Dead calm

flashlights and hold ‘em as far over your head as you can—”

He was interrupted by a sudden cry from Mrs. Warriner, and at the same instant he saw it himself. A rocket arched into the sky ahead of them, hung poised for an instant, and began to float down like some great glowing flower.

“She’s lost herself,” Bellew said. “Hell, I thought you said she could take a bearing—”

Ingram cut him off savagely. “Save it!” Then he went on to Mrs. Warriner. “As soon as that goes out and she can see again, start waving your lights, pointed straight at her.”

She held them ready but made no reply, and he wondered if she were prey to the same chilling thoughts that were running through his own mind. Probably. Anybody but a stupid meathead like Bellew would know something must be wrong aboard Saracen. Was she hurt? Or had she killed Warriner and now was beginning to go to pieces? Then the flare went out ahead of them, and Mrs. Warriner was signaling. Several minutes went by while they rose and fell in silence.

Then Mrs. Warriner cried out. “She’s turned. I can see both running lights!”

Ingram sighed. She’d sighted them and was coming.

16

The range was closing. ahead of her the flashing lights were less than a quarter-mile away. Then it occurred to her he might be in the water instead of the dinghy, and she left the wheel long enough to run forward and hang the ladder over the side. Her knees were suddenly too weak to support her, and she almost fell coming back to the cockpit. It was difficult to breathe, and she was conscious of the pounding of her heart. She stared ahead at the two flashlights as if trying to burn away the darkness surrounding them. Two hundred yards …

She brought the throttle back and reached inside the hatch to turn on the spreader lights. The sea was illuminated for twenty or thirty yards on all sides of her, but she could still see the signals dead ahead.

She came hard left, and then right. She pulled the lever into reverse and backed down, racing the engine. Saracen came to rest, and the lights were less than fifty yards away, directly abeam. She reached down and yanked the wires apart, and in the sudden silence she could hear the rattle of oarlocks. He was in the dinghy. She leaned across the cockpit seat, staring outward.

Now she could see it. It was coming into the outer limits of the spreader lights. There were two people in it. John was rowing, and there was somebody smaller in the stern. She thought it was a woman— It wasn’t John rowing. He was bigger than John. It was somebody she’d never seen before, and the other one was a woman, and there was nobody else. Then she saw the head come out from behind the dinghy, the man swimming, and the upraised arm waving to her. She slid down into the cockpit seat with one hand still feebly clutching the lifeline above her, unable even to raise her head, and her diaphragm began to kick so she couldn’t exhale. Every time she would try to breathe out, it would kick and she would inhale again.

Ingram saw her slide down and could see no sign of Warriner. “Ill go aboard first,” he said to Mrs. Warriner. She was staring straight ahead, and when Saracen rolled down she thought she saw something on the other side of the cockpit, beyond Mrs. Ingram. Something sprawled. “Yes,” she said in a controlled but very fragile voice. “Yes. Thank you.”

Ingram lunged ahead and went up the ladder while they were coming alongside. Rae was sitting up now, and was apparently unhurt except for that bruise on her face. Beyond her he could see Warriner’s body, but in the same glance he saw the bound wrists and the line going forward to the stanchion, and all the breath went out of him at once.

Rae was still looking up at him. “He smash—he smu—he smu—” She tried to point, but he had already seen the uncovered and empty binnacle, like an eyeless socket, and understood. Probably wrecked the other one too, he thought. So she came all the way back and found us with nothing at all. He wanted to say something, but his eyes had begun to sting, and he didn’t trust his voice. Without even looking around, he gestured for the others to come aboard and reached down for her arm. She made it to her feet. She went down the ladder, and when she was in the darkness at the bottom of it, she turned.

She still couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t even cry. She was wrung out, drained, emptied of everything. She could only manage to get her arms up around his neck and cling while his went on crushing her, moving up and down her back as if they couldn’t find any place they wanted to stay, while water dripped on her and whiskers ground into her face and the voice was saying, “Oh, Jesus Christ—oh, Jesus Christ—” against her throat.

The last handhold crumbled then, but instead of falling she was floating upward into some welcoming and completely sheltered oblivion, like a child’s going to sleep. She felt herself being lifted and placed on the bunk. The arms still bound her, and the voice went on with its profane and ragged whispering, this time into her hair. Then, just before she disappeared entirely into the mist, she heard her own voice say something at last.

“Did you have any lunch?” she asked.

“No,” he said. He swallowed and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “I guess I forgot.” He kissed her again but knew she was gone. He still knelt beside her, and now he brought a hand up and placed the finger tips very gently against her throat to feel the pulse. And even after he was reassured she was all right, that she had merely reached the limit of endurance and stopped for a moment, he left the hand there, feeling her life run steadily on beneath his fingers. He didn’t even know why he did it.

He got up for a cloth to bathe her face, and when he switched on the lights he saw the battered shotgun barrels on the deck beside the ladder. He took a long and shaky breath and shook his head.

She was just beginning to stir again when he heard the voices above him, the one a lashing impassioned whisper, “Leave him alone!” followed by the sharp slap of palm on flesh, and hoped she hadn’t heard too. After what she’d been through, she deserved at least a few minutes of thinking it was all over. He thought of what was ahead of them and suddenly felt very old and tired. But the only chance they had was to meet it now, and head-on. He ran up the ladder.

Mrs. Warriner was trying to get up from where she was sprawled back on the cockpit seat. Beyond her, Bellew was standing on the narrow strip of deck, trying to turn Warriner’s face up with the toe of his shoe. “Wake up, old Hughie-boy, and see who’s here.”

“All right, Bellew,” he ordered, “leave him alone.”

The other turned, and in the glow of the spreader lights above and forward of them he could see the insolence in the eyes. “Easy does it, Hotspur. You got your boat back, so just simmer down. This is mine.”

“That’s right; I got it back. And I give the orders on it. You heard what I said.” There was no area for compromise here, not with Bellew. If it meant forcing the issue now, within the first five minutes, force it. But at that moment Mrs. Warriner sat up, the side of her face still red from the slap. Her voice was level and very cold as she spoke to Bellew. “I warn you. Don’t touch him.”

Bellew sat down on the opposite side of the cockpit. He leaned forward and tapped her on the knee with a forefinger. “Don’t crowd me. I’ve had it. With you and your gold-plated fag.”

Twelve hundred miles, Ingram thought, in a forty-foot yacht, with the third one crazy. He wondered what Lloyds would quote you on that. “That’ll do,” he snapped. He felt a little better now that Bellew had sat down. The situation wasn’t going to explode as long as Warriner was asleep, or knocked out, or whatever he was. If he could leave the three of them alone for as long as five seconds he might find out.

“It does seem to me,” Mrs. Warriner said then, “that one of us might make at least some casual inquiry as to how Mrs. Ingram is.” She turned to him. “Is she hurt?”

“No,” he said. “Not as far as I could tell. She’s had a little too much for one day, and she fainted, but she’s coming around now.” He turned to go back below. It should be safe enough now, and Mrs. Warriner would sing out if anything happened.

“How’d she get the creep tied up?” Bellew asked.

“How the hell do I know?” he said. “I had some stupid idea that after a whole day of it I might get a chance to talk to her for a minute and a half—” He broke off, realizing he had to keep his temper.

“Sure, sure.” Bellew grinned coldly. “I can understand you might have been a little worried. That’s where I