Transgressions

freeze your lungs. You know I don't want you to die like this! Talk sense to Peter! Best of times it's like threading a needle through all the little islands. In a blow you can lose your boat on the rocks.'

'Peter's s-sailed b-boats all his life!'

Ransome shook his head. 'Not under these conditions.'

A vicious gust heeled them to port; the bow was buried in a cornering wave. Water cascaded off the back of the overhead as the cruiser righted itself sluggishly.

'Peter!'

'We're okay!' he yelled, leaning on the helm.

Ransome smiled in sympathy with Echo's terror.

'We're not okay.' He turned to Peter. 'There is a way out of this dilemma, Peter! If you'd only give me a chance to make things right for all of us! But you must turn back now!'

'I told you, I don't have dilemmas! Echo, keep that gun on him!'

Ransome said, his eyes on the shivering girl, 'I don't think Peter knows you as well as I've come to know you, Mary Catherine! You couldn't shoot me. No matter what you think I've done.'

Echo, her eyes red from salt, raised the muzzle of the Colt unsteadily as she tried to keep from slipping off the bench opposite Ransome.

'Which one—are you tonight?' she said bitterly. 'The g-god who creates, or the god who destroys?'

They were taking on water faster than the pump could empty the boat. The cruiser wallowed, nearly directionless.

'Remember the rogue wave, Mary Catherine? You saved me then. Am I worth saving now?'

'Don't listen to him!' Peter rubbed his eyes, trying to focus through the spume on the wheelhouse window. What he saw momentarily and some distance away were the running lights of a large yacht or even a cutter. Because of the cold he had only limited use of his left hand. His wrist had begun bleeding again during his fight with Taja at the lighthouse. With numbed fingers he was able to open a locker in front of him. 'Echo, this guy has fucked up every life he ever touched!'

'There's no truth in that! It was Taja, no matter what she wanted you to believe. Her revenge on me.

And I was the only one who ever cared about her! Mary Catherine, last night I tried to stop her from going after Silkie MacKenzie! You know what happened. But the story of Taja and myself is not easy to explain.

You understand, though, don't you?'

'You should have seen what I've seen the last forty-eight hours, Echo! The faces of Ransome's women.

Slashed, burned, broken! Two that I know of are dead! Nan McLaren OD'd, Ransome—you hear about that?'

'Yes. Poor Nan—but I—'

'Last night Valerie Angelus went off the roof of her building! You set her up for that, you son of a bitch!'

Ransome lifted his head.

'But you could've stopped her. A year, two years ago, it wouldn't have been too late for Valerie! You didn't want her. Don't talk about caring, it makes me sick!'

Ransome lunged off his bench toward Echo and easily took the automatic from her half-frozen hands.

He turned toward Peter with it but lost his footing. Peter abandoned the helm, kicked the Colt into the stern of the boat, then pointed a Kilgore flare pistol, loaded with a twenty-thousand-candlepower parachute flare, at Ransome's head.

'I think the Coast Guard's out there to starboard,' Peter said. 'If you make a big enough bonfire they'll see it.'

'The flare will only destroy my face,' Ransome said calmly. 'I suppose you would consider that to be justice.' On his knees, Ransome held up his bound hands suppliantly. 'We could have settled this among ourselves. Now it's too late.' He looked at Echo. 'Is it too late, Mary Catherine?'

She was sitting in a foot of water on the deck, exhausted, just trying to hold on as the, boat rolled violently. She looked at him, and looked away. 'Oh God, John.'

Ransome struggled to his feet. 'Take the helm, Peter, or she'll roll over! And the two of you may still have a life together.'

'Just shut up, Ransome!'

He smiled. 'You're both very young. Some day I hope you will learn that the greater part of wisdom is . .

. forgiveness.'

He unclipped his safety line from the vest as the bow of the cruiser rose, letting the motion carry him backwards to the transom railing. Where he threw himself overboard, vanishing into the pitch-dark water.

Echo cried out, a wail of despair, then sobbed. Peter felt nothing other than a cold indifference to the fate the artist had chosen. He raised the flare pistol and fired it, then returned to the helm as the flare shed its light upon the water, bringing nearby islands into jagged relief. A few moments later they heard a siren through the low scream of wind; a searchlight probed the darkness and found them. Peter closed his eyes in the glare and leaned against the helm with Echo laid against his back, arms around him.

Below decks of the Coast Guard cutter as it returned to the station on Mount Desert Island with the cruiser in tow, a change in pitch in the cutter's engine and a shudder that ran through the vessel caused Echo to wake up