Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

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 sickeningly 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 fiancé, 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