Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

out her approaching death and clung to the handrail and alternately prayed for deliverance and cursed the pilot, Albright, and Jared in random order.

Jared started up from his recurring nightmare of sirens and red flames into the dislocation that now accompanied his every awakening. This time the visions were more real, and as the sirens raged over him he looked up and saw a yellow floatplane, its port wing surely no more than ten feet above the water, barreling past. In that wide-eyed split second, he saw sunglasses, the flash of teeth, and a cheery wave; he blinked and envisioned Cat, eyes shut and white-faced in the seat behind the pilot, and he blinked again and scrubbed his eyes and she vanished as the plane tilted up and away from him and screamed off into the distance. Jared stared after it and shook his head to clear it. He went below and threw water on his face and poured himself a large coffee and returned to the cockpit and vowed to drink and sleep no more.

The dreams were becoming too real.

He pulled out his phone on a sudden urge to call Cat but watched as the phone failed to connect. Out here in the middle of the Strait there was no signal. He’d try again later. The sky darkened and Arrow bent to a sudden gust then regained her footing and sailed on into the early evening. Sooner than forecast, Jared thought, and took a long look around, then went below and turned on the VHF and checked the weather channels. There was mention of the low that had been predicted coming in with some southeast wind increases, and Jared reached across and tapped the glass on the barometer and the needle dropped. Maybe the start of something bigger.

He pulled on a hooded rain jacket and long-billed cap and went back out on deck and sheltered under the dodger where he sipped his coffee and pondered his dream. He’d never paid much attention to dreams before Joseph came into his life, partly because he didn’t believe in their relevance and partly because, if they were in some way indicators of the inner self, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know what they revealed about him. Joseph had changed him, and now he looked upon dreams as some combination of things past and a foreshadowing of things to come. It was something he had come to believe reluctantly and would never attempt to explain to anyone. Maybe not even to himself.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder and the sound of something striking the mainsail directly above where Jared sheltered under the dodger. A moment later a large raven fell onto the cabin top in front of him and lay without moving. Jared stared at it, astonished, and it raised its head and croaked angrily at him and hopped a few steps then flew away. It turned back and circled the boat at mast height, once, and then again, its head tilted down, the guttural croaking unceasing before it finally headed off in the direction of Desolation Sound.

Jared watched after it, his heart hammering, eyes half shut as he stared out through the rain-streaked isinglass of the dodger, and without conscious thought he swung the tiller to follow the bird. And then he saw a flash out of the corner of his eye, right at the dark heart of the storm cell that had moved past and was now miles ahead. Lightning, he thought, and went to turn away when it flashed again. He picked up the binoculars and focused. It was a hand-held flare, and much closer than he’d first thought. He took a quick bearing from the compass and went to the tiller and clicked the autopilot onto the new course. It brought the wind more on the beam and Arrow picked up speed and Jared decided not to bother with the engine.

Twenty minutes later he could make out the Zodiac dead in the water with two men in wet gear and Sou’westers inside waving frantically. He brought Arrow past them and rounded up into the wind and ran back alongside and signalled they should tie on and come aboard via the stern ladder. The wind had died back down as the cell moved through, and it wasn’t difficult.

“Thanks, partner,” one of them said. “The damned engines quit dead on us. Just like that. Barely a splutter. Must have been water in the gas, a fuel blockage, something like that.” The man grinned at him, but something was off.

Jared looked at the twin 200 Yamahas bolted on the stern of the Ribby and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he remembered Cat’s trip across to Nanaimo after the race.

Jared took a deep breath and turned back towards the brothers.

“Don’t even think about it, partner,” Clint said. The gun in his hand was rock steady. Travis stepped behind Jared and cold-cocked him, and he slumped to the deck. Clint leaned over Jared and bent his legs up behind him and zip-tied them to his wrists. The two men pulled the painter on the inflatable and hauled it up tight against the stern rail, then picked Jared up fore and aft and threw him over the lines and into it. His head crashed against the fibreglass seat and blood spurted out.

“Whoops,” Travis said.

There was no reply, just a small but growing pool of blood on the dinghy floor. The brothers turned their attention to the depth sounder.

“Sixty-eight feet, that can’t be right.”

“Must be a bank here.”

“Better phone him.”

Travis moved around the deck holding his cell phone up in the air and squinting at the screen through the rain, even climbing up onto the cabin top in his search for a signal.

“No reception,” he said.

“He told me there was two hundred feet of water out here.”

“Maybe the sounder’s not working right.”

“Seems to be,