Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

luck.”
    “The worst.”
    He hit the rocker switch. A fan kicked in somewhere at the stern of the boat, inside the engine compartment.
    Jake lifted the bottom of the driver’s seat and tilted it toward the steering wheel. There was a small sink tucked away underneath the seat. He turned on the water pump, rummaged for a kettle and settled for a saucepan, and put some water on to boil on the small galley stove.
    Then he turned back to the boat itself. He went over the controls, turning on electronics, checking dials, and listening to the marine weather report from Canada, twenty miles away. As he touched each piece of equipment, he gave Honor a short explanation of its function.
    She watched, listened, and absorbed intently. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have known a marine widget from a nautical whatsit and wouldn’t have cared. But nothing had been normal since Kyle vanished.
    The Tomorrow was her best chance of helping him. The logical part of her mind knew that the boat wasn’t much of a chance. Her emotions didn’t care. This was the only chance she had. She would make the most of it and ignore Archer’s smug advice about going back home and catching up on her designing.
    It was hard to design when she couldn’t shake the feeling that the key to Kyle’s disappearance—and reappearance—lay somewhere in the San Juan Islands, just waiting to be discovered by her. That was why she had plastered the town with “Wanted: Fishing Guide who knows SeaSports” notices.
    She finally had the guide. Now all she had to do was keep her mind on cold electronics instead of on a stranger with clean hands and a wry, sexy curve to his mouth. Considering that she had given up dating precisely because she was tired of men who thought sex was as obligatory—and exciting—as breathing, keeping her mind on electronics shouldn’t have been a problem.
    But it was.
    She wondered if Jake would mind not exhaling for a bit, just while he was so close to her. The coffee-and-cream scent of his breath was making her restless.
    “Chart plotter,” Honor said, trying to gather her thoughts.
    “What about it?”
    She frowned at the small computer screen to the left of the steering wheel. The screen, and assorted other electronic equipment, was mounted on a swinging arm that could be pushed out of the way into the V berth when the boat was at anchor. There were rows of buttons with cryptic labels bordering the screen. There was another number pad below, but it wasn’t set up like any computer she had ever seen. None of the labels helped her to figure out what all the buttons did. In addition there was one of Kyle’s crazy add-ons wired into the lot. She had no idea what modification her brother had made to the standard electronic setup.
    But if he had an electronic “lock” on this computer, she knew the password he used to access his other computers. All she had to do was figure out how to use the basic electronic equipment while learning how to run the boat itself. Then she would access the special computer stuff—if any—with Kyle’s password, find out the key to everything, fire up the SeaSport, and go rescue her brother.
    Simple.
    Honor ignored all the self-doubts and gaping holes in her plan. She had been over them all again and again in the past week and done nothing but wear paths on the cottage floor as she paced. The secret to success lay in doing one thing at a time. Right now, the thing was learning the Tomorrow ’s electronics.
    “How does the chart plotter work?” she asked.
    “Well, I hope. If not, there’s always the old-fashioned way to plot a course.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Compass, pencil, and ruler.”
    “Tell me about the electronic way.”
    Jake’s eyebrows lifted slightly. The demand in her voice was polite but very real. Excitement whipped invisibly through his blood. She didn’t like boats or water but she was dead set on learning about plotting a course. If the cops were right about Kyle sneaking back into the United States, the key to the stolen amber might very well be the Tomorrow .
    The lady must have amber on her mind. That was the best news Jake had heard since the amber disappeared and the governments of Lithuania, Kaliningrad, and Russia had decided that J. Jacob Mallory’s passport was no longer welcome in their countries. Nor was any representative of his company, Emerging Resources.
    “I’m used to a different electronic setup,” Jake said, which was true.