A flood of incredulous wrath filled her entire body, driving out cold, cramp and lack of air, although later she wondered why incredulous. Harry Gault had seen her surface. Harry Gault had seen her, had realized she had fought her way out of the pot and back to the surface, and had swung the stem of the Avilda around to try to catch her in the propellor and finish the job once and for all.
Furiously calm, letting the air stored in her lungs out one minuscule bubble at a time, she let herself drift for a moment, studying the movement of the hull above her.
She could see it quite clearly, and the propellor, as well as the rudder, and she waited, sure of Harry's next move.
When the rudder shifted to starboard she struck for the port side of the vessel and broke surface just as the aft cabin was slipping by. Something wet and slimy trailed across her cheek and with a reflexive motion she reached up to claw it away.
It was the lady's line.
The lady's line, the line Ned threw over the side when they were done fishing and ready to head for home. The thought that he had felt confident enough that the day's business was done to throw the line overboard banished the fear that her hands might be too numb to grip, and she forced her fingers around the rope.
On her peripheral vision she thought she saw the flash of a triangular fin, a white patch on a shiny black back, and for the first time she was truly afraid. That fear was enough to propel her up the rope, hand over hand, breaking the surface, bringing her feet down against the hull, walking up it, braced back against the pull of the lady's line. She caught at the railing with one hand, dropped the line and grabbed with the other. Scrabbling with her toes, she threw a leg over the railing and pulled herself up and over it, to collapse on the deck and fie there soaked and shaking in a puddle of seawater.
Never had air tasted sweeter, never had the deck of the Avilda felt firmer, never had she felt so alive. Life was good.
"When killer whales come to a bay with a village, someone dies in that village," she muttered, half hysterically. "But not this time, Auntie. Not today.
Not me."
Yes, life was good. If she wanted it to stay that way she had to move. She rolled over and came to her knees and banged at the sides of her head, shaking water from her ears. Raised voices came to her from the foredeck, and crouching, her back pressed up against the cabin, she inched her way forward. Where the side of the cabin began to curve into the front, she stopped to listen.
"That's all you're going to do?" she heard Andy say, his young voice agonized. "We've got to look for her.
We've got to at least try!"
"Forget it, kid," Ned's voice growled back. "She's gone. There's no buoy we can hook on to. That pot wasn't attached to a shot yet anyway."
"Seth?"
"Forget it, kid." Seth's voice was just as gruff but kinder. "It happens. Let's just get back into port."
Andy said no more. Kate, peering cautiously around the corner, saw him with tears coursing down his face, and wondered how she could attract his attention without attracting the attention of everyone else and without it being such a wonderful surprise to have his darling Kate back that he gave her away. If only he weren't so young.
If only Jack were on board in his place. But if Jack had been on board she would have brained him with her Louisville ice breaker long ago.
She drew back and hoisted a cautious eye over the edge of the porthole in the galley door. It was empty.
Swiftly, silently, she opened it and slipped inside. The warmth hit her like a blow and she staggered beneath it. She steadied herself and made for the passageway.
A movement caught the corner of her eye and she saw Seth gaping at her through the opposite door.
"Shit!" She dived through the entry into the passageway, hearing the starboard side door to the galley bang open and thumping footsteps behind her. She ran past the doors leading to the staterooms and out the door that led to the aft deck. She launched herself down the stairs and into the storeroom. She cast about desperately for some kind of defense among the stacked cases of canned goods, the burlap sacks of onions and potatoes, the industrial-size refrigerator and the hated walk-in freezer.
There was nothing, not so much as a butcher knife or an AK-47. She had time for one longing thought of the baseball bat stacked next to the sledgehammers in the fo'c'sle before she heard a footstep on the stairs. Fear at being caught unprepared sharpened her wits, and she improvised.
He came down the stairs slowly, one cautious foot at a time. Somewhere during the chase he'd picked up a very large monkey wrench and he was carrying it ready to swing. Any liking Kate Shugak had felt for Seth Skinner vanished in that moment.
"Kate?" he said in a low voice. "Come on out. Come on, you know there's no place to go. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."
She crouched behind the Elberta Freestone Peach Halves in Light Syrup, not moving.
The footsteps halted on the other side of her canned goods revetment. Her heart was banging so loudly in her ears she was afraid he could hear it. A drop of seawater, mixed with sweat, gathered on her forehead and rolled down her nose to splash onto the floor, and to Kate the 1964 earthquake and tidal wave combined had made less noise.
"Kate," Seth said sternly, sounding for all the world like a strict, no-nonsense father chastising a recalcitrant child, "I know you're in the freezer, you left the door open. Come on out now."
By then Kate was so conditioned to failure she almost got up. His voice stilled her.
"You've just come out of the water. You must be freezing in there, literally. Come on out. The game's over. Hey, I haven't even told the rest of them you're back on board. It's just me here. Come on.'"
The creak of the freezer door sounded loud and joyously in Kate's ears and she tensed in every muscle of her quivering body. She heard him take one step, another, and with every ounce of strength she possessed hurled herself forward, knocking the boxes into him and him into the freezer.
There was a yell and a flash of light; he'd been reaching for the string that dangled from the single bulb in the middle of the freezer just as she'd hit him from behind and had pulled it on his way down. She didn't stop to question her good fortune, she kicked boxes out of the way of the door while he was scrambling to his feet and slammed the door shut in his face.
The latch clicked and Kate banged the locking bar down into its bracket with a feral cry. The thud of his body against the door one second too late made it vibrate beneath her cheek. She heard yells and curses and after a moment he began to bang on the door with the monkey wrench. The noise was muffled by the sound of the engine and by the thickness of the door itself, but she leaned up against the door anyway, ear pressed against it, trembling from cold and relief and elation, drinking in the sounds.
Straightening, she turned toward the stairs. One down.
Two to go. She wondered if he'd been telling the truth.
She hadn't heard him yell out when he'd seen her. If he'd been lying, Andy- she couldn't think about Andy now.
The passageway was still and silent, and she mounted the stairs. The beat of the engine through the walls of the engine room didn't falter. It was warm and dark in the stairwell, and the beat of the engine was hypnotic, a steady chant enticing her to rest, to sit down and relax for just a second. She tried and failed to remember what relaxing felt like, and shied away from the seductive temptation to sit down and find out. She opened the door to the deck. Her teeth were beginning to chatter and she was reluctant to leave the cozy stairwell for the cold, open air.
Her reluctance abated when she realized she'd forgotten the boat hook racked next to that door, as well as the ladder leading to the catwalk, the catwalk that circled all the way around the cabin's second story to the bridge itself. The bridge where Harry Gault stood before a large, spoked wooden wheel, steering his ship into harbor, no doubt smug as all get out in his sense of self-satisfaction over a difficult job well done.