Jan Burke - Bloodlines

“Forgiven him? Conn…I caused the accident.”

He frowned.

“Not the way Jack tells the story?” she asked.

“No. He said he had been drinking.”

“A safe claim to make, I suppose. No, it was my fault. I threw a temper tantrum, grabbed the wheel, and we crashed into a tree. Jack couldn’t walk, was bleeding and in pain, but did I stay to help him? No.”

“He said you were hurt, too.”

“Treated at home. Discreetly.” She stared into the fire for a long moment, then said, “No injuries I couldn’t survive, obviously. I was young and stupid and so afraid that the report would leak out that the relatively new Mrs. Harold Linworth-whose husband had just gone to Europe, preparing to make more money out of the war-was involved in an automobile accident. The driver a single man, former lover-I think you see what I mean. I got out of the car and left him there. Went to a pay phone and called Hastings. He, at least, had the good sense to report the accident, so that Jack got help before he bled to death.”

“Jack has never held anything about that night against you, you know.”

“Of course I do. That’s part of what makes it so unbearable. His damned forgiveness.”

She went back to staring at the fire.

After a moment, O’Connor said, “ ‘If you forgive people enough, you belong to them, and they to you, whether each person likes it or not…’”

She looked back at him and smiled softly. “Another of your quotations? Whose is it?”

“James Hilton.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Chips?”

He shook his head. “Time and Time Again.”

“Ah. I’ve not read that one yet. Let me guess-Jack told you to memorize passages of books that struck your fancy, to have these quotations handy for stories.”

“Maureen. To have them handy for life, I suppose.”

“Maureen. Your sister. I wish I had met her.”

He didn’t say anything. Maureen had been gone from his life for over ten years now, and still he missed her. Missing, he thought, meant exactly that- gone like a piece of you, carved right out of you, missing from you.

“I hope they find both of them,” he said suddenly. “All of them, I mean, but for your sake, I hope they find Katy and Max.”

“I so want to believe they will…” she said in a hoarse voice, then waited until she had control of herself again. “I so want to believe it, I can’t let myself think that they won’t find them.”

“Norton, the detective who’s in charge of the kidnapping case?”

She nodded. He could see the strain showing again, her struggle to keep back tears.

“The best there is. Trust him.”

She nodded again, then suddenly stood up and moved toward one of the windows.

O’Connor stood, too, watching her roughly pull back the heavy draperies, clutching the velvet material in one hand.

“Damn this rain,” she said.

D AWN WAS A LITTLE MORE THAN AN HOUR AWAY WHEN LORENZO Albettini, the captain of the fishing vessel Nomadic Maiden, told his crew of four to haul in the nets. His younger brother Giovanni was one of those four, and Lorenzo watched him with pride. Gio already had his captain’s papers, and soon they would buy a second boat and catch more fish for the booming population that now lived along this coast.

The rain had let up over the last few hours, giving way to mist an hour or so ago, and the swells were not nearly as heavy as they had been. Lorenzo was still using fog signals to let any other vessels that might be passing this way know of the Maiden’s presence.

Gio and the others had just pulled the last of the haul aboard when Lorenzo saw the other boat come out of the mist, drifting straight toward the Maiden’s bow. A large pleasure boat, dead in the water: no lights, no motor, not making way. Crabbing a bit with the current. Lorenzo cursed, sure this was a matter of the storm setting some rich man’s expensive new toy adrift. He called to Gio to rig the fenders and picked up his megaphone. He hailed the pleasure craft, which he could now see was a beauty-teak decks and a sleek white hull. A Chris-Craft-fifty-footer, he would guess.

He was not entirely surprised that he received no reply from it.

Lorenzo was a good pilot, and he easily maneuvered the Maiden alongside the drifting yacht. The Sea Dreamer, he could now see.

He called the Coast Guard. The radio operator interrupted him to ask his position. This was a little embarrassing for him. He was able to take the Nomadic Maiden in and out of a crowded harbor with ease, but he was not a navigator. He knew the coast-its lights, forms, and buildings-and stayed within sight of these markers. “South of Catalina Island, north of San Clemente Island.”

“We’ll find you. Over,” the operator said. When Lorenzo named the vessel he had found, he heard a sudden change in the radio operator’s voice.

“The Sea Dreamer? Any survivors? Over.”

Survivors? Lorenzo was taken aback. He had been sure that this was just another of the many pleasure boats that had probably slipped free of their moorings and ended up adrift at sea last night-a common occurrence after a storm. “I don’t see anyone on deck or at the helm.”

“Nomadic Maiden,” the Coast Guard operator said, “the Sea Dreamer had four adults aboard. Over.”

“Four?”

“Two males, two females-and a small dog. Please ascertain as soon as possible if there are survivors belowdecks, and if so, if they are in need of medical attention. Over.”

So he called Gio to take the helm of the Maiden, and taking a lantern flashlight with him, Lorenzo lowered himself onto the Sea Dreamer. He secured her to the Maiden with a tow line. Gio, he saw, was watching around them, keeping his eyes moving, as he should.

Lorenzo called out again, a hopeful picture in his mind’s eye of four adults, exhausted and sleeping below, but safe.

There was no reply.

His gut feeling, having heard the stories so many times over the years, produced another picture: someone going overboard, someone else jumping into the water to save him, both lost, the others not knowing how to operate the boat or the radio, perhaps washed overboard as well.

Not so easy to go overboard on a yacht this size, the hopeful Lorenzo thought. He called out again.

Silence.

Lorenzo took another moment to get the feel of the vessel, to listen.

Nothing but the creaking of the pull on the line, the lapping of the sea at the hull.

To all appearances the Sea Dreamer was seaworthy, but there might have been engine trouble. He would check that later. He used the flashlight to glance around the upper deck and helm station, casting its beam over the surfaces of the bridge.

He hurried down the companionway. He flashed his light in the salon area. Empty. In fact, except for taking on a little water-not enough to do more than wet the bottoms of a rich man’s deck shoes-the Sea Dreamer seemed pristine, with everything secured just as it should be. He frowned, wondering at it. Galley the same. Dinette folded away and secured. No one in the head. He checked the two stacked berths in the midship cabin. Empty. The two in the forepeak were empty as well.

He began to feel uneasy and told himself not to get spooked over nothing. But the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he made his way carefully to the aft stateroom’s double berth.

Empty.

Not a sign of life.

Nowhere on the yacht did he find any sign of occupants. He climbed back to the upper deck and called to Gio.

“Tell the Coast Guard, no one aboard.”

Word quickly came back that they should stay where they were, that a Coast Guard helicopter and cutter were on the way.

Lorenzo moved back to the helm of the Sea Dreamer. The sky was lighter. Usually, he loved this time of day, watching the dawn. Usually, he spent a moment or two thinking of what the new day would bring, and of his plans for the future of the Albettini Brothers Fishing Company. Now he looked out at the sea and thought of two men, two women, and a small dog.