Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

first way point on our route,” Jake said. “Watch the radar screen. With the next sweep it will show what your new heading should be. So will the lower screen, but it’s not as easy to read.”
    Saying nothing, she waited and watched the screen. A few seconds later she turned the wheel, adjusting course. Immediately the boat became harder to handle. It didn’t like taking the chop at this angle. Though the rpms hadn’t changed, the speed dropped.
    “Bring the bow down two clicks on the left trim tab and one on the right,” he said.
    The ride evened out. Adjusting the trim got back some of the lost speed, but not all.
    Jake looked out the stern. The usual boats were pacing the SeaSport. He didn’t envy Conroy in the open Zodiac. Today the Coast Guard would be grateful for their bright orange dry suits. He looked at the sky and thought about their destination.
    His thoughts were as unhappy as the set of his jaw. Kyle’s last fishing hole was almost on the invisible border between Canada’s Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands of the United States. Right now the SeaSport was more or less paralleling the weather front, but the front would overrun them before too long.
    He turned up the marine radio. Even though it was after the hour, the forecast hadn’t changed. No small craft warnings had been posted yet, though advisories were out along the strait.
    That didn’t make Jake feel much better. Forecasting weather was an art, not a science, especially in the San Juans. The islands were notorious for sudden winds and unexpected squall lines.
    Silence settled into the cabin like carbon monoxide. Jake wondered how long it would be before Honor looked him in the eye again, or at the very least stopped treating him like something that had stuck to her shoe. The tilt of her jaw didn’t predict a turn for the better anytime soon.
    Half an hour dragged by. Jake had never thought of himself as a particularly chatty person, but the roaring silence was getting to him. Honor didn’t seem to notice it-or him. She hadn’t actually looked at him the whole time they had been on the boat. The way she acted he could have been a voice speaking out of the air.
    More than once he caught himself checking in one of the boat’s windows to see if he still had a reflection. He opened his mouth to tell her what he thought about sulky women. Then he remembered the way she had looked that morning when he had held her in bed with his hand on her thigh.
    Direct confrontation hadn’t worked very well.
    The radio crackled to life. The weather bureau had changed its report. Winds from thirty to fifty knots were expected in Haro Strait before noon. Twenty to thirty in the islands.
    “Turn around,” Jake said.
    Honor started to look at him, caught herself, and stared ahead. “It’s only nine-thirty. We’ve got time.”
    “No. Turn around.”
    “But—”
    “Get out of the helm seat.”
    With a hissed word, Honor turned the SeaSport around. If it came to a contest of strength, she would lose. Big time.
    Jake reversed the chart plotter so that it would give them way points back to the dock.
    Silence settled in once more with the weight and color of lead.
    Honor glanced from the rumpled water in front of the bow to the “heads up” radar display. She was off course. Carefully she corrected, then waited for a few seconds before deciding whether she needed to correct again. She had learned that boats and cars didn’t drive at all alike. Most of the time boats were a lot less sudden. Sometimes they were a lot more.
    The solid line on the radar merged with the dotted line of the course she was supposed to follow. She took visual sightings on the islands ahead, kept alert for floating logs, checked the angles and speed of approaching craft, and spared a few seconds to glance at the gauges for anything After fifteen minutes of watching Honor watch the water, Jake’s jaw ached from the tension of biting back all that he wanted to say about stubborn Donovans. He set his jaw even tighter and decided to try a more subtle approach. Somewhere beneath all that icy female fury was an intelligent, reasonable woman. More to the point, she loved him.
    He had it from her own sweet lips.
    “I met Kyle about two months ago,” Jake said, “when Archer sent him to the Baltics to be the liaison between my own company, Emerging Resources, and Donovan International. Usually I work out of Seattle. The only reason I went to Kaliningrad at all was that my