Thunder Point Read Online Free PDF Page B

years of age, but most people would have taken seven or eight years off that.
    He went through the living room and opened a window to the veranda. Rain dripped from the roof and out to sea lightning crackled. He drank a little more of his beer, then put the can down and closed the window. Better to try and get a little more sleep. He was taking a party of recreational scuba divers out from Caneel Bay at nine-thirty, which meant that as usual he needed his wits about him, plus all his considerable expertise.
    As he went through the living room he paused to pick up a framed photo of his wife, Karye, and his two young children, the boy Walker and his daughter, little Wallis. They’d departed for Florida only the previous day for a vacation with their grandparents, which left him a bachelor for the next month. He smiled wryly, knowing just how much he’d miss them, and went back to bed.
     
     
    At the same moment in his house on the edge of Cruz Bay at Gallows Point, Henry Baker sat in his study reading in the light of a single desk lamp. He had the door to the veranda open because he liked the rain and the smell of the sea. It excited him, took him back to the days of his youth and his two years’ service in the Navy during the Korean War. He’d made full Lieutenant, had even been decorated with the Bronze Star, could have made a career of it. In fact they’d wanted him to, but there was the family publishing business to consider, responsibilities and the girl he’d promised to marry.
    It hadn’t been a bad life considering. No children, but he and his wife had been content until cancer took her at fifty. From then on he’d really lost interest in the business, had been happy to accept the right kind of deal for a takeover, which had left him very rich and totally rootless at fifty-eight.
    It was a visit to St. John which had been the saving of him. He’d stayed at Caneel Bay, the fabulous Rock Resort on its private peninsula north of Cruz Bay. It was there that he’d been introduced to scuba diving by Bob Carney and it had become an obsession. He’d sold his house in the Hamptons, moved to St. John and bought the present place. His life at sixty-three was totally satisfactory and worthwhile, although Jenny had had something to do with that as well.
    He reached for her photo. Jenny Grant, twenty-five, face very calm, wide eyes above high cheekbones, short dark hair, and there was still a wariness in those eyes as if she expected the worst, which was hardly surprising when Baker recalled their first meeting in Miami when she’d tried to proposition him in a car park, her body shaking from the lack of the drugs she’d needed.
    When she’d collapsed, he’d taken her to the hospital himself, had personally guaranteed the necessary financing to put her through a drug rehabilitation unit, had held her hand all the way because there was no one else. It was the usual story. She was an orphan raised by an aunt who’d thrown her out at sixteen. A fair voice had enabled her to make some kind of living singing in saloons and cocktail lounges, and then the wrong man, bad company, and the slide had begun.
    He’d brought her back to St. John to see what the sea and sun could do. The arrangement had worked perfectly and on a strictly platonic basis. He was the father she had never known, she was the daughter he had been denied. He’d invested in a cafe and bar for her on the Cruz Bay waterfront called Jenny’s Place. It had proved a great success. Life couldn’t be better and he always waited up for her. It was at that moment he heard the jeep drive up outside, there was the sound of the porch door and she came in laughing, a raincoat over her shoulder. She threw it on a chair and leaned down and kissed his cheek.
    “My God, it’s like a monsoon out there.”
    “It’ll clear by morning, you’ll see.” He took her hand. “Good night?”
    “Very.” She nodded. “A few tourists in from Caneel and the Hyatt. Gosh, but