didn't. He hesitated, obviously wanting to-about to-but somehow conflicted. No doubt it was all those years with his sweet Helen. She had been his soul mate. When he had disengaged, he kissed her forehead. It was sweet, but not what she had in mind. When she returned to her desk, she had allowed her imagination to roam free about what might have happened. Lately, however, he took every opportunity to be with her and wasn't at all above making up reasons. Getting together 'as friends' was becoming a regular habit.
Although she wanted to come clean about her feelings for Ben, she knew she didn't dare. It was for Ben to validate them, and so far he had not. Ben had become no less charming, but he had become very secretive about his work. He had told Haley little for her own protection and hadn't told Sarah much more for the same reason. His leaving Sanker and avoiding other, greater threats was a thicket, and only Ben could negotiate the passage.
It was time to leave. She gathered up her things and her packed bag, and called Betty Horngrave. Of course, her friend of many years would be happy to check the place and feed the cat. The dog was already in the kennels. Then the phone rang. She picked it up and there was a click. Something about that seemed ominous.
She grabbed her small bag and her laptop computer, looked around, and walked out the door.
She was nervous and was unable to imagine what might happen when she arrived at the dive site.
Ben had explained to her that all of the San Juan Islands were created at the end of the Ice Age and were composed of glacial till. Most of the islands had thin topsoil, less than twenty feet, and in many places the leftover giant chunks of rock were at the surface.
Near Orcas Nob and at various points along the edge of Orcas, some very large rock chunks the size of stadiums were at the surface and the beach face was composed of hard-rock cliffs. Near here sat an experimental area operated by Ben some years ago, and Sarah had a hunch that perhaps that was where he was taking her tonight. It was a hunch based on something Nelson Gempshorn had said about a picnic she and Ben had enjoyed a long time ago. She couldn't imagine why she would be diving in that area; it was a steep drop-off to water ninety to three hundred feet deep. But if not there on President Channel, then where? And why Gempshorn's mention of the picnic, if not to clue her in?
She couldn't guess.
Sarah did think it odd that Ben had not called her himself. But the explanation that he was on the run and headed for a safe place had to suffice. She did not know Nelson Gempshorn well, but she knew that Ben did, even though he had tried to disguise the relationship and never spoke much of the man.
Some years previous, Ben had sometimes taken his small research submarine out there.
The area was about one mile north of an intriguing abandoned lime kiln from the early 1900s, with a standing chimney and underground passages that surfaced at the bank near the water's edge. There were no houses along that stretch of waterfront, although there were homes to the north and to the south. Now the area took on added interest and she tried to consider what could be going on and how she could have missed it.
When she was about to leave, she once again tried Haley's phone and received no answer.
As she was walking to the garage to get in her car for the drive to the Fisherman's Bay docks, a sedan pulled in. It wasn't a police car. Quickly she stepped back next to a large tree. A man jumped out of the car. Suddenly Sarah had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Sam left Rachael on the Geisha with the lights off, but for a small reading light. They had turned the heater on. Rachael waited by the VHF radio for their call, where she would sit, read, and try to relax until the appointed time.
With the Geisha's portable VHF radio in hand, Sam met Haley, and she drove them in Gibbons's car to the university compound immediately to the east of the Sanker Foundation, where there were various university dormitories and dwellings. Traveling to the marine lab would require only a brief inland deviation from a straight line.
Once in the university compound, Sam felt safer. Haley seemed to as well. It was dark, there were few lights, and the main administration building had been shut down for the holiday. When he climbed out of the car, he thought hard about taking the bolt cutters.
They were large and awkward, but would cut through a fence in seconds. The alternative would be a pair of needle-nosed pliers that might make a simple job excruciating. He used some loose twine in the trunk to tie the bolt cutters to his belt.
Venturing into dark woodland, thev slowly felt their way along under the fir and madrona down through the undergrowth alongside of the main building until they reached the beach.
For just a moment Sam thought about their chances of dying and it made him turn to her. As if she'd been thinking the same thing, Haley quickly kissed him on the lips. Once started, the kiss became deeper, stirring the repressed desire in each of them. It wasn't quite what Sam intended, but there was a sincerity to it that made it something to receive rather than reject. Or so he told himself. Too suddenly she stopped. It wasn't a normal ending to a good kiss.
Next came an awkward moment and then they hugged and pulled each other close.
Neither spoke. Neither wanted to try to define the moment.
'If you die, I'm going to be really pissed and you'll never hear the end of it,' Haley said.
'And if I die because you die, I'll be twice as pissed.'
'We need to discuss exactly how you are going to get Rachael to her uncle's dock on Orcas.'
'Okay.'
'My thought would be to take the way to Crane Island through the rock pile, going off the ferry route. Just like the smugglers used to do. You should go as fast as you can and survive.'
'I'll go fifty at least.'
'Turn off your running lights before you're even with the outer marker; then when you're almost past Crane Island, turn hard right back, double back through Poll Pass, stop at the dock before they can see you. Come on back by Crane Island, this time on the safe side, and lead them on a chase. Then do it just like we discussed.'
'You're thinking this crazy-ass route will stop them, confuse them?'
'Would you follow somebody into those rocks at night? Or would you wait and see what the hell they're doing?'
'Effectively, I'm making a circle around Crane Island.' 'Yes. I realize I'm suggesting that you run fifty knots at night through the narrowest navigable passage in the world.'
She looked at Sam without blinking. 'I can do it,' she said simply.
'At night you can't run this like you're in a race,' Sam cautioned.
'I guess we'll find out, won't we? I am in a race for our lives. Don't kid yourself.'
Sam didn't have a quick answer to that one. As a practiced sailor, he knew that when these boats operated at one hundred miles per hour plus, absolute attention had to be paid to the throttle. If the boat went airborne and the props came out of the water, the engines would overrev and burn themselves to a crisp. The antidote was to back off the throttle as the propellers left the water. But if the throttle was off too long and the props were resubmerged without power, they would be ripped off the boat with the entire drive assembly. There were plenty of race boat drivers who had learned the hard way not to push the speed in chop and lose control of the throttle.
Together they crossed to a thin rivulet of a creek that came down to the beach. It reflected a bit of the light from the lab parking area and some from the lights of Friday Harbor across the bay. Except for that dark mirror on the sand, the beach was indistinct, like the bottom of a freshly used coal bin. Moving slowly down the beach, they were careful to keep the crunch of the gravel to a minimum. With so much life at the boundary between the land and sea, things were constantly dying and their decay left an odor that mixed with the salt air in a kind of olfactory stew unique to beaches. Soon the beach turned to steep, slick, solid rock. This portion was very slow going with Sam's bad knee.
Frick's boat, the Opus Magnum, was completely tarped down. It was a customized 46
Rider XP with twin 1050-horsepower MerCruiser engines and ostentatious for its speed.
Sam knew the engines weren't winterized because he'd seen Frick use it on sunny days to travel around the islands and over to Anacortes and Bellingham. On calm days he sometimes went to lunch at one hundred miles per hour over to Lopez. There was too much wood in waters surrounding these islands to sustain those speeds without great care. Even then it was a death wish to travel at high speeds for sustained periods because of so called dead heads-logs nearly full with absorbed water that float one end up with the top end barely visible or just under the surface. If it rained, Frick took a more conventional foundation boat, and if it was particularly choppy, he did not exceed about sixty. The boat was the talk of the island, and it was no secret that it really belonged to old man
