" said Holly in an urgent undertone. "What should we do? If we let her get in the dinghy and have to follow her, we'll lose the
Vixen."

Save the money or save the
Vixen
?

I
t never became a full-blown dilemma.

Oblivious to their presence in the darkness nearby, and clutching something silvery to her breast,
Eden
was making her way forward to the gate in the lifelines, where the dinghy lay tied to the low side of the drifting boat. Light and inflatable, the dinghy was streaming downwind, ahead of the
Vixen
itself. They watched as
Eden
sat down on the starboard deck with her legs dangling overboard, then tried to haul the dinghy in closer before jumping into it.

By now Holly, who ha
d been taught to sail by a once
cautious man, had a sick and sinking feeling in her stomach: it was insane to take the kind of risk that
Eden
was taking, all for a suitcase of cash. She wanted to shake
Eden
, wanted to scream in her face, "It's not worth it! Don't you get it? It's not worth it!"

Eden
still did not see the Robalo as it closed on the
Vixen.
That was the wonder of it. She stayed focussed on her foolish, dangerous task.

Unwilling to drop the valise into the dinghy, she attempted the awkward maneuver of dropping down into it while still clutching her cargo. She landed on both feet, all right, but lost her balance and the valise flew out of her hands and into the sea. They heard her cry out in dismay and saw her reach for the money with both arms extended, upsetting her balance even more. She tumbled out of the dinghy just as a sea lifted the
Vixen
and sent the boat rolling to starboard over her before resuming its angled slide downwind.

"Sam,
Eden
's overboard!" cried Holly, aghast. "We have to save her!"

Sam was ahead of Holly, moving the Robalo almost alongside the
Vixen
and its still-tethered dinghy. "I see her—that patch of white! Take the helm," he shouted, kicking off his deck shoes. "Keep it in neutral as much as you can."

Shaking in fear for
Eden
's life now, Holly nodded and got behind the wheel of the Robalo just as Sam dove over the side and plunged into the still-churning seas.

He was in
dark clothes
and harder to see, and Holly stopped breathing for the entire time it took her to spot his face, bobbing up from below.