They passed the glass-fronted airport terminal, where transit police patrolled the crosswalk and the overhead walkway to the Canada Line station, and drove on to the nondescript RCMP sub-detachment building a few hundred yards farther down the road. The rest of Mike’s group was gathered in the lobby. They greeted the late arrival with a round of applause.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very funny.” Mike pushed past them. “I may strive for perfection, but even I can’t control the weather.”
He ignored the good-natured rejoinders and moved into the meeting room, where more than a dozen men and a couple of women were already seated around the table. Mike took his place, nodding a greeting at familiar faces. He knew all of them professionally and was socially acquainted with more than a few, but this was not the time for chit-chat, and they quickly settled down to business. This was the final session of the security planning group, and there was no room for error. The leaders of many of the world’s largest organizations, including the United Nations, UNESCO, and the World Bank, would be arriving in Vancouver in less than a week. They would be joined by a former US president, the US Secretary of State, a handful of envoys, and several senior Canadian ministers. Following close on their heels, a handful of celebrities slated to perform at the benefit concert that was the only public event of the international conference would descend on the city. The protesters had already started arriving. Most of the bureaucrats and civil servants were already in place. The security requirements were not quite as complex as those required for the G8 summit that Mike had been involved in a few years back, but they were close. And the risks were greater now. It wasn’t only the protestors and the lunatic fringe. Terrorism was a very real threat.
FOURTEEN
“I want to see her.”
“What?”
The comment surprised Dan. He and Claire had moved back into the salon, where they had been sharing memories of growing up as fishermen’s kids. It had stirred up recollections of days spent on net floats, catching shiners and poking at sea anemones as his father and the other fishermen spun yarns and mended nets while they listened to the company radio for news on the returning schools of salmon. It had also kept Claire from thinking too much about the fate of her boat. At least, he had thought it did.
“I want to see my boat. She can’t be completely underwater or Walker wouldn’t have found her.”
“Claire, that’s impossible. You know those guys are still out there. They’re the ones who sank your boat. You know they’re armed. If they see you there, do you think they will hesitate to shoot you?”
She shrugged, her mouth set in a stubborn line. “They could find us here just as easily.”
Dan’s eyes narrowed. “That’s different. If they see Dreamspeaker here, it’s just me on my way down south—and there is no ‘us’ because ‘we’ are not going. Not until this is all over.”
She glared at him. “And when will that be? We don’t know what’s happening out there. It might already be ‘all over.’ They might be gone.”
He shrugged. “The answer is still no—and before you ask, no, you can’t take the dinghy.” Damn. He was losing his touch. First Walker and now Claire. Maybe it was something in the air up here on the mid-coast.
She looked at him with exasperation. “I wasn’t going to ask for the dinghy. I’m not an idiot. But we have to leave here sometime, and when we do, I would like to go via Half Moon Cove and check her out.” Her voice faltered. “It’s not just memories they took. All my research is on that boat. Maybe I can save some of it.”
Dan’s frustration evaporated at her words and was replaced by growing admiration mixed with sympathy. Of course she would want to see her boat. In her position, he would want the same, and although she was still battling the effects of shock and confusion, he realized that this girl was tough. She faced life head-on and didn’t let it get her down. A wry thought crossed his mind: a few lessons from her might do him good. He smiled and reached out to shake her hand.
“Deal. Look, I know waiting is hard, but right now that’s all we can do. If I can’t get hold of Walker in the next couple of hours, I’ll call the police boat again. Maybe between the lot of us we can figure something out. Okay?”
An apologetic smile quirked the corners of her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch. You’ve already done more than I could possibly have expected, and here I am plotting your course and arranging your life.”
“Hey! No problem. We’ll plot that course as soon as we know what’s happening and where everyone is.” He stood up and scanned the bay through the portholes. “I’ll go and check on Walker. How about I show you the laundry on the way and you can get your clothes fixed up. I can’t imagine you want to wear that T-shirt for the rest of the day.”
It took almost an hour to get a response from Walker, and Dan had almost given up when the quiet voice floated out of the radio.
“Yeah.”
“Where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to reach you since last night.”
“Been busy.”
“Doing what? You can’t still be in Shoal Bay.”
“Nope.”
Dan sighed. “Walker, this is getting tiresome. I have Claire with me and I have no idea what’s happening or where anybody is. At least let me know you’re okay.”
There was a pause, and he could almost hear Walker thinking before he said, “I’m fine. I’m on the other side of the island. Where Claire took her kayak.”
Dan felt a little of the tension go out of his shoulders, although the thought of Walker still being on the same island as the guys from the crew boat bothered him. “You get any sleep?”
“Yeah, a couple hours. Enough.”
“So you coming here?”
The silence grew as he waited for Walker to answer.
“Walker?”
“How about you come here?”
“What?” The tension rushed back, a hundred-fold stronger than it had been. Dan could feel it throbbing in the veins in his neck and surging into his skull. “Why the hell would I come there? Are you in trouble?”
“Bring Claire with you.”
“Bring . . .” Dan clicked off the transmitter and stared blindly out through the windshield. The sun had risen above the trees and was reflecting off the leaves and the water, turning the tiny cove into a glittering world of light. It was surreal, and it matched this conversation perfectly.
He took a deep breath and pressed the transmitter switch back on. “And why would I bring Claire with me?” he asked, his voice careful and quiet.
“Someone needs to walk across and see what’s happening, and I can’t do it. Take too long and make too much noise. And you can’t leave her there alone while you do it, so that leaves the two of you together. Besides, without her, you have no idea where to go.”
Dan let the idea float around his brain for a while. The crazy thing was that Walker was probably right on all counts. It made sense in many ways—and it would get him out of this holding pattern that was driving him nuts—but the risks were enormous. He might be tempted to do it, but all his training and his instincts told him that he should not put Claire, a civilian, a young woman, at risk.
“Too dangerous. What if the crew boat found us out in the open? Or White Hair? We wouldn’t have a prayer.”
“Already here.”
“Who? The crew boat?”
“All of them. Arrived just after sun-up this morning.”
“You saw them? Where the hell were you?”
“Just round the point. Taking a nap. They woke me up.”
Dan opened his mouth to point out the obvious dangers but decided it would not be worth it. Walker would do what Walker would do. And so far, Dan had to admit, it seemed to be working.
“Walker, I can’t ask Claire to go back there. She’s spent the last few days running from some guys who want to kill her and she just found out they sank her boat. That’s a lot to handle. You think she’ll want to walk back into the lion’s den?”
“She’s a pretty gutsy lady.”
The statement hung in the air as Dan struggled with his options. If he did nothing, he might never know what these guys were up to. Even worse, he might hear about some disaster later and have to live with the fact that he might have been able to do something to stop it. On the other hand, the chances that he could actually do anything, even if he did manage to make it over to Shoal Bay, were pretty slim. Still, knowing that didn’t stop him from wanting to go there. But what about Claire?
“I don’t know. Doesn’t feel right—and she’s a civilian anyway.”
“So are you.”
The blunt statement stung. He still hadn’t come to terms with that particular situation, had avoided thinking about it. He had given Walker an edited version of his resignation from the force, a version that omitted Susan altogether. He knew Walker didn’t buy all of it, but at least he knew that Dan was no longer an RCMP officer.
“Yeah. But it’s different for me. I have some training and I know what to expect.”
“Why don’t you ask her and see what she says?”
Dan snorted. An ex-con was offering him advice, telling him what to do. And he was probably going to do it. Talk about role reversal.
“I’ll get back to you.” He put the radio back in its cradle.
It took ten minutes of wrestling with his conscience to be able to convince himself to ask Claire. It took her less than ten seconds to agree.
“Sure. Why not? Better than sitting here doing nothing.”
Dan stared at her, amazed by her willingness to return to Shoal Bay. “That’s my line. I’m surprised to hear it coming from you.”
“Why? It’s my boat they sunk, my work they ruined, my bay they took over.” She had changed back into her jeans and sweatshirt and worked her hair into some semblance of order. She had also shucked the shock and depression.
“You do realize there is more than a little danger involved?”
Her glance slid away from him, but when she looked back, her face was composed. And serious. “Yes, of course I do. I was terrified that first night, when I saw those men and their guns. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before and I had no idea what to do. I was so scared I felt sick.”
Dan could hear the slight tremor in her voice as she relived the events.
“And the next morning, when they came looking for me? That was even worse, because I was trapped up in the rocks. But when they left, I knew I had to do something, and once I started moving, it got better.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “I don’t know why, but even though I was cold, and hungry, and didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t feel quite as scared. Does that make any sense?”
He smiled. “Yeah. It does. Kind of.”
“Well, I feel the same about this. We can either sit here waiting for something to happen, or we can go there and maybe do something. I like that option better.”
She had put into words precisely what Dan had been thinking, but still he hesitated. The risks were enormous. Common sense dictated that he haul anchor and head south as fast as he could. That would get Claire out of harm’s way and he could contact Mike again, maybe speak to his old team, get them on board, leave the decisions as to what to do up to them. It was not only the safest option, it might also be the best. But it would take time. He was at least three days away from Victoria, and he didn’t think they had that long. And then there was Walker.
He looked at Claire again. She was watching him.
“You’ll stay with me the whole time and do exactly what I tell you. Okay?”
She nodded, her face completely serious.
“And you wear a jacket with the hood up while we’re in the dinghy. Maybe a ball cap under it. Might give us some extra time if they see us.”
He was thinking out loud, trying to cover his discomfort and justify doing something he knew he should not even be considering. “And you stay behind me when we’re on the island . . .”
It was her turn to reach out a hand and touch his arm. “It’s okay. Really.”
Dan snorted as he shook his head. “No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s crazy. And dangerous. I could lose my job—if I still had a job. And if something goes wrong, I am probably going to lose my mind—if I still have one of those when this is over.” He stood up and ran his hand through his hair. “Come on. If we’re going to do this, we’d better get going. Let’s get you a ball cap and a jacket.”
FIFTEEN
Annie struggled out onto the slick, night-damp deck. She had been pulled out of deep sleep by a noise that threatened to break her eardrums as it reverberated through her boat. Once she was outside, the pounding only intensified. Now the vibration traveled up through the hull to the soles of her feet in time with the assault on her ears. She clutched a tattered robe to her throat with one hand and grabbed her shotgun with the other as her worn slippers slapped along the deck. The moon was behind a thin cloud, and only a silver gleam stippled the water as she peered down into the blackness, trying to make out who, or what, was there. She was more than willing to fire the gun, but she thought there was a chance it might be Walker again, maybe with news of Claire, and she didn’t want to shoot him.
“Walker? That you? Goddamn it! You gotta stop sneaking around at night, scaring the shit out of people!”
The pounding continued unabated, but above it she could hear another noise and she strained her ears to identify it. She thought it sounded like an animal in distress, an eerie keening that rose and fell with the waves. It set her teeth on edge.
“Walker?” She made her way back along the deck, trying to see past the curve of the hull. There seemed to be a blacker patch within the deep blackness of the shadow, but she couldn’t be sure, and in any case, the pounding was going to drive her insane.
“Shut the fuck up!” she screamed down into the darkness. The noise stopped for perhaps ten seconds, then started up again, more frantic than before, and the weird howl that accompanied it swelled to a crescendo. In the lull, the howling had sounded more like sobbing.
“How the hell can a person get any sleep with this shit going on,” Annie muttered to herself as she stomped back to the wheelhouse and pulled the big spotlight from its holder. “It ain’t right.”
She moved back out onto the deck, flipped the switch on the spotlight, and held it over the railing, watching as the brilliant white beam of light erased the shadows. It revealed a tiny, battered rowboat with a single occupant: a skinny, oddly twisted old man, sitting hunched on the single wooden seat. One gnarled hand clung tightly to the ladder that hung down from her boat almost to the water and the other held an oar. He was smacking the butt end of that oar against the hull, rocking himself back and forth, his eyes closed and a dark trail of what could be blood twisting down his sleeve. His long hair was plastered in wisps across his head, and his open mouth was uttering the weird, hysterical, unnerving cry she had heard.
“Tom? What the fuck are you doing here? Tom! Tom!” Her voice rose in pitch as she tried to get him to look at her.
She could hardly believe her eyes. Old Toothless Tom was a fixture for those few people who, like her, had made their home in these waters. A hermit. A loner who kept completely to himself. She had only seen him on a few occasions, when she had been heading over to the store at Dawson’s Landing. Each time, he’d been standing out on the shore in front of his ramshackle cabin, hurling invective at some invisible adversary or pleading with some equally invisible friend. His thin, querulous voice would drift out over the water, rising and falling in time with his waving arms and the writhing undulations of his body as if he were performing a grotesque and macabre dance.
“Tom! Tom! You stupid old bastard. I know you can hear me.”
Again there was no response, and he didn’t give any signs of stopping his compulsive pounding. Maybe Tom wasn’t his name, just what everyone called him. As far as she knew, he had never spoken to anyone else either. She wasn’t sur
e if he had ever left that dilapidated piece of shit he lived in, grubbing for a living in the confines of the tiny dent in the shoreline that surrounded it. The few times she had seen him, standing on the rocks as she motored past, he had never waved. Never called out. What the hell would bring him out in the middle of the night? Was this something those “voices” he talked to were pushing him into? And how the hell could she get him to stop that infernal racket?
“Tom!” No response. “Tom!” Still nothing.
“Fuck!” Annie could feel the tension building behind her eye sockets. She had to get him to stop. She looked frantically around the deck, and her eyes settled on a pile of wood she had dragged up, piece by piece, to burn in the stove. She hated to lose any of it after the work it had taken to get it up onto the deck, but she had to do something. She snatched up the biggest piece she could reach, balanced it on the rail while she lined it up with the dinghy below, and let it fall. If it hit the old bastard on the head, too goddamn bad—at least it would shut him up.
It dropped squarely onto the bow of the tiny boat, setting it rocking and almost tipping it over, then bounced up against the metal hull of her old workboat, where it made a noise louder than Tom’s oar before splashing harmlessly into the water.
The old man looked up in shock, toothless mouth open in mid-wail, and rheumy eyes wide with fright.
“What the hell do you want, you silly old fuck?” Annie shouted down to him. “Stop banging on my boat.”
“He’s dead!” The sound was something between a scream and a wail, and the words were distorted by his lack of teeth.
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