The man had dark brown hair without a hint of red or blond or even gray in it. I could see only his back—a decidedly well-muscled back above an athlete’s narrow hips under the dark rugby jersey and jeans he wore. Something in his stance suggested he was older than Quinton. He was a touch shorter, too, so my boyfriend saw me just fine over the man’s head. Quinton tried not to change his expression, but his gaze had flickered to me and that gave us away. The other man spun around, remarkably lithe, and spat out a swearword as he launched himself at me.
Quinton lunged after him. “No!”
James Purlis hit me at a run. It was more of a glancing block as he passed, meant to shove me out of his way, and the blow fell on my right side, not my injured left, but I still buckled and fell from the sharp eruption of pain. He was out the door and gone before I could struggle back to my feet.
Quinton didn’t chase after him. He stopped at the open door and gazed out for a moment, then returned to help me up.
“Nice guy, your dad,” I said, coughing a bit on my ragged breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he gave me a second take. “How did you know he was my dad?”
“He looks like you.”
“He does not,” Quinton shot back, indignant.
I tried not to laugh, because it hurt, but I sniggered a bit, anyway. “He does. And who else . . . would it be? Sneaking in. Shoving me. Threatening and belittling you. Had to be him.”
Quinton was uncomfortable and he squirmed a bit under my gaze, keeping his eyes on the floor. “I don’t look like him,” he muttered as he helped me into a chair.
“I said he looks like you,” I replied. “Same beard. Bet he’s been letting his hair grow lately. Dyed it recently, too. Not the look I imagined for him.”
“Oh? How’d you picture good old James the First?”
“Bigger. Conservative. Dramatically silver-haired. Mean.”
“Well, that part’s accurate. He’s a prick.”
“Really? He seemed like such a nice guy.”
Quinton gave me a Bronx cheer. “Funny, Blaine.”
“What did he want?”
“He wants me back in the business, like I told you, though he tried to play the family card to get me there. He says my mother is upset about my untimely demise.”
“Awww, how sweet. Did he really think that was going to work?”
“No. The lies and manipulation were just a fun little side trip before he tries to use you for leverage against me next. Mom knows I’m fine. And I’m not going back.”
“Does he know we’re leaving town for a few days? Is that why he came?”
“He didn’t know. He assumed based on operational protocol that I’d run soon. I guess he didn’t want to lose me again. He doesn’t know how fast I can move.”
I gazed at him, breathing in shallow sips, and felt both our mixed-up feelings: fear and anger and desperation and hope all tangling and knotting between us. “Are you planning to keep going? To Canada? It’s not far from the strait once we’re up there. . . .” I didn’t want him to say yes but I’d back him if he did.
He snorted half a laugh and returned an incredulous grin. “No! To hell with him.”
The relief was like cool water pouring over me. “Good. Because . . . Chaos would be heartbroken . . . if you left.”
He laughed out loud this time. Then he crouched next to me and put his arms around my shoulders gingerly. “I’d miss her, too. But I’d miss you more.”
“You are so predictable.”
“Another reason why you love me.”
I stifled a giggle and leaned my head onto his shoulder so I could kiss him. Then my phone started making noises and nipped that in the bud.
Quinton grabbed it off the kitchen table. “It’s a quarter of seven. We have to get going.”
I followed him into the hall to grab the bags and get my boots. “Did you make my phone do that?” I seem to manage the alarm properly only half the time and I didn’t remember trying.
“Yeah. I know I should have asked first. . . .”
I rolled my eyes and kept my mouth shut.
SEVENTEEN
Puget Sound is a strange thing—almost an inland sea full of islands and deep saltwater crevasses carved by passing glaciers eons ago. In some places the depth at the bottom has never been mapped, only guessed at, and ships or planes that fall into those underwater canyons never come back—not even as broken bits of flotsam. Seattle lies on salt water so deep that it remains cold year round, yet it’s sixty miles or more from the Pacific coast while still touching the same water that eventually passes Alaska and California. Some of its islands are rocky tumbles of cliffs rolled up from the depths, while others are mere piles of sand that sink away at high tide. Orcas cruise by the upper islands in spawning season, following schools of cold-water fish and tipping the occasional tourist into the water when they foolishly get too close. The islands in the south Sound are large and infrequent, while the north end, shared with Canada, is littered with dozens of broken drifts of land wound through with passages and labeled with names like Orcas Island, Deception Pass, and Desolation Sound. It’s seductive in its beauty and sudden isolation but not a safe place for a stranger to go alone.
The voyage out from the marina and into the northern Puget Sound was almost too gorgeous to bear as we headed northwest from Seattle up what Zantree identified as Admiralty Inlet. The boat growled along, rocking up and down with a long, mild swell. The water sliding beneath us was a deep, cold blue that reflected the sun as it slowly dipped toward the summer horizon dead ahead of us, reddening and casting the sky in golds and pinks and finally into slumbering purples as we put in at Port Townsend for the night, just as the Seawitch had done in a last-minute change of plan, according to the log. We could have driven and taken the ferry across in a bit more than two hours but we’d soon realized we’d never find Fielding’s cove without a boat and the experience of Paul Zantree. And the trip at sunset had been an unlooked-for delight in the midst of creeping horrors.
Once Mambo Moon was tied up at the dock, Zantree laid out a chart on the navigation table in the pilothouse that sat above the slightly sunken galley and below the rooftop flying bridge. He gave us a quick overview of where we were and where we were going, following the path the Seawitch must have taken as far as the last log entry where Fielding had stated he was heading for an unnamed cove.
“We’re here at Port Townsend, so we’re in the throat of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. North is Vancouver Island—that’s where the city of Victoria is and if anyone has a mind to get off tomorrow, that’s where I’ll drop you. You can see how the southern point of Vancouver comes down like a tooth. That’s Canadian water, but to the east of the big island it’s U.S. waters for several more miles north and east to the British Columbia coast and the actual city of Vancouver. The U.S. portion of the northern Sound is small compared to the area as a whole but it’s treacherous and the international border runs right about where we’ll be heading, so there’ll be eyes on us and plenty of traffic.
“We’ll go north in the morning, heading for their last recorded destination: Roche Harbor.” Zantree put his finger on the second-largest of the San Juan islands, lying to the extreme west of the group and pretty much due north of us. “That’s up here on the northwestern tip of San Juan Island itself. The harbor’s nicely protected but both approaches can be proper hull scrapers in a storm ’cause they’re both narrow and the cliffs can channel the winds and raise their speed to a killing velocity. Not too likely in the summer, but it can be a wild ride in the winter. We’ll have a clear run across San Juan de Fuca and up this big open area here, Haro Strait. See how it’s running right up between the two big islands, at a right angle to Juan de Fuca? Normally I’d go for the southern passage to Roche from the bottom of Haro, but the position given in the log was on the north end, so for some reason they passed that route and we will, too. It’ll take four to six hours to get in and moored up at Roche, depending on how rough the water is, since we’ll have to go perpendicular to the current until we’re up in Haro Strait, where the current should be in our favor if we time it right. Going to be some hobbyhorsing and crabbing—that is to say, the Moon may be rolling up and down the waves coming on the bow or stern and being pushed sideways by the current and wind. So far none of you are turning green around the gills, so I guess you’re going to be OK unless it gets rough. We’re not in the way of any predicted bad weather, but even so, fighting the motion of the boat in a crosscurrent or wind can tire you out when you’re standing or walking around, so get to bed and get rested up. I know this is some serious business but this first part is going to be fun!” he added, his eyes twinkling with glee at the prospect of the cruise.