uncomfortably along her hairline; it ran in rivulets between her breasts, soaking through the fabric of her Victoria’s Secret T-shirt bra.
Damn! Baltimore was hot in July.
Squinting through her Ray-Bans, Angie scanned the bustling Inner Harbor, searching for the sailboat, a Sabre 402 named
But there was no sign of Jack or his boat.
Angie had visited the Sabre website, so she knew that a 402 cost almost a half a million dollars. Even a used model could set you back two hundred thou. But it wasn’t the price that impressed her; it was the fact that the boat had two separate cabins with doors. That locked. With any luck, though, she wouldn’t have to use them.
Angie yanked her cell phone out of its holster and checked to make sure she had her brother Johnny on quick dial, in case things turned sour. Then she punched in the number Jack had given her, but voicemail kicked in right away. Damn! Maybe he was out of signal range, or talking to someone else. She scowled at the phone.
Jack. Jack freaking Daniels!
Angie imagined her mother’s disapproving voice. “With a name like that, Ange,” she would have warned, shaking a finger, “he’s gotta be an axe murderer.”
Angie’d argue she found it hard to believe that anybody’d make up a name like Jack Daniels.
“You don’t know anything about the man!” her mother would say. “Safer to stay home.”
Once, Angie had hitchhiked from Baltimore to San Francisco and back, and lived to tell the tale. “Pure dumb luck,” her mother had scoffed, with emphasis on the dumb.
Angie’s mother had never approved of blind dates, either, so the idea that her only daughter planned to sail off with a guy after meeting him for the first time on the Internet would have sent her into cardiac arrest.
So Angie hadn’t told her.
“I’m taking a vacation, Mama,” she’d said. “Got a great rate out of Providence to BWI. I’ll visit Johnny in Baltimore, see how he’s doing at Harkins, then who knows? Florida, maybe.”
The Florida part was practically true. After Baltimore, Jack said he was planning to sail down the Intercoastal Waterway to Fort Lauderdale, then across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.
On the bench next to her, Angie had a canvas tote with
Angie had responded that she was an adventurous, freespirited young lady who wanted to sail where the weather is warm, the wind is steady, and the islands are beautiful. After a flurry of e-mails, they’d agreed to meet.
She hadn’t called his references.
Angie lived life on the edge.
Someone pulled the plug on the recording, thank God. Angie joined the crowd around the outdoor pool as aquarium staff prepared to feed Ike and Lady, the gray seals who lived there. She rested her forearms against the railing and watched Ike flounder onto a rock, snap up the fish tossed his way, and honk appreciatively for the crowd.
When feeding time was over, Angie strolled along the seawall, past the grinning black hulk of the
So she wouldn’t mess up her cutoffs, Angie selected a relatively clean spot and sat down on the granite wall, her legs dangling over the water. Her feet ended in Docksiders. No one could say she didn’t dress like a sailor.
The water taxi came and went, its canopy flapping as it chugged through the still, humid air. Motorboats flitted about the harbor, weaving around the fleet of paddleboats that puttered around like ducklings. Sailboats bobbed quietly at anchor, suddenly swinging wide, facing into a puff of wind that rippled a path along the water.
“Stevie! Stay away from the water!” A woman’s voice, screeching. When Angie turned her head to check out the kid, she saw it: a Sabre motoring in under bare poles, its blue hull bright against the greenish-brown mound of Federal Hill. It would be ten, twenty minutes maybe, before the captain found a spot to anchor amid the sea of tethered vessels.
Angie extracted a digital camcorder, smaller than a paperback, from a plastic bag in her tote. She flipped it open and centered the sailboat in the viewfinder. She zoomed in, waited for the cam to focus. No mistake.
She panned aft to where the captain, his features indistinct in the shadow of a baseball cap, manned the helm, then forward along the life lines.
When the anchor was secure, the two men piled into the dinghy, cranked the outboard to life, and motored to the dock where they jostled for a spot, bouncing off the other inflatables like oversized inner tubes.
Through the viewfinder Angie watched the men disembark, watched the young guy shake Jack’s hand, watched as he seemed to be saying goodbye. Good, she thought. One less Y chromosome to worry about.
From behind the camera, Angie stared, comparing the man coming toward her to the photo from the e-mail attachment. The man in the photo had darker hair, a wider nose, a less prominent chin. Angie sat on the seawall, puzzled, her knees pulled up, hugging them, studying the man with the salt-and-pepper hair who
Jack reached the end of the pier and stopped to gaze out over the water, big hands hanging at his sides. She stuffed the videocam into her tote bag, stood, and followed.
“Jack?” she called, settling the strap of the tote comfortably against her shoulder.
He turned. His sunfrosted eyebrows lifted. “Mandy?”
“That’s me.” She smiled ruefully. The name sounded strange pinned on her, rather than on the drugged-out cousin to whom it actually belonged. Angie extended her hand, and he took two steps forward to take it.
“Shall we go somewhere to talk?” she asked, eager to get on with it.
Walking side-by-side, chatting casually, they crossed the brick-paved causeway to Barnes and Noble, the ho- hum of its chaindom somewhat mitigated by being sandwiched between its trendier cousins, the ESPN Zone and Hard Rock Cafe. Once inside, they wound through smokestacks tattooed with rivets, rode up the industrial-style escalators to Starbucks.
“My treat,” Jack said, and bought them each a mocha frappuccino.
“Do you want to see the boat now, before you make up your mind?” he asked, sitting down at the table opposite her.
“How about the other guy?” She jammed a straw into her drink.
“What other guy?”
“The guy I saw riding in on the dinghy.”
