Angel took the powerboat out of Brown’s Bay and across the channel to work her way up to Deepwater Bay. She watched the ocean carefully. It was Saturday, and the water was alive with small craft.
“Hang on,” Angel said to Hawk, spotting a slick ahead.
The slick’s deceptively smooth surface concealed an enormous shift in the current. Some of the slicks were upwellings of water from below, where the ocean was squeezed between invisible rocky barriers until water surged powerfully upward. Other slicks became whirlpools during the height of the tidal race. Small boats could be capsized and sucked down into the cold sea if the person at the helm was careless or inexperienced.
The helm bucked suddenly in Angel’s hands. She was braced, expecting it. The stern of the boat drifted like the back end of a car on a patch of icy road.
Angel turned the bow into the watery skid, controlling the motion of the boat. Within seconds they shot off the slick and back into the normally roiled water that came with changing tides.
Sensing Hawk’s eyes on her, Angel turned and smiled.
“Fun, wasn’t it?” she asked.
A black eyebrow lifted, rewarding Angel’s smile.
“Looked like a rather nasty piece of water to me,” said Hawk.
“That was just a baby. At some times of the year it gets rough, though.”
“Storms?”
Angel shrugged.
“Storms are bad any time of the year,” she said. “So are the tides, if you don’t know what to expect. The Inside Passage isn’t for amateurs. Ask him.”
Angel gestured toward a towboat and barge. The towboat was straining northward up the narrowing channel. The thick, braided steel cable that connected the towboat to the heavily loaded barge was taut, humming with energy.
Despite the obvious laboring of the heavy engines, the towboat was barely making one knot forward speed.
“Missed the tide,” Angel said succinctly.
“What will happen to him?”
“He’ll spend the next few hours like that, going flat out and getting nowhere. Then the race will stop and he’ll pop forward like a cork out of a bottle. Until then, though, he’s stuck, working like the devil just to stay even and keep the tow cable straight against corkscrew tidal rips.”
“Is that the voice of experience talking?” asked Hawk.
Even as Hawk asked the question, he realized that he wouldn’t be surprised if Angel had handled one of the tugboats that dotted the Inside Passage. She was supremely at home on the water.
But apparently it wasn’t something Angel wanted to talk about, for she didn’t answer his question.
“Have you worked on towboats?” Hawk asked.
The silence stretched as Angel struggled with memories welling like blood from a fresh wound. The summer she and Grant had fallen in love, he had piloted towboats up the Inside Passage. Even today the visceral, elemental pounding of diesel engines going flat out peeled away the years, leaving Angel naked and bleeding with memories.
“I’ve ridden on the towboats,” said Angel, her voice even and her eyes too dark.
“With a man.”
Angel didn’t answer. It hadn’t been a question.
“Wasn’t it, Angel? A man?”
Hawk’s persistence surprised her. She turned, only to find him very close.
“Yes,” she said.
“The salmon shaman?”
“No.”
Angel’s knuckles whitened as she clenched her hands around the wheel. She didn’t notice, though. She was impaled on Hawk’s dark glance.
“Who was it?” asked Hawk lazily, his eyes as intent as those of a bird of prey. “Maybe you could get me a ride.”
“Derry’s brother.”
Angel caught the flash of surprise on Hawk’s features. She knew what would come next. Turning away from Hawk, she prepared herself for it, calling up the dawn rose, pure color radiant with light, wholly serene; softness triumphant over the worst that bitter winter ice could do.
Hawk watched Angel intently. Her face gave away nothing. Whatever ghost had haunted her features for a moment had been chained again.
“Derry never mentioned a brother,” Hawk said. “It should make it easier to get a ride.”
“Grant Ramsey is dead.”
Hawk was silent for an instant, searching Angel’s face for the emotion he sensed locked away inside her.
“When?” he asked.
“A long time ago,” said Angel, her voice tired and calm.
“He must have been much older than Derry.”
“Yes.”
Angel turned her attention to the sea again. Just short of Deepwater Bay, a cloud of birds wheeled over the shifting water, gulls turning and crying like lost souls, hundreds of keening voices filling the air. Cormorants dived and gulls swooped down on them, filling their beaks with herring and then flapping off heavily as other gulls dodged and darted, trying to steal herring from the overflowing beaks of the successful gulls.
For a few minutes the water literally boiled with thousands upon thousands of herring, tiny fish hurling themselves into the air, shedding silver water drops that flashed brilliantly against the descending sun.
Automatically, Angel cut the speed of the powerboat.
“Salmon,” she said.
“Rather small,” Hawk said dryly.
“Not those,” Angel said, dismissing the frantic herring. “Beneath them, driving them to the surface. Salmon are feeding way down, where the sea is almost dark. The herring come up, trying to get away. Then the birds feed on them from above and the salmon from below.”
“Makes me glad I wasn’t born a herring.”
“To be alive is to eat,” Angel said, her shadowed eyes searching the vibrant, seething water. “And, sooner or later, to die. Some die sooner rather than later.”
“Not a very comforting philosophy,” Hawk said, watching Angel with eyes like very dark topaz, hard and clear.
“Sometimes comfort doesn’t get the job done.”
As Angel spoke, she remembered the people who had tried to comfort her after the accident. They had only made her more angry. Even Derry.
It had taken Carlson’s measured cruelty to shock Angel out of self-pity. Carlson, who had loved her as much as Grant had. But she hadn’t known until it was too late. It would always be too late now. They would never be lovers. They were friends, though, a friendship that was as deep and enduring as the sea itself.
“Where did they go?” Hawk asked.
“Same place they came from.”
Angel stared at the sea, where the herring had vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared. All that was left of the multitude of fish was a vague, metallic glitter deep within the green water, a glitter that faded as she watched.
Abruptly Angel decided that it was time and past time to go fishing. Several hours of light remained, plus a tide change, and at least a few salmon were in the vicinity. No fisherman could ask for more.
Hawk read the decision in Angel.
“Can I help?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know.”
Angel had already rigged trolling rods. It wasn’t her favorite method of fishing but it was better than being skunked. Besides, the salmon wouldn’t be feeding on the surface until well into September.
By then Hawk would be gone.
The thought went through Angel like a cutting wheel over glass. First just the thought itself, pressure and a faint trail of emotion behind it, followed by a spreading sadness. The idea that Hawk might leave Vancouver Island without catching a salmon, without knowing the island’s rugged magic, without smiling . . .
“Angel?” asked Hawk, wondering what new ghost had risen to trouble the blue-green depths of her eyes. “Is there something I can do?”
Angel blinked and focused on Hawk. He saw that the lashes fringing her eyes were long, surprisingly dark, untouched by mascara. They swept down suddenly, concealing her from his probing glance.
“Take the wheel,” Angel said, her voice tight. “Point the bow at the headland and keep us moving slowly.”
When she felt the motions of the boat change, she began letting out line into the water.
“How deep are you going?” called Hawk from the cockpit.
“Does the fish finder show anything?”
Hesitation, then, “Something at about four fathoms, maybe deeper. It shifts fast.”
“Then I’ll go down twenty-five feet on one line and about thirty-three on the other.”
The planer attached to the line took it down quickly. When enough line was out, Angel set the reel’s brake and slipped the butt of the rod into a holder along the side of the boat. For a moment she watched the tip of the rod. It moved subtly, rhythmically, responding to the boat sliding over the restless surface of the sea.
Within moments the second rod was set up on the starboard side. Angel paused, then shrugged.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I’m damn tired of not fishing.
She grabbed one of the long, limber rods, dove into the tackle box, and came up with a bucktail fly half as big as her palm. She let the bucktail out over the stern, feeding line until the big, pale fly danced over the surface about thirty feet behind the boat.
Even though it was weeks too soon for salmon to be feeding on the surface, there was such a thing as luck.
“I’ll take it now,” Angel said, coming into the cockpit.
Hawk slid out of the seat and past Angel. As they switched places, she smelled again the compound of soap and subtle aftershave, heat and man, that had come to be indelibly associated in her mind with Hawk.
When she turned to lower herself into the seat, her body brushed over Hawk’s. Though it only lasted for an instant, the contact sent shards of awareness splintering through her. Unconsciously she held her breath, freezing in place, unwilling to end the racing sensations.
“Watch the rod tips,” Angel said, her voice too low, almost husky. “Get used to their motion. Then you’ll know instantly if anything changes, if there’s weed on the herring strip or if a salmon strikes or . . . ”
Her voice faded as she looked up at Hawk. Her eyes were as green and restless as the sea.
“Do you understand?” Angel asked huskily.
Hawk’s mouth changed, hard lines flowing into a hint of softness, a promise of sensuality that was repeated in the hot brown depths of his eyes.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I understand.”
And he did.
It wasn’t the motion of herring strips and water that he was talking about. It was the hunger making Angel’s eyes a smoky green, and the visible race of the pulse beneath the soft skin of her neck.
The chase was almost run. Soon the last twists and turns would be over, the last frantic burst of flight would be completed, and she would lie panting and spent in his arms.
Hawk turned away and went out into the open stern of the boat to watch rod tips dance to the slow surge of the sea, the shine of the waves beneath the sun.
But it was another type of dance he was thinking about, the slow surge of flesh against flesh, the sensual sheen of passion on smooth skin, and the liquid, rhythmic waves of release.
Soon.
Braced easily against the motion of the boat, Hawk watched the rod tips against the cerulean sky.
Angel looked over her shoulder, but her eyes were on the man, not on the rods. He was the most graceful man she had ever seen. The subtle adjustments of his body to the shifting boat fascinated her. Like the bird he had taken his nickname from, Hawk was fiercely quick, incredibly fluid, stunning in his completeness.
After a time Angel forced herself to look away. She reminded herself that Hawk had done nothing to indicate he was attracted to her in the aching way that she was attracted to him, a fascination of both mind and body.
All of the tactile contact between herself and Hawk could be explained by the close quarters of the boat, or by casual affection such as any friend might give her. Never had Angel seen from Hawk anything close to the emotion with which Grant used to watch her, love and desire intertwined until there was no room left for anything else, even breath.
Deliberately Angel recalled the rose in her mind. She needed its crimson tranquillity.
Five days on a boat with Hawk would be hard enough on her. She didn’t need to make it worse, embarrassing both of them by running after Hawk like a love-struck teenager.
The rose came very grudgingly to Angel, single crimson petals joining and blurring like drops of blood, then sliding away, leaving her empty. After a time she succeeded in forming the whole rose petal by petal, its color glowing with dawn, serene in its own unfolding.
It had been years since the rose had come to Angel so slowly, or she had needed it quite so much.
Trolling quietly, checking the lures from time to time, Angel floated over the area where the sea had boiled with herring and salmon, hunted and hunter. Nothing struck the lures.
After several more sweeps, Angel had Hawk check the lines for weeds. She watched as he picked up a rod out of the holder, yanked sharply on the rod to release the planer, and reeled in. She was envious of the power that let him so easily trip the planer, a technique that she had spent days learning to do correctly, for her arms simply weren’t as strong as the normal man’s, much less a man like Hawk.