Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

glanced over his shoulder. The three boats following him were having to scramble to keep pace. He looked forward again, scanning the water ahead for floating logs, rafts of seaweed, or other navigation hazards. There was nothing in sight but clean, flat water.
    “Might as well see what this puppy will do,” he said.
    Better now than later, when lives might depend on it. But he didn’t say that aloud. He liked the smile on Honor’s face too much to remind her that she had a lot more to fear than cold blue water and the smell of fish.
    Then it occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, she was too innocent to realize her danger.
    Instantly he told himself that was ridiculous, of course she did. But he kept remembering that she hadn’t even noticed when Kyle’s cottage was under surveillance. Yet she was hardly stupid or unobservant.
    That left innocent.
    She certainly had sounded like it when she was talking to Archer. Her older brother had slammed the same kind of doors in her face that he had slammed in Jake’s.
    Savagely Jake told himself he was a fool for even thinking that Honor might be as honest as her clear, amber-green eyes. Not that it mattered—honest or crooked, Honor was his ticket into the closed world of Donovan International. He didn’t have to love, respect, or even dislike the means to an end. He just had to grit his teeth and use it.
    The Tomorrow fled across the flat, cold waters of Puget Sound. The widening white V of the wake spread out from the stern like a fan-shaped contrail. One of the pursuing boats fell back rather quickly. The other hung on. So did the Zodiac.
    Jake eased the power up more. With a throaty roar of delight, the SeaSport hit thirty-four knots.
    “I knew there was a reason Kyle is my favorite brother,” Honor said over the sound of the engine.
    Jake glanced at her. She was smiling dreamily, eyes closed. Whatever fear she had of small boats and big water wasn’t as great as her pleasure in a powerful, well-tuned engine doing what it had been made to do. He couldn’t help smiling back at her.
    While he held the revs at four thousand, he divided his attention between the water ahead and the dials on the console. Nothing changed but the speed of the boat as it skimmed over currents and eddies caused by the slackening tide.
    He nudged the throttle lever higher. The SeaSport had more speed to give. And then more. The motion of the boat became less predictable as a smaller and smaller fraction of the hull actually met the water. He held the boat with a light, relentless touch, finding out what it was made of, what it had in reserve, and where it would fail.
    The gauges remained well within normal range. The Tomorrow sliced cleanly through the water. There were no sheets of spray fountaining on either side of the bow. Jake was too experienced a driver and the hull was too well designed for that kind of inefficiency in calm water.
    Twenty minutes later, satisfied that the engine didn’t have any hidden weakness, he finished a wide loop around an island. As he brought the revs down to thirty-four hundred, he looked over his shoulder to see who was still with him.
    The Coast Guard was hanging back, little more than an orange spot. Jake knew it was Conroy’s choice rather than mechanical necessity; the big engine pushing the light Zodiac could have kept pace with the SeaSport. One of the private boats that had been following was no longer in sight. The other was well behind and making hard work of it, bouncing and smacking down on the water, jolting sheets of spray into the air.
    Jake wondered if the driver was wearing a kidney belt. He certainly needed one.
    “Well?” Honor asked.
    “Nice boat.”
    “Mmm. I begin to understand the lure of fishing.”
    “Fishing? In your dreams. At the speed we were going, you’d have to be trolling for flying fish.”
    “Better and better.”
    “Do you like to eat fish?”
    “Yum!”
    “Fresh fish?” he asked.
    “There’s no other kind worth eating.”
    “I’ll make a fisherman—er, fishersan—out of you yet.”
    “No need. I’ve already buttered up my local fishmonger. He makes sure my fish are fresh.”
    “Nothing is as fresh as when you catch it yourself.”
    Honor gave Jake a sideways look that said she didn’t believe a word of it. “I’d rather learn how to drive the boat.”
    His smile would have made Little Red turn and run. “Okay. First thing you need to know is that the owner always buys the gas.”
    “Is