The Pandora Box (9 page)

“Uh-oh. Looks like we’ve got the wake-up-grouchy type. Probably going to be like this every time it’s her turn to stand watch. What do you think, Starr?”

“I can’t think with a headache,” Starr grumbled from the dock where he was unloading the supplies from a cart. “You could’ve at least told me we were leaving tonight before I drank six beers.”

“Two grouches,” Hawk pronounced.

“Are we leaving already?” Marion emerged from the companionway, wearing her blue-flowered bathrobe and curlers in her hair.

There was a dead silence as the two men stared at her.

Hawk cast Dee a questioning glance.

“This is my friend Marion Bates. Marion, this is Wayne Hawkins and Henry Starr. Better known as—”

“Will you step into my office for a minute?” Hawk took Dee by the arm and pulled her over the rail of the boat and down onto the dock.

She might have stumbled if he hadn’t had a firm hold on her, which he did not let up on until they were two boats away.

“Hey!” Dee pulled her arm free and stood still. “What do you think...”

“You have any more surprises you haven’t told me about?”

“Listen, I didn’t sign on for one of your charters, you know,” she objected. “I signed you on for mine!”

“Wrong. This trip was planned a long time before you got here, sweetheart, and if you were three weeks later, you’d have missed it.”

“It’s my boat, Hawkins. Legally, I could hire someone else to run it for me.”

“Legally, I could hold things up in court long enough to keep you from going at all, Miss Dee Parker. I’ve got papers on it, too.”

“According to the lady up at the office, not good for three weeks!”

“Will you two shut up?” Starr complained. “While you’re standing there arguing over something we already settled, that bar we gotta cross is kicking up like the devil out there. Partners, remember? That’s what we decided. So we got four now instead of three. So what. Just get your butts over here and get busy.”

There was nothing but silence for a minute.

“Welcome aboard, Marion,” Starr added and handed the last box up to her.

“No more secrets,” Hawk said as they started back. “Got that?”

“Oh, sure. You tell me yours…partner… then I’ll tell you mine.”

Getting “under way” was quite a project. Which led Dee to believe that getting a fifty-six-foot yacht out of a crowded harbor was a lot more complicated than pulling a bus out of a garage. It would have been a nightmare if she and Marion tried doing it alone, in spite of their newfound sailing knowledge.

Pandora’s
classic beauty came to life in a confusion of lines and rigging, each of which had a specific purpose vital to her operation. There were ropes to untie and others to tie down, while some needed to be untied and tied all over again. The engine was turned on and rumbling so far in advance Dee had become accustomed to the rhythmic drone of the diesel and only realized they were moving when the dock seemed to slip away of its own accord.

By that time, nearly an hour had gone by.

After stowing all personal effects that had been unpacked back into secure status again, the
Pandora
finally eased out and pointed her bow toward the sea.

Outside the sheltered harbor, there were whitecaps on the crests of waves breaking at ten to fifteen feet in a brisk wind. But the sleek, gracefully-built yacht only shook the breakers off her gleaming decks and plowed with a steady, determined effort away from land. As if she remembered and was grateful for being let loose into her element again.

Hawk, who up until now had been preoccupied with the details of getting under way, was suddenly spellbound. “Starr, look at her! Even in this weather, she handles like an angel.”

“Yeah, yeah. But if you don’t dump at least some of this wind, boy, I’m gonna have the pukes all the way to Frisco.”

Dee clung to one of the support bars that the safety lines were strung through all around the rails and was glad she had given in to Marion’s promptings to take a Dramamine. The trip over the bar resembled one of those fast moving carnival rides.

Marion sat next to her, clinging onto another support bar. She had traded her bathrobe for a sweat suit and bright orange life preserver—bought from the bait and tackle shop along with the Dramamine—and had fastened it over one of the navy blue cockpit jackets they had each been given.

The jackets were made with a special clip at the side which attached to a safety line. The lines ran through the support bars.

Looking at the frightening rise and churn of impending waves, Dee could see little help the clips would be, outside of being a means to haul one’s body back aboard after it was already drowned. She wished she had swallowed her pride and put on a life preserver like Marion.

The waves loomed up like dark giants and began to break over the decks with unnerving regularity. Everyone got soaked beneath the frequent cascades of cold, shocking water. The decks, as well as lurching, were slanted at a steep angle and made a person constantly feel as if they were falling off.

Dee began to get truly scared.

Two grueling hours later, the situation had not changed. If anything, it was growing worse.

Starr could do little more than hang over the lee rail and curse between retching, and Marion, who had lost several of her curlers in the breaking waves, looked pale as a ghost in the moonlight.

“Captain Hawk!” she cried. “Shouldn’t we pull into—into land somewhere and—and wait this thing out?”

“We pull into land in weather like this,” he called back, “and they’ll be picking us off the beach in bits and pieces. We’re coming up on Cape Mendocino…worst cape on the whole West Coast. Ready to take the helm, Marion?”

“What?”

“Take the helm. It’s time to change the watch.”

“But I don’t know how!”

“Have to learn sometime. Starr’s half dead, and the prima-donna over there looks too scared to move. Come on over.”

Dee would have liked to give him a smart reply, only she was too miserable. Common sense told her he must know something they didn’t, because he was far too casual. At the same time, she could not conquer the natural fear that had her rooted to her spot and could do little more than watch the five minute lesson he gave Marion before he went below.

“Hey!” Dee managed to call before he disappeared. “Are you just going to leave us out here by ourselves? What if something happens?”

“Between the three of you, I think you can handle it. I’m tired and it’s almost dawn.”

“Tired,” she murmured after he was gone. “What does he think the rest of us...”

“It really isn’t that hard, Dee,” Marion said. “I’m actually getting the hang of it. All I have to do is keep it on course, and I do that by just watching this...”

At that moment, a deluge of frothing ocean thundered down on top of everything. The dark water had approached unseen from behind.

Pandora
shuddered and shook her way free, but the force of receding waters was so strong, Marion could barely hang onto the wheel, much less keep it on course. The bow swerved, and too much wind against the giant spread of canvas created more pressure above water than below, threatening to roll the yacht completely onto its beam-ends.

Dee jumped up to help Marion regain control, but it was like trying to pull against centrifugal force and the boat didn’t seem to respond.

“Help us, Starr!” Marion yelled at the slouched and silent figure as
Pandora
began to roll. “Help!”

11

Abducted

“The commander of the ship set an example for rudeness.” ~ Nellie Bly

The two women pulled with their combined strength against the wheel, and as the water receded from the cockpit,
Pandora
slowly began to regain herself.

“It’s—too much for me!” Marion panted. “Go get Captain Hawk! That Starr man’s either passed out, or he’s dead!”

Reality hit Dee like a revelation. Her fear left. In its place, welling up like the storm around them was a seething, righteous anger at the realization they were being tricked. She stumbled across the cockpit, now only ankle deep in water, and shook Starr’s massive shoulders. “Get up and help you no good—”

“Holy fright, Dee!” he bawled, “haven’t you got any respect for a dead man?”

“Partners, you said!” What kind of partner would try to cheat the first night out? You’re nothing but a—”

“All right, all right.” He got to his feet and brushed her off. “Tell it to Hawk, it was his idea. Here, Marion, let me show you how to dump some of the wind out of those sails and use the self-steering gear.”

Dee headed for the companionway, angry enough to burst into the captain’s quarters and yank Hawk out of bed. She brought a deluge of water down the ladder and barely succeeded in keeping her balance when her foot slipped off the wet steps and sent her in one long leap to the galley floor.

“Better learn to use the handholds, babe,” Hawk said quietly. “Unless you want to spend most of the trip on your backside.”

“No thanks to you!” She moved toward the sink, knowing instinctively he was there, but unwilling to run into him in the dark. She stopped at the edge of the counter. “Where’s the light? I want to talk.”

There was the click of a switch and the faint red glow of a navigational light spread over them.

Hawk leaned against the counter with his feet braced squarely on a two-inch high brass rail that ran the length of the galley floor and seemed to be specially for the purpose of allowing one to keep their footing on a slanted deck. He was leisurely sipping from a mug of coffee.

She had noticed the rich, inviting aroma the minute she came in, but it only served to irritate her more because he was enjoying the small comfort alone while the rest of them stood wet and shivering outside.

“You have your nerve!” She wiped dripping saltwater from the side of her face. “If you’re going to war, you ought to at least have the decency to declare it! Just how far were you planning to carry this charade? Until we rolled over completely? Or sank, maybe?”

“
Pandora
can handle a knock down without sinking. She’s a good boat.”

“You mean you were just going to stand down here and let it happen? What kind of—”

“This isn’t some pleasure cruise, Dee. If you’re going to give out on me, I need to know now. Not after we get ourselves in a fix somewhere off the coast of Russia.”

“So,” her voice trembled with outrage. “You have absolutely no faith in me!”

“Baby, I don’t even know you. Two days ago, you walked into my life and turned everything upside down. In one slick move you ruined what I’ve been working at for six months! I’m supposed to be happy about that? Come on.”

“Well, it was a shock for me, too! I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”

“No, it was an inconvenience for you. I’m the one that got the shock. You pulled my own boat out from under me!”

“That’s not fair, Hawkins. I agreed to sell it back after this was over. Under the circumstances, that’s pretty reasonable. If you thought different, you should have come right out and said so instead of...instead of acting like...”

Dee realized she was shaking. From anger or cold, she couldn’t tell, but her teeth began to chatter, and she suddenly felt like she was going to slip into a dead faint.

“Here, drink some of this.” He handed her his mug. “Then get out of those wet clothes and try to get some sleep.”

“No, I’m...I’m going to stick it out till Frisco!”

“It’s two more days until Frisco.”

“Until my turn at the...helm, then.”

“You’ve got two hours until your turn. I’ll wake you up.”

“What about Marion? If you’re mean to her for one minute, Hawk, I’ll—”

“Marion’s a peach, that’s easy enough to see. Anyone that’ll take the helm for the first time under these conditions is all right by me. You’re the only one I’m having trouble with, honey.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Go to bed.”

“And don’t boss me!” She handed the empty mug back to him and started toward her cabin. It was the first time she could remember not finishing an argument. But at the moment, she didn’t care.

It took some time and ingenuity to get out of her cold, clinging clothes in the dark cabin. Her light didn’t work. The floor was slanted and constantly moving. She let her wet things lay where they fell and was satisfied to find a dry T-shirt to replace them with. Whether it was inside out or backward, she hadn’t the time or inclination to bother with. She was freezing.

It took more time and ingenuity to figure out how to stay in a bed that was practically vertical. Just as she was contemplating a move to the floor, she discovered a hammock-like nylon mesh attached to the bedrail that fastened to little brass cleats on the ceiling above her. The result was that one could sleep level and comfortable while the boat was at any angle. By that time, she was as exhausted as if she had just run a marathon instead of sitting immobile on a wet, cold deck for three hours.

She hit the pillow and that was the last thing she remembered.

****

Although there was gray daylight filtering through her porthole when she woke, Dee could have sworn she had been asleep only a few minutes. She could smell bacon and coffee, but didn’t have the energy to do any more than roll over and close her eyes again.

The door opened and Hawk leaned his wind-tossed blond head inside. “Hey. On deck, sugar. It’s your turn on watch.”

“You could at least knock,” she grumbled. “Go away. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“That’s what you said last time. This isn’t the
Queen Mary
. If you’re late, someone else loses sleep.”

“I said I’m coming.”

“Five minutes before I haul you up there in your pajamas.”

The door closed.

“Hawk!” she called. When he leaned in again, she threw her pillow at him.

He caught it and tossed it back. “I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I.”

It was Starr who was bustling around in the galley when she finally made an appearance a few minutes later. Breakfast had obviously come and gone. He was scrubbing the frying pan, banging and clanging, looking as if he had been on a three-day vacation instead of awake and on deck all night.