Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

had been coming in too fast and at too steep an angle. Easy enough to figure out now, but at the time everything had happened all at once and yet had taken forever, like fast-forward on a video machine and slow-motion terror at the same time.
    When she came back from paying for the gas, the blower was on and Jake was in the cabin. He killed the blower and started the engine.
    “Take the aft station,” he said, pulling the fenders aboard. “I’ll cast off.”
    She set her jaw and went to the controls. The wind was doing the same thing it had in the little cove, holding the Tomorrow against the dock like an invisible, relentless hand. She couldn’t back away and there was a boat blocking the front exit.
    Jake told her where to set the wheel before she engaged reverse. He gave the stern a shove, grabbed the bow, pushed hard, and swung himself up and over the bow railing. It took him only a few seconds to walk the gunwale and drop lightly into the stern well. The Tomorrow was well away from the dock.
    “Okay,” he said. “Take her out of the marina. Remember, no wake.”
    They got out of the marina without incident. Once they were in more open water, Honor began to relax—until she noticed the clouds. In places they covered the water like draperies of dove gray muslin. Where islands appeared, they were low dark lines capped by mist.
    “The weather report hasn’t changed,” Jake said, turning down the marine radio. “Drizzle and patchy fog in the early morning. Winds out of the southeast at ten to twenty knots. Squall lines possible this afternoon. Haro Strait might be a problem, though. There are small craft warnings at the mouth.”
    “Are we going there?”
    “It’s the shortest way to the last route Kyle stored. At least, it’s the last route I can make the machine show me. He might have something hidden. If he does, I don’t have the code.”
    Honor thought she did, but she wasn’t going to share that information with someone who had a grudge against Kyle.
    “Put the route up,” she said.
    Jake’s mouth thinned. “The place is ninety minutes out in good weather. It will be a lot longer if the wind gets strong enough to make us sneak along in the lee of the islands.”
    Honor looked at the water. It wasn’t exactly smooth, but there weren’t any whitecaps. “Looks good to me.”
    “The chop isn’t bad,” he agreed, “but adjusting to it will add time, unless you want to hammer your spine.”
    “How much time?”
    “It depends.”
    “On what?”
    “Wind, tide, and visibility.”
    “We have radar.”
    “You want to drive blind?”
    Honor’s fingers clenched around the wheel. “Not particularly.”
    “That makes two of us. In case you hadn’t noticed, some mighty big ships share those narrow passes between islands with us. On a boat this size, you bet your life on radar only when fog catches you short of land. You don’t just blithely fire up and head out into the soup for the hell of it.”
    “I’m not doing any of this for the hell of it.”
    She leaned over and pushed a button on the lower electronic unit. She had been watching him closely yesterday; she got the screen to switch from the depth sounder to the chart plotter on the first try. She hit the menu button, scrolled down to the stored routes, and punched the last number on the list.
    A chart popped onto the screen.
    “This the route?” Honor asked.
    Jake said something savage under his breath.
    “Right,” she said. “This is the one.”
    She swung the boat around until she was headed for the first way point on the stored course.
    “Do you remember the most efficient rpm for speed versus fuel efficiency?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Bring us up on plane.”
    After several tries—and a few hair-raising zigzags caused by badly deployed trim tabs—Honor got the SeaSport up on plane. She could tell when she had done it right; if she lifted her hands from the wheel, the boat held a true line. She soon realized that, unlike a car, the boat did better when she left it alone.
    “That’s better,” he said. “You’re learning not to oversteer.”
    Honor looked over her shoulder at the water they had covered. Even through the gloom she could see that the wake wasn’t as straight as when Jake drove. But it wasn’t all that bad, either. She was getting the hang of driving on a road that had no markings and didn’t stand still.
    The computer cheeped. Honor flinched.
    “It was just telling you that we’ve passed the