on the upland side. The waterside of the building was taken up by another small marine lab. When Sam got to the end of the building and there was only a breezeway to the main building beyond, he took the cushion, placed it against a lab window, and smashed the window through the cushion. It required repeated strikes to clear out both panes. Worried about the loud clinking and shattering sounds, Sam sidled in as fast as he could.
It was some distance from where he had heard the two men. He'd entered a lab with numerous tanks and benches. Light came in from the hallway, but the room was dark, and he passed through it in seconds. When he arrived at the door, he checked the breezeway to the left and the hall to the right, saw no one, and shuffled across to the workshop.
He opened the door to the workshop, looking for the shelves that would hide the small office. His eyes stopped casting about when he saw the small door into the storage area Gibbons had described. The boards and plywood were pulled aside, and the passage was already open and not hidden. Although it was dark, Sam could just make out something hanging from the ceiling. He looked more closely. It appeared to be a large side of half a beef. He flicked on the light and gasped.
Detective Ranken hung by a foot from a block and tackle, suspended over a barrel.
Embedded in his throat were the large tweezers from upstairs.
The tweezers Sam had handled without gloves.
Another nice setup, Frick.
Frick must have watched Ranken bleed into the barrel as he hung, gagged and struggling. Sam's heart pounded. He was being beaten at his own game.
Haley had her hands on the wheel and was using the foot pedal for gas. Engine temperature was 180 degrees. If she was particularly afraid of dying in a boat crash, she was even more afraid of being shot. Guns scared her. As a child, before she came to Ben and Helen, an uncle had taken her with him on a deer hunt when he was supposed to be baby-sitting. As he drove through the forest, he came to an enticing meadow and a hillside turned green from fall rains. There was a deer on the slope, beautiful gray among the green, and her uncle shot the animal through the open truck window.
Forever afterward, the vision of a gut-shot deer was frozen in her mind; she couldn't shake it, and she never wanted to be shot. Being hurtled free of the boat, through the air at over one hundred miles per hour, after colliding with a deadhead log, sounded like a quick and merciful way to die.
The boat skipped across the water, and sometimes when it came down, and cracked the back of a nasty little swell, the jarring could put a tooth through her tongue if she didn't keep it sucked down in her mouth. It was punishing work, fraught with the worry of flipping the boat or tearing off the power drives to the propellers and sinking the boat.
Coming off a particularly bad wave, the boat seemed to float and was dangerously bow up. There was a horrible sickening fear as they balanced on the head of a pin. They nearly flipped. She heard the speed of the overrewing engines and she slowed down. At sixty she found she could keep the propellers in the water and the boat more stable in the building sea.
Haley looked over her shoulder. There were two sheriff's boats, both falling behind, but not by much. Rachael shook her head, realizing the need to get a big lead in order to hide the drop-off at Orcas. The near boat had come straight out of the harbor and hadn't been slowed by the run around Brown Island. The water was pitch black outside the shaft of light created by the spotlight near the boat's bow. Above they heard an airplane, and the moment Haley got an inkling that it was staying above them, she doused every light and they disappeared into the blackness and plunged into their worst fears.
Once established on a heading, they were at Wasp Islands in seconds and Haley went over in her mind Sam's instructions for getting Rachael deposited at her uncle's without detection. The Wasp Islands were a bit of a maze for those not familiar with them. There were all manner of rocks near the surface sprinkled amid a bevy of small islands. Out in the channel she made a sharp turn to starboard and lined up on the ferry route, a narrow passage between Neck Point and Cliff Island. The interisland ferry route was narrow, but at least it was a straight line and was the traditional route used by yachtsmen. The line taken by the ferry was 1.69 nautical miles in length, beginning right beside the rocks off Neck Point and ending a hundred feet short of the rocks at tiny Bell Island. The route was ultimately pinched between Shaw Island and Crane Island. On her chart plotter the ferry route line showed crisp and clear, and even at a hundred miles per hour, the boat could pass safely, so long as it remained exactly on course.
But the route outlined by Sam was much more difficult and much more dangerous. Its advantage was that it would slow the sheriff's boat for a moment and allow her to disappear from their radar. Now that there were two boats that was especially important.
She decided to slow to thirty knots and eased back on the throttles. One slip and she would crash into the rocks. It all depended on a Global Positioning System that could easily hiccup. She set the radar to one-sixteenth mile per ring. Never had she gone this fast through such a narrow, treacherous area. She glanced at the radar and noticed that the distance to the police boat was closing. Without hesitation she leaned on the throttle and upped the speed to fifty knots.
'Oh, my God,' Rachael shouted, looking at the chart plotter radar overlay. 'How are you going to do this?'
The sweat popped out of Haley's pores. Rachael touched her arm. It would be the only time in her life that Haley would do anything this stupid.
Clenching the wheel and saying a prayer, she went from San Juan Channel to the start of the rocky gauntlet in sixty seconds. During that minute she left off all her lights but for the instrument panel and the screen in front of her. It was now a life-and-death exercise. Instead of heading sixty-nine degrees true through a narrow straight passage, as would the ferries and any sane yachtsman, she held eighteen degrees true north and went to what would be considered the wrong side of Cliff Island. Magnetic variation in this area was 19.1 degrees east. Her heart was pounding as she shot between the rocks. She held the heading for just over three-tenths of a mile, less than twenty seconds. On the chart plotter screen she watched the progress of the Opus Magnum as shown by the GPS. Thirty or forty yards distant to her right were rocks that would rip the bottom out, an island on her left.
Her mind focused without distraction, knowing that the least error would make a very dangerous situation more dangerous. This thing had no seat belt. The beacon lights over on the ferry channel moved by with mind- numbing speed. After about twenty seconds Rachael called out, 'Turn sixteen degrees to a heading of two degrees true.' She would hold the heading for only 325 yards. That took a second or two. At the next waypoint the boat had to turn very sharply. She turned hard over to the right. Her eyes flashed from compass to screen. She thought she had the turn and Rachael activated the waypoint.
She stared, every muscle in her body taut, wondering if she'd gotten the heading exactly right.
'Right on,' Rachael called out. She glanced at the compass, then at the plot line.
'You're off the course!' Rachael shouted suddenly.
Haley flashed to the depth sounder and saw sixty feet, fifty-two feet; she was outside the channel route, forty feet. She wanted to scream.
'Stop,' Rachael shouted. Haley let her foot off the throttle. Fifty feet. Fifty-five feet.
She came to the left a few degrees.
'Good,' Rachael shouted. Back in the channel she slammed her foot down. Crane Island was just under six- tenths of a mile distant and she was flying toward it at a mile a minute and accelerating. She got ready to slow and make a left turn before she hit the rocks. Quickly she glanced over her shoulder. The lights of the first sheriff's boat were clearly visible. They were slowing, obviously confused. Behind them the second boat was barely visible.
No time to ponder. She went left along the shore of Crane Island at fifty knots, now completely out of sight of the sheriff's boats, and more important out of radar range in the shadow of Crane Island.
Then a green line on the radar-dead ahead-out of nowhere.
'Look out!' Rachael screamed.
Haley got off the gas and twisted the leather-covered wheel. Her wake slammed into Opus's stern lifting it crazily. She managed to resume course and then she tried to get oriented. The boat was askew in the passage but rapidly straightening. She told Rachael to goose the starboard engine with the hand throttle and that brought it square. Then in a giant gamble, Haley hit the foot pedal, opening the throttle on both engines full out.
She glanced and saw the sheriff's boat following at speed evidently having overcome their fear. Opus Magnum heaved its mass out of the water as it rose up on the plane. She reset the course more than ninety
