Dana Stabenow - Dead in the Water

"Prana. It reinforces my prana, and you know it." His fair head poked out from between the sheets. "It's about time you woke up."

"Why? What time is it?"

"High noon."

"Jesus, did I sleep through my watch?" Kate sat up and threw back the sleeping bag.

"Relax. We're going back to Dutch. The skipper's taking us in."

"What!"

"We're going back to Dutch," he repeated, eyeing her with a curious expression.

"The hold isn't even half full," Kate protested. "We haven't picked any pots to speak of, and what we've set are scattered from hell to breakfast up and down the Chain. We're just going to leave them there?"

"Evidently." Andy seemed unperturbed at the prospect, although his paycheck was going to be as short as her own on their return.

She flopped back down on the bunk, her mind busy formulating and discarding scenarios. "Well, well, well.

What do you know."

"I don't know. What do you know?" He saw her look and said firmly, "I mean it, Kate. What was all that business about last night?"

"Shush!" she hissed.

In a lower voice he demanded, "Where were we?

What were the guys doing on shore? What were you doing on shore? What was that plane I heard doing there? Why'd I have to drag you out of the water in a survival suit, and why was it so important that the other guys not see us? What's going on?"

"What did you do with the survival suit?"

"I snuck it back in the locker when no one was in the galley."

She blew out a relieved sigh. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Now tell me what's going on."

She looked at him, sitting facing her in the middle of the floor, draped in folds of white cloth like some minor Middle Eastern potentate, his legs twisted into an impossible position and a stubborn look on his fresh, open face.

She liked Andy Pence. He was very attractive in his youth and his innocence, and his boundless enthusiasm for all things Alaskan had rekindled her own. She might not have been so open to Olga's tales and teachings had she not been first exposed to Andy's enthusiastic and indiscriminatory endorsement of all things Alaskan.

Oh, she would have gone along with the old woman, would have listened to her, might even have taken a few winds with a weaver on a spoke, but it would have been in a mood of amused tolerance and only as a means to an end; specifically, a way to weasel herself into the old woman's confidence. Instead, she had been an actively interested participant. All her childhood she had listened to the stories and watched the ivory carvers and the basket weavers and the oomingmak knitters and kayak builders, but she had resisted taking an active part, chiefly, she realized now with no little chagrin, because of her grandmother's determination that she would.

The discovery that Andy's company was a pleasure, New Age enthusiasms and all, was a distinct shock. It was not enough, however, to take him into her confidence.

Not yet. "Andy, I'm grateful for what you did last night," she said, meeting his eyes frankly. "I'd about had it. I'm not sure I could have climbed back aboard without help. But I can't tell you what's going on. For one thing, I'm not sure myself. For another, the less you know, the safer you are."

He looked frustrated, and she said, "When it's over, I'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Harry Gault and Ned Nordhoff and Seth Skinner but were afraid to ask." She stuck out her hand. "Deal?"

He hesitated. "Promise?"

"Promise."

He took her hand with no enthusiasm. "Okay," he grumbled. "Deal."

"In the meantime, I've got to trust you," she told him.

"You've got to keep all this under your hat."

He was hurt. "Of course." He looked at her, a speculative gleam in his clear blue eyes. "You're not really a fisherman, are you?"

She smiled and admitted, "I'm not even a fisherwoman."

"Never mind," he said, consoling her on the mortification she undoubtedly felt at having this disgraceful admission wrung from her. "You're out here now.

Even if it is on the Avilda. Even if you are working for Harry Gault. And you know, Kate? You are pretty good at it."

"Why, thank you, Andy," she said gravely, and burst out laughing in his affronted face.

It took the Avilda fourteen hours to make her way back to Dutch, and when they tied up at the dock it was too late for Kate to go find Jack. She rose early the following morning and was in the galley assembling breakfast when she heard the thump of feet hitting the deck. The starboard door swung open and she looked up. She recognized him at once. It was the shark who had tried to pick her up in the Shipwreck Bar.

It was obvious that he remembered her, too. He looked her over, an unpleasant grin spreading across his face' and unconsciously her hand took a firmer grip on the knife that was slicing Jimmy Dean's Pure Pork Sausage into neat rounds. "Well now," he said with a geniality as mocking as it was menacing. "Look what we have here." He took a step toward her, and every muscle in her body tightened.

"What the hell do you want?"

Kate closed her mouth and looked around. Harry Gault stood in the passageway, glaring at the shark.

"Why, Harry," the shark said, all his teeth showing,

"I'm just making a neighborly visit." He winked. "How was the fishing last trip?"

"I told you never to come down here," Harry snapped.

The shark looked at Kate. "I can see why," he drawled.

"If only I'd known I'da been after you to share the wealth."

Kate kept her face carefully blank and went back to frying sausage and flipping French toast. The shark strolled over to stand close enough behind her for her to smell his after-shave, which seemed to have been applied with a garden hose.

He sniffed. "Smells good, sweetheart," he said, his voice low, his tone insinuating.

He rubbed up against her back and her eyes narrowed to slits. "I wish I could say the same," she purred.

"You've obviously met," Harry said with awful sarcasm.

The shark heaved a mournful sigh. "At the Shipwreck, week before last. But she ran off with somebody else, didn't you, babe?"

"That so?" Harry said, looking at Kate through narrowed, assessing eyes.

"Yup," the shark said sadly. "Big fucking dude, walks slow, talks slow, but moves pretty goddam fast when it comes to the ladies. Isn't that right, babe?" A hand settled on her waist and prepared to slip down over her hip.

Harry swore. "I told you, Shugak, I warned you, no fucking around on the Avilda! You-"

Kate pried the hand loose and turned. "First of all," she told the shark sweetly, "I am not your sweetheart, or your babe. Secondly"-and she looked at Harry Gault with a straight, level gaze-1 told you that your crew was safe from seduction, and they have been. But what I do off this boat is my business, with or without slow-talking, slow-walking men." She turned back to the stove, feeling the gazes of both men fixed on her, one suspicious, the other lascivious, ignoring them both.

The shark didn't like being ignored and was preparing to say so, but Harry growled, "Let's go up to the bridge."

Contriving to squeeze past Kate when there was more than enough room to walk around, the shark followed.

Kate finished cooking breakfast, loaded two plates and climbed the stairs to the bridge. Hearing voices in the chart room and finding the door closed, she kicked it a couple of times. "Skipper? You in there?"

There was a thump, not unlike the hasty closing of a suitcase, followed by whispers and a dragging sound.

The door slid open and Harry glared at her.

"I brought up your breakfast." She met his suspicious eyes with an expression as guileless as she could manage, and looked past him at the shark, for whom she still had no name, noticing along the way a rectangular object, just the size-surprise, surprise-of one of those shiny silver metal suitcases photographers use to pack their equipment, covered by a hastily tossed, olive-green army blanket. There must have been a locker hidden somewhere in the chart room. "And a plate for your guest."