Safe Harbor (10 page)

He turned to her and said, "Ever flown in a seaplane?"

"No, never," Holly answered, oblivious to the fact that she was about to board one. Still, she seemed as intrigued by the pontooned flying machine as the two kids who were fishing on the dock beside them.

"Well, here's your chance," Sam said. "That's our tour bus."

Don't get mad, lady, please don't get mad
.

"
What
?"

He shrugged his most boyish shrug and smiled sheepishly. "I'm not presuming, am I?"

She rounded on him and said, "You certainly are, Sam!
I
can't let you spend that kind of money taking me around. It wouldn't be right."

"Sure it would," he argued, knocked off balance by her reaction. "The pilot's an old friend of mine; he's doing it for gas money."

"Well, that's not right, either. You're taking advantage of him!"

"Look, it's no big deal—honest. Guys do this for guys. I've given Billy plugs in my books. It comes out even."

"No, really," she said, crossing her arms. "The gesture is too extravagant. I can't accept it."

And meanwhile Billy was threading through the moored boats with a shit-eating grin under his handlebar mustache. Perfect. Somehow Sam had thought that he'd be able to explain the point of the plane over breakfast. Didn't happen. Then he tried broaching the subject of
Eden
en route. No dice. Then the damn kids on the dock struck up an unlikely conversation with them, and now here's Billy, fifteen minutes early, and to top it off she thinks it's, of all things, a little too romantic. How the hell—when the hell—was he going to explain?

The seaplane glug-glugged its way t
o a halt alongside the dock, an
d Billy threw open the door to the passenger seats. "Hop in! Let's go,
for chrissake, before the dock
master gets on my tail! C'mon, c'mon!"

So that was simple enough. In they hopped, with Holly alternating between mutters of dismay and disapproval. After hurried introductions, Billy spun the plane neatly around and reversed his winding route, dodging an anchored catamaran that was drifting back and forth across a wide swath of harbor.

Billy's language, never bland, became even more exuberant than usual. "
Geez
, will you lookit the size of that thing? If I had my way, I'd blow that frigging catamaran right out of the water! There's no room in this harbor for a cat that size. Look at that frigging thing roam! Who the hell let that monster in here, anyway? Where am I supposed to go? I'm gonna write the FA A about this for sure. Damn frigging cats!"

"It's a boat, Billy, which gives it more right to be in the harbor than a plane, so cool it, wouldja?" said Sam, taking little comfort from the look on Holly's face. She was rigid. Whether she was more afraid of Billy or of the seaplane, Sam couldn't say, but she was holding on with white-knuckled zeal.

"You'll want to belt up, Holly," he
suggested.

"
No, I don'
t think so," she responded
grimly, staring ahead
. "You can turn the plane around now, please."

The waves were a little choppy out
side of the harbor.  The
seaplane began to bobble
up and down
and tip from side to side, like the cork on the water it was. With every plop of its pontoons, Holly let out a little gasp. "Back, please. Now, please."

Billy gave her a wink and said, "First time?"

"Yeah-h-h..."

"Best time," he said, snugging his baseball cap over his head. "Where you wanna look first?"

"Look?"

"He means, 'sightsee,' " said Sam, pinching his pal's shoulder in warning. "Do
the closest harbors first—Had
ley; the rest of the
Eliz
abeths
. Then swing up to Padan
arum and follow the south shore, and after that, move on to the
Cape
."

"But not the Canal?"

"Yeah, that, too. You're gonna have to backtrack, I
guess. There's no point to following the outer Cape to
Provincetown
; no one sails that route."

"What
is
this? What's going on?" said Holly, obviously catching on to the point of the plan.

"Here we go," Billy said cheerfully.

"Belt, will you?" Sam repeated. Over Holly's protests that she wasn't going
anywhere,
he reached over and did the job for her.

The seaplane accelerated with an earsplitting but somehow jaunty din, and then with a mighty lift, the little craft became airborne. Up, up, and away they went, leaving the island curled below like a sun-drenched cat. Ahead and to port lay a bracelet of fuz
zy green, sheep-
grazing lumps: the unspoiled chain of
Elizabeth
Islands
, nailed down at the western end by
the quaint community of Cuttyh
unk. To starboard lay the channel that led to Woods Hole and the mainland, plied just then by a ferry and a smattering of early sailors.

"Now this is more like it," Sam said, happy despite his misgivings about Holly. He loved being away from it all. A sailboat knifing silently through the water was his first preference; but the seaplane, despite its noisy drone, wasn't a bad way to get around, either. "Nice, huh?" he offered hopefully.

He saw high color in her cheeks; he chalked it off to excitement.

Wrong.

"What the
hell
do you think you're doing?"
she said
with not-so-repressed fury. "
This is an abduction! And
you!" she said, poking Billy in the back. "You're going to lose your license over this!"

"Oh, hey, now, lady, I haven't abducted
nobody.
You climbed aboard of your own free will."

"My father is an
attorney,
I hope you're aware of that!"

"Probate, Billy; no big deal," Sam interjected.

That made her, if possible, even more pissed. "This is all about finding my father, isn't it? You actually think I'm going to sit here and hunt him down with you two morons?"

Sam shrugged and said, "Unless you're planning to jump out of the plane—yeah. I do."

"You outrageous, godforsaken liar! I
will
have you arrested. The instant we touch down! This is a kidnapping, pure and simple!"

Now that she put it that way, Sam could see how some law-minded person might jump to that conclusion. It didn't help his case that he had a history of kidnapping things that he wanted or needed: that go-fast boat; the red Corvette. Still, he knew that he'd left his life of crime behind him, so if the morning's otherwise perfectly normal situation had an awkward side to it, it wasn't because of him, but her.

"What do we do, Sam?" asked Billy.

"Keep going."

"Turn aroundl"

"You make things hard on a guy, you know that?" Sam said, getting a little testy himself. "I mean, here's Billy, taking time out of his charter business just to do us a favor—"

"Us
a favor?
I
don't care where
Eden
is!"

"But you care where your father is. You have to care,"
he
said simply. "He's your father."

Sam, who didn't have a clue who or where his own biological father was, had cared about that for a long, long time.

"You're wrong," Holly said with icy disdain. "I don't want to have anything to do with my father ever again."

"You say that now. But eventually—in a month, a season, a year—you'll want to have something to do
with him again. So the sooner you see him and confront him about this, the better off you'll be. You have issues to work through."

"Issues!" She laughed scornfully at that one and said, "And how do you propose I deal with them? By swooping low over the
Vixen
and pelting it with propoganda leaflets?"

God, no, Sam thought. The last thing he wanted was to tip
Eden
off. He said, "The way I look at it, if they're still around here it means that your father isn't as committed to this wild affair as you think. He's sticking close to home, at least subconsciously; you can assume that he'll come to his senses soon."

"Why? Because he hasn't sailed off with
Eden
to Rar
atonga yet? He couldn't if he wanted to," Holly muttered as she stared out the window at the water below. "My mother burned all his charts."

Whoa. All that stuff about a woman scorned was true
, then
.

"Please, Holly," Sam murmured, sensing that she, at least, was softening. "I need your help. I know we got off on the wrong foot. I wish I had been more candid with you from the start. I
... I've never in my life had to ask a woman to help me out, but I'm doing it now. Please, Holly. I need to find
Eden
."

Her expression was extraordinarily grave as she studied his face while she considered his plea. Sam had the uncanny sense that she was looking into his soul. While he felt confident that he had God on his side in this one, he wasn't nearly as sure that God approved of the way he was going about His business.

Apparently Holly didn't, either. She whacked Billy on the shoulder again. "Take me back to the dock."

"Hey! Geez! With pleasure," the pilot said, annoyed, and he began banking the seaplane to starboard.

"Hold a turn, Billy," Sam ordered. He took hold of Holly's arm—why, he had no idea; it wasn't as if she
was going anywhere—and said, "Would you recognize your father's boat from up here? Yes or no."

She glanced scathingly at their point of contact and said, "Probably. My father has had the boat customized. And he flies an owner's ensign from the port spreader. It's an unusual color—magenta; I think it would show from up here."

"Help me find them," Sam said bluntly, "and I'll have
Eden
behind bars in no time."

"Oh, good; you can share a cell together," said Holly, yanking her arm free of his grip.

Ignoring the snotty response, he spun a scenario that would help them both. "
Eden
has stolen an extremely valuable engraving," he admitted for the first time. "It belongs to people I care about deeply. Once I get it back, once
Eden
is out of the picture, your father will see her for what she is. It's happened before."

"How would you know?" Holly said, surprised.

"No—you misunderstand," Sam said quickly. No way was he going to admit that
he
was the one who'd had a rude awakening after
Eden
took off. "I meant,
Eden
has taken things before that she shouldn't have." His heart being one of them.

"Really, Sam? She's a proven thief? And you think my father will reject her once he becomes aware of that?"

Her eyes were wide and green and hopeful and Sam felt like a lying shit. Well, it had to be done. God worked in mysterious ways. "Let's take it one step at a time," he suggested. "First we have to find them."

She nodded. Whatever Sam had said, however he had said it, it seemed to have worked. Holly did a complete one-eighty.

"We can find them," she said, pressing her nose to the window in her sudden determination to locate the boat. "I know all my father's favorite harbors. Billy,
don't bother with Quisset; he doesn't go there. But, yes, check out Hadley
... and Qu
ick's Hole... definitely Cuttyh
unk. That's one place where he'd actually pay for a mooring if there weren't any room to anchor."

Billy said, "Now yer talkin'," and began a sharp bank to port. Holly didn't think much of the sudden maneuver. She tensed and grabbed Sam's arm reflexively, which he had to admit, he liked: it gave him the feeling that he was back in control of a hideously slippery mission. Smiling, he said, "Billy's just showing off, that's all."

"Billy's just in a hurry," the pilot shot back. "Billy has to be in
Marblehead
for a two-thirty wedding in the air."

Sam rolled his eyes at Holly. "Good grief. How corny can you get?"

"Really? I think it sounds kind of romantic," Holly ventured.

Ah, shit. "Oh, the general
idea
—definitely," Sam agreed, tap-dancing through his
faux pas.
"I meant, it's doing it over
Marblehead
that's corny. I would get married over
Martha's Vineyard
. Because the Vineyard—now
that's
romantic."

Holly broke into one of her sunshine grins and he thought, here's a girl who should smile more often. Too bad
Eden
had tossed that grenade in her lap. Their laps, in fact—her mother sounded like a basket case as well. He had to wonder about the father. How the hell did a probate lawyer ever find the nerve or, depending how you looked at it, become so witless that he was willing to drop a family on its collective head in a willy-nilly chase after a hot piece of ass?