A Woman Without Lies (8 page)

He was strong. He had lived a long time alone.

So had she.

Am I ready to risk my hard-won serenity for a man who might no longer believe in love?

She closed the trunk with a sharp, metallic sound that brought Hawk’s attention back from the sky. He watched as she got into the car. After a moment’s hesitation he slid behind the wheel, reluctant to break the luminous silence of the
British Columbia
dawn.

Angel said nothing during the drive, however, apparently as pleased as Hawk was by the quiet and the colors radiating through the sky.

They parked at the marina and stepped out to the keening of gulls and the smell of the sea. As one, Angel and Hawk began to carry supplies down the wooden dock to the slips.

When Angel saw Hawk’s boat, she stopped in the middle of the dock and stared. The yacht was over thirty feet long and had the sleek lines that were the hallmark of Italian powerboats. A single glance told her that the boat would handle beautifully, riding the often rough water of the
Inside Passage
with the ease of a hawk soaring on boiling currents of air.

“She’s beautiful,” Angel said simply, turning toward Hawk. “What’s her name?”

“I haven’t given her one.”

Angel realized that the boat was as new as it looked, polished and shining like the sun rising over the sea.

“Don’t name her too quickly,” Angel said. “A boat gets only one name. This one deserves the best.”

“Because it’s pretty?” Hawk asked casually, stepping onto the boat’s shifting deck without hesitation.

“This boat isn’t pretty,” said Angel, looking at its lines with appreciative eyes. “It’s magnificent. Form and function perfectly married. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing missing.”

Hawk turned and looked back over his shoulder at Angel. She didn’t notice. She had eyes only for the glistening white boat.

His lips curved sardonically.

“Expensive, too,” Hawk said.

Angel looked at the boat for another long moment before she sighed and answered.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. The Italians aren’t bashful about pricing their works of art.” She glanced at Hawk. “Can you, er, handle this boat?”

“I used to race powerboats.”

“I thought
Derry
said you raced cars.”

“I did both. There was more money in cars.”

“And more danger?” Angel asked.

Hawk’s eyes narrowed.

“Does the idea of danger turn you on?” he asked.

“No.”

“It turns on a lot of women.”

“Does it?” asked Angel. “Why?”

Hawk made a harsh sound. “Adrenaline, honey. It tells them that they’re alive.”

“Or that someone else is dead,” Angel said, her eyes too dark, too large.

Memories rose, threatening to choke her.

Hawk saw the haunted expression pass over Angel’s face. Then she shifted the bags in her arms and stepped onto the boat as though nothing had happened.

And, Hawk realized, nothing had. Whatever ghosts haunted Angel weren’t new. They were an accepted part of her life, just as his ghosts were part of his.

Or else the haunted look was simply an act, as seamless as the night.

With a mental shrug, Hawk dismissed the subject.

Act or reality, it doesn’t change what Angel is. Even animals twitch in their dreams, haunted by whatever ghosts their limited minds called up.

“I’ll show you how to handle the boat when we’re out in the strait,” said Hawk. “If you want.”

“Of course I do. Besides, that’s the only way you’ll get to fish.”

Hawk lifted one black eyebrow in silent query.

“It’s almost impossible to fish alone in a boat this size,” explained Angel. “Someone has to be at the helm, especially if you hook up with a big salmon when the water is crowded with other boats and the tide is running.”

Together Hawk and Angel finished loading supplies on board. The sun was well over the mainland mountains by the time Hawk eased the boat out of the marina and into the grip of the
Campbell River
current.

To the left of the boat scattered evergreens and flatlands gave way to a forested headland that thrust powerfully out of the sea. To the right a spit of land stuck out like an impudent tongue, dividing the sea from the intertidal waters.

A small plane took off out over the water. The engines revved hard, pushing pontoons through the water faster and faster until the plane lifted into the pale blue sky.

Hawk took it all in with swift, sweeping glances. As soon as the last speed limit buoy fell astern, he smoothly fed power to the twin diesels. The boat lifted slightly, splitting the blue-green water into silver foam.

He kept the speed well below the boat’s capability, for small craft were thickly clustered to the right, beyond the spit of land. As though there were invisible markers, all the boats circled within a defined area. Rods sprouted from the sides and stern of the boats. The rods curved like whips against the clean sky, bent by the combined weight of lures and sea.

“Must be God’s own fishing hole,” Hawk commented.

Angel smiled.

“That’s Frenchman’s Pool,” she said, her voice pitched to rise above the potent mutter of the diesels. “Before the dam was built,
Campbell River
used to flood in the spring. The floods dug out a huge hole in the ocean floor.”

Hawk glanced over his shoulder. No dam was in sight back there, and no hole visible below.

“Salmon coming in from the ocean school up there,” Angel said, pointing toward the crowded area. “Some people say the fish are adjusting to fresh water after years at sea. Others say they lie up there waiting for just the right sensory signals to lure them into the river itself.”

“Which do you believe?” Hawk asked.

For a long moment Angel didn’t answer.

Hawk looked at her profile with curiosity and a hunger he was having a hard time concealing.

Against the sun, the tendrils of hair that escaped from Angel’s single French braid burned like pale flames licking over her clear skin. There was an unusual purity of line in her profile, a harmony of forehead and nose and chin that was very strong without being in the least unfeminine.

And when she turned to face him, her eyes were as transparent and deep as river pools. Her eyes were unfocused, looking inward rather than at Hawk or the restless sea.

“I think,” Angel said slowly, “that the salmon school up in Frenchman’s Pool come to terms with themselves and the fresh water that will be both their consummation and their death.”

“You make the salmon sound almost human.”

“Do I?” murmured Angel, smiling sadly. “Most people aren’t that brave. They look no further into the future than their next meal. The salmon look at death and beyond.”

“Beyond?”

“Birth. The eternal cycle, death and renewal blending together like
Campbell River
and the sea.”

A shout came across the water, followed by an excited babble of French. Angel leaned over the rail, peering into the brilliant light.

“Look!” she said. “He’s got one on!”

Angel pointed toward a small rowboat that appeared to be pinned to the iridescent surface of the sea. Impatiently she slid open the cabin window beside the boat’s helm. Her fingers fastened onto Hawk’s arm.

“Can you see?” she asked urgently. “The rowboat next to the yellow inboard. Oh, they’ve got a dandy! Look at that rod bend!”

For a moment Hawk was aware only of Angel’s nearness, her sweet scent, her fingers pressed against the muscles of his upper arm.

Then his glance followed her pointing finger. He saw a small boat being towed against the current by an invisible force. There was no engine on the boat, nothing but a broad-shouldered man rowing steadily and another man straining against the coiled rod.

“What happened to their engine?” Hawk asked.

“The boat is from the Tyee Club. No engines allowed.”

“Why?”

“The whole idea is to hunt the salmon as the first Englishmen did—wooden oars and wooden lures, nothing but your human strength and the power of the salmon.”

Hawk watched with sharpened attention. The small boat was going nowhere, pinned in place by a tug-of-war between man and salmon.

“People come from all over the world just to try to catch a thirty-pound salmon from a rowboat,” Angel said. “If they succeed, they become members of the Tyee Club.”

“Are you a member?” asked Hawk softly.

“Yes.”

“Who rowed for you?
Derry
?”

The question sliced through Angel, leaving memories welling in its wake like blood from a fresh wound.

Grant had rowed for her. They had laughed and exulted together, making a pact to smoke the salmon and serve it at their wedding reception.

Ten days later Grant was dead.

“On weekend mornings,” Angel said, her voice husky, ignoring Hawk’s question, “Frenchman’s Pool is so crowded you can almost walk from boat to boat across it.”

Hawk had missed neither the instant of anguish written on Angel’s features nor the unanswered question.

“I’d like to try my hand at rowboat fishing,” he said. “Is the man who rowed for you still available?”

“No.” Angel’s voice was soft, final.

“Why?”

“I’m not strong enough to row for more than an hour against a strong current,” Angel said, ignoring this question as she had the other one. “That’s not long enough to give you a fair chance of a fish. Carlson would row you if I asked him to. Carlson is strong enough to row for days against any tide.”

“Carlson?”

“A friend,” Angel said softly. “A very old friend.”

The corner of Hawk’s mouth lifted. He wondered how many other
very old friends
Angel had up and down the strait.

Angel looked toward Hawk again.

“Would you like me to ask Carlson to row for you?” she asked.

“I’ll think about it.”

Hawk turned away from Angel.

The smooth shift of Hawk’s muscles beneath her fingers made Angel realize that her hand was still pressed against his upper arm. She lifted her fingers quickly.

“Do you want to wait while they land that fish?” asked Hawk, adjusting the boat’s throttles.

“No. It could be hours. Salmon are very strong. Unless you want to wait?”

“I’d rather get out of this crowd and teach you how to handle the boat. Which direction?”

“North,” Angel said succinctly. “The farther you go, the less people there are.”

“Sounds like my kind of direction.”

Hawk sat in the cockpit and gunned the engines, letting them lift the boat’s gleaming white prow above the waves.

As the boat picked up speed, Angel braced herself against the cockpit seat and stared through the windshield to the sea ahead. She looked at the water in front of the boat with intent, narrowed eyes.

“Have you been warned about deadheads?” Angel asked.

“What are they?” asked Hawk, answering her question and asking one of his own.

“Logs that have broken loose from a towing raft. When they get waterlogged, they bob up and down just below the surface until they finally sink.”

Hawk immediately cut back on the throttles.

“Sounds lethal,” he said.

“Sometimes. Most often you just get a cold dunking and a bashed boat.”

A powerboat came up on their left, passing them in a brilliant cloud of spray.

“Looks like no one told him about deadheads either,” Hawk said.

“You get used to them, like wind storms and fifteen knot currents. Comes with the territory.”

“Like car wrecks.” Angel flinched in the instant before she controlled herself.

“Yes,” she said. “Like car wrecks. We keep driving anyway.”

Hawk saw Angel’s ghost reappear, pain written for a second across the smooth skin of her face. Then the ghost was banished once more.

“What do you consider a safe speed?” he asked.

“Right now?”

Angel turned slowly, measuring the sea surrounding the boat.

“There’s good visibility,” she said. “The wind is down. The tide is running but not boiling.”

Hawk looked as well, measuring her perceptions against his own knowledge of water and racing hulls and his own reflexes.

Finally Angel gestured toward the power-boat surging away from them.

“About what he’s doing,” she said.

One black eyebrow lifted, but Hawk said nothing as he brought the boat up to speed again.

“There aren’t that many deadheads,” explained Angel. “And most of them are flagged as soon as they’re found.”

“Is that what those are for?” Hawk asked.

He gestured toward a handful of meter-length rods with a sharp point on one end and a bright triangular flag on the other.