David Dun - The Black Silent

"See that's Sargasso stew. Venter's sequencing methods applied to a random mix," Haley said.

"Why specifically would that be of interest to Ben?"

"You saw something in all these papers about looking for a gene?"

"So I did."

"This is a way to look. Only maybe you look in deep-sea sediment. But I don't think we've figured out the Sargasso stew." Haley sighed. "Maybe the reference is to something else. We'd better go to the beach house. Maybe the rest of his files will tell us something."

She put the papers back into Sam's bag. It was cloth, not designed for papers, and it tended to bend and mix the already damp documents. Thinking about the problem, she went into a study, found a big briefcase, stuffed them all inside, and crammed the lid down. It was a wooden briefcase. A little unusual, but it would work.

"I wonder about driving to Ben's," Sam said. "By now they may have heard about the Blazer and there are liable to be cops on the roads, roadblocks." He paused to let that sink in. "How else can we get to Ben's?"

She thought for a moment. "If we want to try hiking the forest at night, we can walk. It's about a mile through the forest along Aleck Bay. There's forest everywhere on the way, with houses intermixed, especially along the beach." Then she paused again, an idea having obviously crossed her mind. "I think there's a boat here we could use."

"We could hide the Blazer down the way from here and walk back," Sam said.

They walked through the living room, passed the table where they had eaten a little ham, to the side of the house. Sam watched her smile when she led him right to the boat.

"They have a beautiful dory. We can put it in, row out of the bay, down the coast a bit, and around the point, down the beach, and we're there."

Sam had had enough time in the ocean for one night, but he agreed that the sea approach would be best. It was turning into an unusually calm night, if the present lack of wind was any indication. Earlier, the wind had been building from the southwest but now was calm out of the northwest, unusual for this time of year, so the sea in this area at the southern end of the islands might have calmed outside the bay. If it hadn't, this dory idea would not work.

The Williamses had a well-constructed steel track to get the dory to the beach. Once at the beach they would have to take the boat from its cradle and carry it.

They carefully turned off every light, leaving the place just as they had found it. They needed to get the Blazer well down the road and completely hidden. Haley drove.

They put a blanket between Sam and the wet seat. Haley imagined Sam's hand touching her, rubbing her back in reassurance. She groped for an excuse to touch him over the center console, but wouldn't allow herself.

He turned and looked at her. For a second she switched on the interior light, then turned it off. His eyes were amber and earnest, keeping with the rock-solid nature of him.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Fine." She started the truck.

Frick had ruined or threatened all she knew. Maybe she saw Sam as the human embodiment of desperately needed proof that she really was okay, even desirable. She wanted to believe there was more than that behind her feelings, but life at the moment was such a tumbled turmoil that she couldn't think clear thoughts, much less feel unadulterated emotions.

She still felt the great sense of caution, but now she wanted to overcome it. Precisely because he seemed unreachable, because he had gone away, because of the summer of

'94, because he had married Anna Wade, and even more important because her whole life had seemed designed to prove that she was a born loser-Haley had been angry.

Now, at least, she could look at all that, even if she wasn't over it. Maybe this thing with Sam was something so boring as having to prove herself, and in this condition, how could she discern love from desperation? It was a question that she had begun asking herself.

Abruptly she realized that she was perhaps, on top of everything else, struggling with falling in love. People who thought this way got soft in the head and interpreted every little gesture as proving some great attribute in the beloved. But history was intervening.

Her emotions were twisting in the wind.

Oh, my God, this is confusing.

Then her mind returned to the problem at hand. "These people are gone for the entire winter, normally," she said. "Can't quite think of their names." She pulled into a driveway, drove back past a shed, past the house, and on a narrow grass strip drove behind a woodshed. They seemed to be well hidden under a tree.

They were quiet for just a moment, and Sam was acutely aware of her hand, of her body. He thought about taking her hand, but didn't. They had to go. Without speaking, they each hurriedly exited the Blazer. Walking in the dark and talking were not mutually conducive. They forced themselves to jog back to the house along the road. Fortunately, they saw no cars and did not have to jump in the bushes.

The calm in the weather seemed to be holding. Sam was grateful but still worried about the wind resuming a strong southerly or blowing in a westerly direction in the midst of their short voyage. He was acutely aware that they might have to escape Ben's with papers and the wind could resume during their return and oppose them or create a serious beam sea. On their return they might be required to land on a different part of the shoreline. In places it was steep and hard to make the shore.

When they arrived back at the house, they went inside for a moment to reexamine a chart on the wall and raid the kitchen one more time. The unspoken truth was that they could end up back in the water, and if that happened, they would need great energy.

They found a can of tuna and some frozen whole wheat bread.

"We gotta leave, but we have to eat," Sam said.

"I don't want to go back in that ocean," she said, reading his mind.

They waited for the microwave to thaw and ruin the bread, while struggling with impatience. Haley seemed energized, alert, and attentive, especially in her face, and that was strange for such a late hour and such dire circumstances. He imagined her in one of her hats, smiling on the dock, and then he studied her in the softer light and decided she was beautiful everywhere, all the time.

They yanked the bread from the microwave and found some mayonnaise.

Sam didn't usually like watching people eat, but not Haley. Next he knew he would be telling himself that she was unique among women and that there would never be another like her. Finally he would think her worthy of poetry and special gifts. Of course, he knew that this was the beginning of a strange chemical change in his brain that mankind had dubbed love. It could be fed or starved; he could come close or walk away. He had made promises to himself about these sorts of feelings.

There was a look in her eye, even in the soft light.

"We're in the middle of more than a bad tuna sandwich," he said. "It's crazy to even think about what we're thinking about. It needs a long talk and we don't have time for one."

"Yes. No one knows that better than I." Then she seemed to agree, or at least relent.

They could talk about it later.

"How can we help Sarah?" she said. "I feel so helpless. We're just running around, not really doing anything to help her. It's frustrating."

"Find Ben and his secrets. It's the only reason they have to keep Sarah. Maybe we can feign a bargain. Aside from that, after Ben's we'll try calling her friends and see if she's shown up. We'll call Rachael and tell her to tell the state. But the odds of them letting her go before somebody finds Ben, or brings in the state, are very bad." Sam didn't tell Haley his belief that they would kill Sarah once she was no good to them.