Seize the Storm (2 page)

T
HE SUN WAS UP.

The sky was bare of cloud, a few lingering stars above, and a half-moon aglow. The sea was calm, too, easy swells dimpled with eddies as the vessel cut through the water. They were a long way from San Francisco, their home port, and not as far from Honolulu, their destination.

Susannah saw the threat, an object half submerged in the water.

“Slow down!” she called to her mother at the helm of
Athena's Secret
, and the yacht powered down, the port and starboard engines both shifting to idle.

The forward momentum of the craft gradually decelerated, and Susannah seized the boat hook and got ready to fend off what could be real danger—maybe a chunk of freighter debris or a floating explosive.

The ocean was not clean. Objects floated in the waves, and not simply the incidental plastic bottles. Miles of fishing wire floated below the surface, threatening to befoul propellers, and carpets of nurdles—raw plastic that had been flushed down factory drains—could easily jam a rudder.

To make matters worse, craggy timbers and drifting furniture had been known to damage ships in collisions at sea, and there were legends of spike-encrusted, superannuated mines that escaped from storage and swept the currents, blindly seeking targets.

Leonard was on the lookout for salvage, or what he called “waveson,” the old term for floating wreckage that could be lawfully collected and that belonged to the finder. In the unlikely event of the discovery of a craft that was abandoned and derelict, Leonard and his crew could claim a salvage reward from the owners, and could claim the entire cargo if no lawful owners could be discovered.

This whimsical adventurism added zest to the cruise. So far, the only useful flotsam they had hooked from the water had been an Igloo ice chest.

Susannah thrust the long boat hook across the water. The pole had a brass crook at the end, like a shepherd's crook. When she reached the lunging metal thing, she set her feet. Using all her strength, she fended the object away, fighting it off. An oil barrel. The logo was vivid red and gold,
Shell
, barely corroded by the sea.

It was not easy—the sea forced the unsteady, heavy drum back toward the wooden hull—and it was only with a great effort that Susannah was able to compel the barrel far enough away that the ship's wake fanned out to meet it and the danger bobbed past them to the east.

Susannah put the boat hook back where it belonged, just under the gunwale along the inside of the yacht.

“Cruise speed,” she called, and her mother throttled up, the yacht's velocity increasing to ten knots—their normal speed in fair weather.

Over two thousand miles from the Mainland, the birds had been a friendly albatross and a team of male frigate birds, large fowl with graceful wings and long, cutlass-fierce beaks. These were the young males who had not found a mate for the summer, so they ranged the ocean in groups of threes or fours, companionable rivals, enjoying their ability to loft upward with the wind and snap sea bass out of the water.

Now these birds had disappeared, except for a remnant few, circling high in the vault of the sky. This far out at sea, she did not expect to see a wandering gull—gulls couldn't drink salt water, and the only gull out here would be lost, or on his way back to land as fast as he could fly.

There had been a cascade of flying fish at first light, the first flying fish of the voyage, and Susannah had a surprise for her cousin Martin.

But now the only signs of life were the contrails of jetliners, blurred slashes far above. And just then a new arrival—a red and white airplane, far to the north.

The aircraft was heading east, too far away to make a sound. As Susannah watched, it turned gracefully in a different direction. Something about the far-off airplane puzzled Susannah, and she felt the first beginnings of concern.

Safety was on everyone's mind. Central America's drug wars had spilled over onto the sea, and as far north as Juneau the Coast Guard had been in running battles with ships laden with illegal cargo. Pleasure craft had been captured routinely by pirates, and this family voyage might prove to be reckless.

At least the blue shark that had been trailing them in recent days was reliable. He appeared with the rising sun, the creature showing off the way an F-16 buzzing a stadium showed off, demonstrating his powers.

What would you tell me, she wondered.

She listened to the silence. Martin joked that she was crazy, believing that she could hear what animals were thinking. Martin was gentle, even when he was being critical.

So maybe she was a little foolish. But surely she could hear what the shark was obsessing about, that long-living spear, blue as any Pacific swell on his topside and sky-pale beneath, so no creature below could see him coming.

Hunger was all she sensed from him. But nothing like human hunger—the real thing, primordial and, except for brief intervals, everlasting.

Susannah had worked recent summers at the Marine Mammal Center north of San Francisco, helping to nurse harbor seals who had been cut by boat propellers or snagged by fish nets, abscesses in their fins. Or worse—sometimes the animals had been shot.

Now Susannah went aft, to be closer to her mother, Claudette, and switched on the marine scanner, listening to ship-to-ship chatter, except there wasn't any this early in the morning, just the empty hiss of static, gentle and not quite reassuring.

Susannah asked, “Can you smell it in the air?”

Her mother was at the wheel, smoking. Of course she couldn't smell anything, inhaling cigarette smoke unapologetically and moodily, staring at Susannah as she shook her head no. She seemed to still be brooding over a conversation they'd had earlier.

“The air smells salty, like the beach,” said Susannah.

Open ocean smelled like fresh laundry, whole sheets of it, wide and clean. It shouldn't smell like this.

This thick, brackish air meant a storm was coming.

“
I
KNEW ALL ABOUT YOUR FATHER
and that woman,” Claudette said at last, resuming their conversation from earlier after the long, edgy break. “You weren't telling me any news.”

Susannah groaned aloud. She wasn't given to silent exasperation. When she was unhappy, people knew it.

She shouldn't have mentioned the subject. She should have kept her mouth shut. Who cared about extramarital affairs these days? She called her parents by their first names. They were a modern family.

“You knew about it?”

“He told me,” Claudette replied.

Claudette had a way of standing that looked as though she had an attitude of prideful dismissiveness toward everything around her, one foot forward, the other at an angle, one hand on her hip.

The truth was that she had injured her right knee falling from a horse as a teenager. The knee was chronically weak, and she stood and walked in a manner calculated to disguise this flaw.

So why the long sulk? wondered Susannah.

“Claudette,” she said, “ I have trouble believing that Dad told you everything.”

“He told me he saw her, and he told me it was innocent.” Claudette tossed the cigarette away, and it flew wide, over the side of the yacht into the sea. This bothered Susannah, her mother using the Pacific as an ashtray.

“It didn't look innocent,” said Susannah.

Her mother was proud—arrogant, even, with good reason. She was smart and good-looking. Susannah figured her mother deserved better than a cheating husband.

“Where were they?” came the question again. They had been through all this.

“In Oakland, at Jack London Square,” Susannah said, “near the ferry station.”

“When?” This time more sharply. Her mother might have hidden deficiencies, Susannah knew, but she had hidden powers, too. She got what she wanted.

“A month ago,” said Susannah. “Maybe five weeks.”

“Just like he told me,” said her mother, perhaps betraying just a small amount of relief.

Susannah gave a shrug.

“He told me Michelle was going to work for the FBI. It was a farewell lunch.”

Susannah waved her hand OK. She wanted to drop the subject. Maybe it was a relief to figure out now that her dad had not been cheating.

Claudette thought for a while. “Are you sure it was Michelle?”

What an odd question, thought Susannah. If she already knew, why was she asking? Another hidden weakness. But she felt a little compassion for Claudette. After all, they were talking about marital dynamite. “No one looks like her, with that mustard-yellow hair, or wears those—”

She made a gesture across her upper thigh.

No one else sports those unstylish but never completely out-of-date short skirts, she meant. Except her father's old legal secretary, his former and now maybe not-so-former girlfriend. Susannah had told Martin about the sighting, and he had suggested not mentioning it, at least not until the voyage was over and they were safely berthed in Honolulu.

But her mother had been sharing the predawn watch with her daughter, and the warm air was so sweet that her mother had started bragging about what great luck she had enjoyed all her life. This had to be a lie, or at least an exaggeration. The last year had been one slump after another, with the family stockbroker finally quitting and leaving for the Bahamas. And for some reason Susannah had felt like pricking that air of self-congratulation, cutting her mother down.

Claudette lit a fresh cigarette. Someone else was awake now. He was moving around below, the wooden deck communicating the movement of a human body over the vibration of the engines. Someone big, Martin probably, tiptoeing forward to the galley, where Leonard, her father, was probably already up, too, preparing the ingredients for his mysteriously delicious hot cocoa.

“This is a bad time,” said Claudette, “to even think about divorcing your father.”

Susannah put her hands over her eyes. No, no, no, she wanted to protest. This was not what she was suggesting.

Claudette could survive a divorce emotionally intact. She was good-looking in an athletic, silver-tipped way—tall, size sixteen, and with the posture and shape to go with it, aside from her old injury. Dad, however, would be wrecked by a breakup. He was an affable man who couldn't sleep without pills, a man who loved life but suffered emotional downturns in broad sweeps of feeling.

When his own father died he had sat in a darkened room for a week and lost ten pounds. When Claudette's mom died, Claudette wore a black scarf and bought an iPhone. Both of Susannah's parents were genuine and loving, but her dad was an animated bear, and her mom was an ocelot.

“Our stock portfolio is dust,” said Mom now, “and our money market is down to pennies.” She spoke as though to herself, closing one eye against the smoke, keeping the cigarette in her mouth, looking tough and ready for anything. The cigarette bobbed up and down when she added, “Divorce would be a financial H-bomb for both of us.”

“What are we going to do about Axel?” asked Susannah, wanting to seek some common cause with her mother.

“Anything you like,” said Claudette.

Axel had been coming on to Susannah, not overtly, but with a quiet, possessive air that bothered her. It was hard to avoid someone on a yacht in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Axel was the only paid crew member, an eighteen-year-old with a lot of sea experience and a high opinion of his powers. Susannah was a year younger than Axel, with a lot less know-how, and she had to admit that Axel had sex appeal. He didn't talk much to her, and she did not mind. Axel liked talking to men, showing off. He just looked at her and smiled, sticking his chin out.

“I'll tell him to leave you alone, if you want,” said Claudette.

“I'd feel embarrassed.”

Claudette conceded this possibility with a contemplative smile.

Susannah liked this about her mother. She had a way of sighing that made everyone around her feel like failures, but she got the point of things quickly. Claudette had been a manager for Macy's, before the business collapse cost her the job, and she had always been hurrying to a meeting with the Talbots agent or the Cole Haan rep. Claudette knew how to deal with people.

“We've all gone salmon fishing with Axel a few times,” Claudette said. She got the gold Dunhill lighter out of her pants pocket, flicked it, and lit yet another cigarette, the burst of Marlboro menthol smoke vanishing into the air. But Susannah caught the scent of it, raw perfume, toxic but almost desirable, even to someone who had never smoked.

Claudette drew on her cigarette and gave a sideways toss of her head, an unspoken
Never mind Axel.

“Have you been watching that airplane?” Claudette was asking now.

“Heading east, and then heading north,” said Susannah. “For the last ten, fifteen minutes.”

Claudette had the big Pentax binoculars up to her eyes, focusing. She kept one hand on the helm and manipulated the binoculars easily with the other.

She said, “Now I can't see it—like it vanished.”

M
ARTIN CLIMBED OUT ON DECK.
Susannah wondered why guys like Martin always looked great in the morning, fresh out of bed.

He said her name, and she said his in return, casual and cheerful like it was no big deal, but for her, seeing him after an absence was always a forceful moment. Martin had a way of changing things, shifting the mood, making it better. If you could fall in love with your first cousin, that's what she was doing.

Martin had thick auburn hair and a hale, easygoing manner that could be welcoming or thoughtful, depending on his mood. This morning he wore army-green shorts and a Scripps Oceanography T-shirt, his feet thrust into a pair of Top-Siders. He had studied tide pools and sea currents at Scripps last summer, had taken scuba lessons, too, and had come back talking about plankton and carbon dioxide levels.