Dark Moon Walking (5 page)

Cautiously, he let the canoe float free, guiding it gently with his hands until he felt safe enough to dig the paddle into the water. Grimacing as the muscles in his shoulders protested, he steered back toward the bays he had visited earlier. He was exhausted. He had been on or in the water for almost eighteen hours, and he had long ago lost most of the feeling in his legs. Mind you, that was probably a good thing, he thought grimly, as a shaft of pain shot through his hip. The rest of him hurt more than enough to make up for it. Not that it mattered. There was the girl to find, and his gut told him that there was very little time to find her.

Annie's boat rocked gently in the shallows, lifting slowly with the waves. Its dark hull loomed a solid black against the night sky, forbidding and silent. Walker hesitated for a moment before reaching out and rapping the hull with his paddle. Annie was quick with her shotgun, and he had no desire to test either her accuracy or her temper. He craned his head back to look up at the railing as he rapped a second time, a little harder.

“Annie! Annie, it's Walker.”

He waited a couple of minutes and was about to try again when her harsh voice screamed down at him.

“What the hell do you want?” she yelled as she leaned out over the rail. “It ain't even light yet!”

He heard the sound of metal scraping against metal and caught the glint of a barrel sliding down toward him.

“Come on out where I can see you,” she rasped. “You ain't Walker. He was here yesterday.”

“It's me, Annie.” He slid out cautiously from under the curve of the hull. “I need your help.”

“Walker? That you?”

He couldn't make out her expression, but he thought she might have relaxed her grip on the shotgun.

“Goddamn it. You scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the fuckin' night?” She peered down at him for a few more seconds, then moved away from the rail. He heard her clumping heavily along the deck as she headed toward the bow. She was muttering as she went, and then came the sound of a door slamming. A light appeared in the cabin.

It took Walker a long time to get out of the canoe. He had moved around to the beach behind the boat, but he was so cold and stiff he wasn't sure if he would ever get his legs moving. Finally he managed to twist himself upright using a rusty ladder that hung down the side of the hull. Staggering over the rough ground, he slowly made his way over to the narrow boards that formed a path up from the shore to the deck. He used his hands to pull himself up them.

Inside the cabin, Annie was bent over a cast-iron stove, angrily stirring the embers with a poker. She kept her back to him, pointedly ignoring him as he slid awkwardly past two large black cats and onto the bench of the dinette.

He leaned his head back tiredly against the cabin wall and closed his eyes. “Thank you,” he rasped, his voice sounding as rusty as the rest of him felt.

There was no response, but he heard the sound of the kettle sliding across the grate and water being poured. Minutes later a cup landed on the table in front him and the smell of coffee filled his nostrils.

“Find her?” Annie's voice was still harsh, but underneath he could hear her concern. She too had grown fond of the girl over the summer.

He pushed himself up and shook his head. “Nope. Found her boat though.”

Annie's gaze sharpened. “Where?”

“Over in Half Moon Cove.”

He heard her sharply inhaled breath, but she didn't speak. He turned to look blindly out the dark window.

“Lying in five feet of water.” His voice roughened with sudden anger. “Looks like someone towed it there and sank it.” He looked back at Annie, his dark eyes burning with a flat, black fury. “The dinghy's there too, thrown up on the rocks. They holed that too.”

“Holed it?” Her weathered face took on a look of complete puzzlement. “What the hell are you talking about? You crazy or something?”

She turned away from him to poke more wood into the stove, then reached over to pick up one of the cats. It nuzzled into her neck, purring loudly as she gently stroked its back.

He watched her, drawn by the tenderness he saw in the action. She was a big woman, perhaps six feet tall, with rough, calloused hands and feet that were perpetually stuffed into caulk logger's boots. He had never seen her in anything but a torn flannel shirt and stained work pants held up by red suspenders. Now she was wrapped in a threadbare robe, the hem of a flannel nightgown brushing the toes of a pair of worn fleece slippers. The long iron-gray hair she usually wore in a braid hung in wisps over her shoulders, giving her a look of vulnerability he had never noticed before.

“Why the hell would anyone put a hole in it?” she continued, staring at him as she tried to make sense of his words and obviously failing. It was a rhetorical question, and they sat in silence as they both considered the implications.

“So where's the girl?” she asked finally. “She get blown ashore or what?”

He shook his head, still staring out into the darkness. “No. I don't know what happened, but the boat was sunk deliberately. I think maybe Claire got away in the kayak. It's not there.”

Silence fell again. There was nothing to say.

It was Walker who woke first. The warmth of the cabin had wrapped around him, relaxing tired muscles and bringing a deep and dreamless sleep, but the first pale hint of daylight brought him instantly alert. He was alone. Annie had covered him with a blanket before returning to her bed. He could hear her steady snoring coming from the forward cabin.

He pushed himself upright and looked around. He had only been inside Annie's boat a couple of times before, and he remembered his amazement the first time he saw it. It was certainly not what he had expected. The outside matched the woman who owned it: large and rough. The inside was an entirely different matter. Simple padded benches surrounded a wooden table, a cast-iron stove gleamed against the bulkhead, and a heavy black kettle issued a welcoming wisp of steam. China cups swung from hooks below the cupboards. Colorful prints filled the open spaces on the walls, most of them scenes of thatched cottages and gardens, and the oiled wood floor was covered with a scattering of faded rugs. It wasn't opulent, but it was neat and clean.

Even more surprising were a small refrigerator he found humming softly in the galley and the speakers that were almost hidden behind shelves of books in the salon. As his eyes took it all in he came to the understanding that this was a home, warm and comfortable and well cared for. By the time he had reached the bridge and seen the gleaming array of instruments sitting on the wide ledge in front of the windshield, his face had taken on the bemused expression of a child at a magic show. Annie had laughed at his look of amazement.

“Bit more than you expected?” she had cackled loudly as she proudly showed him the generator that kept the batteries charged.

Now he stood up and moved forward to the wheelhouse. The dial on the radio glowed green and the power light blinked reassuringly. He picked up the microphone, feeling awkward and uncomfortable with it in his hand. It was a reminder of another life, an alien technology he had thought he would never need again. He didn't want to use it. It was the one link he had to the man he had once hated. The man who had put him in jail. The man who had helped give him his life back. The man who might be able to help him find the girl.

He pressed the switch. “
Dreamspeaker. Dreamspeaker. Dreamspeaker.
Walker calling.”

FIVE

The black ship floated gently at anchor at the head of a small inlet, her name,
Snow Queen
, inscribed in pale charcoal-gray script across her stern. Someone, Harry couldn't remember who, had come up with it as a joke, but Harry had liked it.

On deck, Javier Fernandez sat quietly, his lean frame draped easily over an upholstered teak chaise. It was not the kind of quiet that Harry Coombs liked. He had seen Fernandez like this before and two men had died in the fury that erupted when the quiet ended. He did not want that to happen here. Not only would he be one of the ones in the line of fire, but if he survived the tempest, he would have bodies to dispose of and a boat to clean. Neither was easy.

Harry glanced down at his empty glass and gestured to the man behind the bar. If this had been his regular crew, he would not have needed to ask, but Fernandez had insisted that his own men staff the yacht and Harry had reluctantly agreed. Only Harry's captain remained aboard, and Harry shuddered to think what it would have been like had he also been replaced.

Harry Coombs was sixty-five, shorter and heavier than he liked to pretend, with the engaging look of an aging leprechaun. His florid cheeks and unruly shock of black hair had served him well and, combined with brilliant blue eyes and an impish smile, had helped him amass a fortune exporting used heavy equipment to war-ravaged countries in Asia and Africa. When the iron curtain fell, Harry easily switched to buying and selling other things: surplus tanks, rocket launchers, and machine guns were followed by bombs, land mines, and all kinds of electronic devices. There was never a shortage of either sellers or buyers, and while trade in weapons was frowned upon by authorities at home, it was still legal if you followed all the rules. Harry didn't, but he paid his lawyers enough to ensure that it looked as if he did. Other things he had more recently added to his inventory were even less acceptable. The occasional shipment of opium or heroin. Carefully wrapped bricks of hashish. Blocks of pressed marijuana. Boxes of oddly colored pills. Even occasional passengers who used only a first name and had no papers to identify them. Harry was not fussy as long as it paid well.