Overfall Read Online Free PDF Page B

Manhattan on board. One smoke is understandable.” He lit up and took a drag, inhaling deeply. The wind was still whipping and he could feel the chill even in goose down. Once more he pulled the smoke into his lungs, the ember a tiny glowing furnace.
    After the third drag he ground out the smoke with a pinch of two wet fingers. Then he took one more look around with night vision and was reassured by the isolation. Never before had he left his sat phone behind, but it had broken last week and it hadn’t seemed a priority until now. At this moment he would give a lot to call Grogg and get Big Brain started on some probing questions about Anna Wade. He figured he’d better get down to his guest. As his last act topside, he opened a lazzarette and put the butt in a plastic garbage bag.
    “Filthy damn habit,” he told Harry, promising himself it would be his last.
    It would take two hours to cook the spaghetti if he did it half right, twenty minutes if he sacrificed quality and cheated. She could drink wine while he decided exactly how nosy he was going to be.
    He had the pot full of Italian-spiced tofu balls, beer, more Italian spices, tomato paste, and stewed tomatoes.
    The curlicue pasta was on and he was marinating the avocado for the salad when she walked out of her stateroom. It was a mere fortuity that he had fresh lettuce. He had bartered it from the captain of a packer boat coming down from Alaska.
    “What you been doing up there?”
    “After my makeup, shivering under a blanket, looking through your books, and snooping.”
    “Least you’re honest.”
    Her hair was soft now, her lipstick even, smooth, and warm; the touch of eyeliner and mascara made pools of her eyes. He saw it coming—at any moment the next assault would arrive.
    Harry trotted over to her for a second pat.
    After fussing over Harry for a moment, she came to Sam and put a hand on his arm. “Can’t you think of some way to get us out of here?” These words and the warm hand were accompanied by her truly charming smile. It would make most men want to please her. It made Sam want a drink with another smoke. This was the old life and it had come roaring back with the adrenaline rush.
    He shrugged. “I’m sorry you don’t want to stay for dinner. It’s a good recipe. Ever had beer in the red sauce?”
    “Beer?”
    “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
    “Could you use your radio to call someone—a seaplane maybe?”
    “We went over this. It’s a line-of-sight VHF radio, we’re in a natural bowl, the shortwave radio is in the shop. I don’t have a sat phone that works. There is no cell signal here.”
    “Get me off this boat. Yes or no?” This time she was direct.
    “No.”
    She looked at him with a level stare and he looked right back.
    “Don’t you have a beacon?”
    “An emergency locator beacon won’t get anyone here tonight.”
    She folded her arms and exhaled as though it were her last breath on this earth. It moved him but not enough to overcome his own determination. He made it a point not to be impressed by celebrities.
    “The Mounties could get me off the beach,” she said.
    “With some luck we’ll find a way out of here tomorrow. Of course if I knew what was going on, I might try to figure some way off this boat ... some way that didn’t entail freezing my ass in the salt water and then facing death from exposure on shore. Maybe.”
    He returned to the stove and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Without a word she walked back into the stateroom and closed the door.
    So it’s going to be like that, he said to himself. Maybe she really can’t even pretend to be like the rest of us.
    Three
     
    Anna Wade had been aboard a few yachts, some lavish, some ordinary. Sam’s seemed compact but cozy and tasteful. In the forward stateroom there was a walk-around queen-size pedestal bed and a small vanity next to a door to the forward head. Additionally there was a desk. The woodwork was lustrous and warm, a little