Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

disappointment all over again, she shut down the electronics with trembling fingers. Moments later she turned on everything again, as though she had just come on board and was starting up the boat for a day of fishing.
    Two separate sets of buttons lit up once more. They were the only access to the normal functions of depth sounder and chart plotter. They were also the only access to whatever unusual functions Kyle had added to the electronics.
    “Which set of buttons is the lock?” Honor asked, staring at the machine. “Or is it both, half on one set and half on the other? And which half? Or is it every other, back and forth?”
    There was only one way to find out. Starting with the keys that held letters rather than numbers, Honor punched in Kyle’s password, which could be rendered in numbers or as a word. Either way, it permitted access to his bank accounts, his computer, his telephone answering machine, everything.
    Nothing happened.
    She clenched her fist, shut off the electronics and started them again. This time she punched the password into the upper set of buttons. The picture on the chart plotter flickered, then went blank. Honor’s groan turned into a sound of surprise as the screen flickered again, then called up a different chart.
    Honor was still staring at the screen, trying to make out the location of the route, when she felt the boat shift as it took Jake’s weight on the swim step. She slid out of the helm seat and hurried to open the door.
    “Jake—” she began.
    “No,” he interrupted curtly, peeling off the dive harness. “I didn’t find anything.”
    “I did.”

22
    I T TOOK AN hour for Honor and Jake to get to Kyle’s last, hidden route: Jade Island. Very small, uninhabited, and too far off the common routes to need navigation markers, the island was inaccessible a lot of the time by anything but a Zodiac or a kayak. During high tides there were several narrow channels leading through the rocks, reefs, and rafts of seaweed to the island itself, but there were few people who would risk their boats on the unmarked rocks.
    “I can see why Kyle took the Zodiac,” Jake said as he completed circling the island. “We’re lucky the tide is up. Otherwise you would get a chance to find out how you do in an open boat.”
    Honor shuddered.
    Jake tried the south side of the island first. After he threaded through the obstacles, he discovered a trough of deeper water surrounding much of the island itself. There was no year-round freshwater spring, no beaches except at low tide, and no good fishing or crabbing; in all, there was nothing to recommend Jade Island but isolation and scenery. The scenery, at least, could be duplicated on the more accessible islands.
    Jake stood in the stern well, still in his dive suit, handling the Tomorrow’s aft controls with the unthinking skill of a man who was thoroughly at home.
    A few feet from him Honor looked through binoculars at the uneven, rugged stone wall rising from the sea. She felt a hundred years old and frozen to the marrow of her bones. She didn’t even have the relief of tears. The disappointment she felt was so deep that it was impossible to cry. She had been so triumphant when she had finally found the hidden chart and so relieved that she was almost light-headed.
    “Let me look,” Jake said, taking the binoculars from her. “You’re making yourself sick staring through these.”
    Even though the wind had fallen off steadily and whitecaps were disappearing, there was still a noticeable chop beneath the Tomorrow’s white hull. Yet it wasn’t seasickness that was making Honor’s skin feel clammy. It was the suffocating fear that she had done everything she could and still had failed her brother completely.
    There was nothing on the tiny island but rock, fir trees, and more rock.
    Jake divided his attention between driving the very slowly moving boat and looking through the glasses. Numbly Honor waited for him to tell her what she already had seen for herself: Kyle wasn’t there.
    But when Jake lowered the binoculars, all he said was, “Let’s try the north side.”
    Her shrug said more than words. She didn’t think the other side of this unforgiving island would have anything to offer but more disappointment.
    Slowly the Tomorrow cruised the length of the north side, picking through obstacles to the deeper water close to shore. Other than being in the lee of the southeast wind, and having more trees, the north side of the