Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

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