Overfall

Two

Hurrying but purposeful, Anna Wade slipped on her tennis shoes, took nothing but the computer CD-ROM entrusted to her by her brother, her considerable wallet, and her satellite phone, all of which she stuffed in a waterproof bag that went into her fanny pack. The seaplane would meet her on the backside of the island in an hour and a quarter, but there might be a long wade to reach the plane as there was no dock.

When she walked up the trail away from the lodge she felt as if someone was watching. She knew she was rattled and perhaps imagining things. Normally she felt freed, calmed, by this wild place, even the shivers of isolation and the creatures casting wary stares. Today instead of wonder she felt fear.

She tried to tell herself that a major company would not be committing murder, but at this point, alone on this island, she couldn’t come to any conclusions. As she jogged past their pen the rotweillers’ ugly snarls caused her to pick up her pace.

Soon she found herself running on the forest trail just above the steep shoreline headed toward the large cliffs-the long route to Langley Bay on the opposite side of the island. It would be less obvious if she didn’t take the direct route. The dry leaves of October made the forest noisy and her passage through it anything but a secret. After several minutes, she stopped. She thought she heard a snap above the wind sound a little distance back, perhaps a footfall breaking a stick. More sounds came-maybe something moving behind her along the brushy trail.

It stopped and she could feel it listening. Or was it just the wind? She bolted and ran. If they discovered that she was sneaking off to a seaplane, the fear now crouching in her mind might become reality-an outright confrontation with Roberto or worse. They might let the dogs loose.

She was in good shape and thought she had a good chance of outrunning them. Unless they brought the dogs.

As if summoned by the thought, she heard the snuffling and yelping of hounds eager for blood. Anna’s stomach knotted and her throat tightened. Ahead ran a nearly invisible path that eventually cut across the middle of the cliff. Although she had never taken it, she had seen where it emerged from the tree line. The cliffs were one place where she might face an attack dog and win.

Quickly she jumped off the main trail and scrambled down the hill toward the water. It was much steeper than she imagined but the dense brush made her feel safer. The forest, shades of green above her and choked with huckleberry, salal, and salmon berry, grew like a wall. Adrenaline made her gut hollow and her body light. Suddenly it occurred to her that it would be easy for someone to force an accident on these cliffs.

Uncertain, she stopped. Maybe she should fool with the satellite phone. But what could anyone do? First she would get distance between herself and any pursuer.

Her heart was pounding and her breaths were deep and hard. She tried to listen, but heard only herself and the wind. She supposed that a person on the cliff trail would make an easy target.

Again she ran. She could not go back, and going upslope would be impossible without slowing greatly and releasing a cascade of stones and creating the crackles and snaps of walking in a dry forest.

After what seemed a few desperate strides around a corner the trees gave way to the vertical drop. It was a couple hundred yards to more forest. She paused and wiped the sweat from her eyes.

Then Anna saw the sailboat throwing spray in the whitecaps, its sails looming and its sleek body, and the man at the helm. She glanced down at the whirling of the bending water green like moss on marble headstones, strong enough to move a train, sufficient to drown an army. The boat shined at her like mock salvation, a world away below her.

As Sam watched her try to sprint on weary legs, the trail collapsed. Dirt, rocks, and the woman plummeted into the water. Glancing at his chart, then at the GPS, he knew that she might have fallen into the current.

Sam took a deep slow breath, and flipped off his hat, angry that this was happening to him. Harry barked in earnest now. Meaning to take a better look, Sam once again came about, heading back down into Devil’s Gate. On a broad reach the boat shot ahead, requiring that he completely luff the main. He had seconds to decide. The wind was still increasing and driving the black clouds overhead.

Always things went wrong in multiples.

With the mainsail flapping he knew he was about to attempt a nearly hopeless rescue. It would be a regression into his old life-a life he had forsaken.

He punched a button to furl the main inside the mast. Incredibly, the sail bound and it stuck. Never in a whole year had the mainsail furling jammed and now when he needed it to work-it didn’t. He cursed gadgets and reversed the process. Fortunately the bind came free and it unfurled. Not wanting to waste precious seconds, he released the halyard, ran forward, and yanked with all his weight to pull the big sail down. It piled on the boom in a sloppy mess.

Out of habit his mind calculated the odds of survival-his own and hers. This area was a wilderness with an occasional passing yacht or commercial boat. The instant she hit the fifty-five-degree water she would be swept away, probably dragged under by a whirlpool, and if by some miracle she did not drown in that fashion, she would be dead in three or four minutes when she was pulled into the overfall and then buried by the huge whirlpool underlying it, down thirty or forty feet under the sea with little hope of making it to the surface in time to breathe. And if somehow she did struggle to the surface, she’d probably die from cold shock before she could swim to shore. Her only real chance was climbing onto a dry rock or making it to a tiny pocket of beach.

While he started the motor and ran down the channel he looked for some sign of her. Normally he’d have left himself a spot of mainsail to steady the boat. With the main down the boat set up a roll.

He waited for the next piece of bad luck.

His eye caught the white of her shirt against a rock. Glancing at the GPS, he realized he was being drawn toward the pass, but there was still time to escape the current. Quickly he looked with binoculars. Even with the boat’s motion he could tell that she clung to seaweed-covered granite. She was well away from the cliffs and the point from which she had fallen. From her location it was too far to swim to shore in this current.

For just a second his eyes left the figure in the water to look for another boat-any boat. Nothing.

The wind was increasing fast, blowing right at the overfall. He knew the result: It would push the wave up, perhaps making it half again as high.

He pondered whether he could save her. He loved his yacht as much as a man could love a material thing and still possess a soul. He loved Harry. If he went much closer he would risk losing Harry and the boat, maybe dying, and for a stranger who would probably drown anyway.

Then he saw the solitary figure on the trail from which the woman had fallen. He breathed a sigh of hope. There were two dogs running, noses down, barking their frustration at the cliff and the vanished track.

Through the binoculars he managed to get a shaky view of a man standing, looking down into the water, and then turning to walk away.

She was waving frantically, but at Sam, not the man on the cliff. The man didn’t run or even look agitated. Assuming that he saw her, he plainly didn’t care if she died. Perhaps he even wanted her to die. A moment later he had disappeared.

“Unbelievable,” Sam said aloud.

With the wind the sea was building fast and the waves were washing over her. She would be swept away in minutes. Glancing at the wind indicator he saw the wind at thirty-five knots and building. It was going to be a williwaw.

He brought the boat around into the wind and furled the jib, then ran to the wheel and concentrated on positioning the boat. Because he was upstream from the woman, the current, the wind, and the breaking sea were sweeping him toward her. With the sails down the boat rolled even worse in the building chop. He added power.

According to the GPS, the current was pushing him at seven knots over the bottom. Sam was accustomed to risking his life, but there was still an adrenaline surge.

In the distance the roar of the overfall filled his ears. Even from his location he couldn’t escape the white wave that sat just ahead of the largest saltwater whirlpool and undertow in the world. The boat would be drawn into it and the treacherous rocks all around as surely as the moon pulls the oceans. He wondered if his boat could survive the water that might fill it or bash it against the green-tinged jaws of rock that guarded the Paradise Channels.

The wind was rising fast under a black sky. Forty-one knots, the incandescent numbers blinked.

“Harry, go to your bed.”

The little dog jumped up on the bulkhead, then dived down the hole of the companionway hatch into the pilothouse. Sam pulled the hatch shut. There would be water everywhere once they hit the overfall. He could see the woman, still clinging to the rock, thrashing with her legs, obviously trying to get a better purchase. She couldn’t climb out of the water, and with everything but her shoulders and head immersed she would develop hypothermia in minutes. She was still looking in his direction, waving one arm.

“I see you,” he muttered. “Just hang on.”

With less than two hundred feet to go he swung the boat into the wind and current, letting the rushing water push him backward against the full power of the diesel. It was like the middle of a river, and the force of swirling water jarred the boat, making it hard to hold the bow on a heading. Even with full power into the current he was going backward at about five knots over the bottom. He threw a strobe-lighted life ring with a safety line out the stern for her to grab if she missed the boat. The current was increasing-the fierce wind was doing the rest. Finding the lee of some islets that broke a little wind, twisted the water, and reduced the current, he was able to slow the boat’s backward movement. Silverwind’s stern was headed very near the rock to which she clung.

Soon the current would roar to seventeen knots and life on his boat might well come to an end.

“Let go after I pass,” he called out, over an electronic megaphone, hoping she wouldn’t hit a nasty whirlpool and disappear. It was a billion-ton washer with the water beaten frothy, the current swirling and eddying. The clouds looked worse, and at the heart of the gorge he suspected the wind would rise to more than forty-five knots. Ninety knots had been reported in winter gales. The land was shaped to multiply as much as twofold any normal wind.

Everything was rapidly becoming more difficult. The first whirlpool caught the hull and shoved the boat over on its side until the weight of the keel pulled it upright. The boat jerked, shuddered, and careened before straightening out. Less than fifty feet to go. She looked grimly determined. Worried about running aground and ripping a hole in the bottom, he swung the stern slightly outward and eased the throttle for just a second, letting the current push him a little farther off.

“Do I swim?” she screamed.

“Wait,” he blasted over the loudspeaker.

Twenty feet.

“Get ready.”

Going backward past the woman he shoved the nose behind her rock as if he were trying to drive the boat aground. The current created a massive eddy and a giant whirlpool just to the stern of the woman’s perch and of Silverwind that allowed the boat to move forward. With a swipe of his hand on the throttle he reduced power. There was an ugly crunching and he was slammed over the wheel as the lead keel hit the granite.

“Now?”

“Swim!” he screamed at the woman, not bothering with electronics. She began a powerful crawl stroke.

He heard her hit the hull and saw a hand trying to grab. He thrust a huge salmon net over the side, almost falling overboard himself. Her legs went into the net first as she slid down the side of the boat. Holding on to the net with all the strength he could muster, he watched helplessly as the bow swung from the rock and the boat turned broadside to the current, gaining speed. Her hand grabbed the gunwale.

“Hang on.” Desperately he hauled in the net. She got a foot hooked over the edge of the boat’s rail.

“Climb!” he said. Still grasping the handle of the net with one hand, he used the other to throw the transmission into forward and move the boat away from the rocks toward the center of the channel.

“Grab me,” she screamed.

“Just hold on,” he said as he continued his efforts to get clear of the downstream rocks. The overfall was around a slight bend and about two hundred yards distant. He decided to take it bow first and that meant turning the boat ninety degrees. Just as he hit another whirlpool he spun the wheel. Tipping far over, the starboard rail went under and the woman with it. Quickly he stepped above her, grabbed under her arms, and hauled her body half over the lifelines. Around them the water roared and the boat careened, but he kept pulling.

When he had her torso in the cockpit with her feet still over the lifelines, he pulled, deliberately falling to the side and using his weight to take her with him. Landing on a seat corner, he slammed his ribs into the fiberglass. Water was everywhere as the boat righted itself. Had it been anything other than an oceangoing sailboat it would have filled quickly.

He took the woman by the shoulders and moved her around the wheel to the bottom of the open cockpit, tossed a life jacket at her, and tightened down his own. Then in little more than the time it takes to sneeze, he recognized her as Anna Wade, actress, Oscar winner, two Golden Globes, $20 million a picture, and still a nice person. At least by reputation.

“Stay there.” He calculated the boat’s entry into the wave. It wasn’t the size of the wave that mattered but its steepness, and the down suction from the whirlpool. He could see that there’d be no climbing it. They would be buried.

Here the canyon created the venturi and the wind howled. The digital readout of the wind indicator was showing fifty-plus knots and still climbing. If Sam hadn’t seen it and heard the stories he wouldn’t have believed it. Lines were tangled in the cockpit. Some were wrapped around his leg.

“Haul this in,” he said, handing her the safety line. In a whirlpool it could catch in the propeller. She pulled like a seasoned deckhand. “It will be okay,” he said. Then a whirlpool spun them and he fought to keep the bow pointed at the wave. Unless he kept it straight the rocks would punch holes like an angry fist through tissue paper.

“A hundred feet,” he said, as the boat careened around the whirlpools. “Grab,” he said to Anna Wade while planting her hands on two chromed bars to either side of the steering column. Her grip was vice-tight.

The wave loomed, rising up thick and green with a dimpled belly and its head rolling white like a great ocean breaker. There was a slick on the surface and a steep dip just ahead of the wave. They shot through the slick like a toboggan on ice, the wave coming and going with a hiss, then a roar. The sounds shook in his head. Green water poured over the yacht’s nose as the current sucked it down so hard Sam could feel it in his gut. Rolling over the decks the water submerged the cockpit, and everything but the mast disappeared.

Green water, bitterly cold, hit him hard. His hands dug into the wheel as the water yanked him off his feet, his body nearly prone. When his feet were back under him he stood in water to his thighs.

Suddenly the yacht rolled almost completely over to the port side. There was a hard jolt as the keel bounced off a rock and then the frothing water was gone, leaving only a series of whirlpools more than two hundred feet in diameter.

With water pouring from the scuppers and the boat weighted down at the stern, it began to spin. As if on ice the boat glided stern first to the center of the whirlpool. In seconds he realized that the transmission was in neutral, the lever knocked back by the force of the water.

Feeling the yacht slowly sink below the horizon, he knew they’d been caught in a whirlpool’s vortex. They were falling backward down a watery shaft. With his boat in a bewildering spin, Sam shoved the transmission into forward, grateful that the motor was still running. With full power the boat clawed over the funnel’s lip, careening out of the first whirlpool only to be knocked in a circle by the next. Using the power again and again, he managed to escape each whirling eddy until their strength diminished.

They were inside the Okisolo Channel, one of several watery fingers penetrating fern-covered granite walls whose patches of moss, lichen, and grasses made natural corridors of pristine beauty. They passed through to Heron Bay a couple hundred yards distant as the current slowed to a mere two knots. The wind had been cut by half by the bluffs around the bay but still moaned in the rigging and thrashed the sails. Lines ran everywhere, even streaming down the boat’s sides, and the mainsail still lay across the deck, draped over the rail.

Sam put a hand on her shoulder and studied her face. She was shaking badly. “I’m okay, let me help,” she said in response to his silent concern. Then she struggled to pull in sails and every line that could reach his prop as if she were regular crew. He let it go on maybe three minutes, then ushered her down below.

His inflatable raft was gone, ripped from its tie-downs on the front deck. The diesel was still running and sounded good. In the relative calm came the discovery that the Silverwind had a broken rudder. And a broken weather vane-an automatic steering device that held the boat to a preset angle to the wind. The aft solar panel was a shambles.

“What a mess, I’m sorry,” she said as they went through the pilothouse and down into the cabin.

Although the diminishing wind was still pushing them, he kept the engine in forward with the auto pilot on so they would be certain not to drift past the bay down to the Gordon Rapids. Using the remnant of the rudder, the boat held a heading after a fashion. Quickly he showed her how to work the sumps in the head and got her in the shower with her clothes on.

“Don’t undress yet,” he said as he left her for topside. Soon they were motoring into Heron Bay and turning in eddies as they went.

The islands’ steep terrain appeared only as imposing textured blackness against the night sky. The clouds were mostly gone, the wind reduced to gusts of twenty miles per hour.

Down below, Anna could only take in the mood of the bay through the porthole, but was more probably lost in thoughts of death and the sweetness of life. He thought about her with her wet hair hung in her face, the borrowed life jacket draped with seaweed. Before he got her under the shower she had to have been on the verge of serious hypothermia.

Once safe in the bay, Sam put the boat in neutral and went below. “You all right?” he asked outside the door.

“I’m okay. Thank you so much.”

“You still decent?”

“Yeah.” He opened the door and found her seated on a bench in the small shower looking much warmer in the steamy little compartment.

Harry barked and wagged his tail ferociously.

“This is Harry,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, reaching down, even in her drenched condition, to pat him. Sam ran into the galley for a plastic bag and some gauze to wrap a cut on her hand. Now he was starting to chill pretty badly despite all his high-tech underwear and outer garments. For the first time he noticed blood on his own hand and a modest cut that had been dripping red about the teak floor. He made a makeshift bandage with gauze wrap and tied it off.

“And, Harry, this is Anna Wade,” he said when he returned.

“That’s pretty good,” she said. “I must look like a drowned rat. You’re turning blue around the lips.”

He grabbed towels, blue jeans, and a shirt. Sam had a thirty-two-inch waist, so the pants could be cinched up with a belt even for a woman who probably measured only twenty-six.

“When you’re warmed up you can dry off and put on these,” he said. “Are you okay?”

She was looking better already. “I’m fine. Especially with the warm water.”

“One-handed shower,” he said, wrapping her hand and pulling the bag over it.

Getting out of her clothes might be awkward, but he thought better of offering assistance.

After satisfying himself that she knew how the toilet worked-always problematic on a yacht-he closed the door and went topside. Normally it would have taken him ten minutes to drop and set the anchor, but with the cold wind making it nearly unbearable, he just loosened the windlass and let it go. Making its usual whine, the anchor chain payed out some forty feet until the anchor hit bottom.

Belowdecks, he stood outside her shower door. Harry was perched on the settee, watching.

“You okay in there?”

“Great,” she said.

“I’m going to take a shower myself.”

“Okay,” she said. “Not in here, I hope.”

Sense of humor’s intact.

When he finished warming himself, which took a good ten minutes, he dried off, pulled on his pants, and opened the door to his stateroom. He saw her with the door of the forward stateroom ajar, wearing jeans but nothing else. Her beautifully tapered back was covered by her long curly dark hair. Seeming to have eyes in the back of her head, she closed the door with her foot A couple of minutes later she emerged in his shirt.

“Is the boat going to float?”

“Oh, yeah. But the rudder is mostly gone-God knows what else. I’m ready to call it a night.”

“Look,” she put her hand on his arm. “You risked your life to save me. No one has ever done that for me. So, I hate to bring this up but I really need to get off this boat. So do you.”

He pulled a large first-aid kit from under the seat at the navigation station. After washing her cut, he went right to work using the cotton, gauze, and cream.

He didn’t respond to her comment. There was no practical way to leave the yacht.

“I will never be able to thank you enough for what you did. I’ll pay to fix your boat.” She shivered just a bit, the chill obviously still inside her.

“The clothes don’t quite fit but they work. There’s a down coat over there on the couch.” He stopped for a moment while he grabbed the parka and she slipped into it.

She pulled back her hair from her face and smiled. “When did you recognize me?”

“When I pulled you in.”

“You weren’t the least bit uncertain?”

“Why would I be uncertain? I see you on the magazine racks several times a year in every grocery store. What’s to be uncertain about?”

She raised a brow. “Do you watch many movies?”

“I’ve seen a few of yours.”

She had her eyes on his hands. “I think you hit a punching bag with your knuckles. I couldn’t help but notice a scrapbook in the stateroom. Articles about celebrities, a lot of them in film.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged.

“What picture won Peter Malkey an Oscar?”

“Sandals.”

“He won it for?”

“Best Director.”

“Who produced the movie?”

“Hey, I’m neither Siskel nor Ebert.”

“You know, don’t you?”

“Only because my mother loved the movie. Raved about it.”

“Who’s my agent?”

He smiled. “You’re a woman with a lot of questions.”

“Either you know the name or you don’t.”

“I know her name. I’m making spaghetti tonight.”

“One of the articles was about how they found Peter’s thieving CPA-the one that took him for two million-and a lot of other people as well-handcuffed to the steel railing in front of the police station with a sign around his neck.”

“Pretty amazing.”

“And your name is?”

“Sam.”

“Sam…?”

“Sam of the Silverwind.”

“Well, obviously I’m pleased to meet you. You’re brave, Sam of the Silverwind, and I’m alive because of it.”

He cleared his throat. “I neglected to mention that in the drawer of the forward stateroom-the same place you found the scrapbook-you’ll find a brush, makeup, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds good.” She rose and disappeared while he pulled out the spaghetti pot and began cleaning up. There was going to be an issue here.

“How can I get out of this bay? Back to civilization?” She had returned with the brush, trying to draw the tangles out of her hair.

“How did you get here?”

“In a seaplane.”

“Well, then, tomorrow we find a seaplane.”

“I really have to go, and I’m going to need your help. It might not be safe here in the open.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. Call it intuition.”

“You could swim to that beach, on Sonoma Island, get hypothermia, and warm yourself inside a bear’s gut.” He grinned. “Just intuition of course.”

“Come on,” she said. “Be nice. You know that New York traffic is more dangerous than the bears.”

“Absolutely. You’re much more likely to be eaten by the cold, and then the crabs, but eaten just the same. The dinghy and emergency life raft are both gone. There is no good way ashore and then no place to go should you happen to make it to the beach. Unless you know something I don’t.”

“Or we could stay here, is that it?”

“The beach is not practical. So a delightful evening with me and my spaghetti is really the only option.”

“Now you’re trying to make the bears sound good,” she joked as she walked toward him. “Look. I can’t talk about my situation. You apparently have lots you can’t talk about either. But we could trust each other.”

“Who was the guy who walked off and left you?”

For a split second she looked troubled. “What guy?”

There was a story here. For her sake he hoped nobody in the media found out. Stars magazine would pay a fortune for this piece, BACHELOR ON SAILBOAT SAVES BIG STAR AFTER MYSTERY MAN LEAVES HER TO DIE.

He wanted a smoke.

“What is your last name, Sam?”

“I’m just Sam. Here’s my card.” He handed her a neatly embossed, gold-lettered card. It read “Sam of the Silverwind,” with nothing but an e-mail address.

“People usually have a last name.”

“Yes, indeed. But then when someone is fleeing for their life they usually talk about it.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

“Okay. Tell me what happened so I can understand the desperation to get out of here.”

“Do those toiletries you told me about belong to anyone in particular?”

“Yes. My mother.”

“She travels with you?”

“Occasionally.”

“She’s the one who put together the scrapbook. Probably forgot it.”

Sam shrugged.

“I need to get off.”

“You know a lot more about what’s going on here than I do. So why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Look, I know this is strange. And you did save my life. And I’m very grateful. But please trust me. We both need to get off this boat.”

“We’ll trust each other, and we can begin by you telling me what we should run from.”

She shook her head no. Sam could see that she was anxious, but he needed to know why she wanted to leave. Running was often more dangerous than waiting. There was a dry suit on board that he hadn’t mentioned, and he could start the motor and proceed more or less aimlessly to the beach, where he could ground the boat on one of many rocks perhaps fifty yards from shore. A less expensive alternative would be to use the dry suit and tow Anna to shore. There was a kid’s blow-up boat that would hold two adults maybe, half submerged and totally soaked with this chop and the wind. With one adult it would be just as wet but not as deeply submerged. But keeping her on the boat, or seeming to, was the only leverage he had to get her to talk. Unless he knew the why of it all, he couldn’t make a good plan.

Outthinking ill-intentioned people had been Sam’s calling in life-all kinds of criminals, but sometimes the worst of the worst, those who by natural gift were uncommonly intelligent and by some means, natural or unnatural, had become twisted and/or nearly conscienceless.

Those with no conscience were less a problem for businesspeople or celebrity types because they were psychopaths devoted to killing people they encountered in their daily life. They remained the province of homicide detectives who worked long hours under the influence of black coffee and nervous politicians.

Sam’s company worked both in the private sector and under government contract. Powerful people, celebrities, and governments paid small fortunes for his skill and the cold logic of a silicon beast called CORE (an acronym for Common Object Repository for the Enterprise), affectionately christened “Big Brain” by Grogg, the man who helped conceive her according to Sam’s vision.

Sam’s greatest asset was a strong mind, housed in a near-perfect tabernacle tainted only by the occasional doses of cigarette smoke that he perpetually swore would end. Scholarships at Yale and MIT-specialty: computer science-had enabled him to create a so-called “expert system” that revolutionized data analysis using a programming method known as forward- and backward-chaining heuristics.

His skills had forged for him a unique occupation, a job that kept him in high demand, a job that he had found profoundly satisfying until recently, when he’d left it altogether. It was a line of work that required he keep an extremely low profile, something that, even in premature retirement, Sam did not intend to abandon.

Anna Wade was no exception: Unless she became a client, she could know nothing of him or the exotic trade he had once plied.

“I’ll make the spaghetti sauce. Relax. You have been talking about both of us leaving the boat Somewhere along the line you decided I must leave too. Why?”

“I was going to get you accepting my exit and then drag you along.”

She walked back to the forward stateroom and closed the door, obviously disappointed. He was acutely aware that she hadn’t answered the question.

Sam went to his stateroom, took out night-vision equipment, and went topside. It was uncomfortably cold in the wind. He looked to the near shore, then out across the channel behind him to Windham Island. A small island called Double Island that lay off the shore of Sonoma Island formed the shelter for their secluded anchorage. There was no one and nothing that looked like trouble. It didn’t appear that anyone else was anchored in the bay, not surprising since this place made sailors nervous even when the tide was slack. The rocky channel was a little tricky to negotiate-high tide at slack water was definitely the preferred time. No bilge alarm was sounding so it was unlikely that he was taking on water. The next high tide was many hours away, and it would be dark. Without a rudder they would run aground if they attempted to weigh anchor and leave.

He considered whether he should just leave with Anna and trust her judgment. Anchoring overnight or longer with no one aboard would require putting more scope on the anchor, so he went topside and released more chain. It was wise to be prepared for any eventuality. After the boat drifted off he would drop a stern anchor with very little scope.

The boat wouldn’t go anywhere. He wanted a smoke and a drink, but first he should take care of an emergency escape method. Rummaging around in a locker he found the kid’s raft and pumped it up in the wheelhouse, wondering how long it would take for Anna Wade to stop pouting or whatever she was doing. He lashed the small rubber boat to the lifelines midships where it could easily be cut loose. As he was turning to go back inside he noticed that the rubber boat had lost its turgidity. Leak. Typical with kids’ rafts. Then he remembered the relatives’ kids in the early part of the summer and the barnacles. After dinner he would try to find the little pinhole and fix it. In the meantime, if he and Anna had to leave they would use the dry suit and an air mattress.

When he returned to the cabin, he opened a cupboard and took a look at a bottle of Caymus Cabernet, 1996 vintage. He considered it. He had quit the hard stuff completely, and would have a glass of wine only when he knew he could stop at three. Or even more likely, a German beer with similar limitations. So far he had never been wrong. Taking a careful measure of himself, he closed the cabinet. The arrival of Anna Wade and the near destruction of his sailboat could put a man on the bottle.

He filled his wineglass instead with sparkling water and fed Harry. Judging from the homey little galloping noise, his guest was running water in the sink. It made him smile that in the midst of begging to jump overboard and swim, this woman was still going to be well groomed.

He closed the companionway hatch and turned up the diesel heat. The sound of the sink pump stopped. Like a lot of landlubbers she ran the water whether she needed it or not. He proceeded to clean the galley and main salon of the few items that had fallen from cupboards. Most of his things had stayed put behind heavy-weather barricades.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a blow-dryer. Quickly he started a generator so she wouldn’t drain the batteries through the inverter. At the rate she was going she’d find his mother’s curling iron. Better whip up some vegetables and rush the spaghetti sauce; it seemed she was settling in for the evening. If it was that easy to persuade her, perhaps she wasn’t desperate after all.

He went to the cupboard, and beside the wine was an unopened pack of Marlboro smokes. He studied them.

“Come on, Harry,” he said. After he was up topside, he tapped the carton until a cigarette slid partway out. “I know,” he told the dog. “But I’ve got Miss Manhattan on board. One smoke is understandable.” He lit up and took a drag, inhaling deeply. The wind was still whipping and he could feel the chill even in goose down. Once more he pulled the smoke into his lungs, the ember a tiny glowing furnace.

After the third drag he ground out the smoke with a pinch of two wet fingers. Then he took one more look around with night vision and was reassured by the isolation. Never before had he left his sat phone behind, but it had broken last week and it hadn’t seemed a priority until now. At this moment he would give a lot to call Grogg and get Big Brain started on some probing questions about Anna Wade. He figured he’d better get down to his guest. As his last act topside, he opened a lazzarette and put the butt in a plastic garbage bag.

“Filthy damn habit,” he told Harry, promising himself it would be his last.

It would take two hours to cook the spaghetti if he did it half right, twenty minutes if he sacrificed quality and cheated. She could drink wine while he decided exactly how nosy he was going to be.

He had the pot full of Italian-spiced tofu balls, beer, more Italian spices, tomato paste, and stewed tomatoes.

The curlicue pasta was on and he was marinating the avocado for the salad when she walked out of her stateroom. It was a mere fortuity that he had fresh lettuce. He had bartered it from the captain of a packer boat coming down from Alaska.

“What you been doing up there?”

“After my makeup, shivering under a blanket, looking through your books, and snooping.”

“Least you’re honest.”

Her hair was soft now, her lipstick even, smooth, and warm; the touch of eyeliner and mascara made pools of her eyes. He saw it coming-at any moment the next assault would arrive.

Harry trotted over to her for a second pat.

After fussing over Harry for a moment, she came to Sam and put a hand on his arm. “Can’t you think of some way to get us out of here?” These words and the warm hand were accompanied by her truly charming smile. It would make most men want to please her. It made Sam want a drink with another smoke. This was the old life and it had come roaring back with the adrenaline rush.

He shrugged. “I’m sorry you don’t want to stay for dinner. It’s a good recipe. Ever had beer in the red sauce?”

“Beer?”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

“Could you use your radio to call someone-a seaplane maybe?”

“We went over this. It’s a line-of-sight VHF radio, we’re in a natural bowl, the shortwave radio is in the shop. I don’t have a sat phone that works. There is no cell signal here.”

“Get me off this boat. Yes or no?” This time she was direct.

“No.”

She looked at him with a level stare and he looked right back.

“Don’t you have a beacon?”

“An emergency locator beacon won’t get anyone here tonight.”

She folded her arms and exhaled as though it were her last breath on this earth. It moved him but not enough to overcome his own determination. He made it a point not to be impressed by celebrities.

“The Mounties could get me off the beach,” she said.

“With some luck we’ll find a way out of here tomorrow. Of course if I knew what was going on, I might try to figure some way off this boat… some way that didn’t entail freezing my ass in the salt water and then facing death from exposure on shore. Maybe.”

He returned to the stove and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Without a word she walked back into the stateroom and closed the door.

So it’s going to be like that, he said to himself. Maybe she really can’t even pretend to be like the rest of us.