Walker didn’t answer, and Dan thought he might not have heard him over the sound of the motor, so he asked him again.
“Hard to say,” Walker finally replied, an intense look gripping his face. “Learn to be Indian, I guess.”
There wasn’t much Dan could say after that, and the dinghy carrying them moved slowly eastward under the fading sky. Walker spent most of his time peering at the shoreline or looking up at the outline of the Coast Mountains where they were drawn sharply against the encroaching night sky. At times he took one of the oars and pushed it into the water to check the depth or keep them clear of some obstacle. At other times he simply pointed to one side or the other, showing Dan where to steer.
They passed the first of the narrows. It was barely wide enough to allow the dinghy through, and the fast-running water rose up in steep, short waves that hurled themselves against the bow as the boat pushed against them. The water quieted as soon as they were through, and they entered a wide, smooth expanse of ink-dark water that Dan assumed was the lake.
Walker moved back from the bow and sat on the center thwart. He was facing forward, but he turned his head back toward Dan when he spoke, and the dim light caught the flat planes of his cheekbones and the sharp ridges of his brow and nose, giving him the look of an ancient warrior who had stepped out of a legend. He lifted his arm and pointed to a bright star clearly visible above the soaring peak of a mountain.
“You see that star? The one right there over that peak?”
“Yeah. It’s called Pollux. It’s one of the Gemini twins.”
“Maybe where you live. Out here it’s t'ut'u.”
Dan nodded. He was in Walker’s territory now.
“Okay. What about it?”
“Keep it dead ahead and you can crank up the speed. Pick up some time.”
Dan pushed the throttle all the way to its limit, and the dinghy surged forward and ran through the night. He had learned to use the stars to steer many years ago on his father’s boat and it felt good—and natural and right—to be using them again. And for some reason he could not fathom, it somehow relaxed him and eased the worry that nibbled at the edges of his brain.
He felt the movement when Walker shifted again, but it was so dark that the only thing he could see was a disembodied hand as it approached his face. Night had closed in completely and the moon was new; it would not be of any help to them tonight. He slowed, felt the wash catch up, and tried to see what lay ahead.
“You got that flashlight?” Walker’s voice reached him over the throb of the engine.
“Here.” Dan dug it out of the side pocket, held it up, and felt it removed from his hand. “Where are we?”
“That’s the narrows, up ahead.” The thin beam of the flashlight illuminated a narrow channel of black water. “Take it slow. There’s a big rock a few hundred feet past it. We’ll stop there.”
The rock wasn’t just big: it was massive, a single bulwark of smooth black granite that rose out of the water and soared skyward for maybe twenty feet, almost blocking passage into the waterway completely. Dan shut the engine down, letting the dinghy drift slowly toward it, and Walker reached out his hand to steady them as they bumped up to its menacing face.
“So what do we do now?” Dan asked.
Walker’s teeth gleamed at him. “We wait.”
The darkness wrapped around them like a blanket as they sat quietly, listening to the water chuckling past. It lapped gently against the hull, setting it rocking so slightly they could barely feel it. On the nearby shore, a breeze stirred the branches and whispered through the leaves. Somewhere, an owl hooted, then another.
And another.
A shrill whistle shredded the silence, and Walker answered it with one of his own. Minutes later came the muted splash of paddles.
The two canoes that slid out of the night were almost alongside before Dan saw them. Each contained a lone paddler, both of whom greeted Walker like an old friend, with warmth and, Dan thought, a large degree of respect. Dan they ignored completely.
They positioned themselves one on each side and reached out to the dinghy, holding it steady as Walker carefully lifted his legs over the adjoining gunwales and into the starboard canoe, then slid his body across and settled himself on its forward thwart. Once he was in place, he used his hands to pull the canoe backward till he was even with Dan, then looked at him.
“Wait here. I’ll go talk with them.”
“Jesus! How long you going to be?”
He shrugged. “Not long. I’ll come and get you if everything’s okay.”
“What?” Dan found it hard to believe that Walker was simply going to paddle off into the night and leave him sitting out there alone.
Walker grinned. “Don’t forget, white man. Out here, they think you’re the bad guy!” He pushed off, and the darkness swallowed him. The sound of the paddles faded, and a few seconds later his voice drifted across the water.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
Right. Sure. He was going to be back, but he didn’t say how long he was going to be. What now? Did he really expect Dan to just sit and wait?
Once his initial shock at being left alone had worn off, Dan realized that that was exactly what Walker expected him to do. And there was nothing else he could do. He didn’t know where he was, and while he could probably find his way back once it was light, he sure as hell couldn’t do it in this blanket of darkness. Shock turned to anger, and he was tempted to hurl an oar against the rock and scream curses into the night, but common sense prevailed and the anger quickly evaporated into frustration as he sat helpless in the dark.
And although it seemed impossible, he thought it was getting darker. At first he put it down to his imagination, but then he realized that the stars had disappeared. Great. That was all he needed. He’d just sit out here in the middle of nowhere and wait for the wind to pick up and the rain to start. Hell, maybe there would even be a thunderstorm! He couldn’t even try for the shore. This was near the end of a fjord, and the sides were steep, the land dropping almost vertically into the water.
He raged and seethed for a while, but gradually his emotions calmed and the sounds of the night infiltrated: fish rising, water chuckling, roosting birds softly chattering. His mind finally quieted and he settled himself into the bottom of the boat, leaned back against the thwart, and let his thoughts drift with the night air, to his father, Mike, Susan, Annie, Old Tom, Claire, Walker . . . so many lives being lived in so many different ways. He had never really thought about it before—too busy doing to simply be. Did people really choose their lives, he wondered, or did their lives choose them, sort of evolving over time? Make a spur-of-the-moment choice about something—go to the city, apply for a job, submit an application—and the rest would just follow? Surely Annie must have made a deliberate choice. And Walker had certainly made one when he decided to return home after his years in jail. Even Old Tom would have had to choose to make his way up here.
He wondered if he’d ever made a deliberate, thoughtful, careful choice that had required him to shut one door of opportunity in order to open another. To give up something of value, something familiar, for the chance to achieve something else. He had joined the police force as much on a whim as anything else: it had seemed like fun at the time. True, he had also left the police force, but that had been a reaction, an escape rather than a choice. So too was buying Dreamspeaker and moving aboard—and that was mostly Mike’s doing anyway. So what did all that say about him, if anything? And what choices could he make to get his life back on track? Something to think about.
He settled himself a little more comfortably and made Annie’s jacket into a pillow for his head. Too bad he couldn’t see the stars anymore. It would have been nice to just watch them overhead. Hadn’t steered by the stars in a long time. Had to do that more often. Switch off all those fancy electronics and trust himself. Maybe he and Claire . . .
He woke to a violent rocking and found Walker trying to cla
mber back into the dinghy, his progress hampered by Dan’s body, which was sprawled across the bottom of the boat.
“Remind me not to use you for guard duty,” Walker said as he worked his way to the bow. “You think you can stay awake long enough to run this thing?”
“Yeah.” Dan blinked and pushed himself up into a sitting position, then moved up onto the thwart. “What’s happening?”
“They’re in.”
“They’ll do it? Hey, that’s great. How’re they going to get there?”
“They’ve already gone. Went right past you while you were snoozing.”
“They’re paddling?” Dan couldn’t believe it. “Shit! It’s gonna take them till daylight to get there!”
Walker laughed. “They’ll be back here before dawn.”
Dan had no answer for that. It didn’t seem possible, but he knew the distances Walker could cover, and the speed at which he could paddle. He had seen it for himself. He reached for the starter.
“You want to untie us?” Dan said as he moved his hand to the throttle.
Walker’s peal of laughter echoed off the steep cliffs.
“You lasso that big rock or something?” Walker asked when he had caught his breath. “You’re not tied up, white man. You’ve been sitting in a back eddy. It’ll hold you against that rock for as long as you want to stay there.”
Dan stared at him for a minute in confusion, looked up at the blackness that loomed ahead, more solid than the blackness of the night, then shook his head and pushed the starter button. He was a complete neophyte out here. All that time spent on his father’s boat, all the navigation equipment and electronic gizmos, all the charts and tide tables—and still he felt out of his element. He didn’t have even a small portion of the knowledge and ability that Walker and his friends had and he never would.
And as for his powers of observation . . .
“So what’re they going to do when they get there?” he asked, changing the subject. “They can’t just climb aboard.”
“Don’t know,” answered Walker. “They’ll think of something.”
“Jesus. I don’t like it, Walker. Maybe we should stop them. If they get caught . . .”
Walker interrupted. “You don’t have to like it. And you can’t stop them. This is their decision, not yours. They know the score. They made the choice. They’ll handle it.”
And there it was. All the stuff he had been struggling with ever since this had all started, laid out in front of him in a few simple, uncompromising words. He was not in charge. He had no authority. He was not a cop anymore. He couldn’t just rush in and take control of the situation. Like it or not, he was just an ordinary guy, a private citizen no different than Walker—or Annie or Claire, for that matter. He could only do what he could do. The realization should have depressed him, but instead he felt strangely relieved.
“Can you see where you’re going?” Walker’s voice brought him out of his reverie, and he was suddenly aware that he had the boat moving without any idea of where he was or where he was going.
He jerked his hand off the throttle and peered ahead, trying to see some kind of landmark but coming up with nothing. “No. Too dark.”
“Look again. Over there, a bit to your right. See that shine? That’s the narrows.”
Dan looked again and finally saw the faint glimmer of light that danced along the ridges of moving water. How the hell did Walker do it?
They stayed silent as the boat moved steadily down the lake, Walker occasionally giving corrections to the course, and just before they arrived at the last set of narrows, the clouds cleared away and the stars shone out to limn the water with silver.
A single canoe was waiting for them once they had made it through the narrows. It too had a lone occupant, and he made no move to approach them as they slowed to a stop, seeming content to stay some distance off. Walker looked over and lifted his hand in greeting, then turned back to Dan. “Think you can find your way back to Annie’s from here?”
“What? Where the hell are you going now? You want me to go back to Annie’s by myself?”
Even as he said the words, Dan knew how inane they were. He sounded like the kind of man he despised. He should have figured this out by now. The fact that he hadn’t was a testament to how lost he felt in this environment. Of course Walker would want to go with his people, guide them, lead them, help out where he could. And Dan couldn’t go with him. Not only would he not be welcome—as Walker had pointed out, he was one of the bad guys as far as they were concerned—but the motor on the dinghy made far too much noise. And he had to go back to Annie’s anyway. Claire was still there, waiting to hear what they had done with Robbie.
Walker was looking at him, watching him struggle past the layers of doubt, waiting patiently for his answer, no doubt well aware of exactly what he was going through.
“Yeah,” Dan said as he breathed in a lungful of air and gathered his scattered thoughts. “Sure. Of course I can find my way. That’s as long as the sky stays clear until I get in the channel.”
Walker looked up. “It’ll stay clear, long as you don’t fall asleep again. Just take it easy till you get out of the inlet, then go a bit to starboard. You’ll see the channel open up easier if you keep to this side.”
He turned toward the waiting canoe, gave a short whistle, then sat quietly and watched as it moved toward them and slid alongside. As it came close, Dan could make out the features of the man who paddled it. He was considerably older than he had expected, long hair heavily streaked with gray and deep wrinkles seaming his face, although they could have been due as much to exposure to the elements as to age. Still, Dan figured he had to be well into his second half-century.
Walker introduced him. “This is Percy. He runs the camp back there. He looked after me when I came back. Taught me what I needed to know.”
Dan reached out a hand in greeting. “Good to meet you.” He nodded at Walker. “You did a hell of a good job.”
Percy grinned. “He tells me you did a pretty good job too—for a white guy.”
Dan snorted. “That’s not what he said at the time.”
Walker laughed. “That’s not what I thought at the time.” He took an oar and placed it so it rested sideways across the two boats. “Hang on to this. I’m gonna get in with Percy.” He eased himself up till he was sitting on the oar, then slid across into the other boat.
Within seconds the canoe had disappeared into the night, but Walker’s voice came drifting back over the fading splash of the paddles: “See you in the morning, white man.”
Dan had lost all track of time, but it seemed like many hours had passed since they had set out from Annie’s. It had to be almost morning now. He squinted down at his watch. It was not yet eleven o’clock.
TWENTY-TWO
Dan found the trip back to Annie’s surprisingly easy. He had been caught off guard by Walker’s suggestion that he make his own way back in the dark, with no charts, no compass, no lights. Nothing. But when he had forced his mind past its initial resistance and taken stock of exactly where he was, he realized with both surprise and pleasure that it was something he could do. Risky, certainly, but far from impossible. Hell, Walker and his friends were doing it without a second thought.
At first he was nervous. He kept his speed down and stayed close to the shore, but as the inlet widened and he moved out into more familiar territory, he found the stars provided just enough light to give form to the land. The odd sense of relief he had been feeling ever since Walker’s pronouncement that he was neither in control nor responsible persisted, and the steady hum of the motor slowed his brain in much the same way as listening to the soaring jazz notes of Charlie Parker.
He thought there was a chance that it was already too late, that Walker and his bevy of canoes might find Shoal Bay abandoned and the black ship long gone. But probably not. The men at the lodge had given off a sense of purpose, but not of real urgency. And they had only opened five of the canisters. More tha
n half had remained sealed when he and Claire had left . . . was that only this morning? Seemed impossible.
So what would happen if the men were still there? Walker figured he and his friends could stop them, but how? They had no weapons, and Dan doubted they even had any tools—not that tools would help them. Maybe they figured that just by being there, they would disrupt things enough to throw the schedule off. Might work, too, as long as White Hair and his pals held off from using their weapons. Come to think of it, they hadn’t actually used them at all so far, and while Dan was pretty sure one or more of them was responsible for Robbie’s death, they hadn’t used a gun to kill him—unless it was the butt. But that was hardly a guarantee they wouldn’t use weapons tonight on the slow-moving canoes.
Still, Walker might have numbers on his side—he had said “they” when he talked about his friends, like there were quite a few involved, and Dan thought there were probably at least enough to make it unlikely they could all be taken out, even with guns. And if White Hair and his boys couldn’t take all of them out, it would leave witnesses, and one thing for sure was that these guys didn’t seem to want any of those. They certainly had no qualms about removing them, either. They had gone hunting for Claire and had made sure Robbie was removed from the picture. Not that that would have been difficult. They would have approached him the same way they had approached Annie’s boat, gone aboard, hit Robbie over the head, and then shoved him overboard. God knows what they had done with his boat—sunk it, maybe, or set it adrift on an ebb tide. He would have to tell Mike to get the coast guard and the marine guys to look for it.
So the bad guys might not shoot at Walker and his group. Hard to hit a moving target, even if they could see it clearly, and almost impossible in the dark unless you had a night-vision scope, and that seemed unlikely. So Walker and his friends might be okay. Hell, if the guards were asleep, as they had been the night Walker had snuck into the bay, maybe they wouldn’t even be noticed. But then what? What could they do that would stop them? Steal the canisters? Possible, but surely that would make enough noise to alert even sleeping guards. Set the crew boat adrift? That might slow them down, but they had dinghies and radios and it wouldn’t take long to track the boat and bring it back. And the crew boat might not even be there. It could have gone back to the black ship. In fact, Dan figured it probably had. And that was a problem of a completely different kind.
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