Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

another, he really wanted to get a good look at the driver.
    “Rest your neck,” he said to her after a few minutes. “The radar will keep track of our escort.”
    “Good for it. I’d rather do it the old-fashioned way. Then I know what I’m looking at.”
    “I’ve set the radar screen at a quarter mile. That means each of those three rings on the screen covers about eleven hundred feet.” He began pointing to the radar screen mounted above the dashboard. “That ragged chunk of green to the port—left—is an island. That bright spot over there is a channel marker. That big ellipse is a freighter headed for the docks to pick up logs for Japan. Those three specks behind us are our admirers. The ferry off to the starboard—right—doesn’t show yet, but it will as soon as it gets closer.”
    Honor glanced from the screen to the water and back again. It took a little practice, but soon she began to associate the electric green blobs on the screen with the reality outside.
    “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the screen, where it appeared as though the freighter was separating into two uneven pieces.
    “Looks like another boat was in the radar shadow of the freighter but is pulling away now.” He glanced outside. “A purse seiner. See it?”
    She stared out the side window and saw a ratty-looking commercial fishing boat pulling away on the far side of the freighter. The seiner’s paint sat on rusting metal like gangrene on flesh. The freighter itself was no prize in the glamour department—streamers of rust spilled down its sides. The name on it was Japanese. The name on the fishing boat was Russian.
    “Don’t we have any American boats around here?” she asked.
    “You’re riding in one.”
    “I mean commercial boats.”
    “There are a few, but most of the nonpetroleum haulers that go out of Anacortes these days are foreign.”
    Honor looked at the freighter and tried to forget she was in a small boat heading out into the San Juans in search of answers that she might not want to know.
    It didn’t work. She couldn’t forget. Kyle was a knot in her stomach and an ache across her shoulders that didn’t go away. She forced herself to concentrate on the Tomorrow , which might do Kyle some good. Worrying sure hadn’t.
    As the boat arrowed through the shipping channel, she compared shapes on the water with the shimmering green blips on the radar screen. Once they were out of the main channel, the number of big ships went down. The number of small pleasure craft soared. She felt like part of an unannounced parade.
    “I didn’t think there were that many crazy people, even in the Pacific Northwest,” she said, waving a hand at little boats zipping around on the cold water like speedy white bugs.
    “Crazy? Oh, you mean boaters. The San Juans are a mecca for small boats, especially in the summertime.”
    “Then Kyle wouldn’t exactly have stood out . . . .”
    “No. Don’t be alarmed. I’m going to slow down and get the fishing gear in the water.”
    “Oh joy. I can’t wait. Be still my beating heart.” She gave him a sideways glance. “How’s my enthusiasm index?”
    “Right off the bottom of the scale.”
    Carefully, slowly, Jake brought the boat down to idling speed and put the shifter in neutral. The wake swelled up beneath them very gently. He didn’t want to make Honor nervous. Just because he had to use her to save himself didn’t mean that he had to torture her in the process. It wasn’t much of a sop to his conscience, but it was all he had.
    Silently Honor watched while he set out the fishing rods. He kept up a running commentary about down-riggers, rod holders, cannonballs, flashers, spoons, and other words she let pass right out of her mind. Then he started in on the difference between fishing with cut plug herring versus whole herring versus artificial lures. Then he went on about trolling versus mooching versus buzz bombing.
    His enthusiasm should have been catching. It wasn’t. She tried not to yawn in his face, but she didn’t try hard enough. When he got to the part about how many “pulls” behind the boat the lure should be positioned to catch silver versus coho, and what the trolling speed should be in order to avoid getting dogfish, she held up her hands in surrender.
    “Enough,” she begged. “You’ve made your point.”
    He looked surprised. “I have?”
    “Yes! Fishing is a lot more complicated than squeezing eight inches of worm onto a