Amber Beach Read Online Free PDF Page B

way.
    “This is a purse?” he asked, lifting the black leather backpack on the table.
    “It works for me.”
    He held the backpack with one hand. “Find any?”
    “What?”
    “Good fishing holes.”
    “Er, no.”
    “So you decided to hire a fishing guide?”
    “Er, yes.”
    Jake decided that Honor needed a lot more practice lying. Unless she really was a world-class actress pretending to be the innocent sister of a larcenous brother….
    Impatiently Jake told himself that it didn’t matter. Either way, the lady with the cat eyes and quick mind was definitely trouble in oversized sweats.
    “Why are you looking so skeptical?” Honor asked. “Surely you’ve seen a woman’s purse before.”
    “All sizes and shapes. I once saw a woman pull a live rooster and two chickens out of her purse. Of course, she was on the way to the market, so it wasn’t all that surprising.”
    “Any fresh eggs?”
    “Does scrambled count?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then there weren’t any eggs.”
    A smile changed the taut lines of Honor’s face. The smile was brief and all the more beautiful for it.
    “Ah, well”, she said. “Maybe next time. Where was this market?”
    Telling her that it was in Kaliningrad would raise the kind of questions Jake had no intention of answering.
    “In the country”, he said. “Is that the log?”
    “Yes, but there’s nothing interesting in it. Just rows of dates and gas consumption and maintenance records and that sort of thing.”
    Adrenaline pulsed through Jake. He had hoped that Kyle was the kind of captain who kept decent records. That, plus the chart plotter and computer, could tell a lot about where the boat had been recently.
    Jake took the log from Honor. For a minute or two he flipped through it, frowning like a man working hard. Then he looked up at her.
    “I can’t say for sure that the boat is ready to go out until I look over this log more closely”, he said. “Why don’t I read it while you go into town and get boat shoes and a fishing license? If you hurry, we can still make the tide change.”
    She hesitated. “Okay, I guess.”
    “I’ll meet you back here in ninety minutes”, he said, sliding out from the helm seat.
    “Wait! What do I do with the boat until then?”
    He gave her an odd look. “What do you mean?”
    “It’s running”, she pointed out.
    Jake turned off the ignition key, pulled it out, and dropped it in Honor’s lap.
    “It’s just an engine”, he said with exaggerated patience. “It won’t attack you. Treat it like a car.”
    All that kept Honor from saying Bite me, big boy! was the fact that he probably would.

 
3
     
    Jake turned his battered four-wheel-drive truck into the muddy tracks that led to his cabin. Surrounded by dark, wind-sculpted fir trees, the small house crouched on a cliff above Puget Sound. This was his getaway from company headquarters in Seattle, the place where he caught up on work, his home away from home, the one place whose address and telephone number no one had.
    That was why he swore when he saw a Ford utility vehicle sitting in what passed for his driveway. When a woman in a smart red blazer and black skirt climbed out and waved at him, he knew that the day had just gone from sugar to shoe polish.
    Ellen Lazarus was old news from a time in his life when he believed in saving the world from itself. These days his goal was less grandiose: all he wanted was not to be at ground zero when that great outhouse in the sky unloaded.
    He turned off the truck, climbed out, leaned against the door, and waited to find out how much crap was headed straight for his head.
    “What, not even a smile or a wave of welcome?” Ellen said, walking up to him.
    Jake watched her move with a cross between cynicism and male appreciation. She didn’t have to work to add an extra swing and jiggle to her ass. She had been born with that special locomotion, the same way she had been born with wide blue eyes, black hair, and a brainy pragmatism that