Riptide

'Reverend and Mrs. Woodruff Clay,' said the minister crisply, extending his hand to Bonterre.

Hatch was stunned, his mind almost refusing to accept this fresh surprise.

Bonterre dabbed at her lips with a napkin and stood up with a languid motion, giving Claire and Woody each a hearty handshake, exposing a row of dazzling teeth. There was an awkward pause, and then Clay ushered his wife away with a curt nod to Hatch.

Bonterre glanced at the retreating figure of Claire, then back at Hatch. 'Old friends?' she asked.

'What?' Hatch murmured. He was staring at Clay's left hand, possessively placed in the small of Claire's back.

An arch smile formed on Bonterre's face. 'No, I can see I am wrong,' she said, leaning over the table. 'Old lovers. How awkward it is to meet again! And yet how sweet.'

'You have a keen eye,' mumbled Hatch, still too off balance from the encounter—and the revelation that followed—to make any kind of denial.

'But you and the husband, you are not old friends. In fact, it seemed to me that he does not like you at all. That tiresome frown, and those big black bags under his eyes. He looks like he had a nuit blanche.'

'A what?'

'A nuit blanche. A—how do you say it?—a sleepless night. For one reason or another.' She smiled wickedly.

Instead of replying, Hatch picked up his fork and tried to busy himself with his lobster.

'I can see you still carry her torch,' Bonterre purred, with a cheerful smile. 'Someday you must tell me of her. But first, let me hear about you. The Captain's mentioned your travels. So tell me all about your adventures in Suriname.'

Almost two hours later, Hatch forced himself to his feet and followed Bonterre out of the restaurant. He had overindulged ridiculously, obscenely: two desserts, two pots of coffee, several brandies. Bonterre had matched him enthusiastically, order for order, yet she did not seem any worse for wear as she threw open her arms and breathed in the crisp night breeze.

'How refreshing this air is!' she cried. 'I could almost learn to love a place like this.'

'Just wait,' Hatch replied. 'Another two weeks, and you won't be able to leave. It gets in your blood.'

'Another two weeks, and you will not be able to get out of my way fast enough, monsieur le docteur.' She looked at him appraisingly. 'So what do we do now?'

Hatch hesitated a moment. He'd never thought about what might happen after dinner. He returned the gaze, warning bells once again sounding faintly in his head. Silhouetted in the yellow glow of the streetlamps, the archaeologist looked captivatingly beautiful, her tawny skin and almond eyes bewitchingly exotic in the small Maine village. Careful, the voice said.

'I think we say good night,' he managed to say. 'We've got a busy day tomorrow.'

Immediately, her eyebrows creased in an exaggerated frown. 'C'est tout!' she pouted. 'You Yankees have had all the marrow sucked from your bones. I should have gone out with Sergio. He at least has the fire in the belly, even if his body odor could kill a goat.' She squinted up at him. 'So how exactly do you say good night in Stormhaven, Doctor Hatch?'

'Like this.' Hatch stepped forward and gave her hand a shake.

'Ah.' Bonterre nodded slowly, as if comprehending. 'I see.' Then, quickly, she took his face in her hands and pulled it toward her, letting her lips graze his. As her hands dropped away from his face caressingly, Hatch could feel the tip of her tongue flick teasingly against his for the briefest of moments.

'And that is how we say good night in Martinique,' she murmured. Then she turned in the direction of the post office and, without glancing back, walked into the night.

Chapter 24

The following afternoon, as Hatch came up the path from the dock after treating a diver's sprained wrist, he heard a crash resound from the direction of Wopner's hut. Hatch sprinted into Base Camp, fearing the worst. But instead of finding the programmer pinned beneath a large rack of equipment, he found him sitting back in his chair, a shattered CPU at his feet, eating an ice-cream sandwich, an irritated expression on his face.

'Is everything all right?'

Wopner chewed noisily. 'No,' he said.

'What happened?'

The programmer turned a pair of large, mournful eyes toward Hatch. 'That computer impacted with my foot, is what happened.'

Hatch looked around for a place to sit, remembered there was none, and leaned against the doorway. 'Tell me about it.'

Wopner shoved the last piece in his mouth and dropped the wrapper on the floor. 'It's all messed up.'

'What is?'

'Charybdis. The Ragged Island network.' Wopner jerked a thumb in the direction of Island One.

'How so?'

'I've been running my brute-force program against that goddamn second code. Even with increased priority, the routines were sluggish. And I was getting error messages, strange data. So I tried running the same routines remotely over on Scylla, the Cerberus computer. It ran lickety-split, no errors.' He gave a disgusted scoff.