“I heard shots.”
“I’m not sure what that meant. Maybe a signal to someone else out there on the lake. Maybe some kind of threat or warning, I don’t know. But once it was clear that he had a gun, I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“Will he come back?”
He didn’t reply immediately, and Jenny wondered if it was because it hurt him to talk, or if he was simply reluctant to answer. “If I were him, and I wanted to be sure of the situation here, I’d come back at first light, when I could see everything better.”
“What do we do?”
He spoke as if the answer was obvious. “We make sure we’re not here.”
ELEVEN
Mal navigated by moonlight. They were moving along a corridor he said was called Tranquil Channel. Fortunately, the running lights still worked. The storm had littered the lake with all kinds of debris, and Rose was posted forward with Stephen and Anne to watch for anything that might damage the bow at waterline. They all had flashlights, and the beams crisscrossed the tea-colored water ahead.
Stars lay on the sky like sugar tossed on an onyx plate. The moon, frost-colored and nearly full, was at their backs. The islands rose black all around them, their outlines visible from the way they blotted out the stars.
They’d been intent on their responsibilities, on keeping all eyes toward the lake in front of them, and for a long time they had not spoken. Rose was tired, tired physically and mentally, tired of considering all the tragic possibilities they might have to face. She’d lapsed into a long, silent prayer.
“I keep trying to figure that storm,” Stephen finally said, without looking away from the broad yellow oval where his flashlight beam met water. “I never saw anything like it before. Like a tornado except it was everywhere.”
“Straight-line winds,” Anne said. “We had a storm like that once at St. Ansgar. A bunch of trees on campus blew down. A lot of damage in town, too.”
“I wonder how far the damage goes here,” Stephen said. “All the way to the Northwest Angle, do you think? And back to Kenora?”
“That’s something we probably won’t know until we dock,” Anne said.
The progress of the houseboat, though measured, created a small breeze that felt cool against Rose’s face. Her eyes hurt from the intensity with which she scoured the lake and the darkness ahead. Mal had said that, as soon as they hit open water, he’d try to give the houseboat more throttle. Until then, it was best to proceed with utmost caution.
“Do you think they’re okay, Aunt Rose?” Anne asked.
Anne stood to her left. Rose tried to remember what that side of the boat was called. Starboard? Port?
“I really think that, yes,” Rose replied, trying to keep the exhaustion out of her voice.
Stephen stood to her right. He turned his face toward her sharply. In the moonlight at his back, half his features were brilliant, the other half in shadow. “Why?” he challenged.
“It’s simply what I choose to believe.”
“What if they were caught in open water?” he threw at her. “They’d never make it.”
“Then they weren’t caught in open water,” she said calmly. “They made it somewhere safe before the storm hit. Until I’m proven wrong, I’ll believe the best.”
“You actually think that way?” His tone suggested that she was more than a little foolish.
He had good reason to be skeptical of her philosophy. Almost two years earlier, when his mother had disappeared on a charter flight over the Rockies during a horrific snowstorm, they’d all held to an impossible hope that she would be found alive. It had been Stephen’s father who’d pursued the truth and brought it, like a slaughtered animal, home. All of them, Rose thought, in their own ways, were still reeling. And now this. This pushing through the dark again.
“Stephen,” Anne said, “it will be all right.”
Her voice was gentle, but the strength in it was undeniable, something annealed in the fire of her heart. Several years earlier, when she was eighteen, she’d stood toe-to-toe with death during the rampage of a high school shooting. Bloodied, she had cradled the dying in her arms, had walked out of that hell a different person, had followed a road many would have called pointless. She was preparing to be a nun.
“Okay,” Stephen said, though he didn’t sound fully convinced. “But say they didn’t make it all the way to the Northwest Angle. Where would they have put in?”
“There are probably a thousand islands they could choose,” Anne replied.
“How would we know which one?”
“A signal fire?” Rose suggested.
“Maybe they simply waited it out and then went on to the Angle,” Anne said.
“No,” Stephen said. “They’d have come back to check on us after the storm passed.”
He was right, Rose knew. But nothing of the dinghy had been seen or heard since Cork and Jenny motored away hours ago.
“So, they took shelter on an island,” Rose said, “and they’re stranded, and the boat’s damaged. Okay?” She looked toward Stephen.
This seemed to be a scenario he could accept. He nodded. “The fire would be difficult,” he said, thinking it through. “Everything’s wet. Did they take matches?”
None of them knew.
“He’s got gasoline in the outboard,” Stephen went on, as much to himself as to the others. “He could soak a bunch of the wood and all he would need would be a spark to get it going. Once he did that, he would just have to keep feeding it.” He looked north toward a long island that was like a black caterpillar on the shimmering surface of the lake. “We could probably see it a long way off.”
“Or someone could,” Anne said.
“What do you mean someone?”
“I’m sure there are folks out searching for people lost in the storm. The Coast Guard, the sheriff’s office, the provincial police.”
“And locals giving a hand,” Rose threw in.
Stephen scanned the empty horizon. “Why haven’t we seen anyone?”
“It’s a big lake,” Rose said. “But they’re out there, I’m sure.”
She realized that her words weren’t just for Stephen. They helped her hold to her own hope.
They were all quiet again. Again, for a long time.
From the east came a sound like a buzz saw working through wood. All their heads turned in that direction, and six eyes scanned the liquid silver that was the lake.
“A boat?” Anne asked.
“Yeah,” Stephen said. “Powerful. Look, there it is!”
He poked a finger into the wall of night, pointing directly toward the moon, where a broad avenue of silver lay across the water, and where, for a few moments, the black silhouette of a boat was visible.
“A cigarette boat!” Stephen cried.
“What’s a cigarette boat?” Rose asked.
“A long, fast powerboat,” he replied. “They’re called cigarette boats because they’ve been used a lot to smuggle cigarettes into Canada. They were designed to outrun the boats the Coast Guard and customs people have.”
“How can you tell it’s a cigarette boat?”
“Gordy Hudacek’s father has one. I ride in it all the time on Iron Lake. They have a different look and sound to them, and, man, can they fly.”
The boat was gone in almost the same instant she’d seen it.
“I can’t tell which way it’s going,” Rose said.
Stephen listened. “North,” he said. “It’s headed away from us.”
