Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

island wasn’t much different from the south. There was no place to run a Zodiac up onto a beach because there were no real beaches.
    Turning away from the empty island, Honor fought the cold tide of despair that kept threatening to overwhelm her. She had been so certain that Kyle would be there, safe, able to explain everything that had happened . . . .
    So certain, and so wrong.
    “What does the bottom look like?” Jake asked in a clipped voice.
    Honor didn’t answer.
    He set his jaw. He had been in a lethal mood since he discovered how little Honor trusted him; she had known Kyle’s access code but hadn’t mentioned it until an hour ago.
    The rational part of Jake admitted that he could hardly blame her. But he wasn’t feeling particularly rational at the moment.
    “Go inside and check the fish finder,” he said without lowering the binoculars. “I need to know what the bottom is like. I’ll tell you if I see anything.”
    Honor went into the cabin and switched the lower screen from chart to fish finder. She stared at the gaudy blue-and-red display while the boat crept closer to the island. The angle of approach Jake chose was very shallow. Each time the depth changed more than a few feet, she read out the number in a voice loud enough to carry through the open cabin door to the stern.
    “Forty-four, forty-one, thirty-two-going up fast. Twenty-five. Twenty. Fourteen. Nine!”
    Jake reversed the throttle, killing all but a tiny bit of forward momentum.
    Honor glanced up and gasped. The rugged cliff looked close enough to touch. “Jake, the rocks!”
    “I see them. We can get closer if we have to. There’s still water to spare under the hull. What does the radar show?”
    “An island right in front of us, what do you think?”
    “Behind us,” he snapped.
    She forced herself to look at the radar screen instead of the looming cliff. An island was back there, too. She tried to remember its name. All she could think of was her sense of failure, the aching feeling of having come so very close but not close enough to make a difference.
    “I can see the little island we came past to get here,” Honor said. “That uninhabited one on the left, about a mile off. You know which one I mean?”
    “Yes.”
    Jake also knew that a small boat could hide quite handily in the island’s dense radar shadow. But there was no point in bringing it up. Honor was unhappy enough without adding more to her worries.
    Besides, he couldn’t be sure they were being followed. He was just being paranoid about something that probably was no more than an occasional flicker way out at the edge of the radar screen. Getting sucked back into Ellen’s world had that effect on him. He didn’t like living in a place where everyone had false smiles, multiple motives, and top secret agendas.
    He adjusted course to go around a small nose of rock, then ducked back into the cabin and slid into the pilot seat. Honor was staring out the window. The bleak expression on her face told him exactly what she was thinking.
    Jake handed over the binoculars. Silently she took them, turned her back, and began examining the shoreline through as much magnification as her stomach could take.
    Slowly the Tomorrow made its way around a small headland. The opposite side of the headland was a very shallow cove that might have had a rough, rocky beach at low tide, but the tide wasn’t low at the moment. A light breeze played over the steep slope dropping down to the shore. Fir trees came all the way to the waterline and trailed their shaggy green arms in the sea.
    “Stop!” Honor said suddenly.
    Jake didn’t have brakes, but he did what he could. He shoved the shifter into neutral, then into reverse for a few seconds, then into neutral again. The boat began drifting. He corrected with the shifter rather than the wheel, holding the Tomorrow as nearly stationary as he could in the wind and current.
    The shore was less than thirty feet off the port side of the boat. The bottom was at sixteen feet. He watched Honor, the depth sounder, and the shore. Without removing the binoculars she fumbled open the side window and leaned out.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. Go back to where that bunch of fir trees comes down to the water and get as close as you can.”
    He looked to her left and saw a dense growth of young trees. Gently he powered backward until the boat was opposite the firs. Abruptly the bottom leaped up to meet the