A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

available at this hour—and I locked up the car. If it weren’t for the fog, I would’ve been scared out of my wits. But I figured anyone who wanted to mug me in all that soup would have to find me first.

Tor took my hand and guided me down the wharf, where the shops and bistros fell away and—down near the end—boats creaked and sloshed in the water between the ghosts of rickety, dilapidated buildings.

“This looks like the one,” he said, pointing at a small motorboat I could barely make out in the gloom.

“You’re taking me on a boat ride?” I said, slightly hysterical. “On the bay—at this time of night?”

But he climbed down without a word, and was fumbling about.

“Let’s see, the key should be … here it is.” I heard his voice in the fog. “Now, my dear girl,” he added as his hand came up out of the fog for mine, “have I ever introduced you to any experience you didn’t, in the long run, enjoy?”

“It seems this may be the first,” I assured him. But there was little I could do about it—so I gave him my hand and climbed down into the boat.

We were out on the water before I knew it—cutting out into the bay. When we’d cleared the wharfs and were out far enough, the black waters glittered with light from the city beyond. The bay was clear but for patches of mist, and the tall buildings of San Francisco soared above their whipped-cream shroud of fog like lost Atlantis rising, dripping with foam, from the sea. The moon above was fat and full, and draped with scudding clouds. I’d never seen anything so magnificent.

“It’s incredible,” I whispered to Tor, though there was no one within miles to hear. “I’ve never been out on the bay at night.”

“Just the first of many such experiences I see in your immediate future,” he assured me.

“Where are you taking me? Or is this just a general excursion?” I wanted to know. After all, he’d said the place would be open.

“We’re going to an island—our island,” he said softly, as if to himself. “In the midst of the wine-dark sea …”

THE HOSTILE TAKEOVER

It is not from the benevolence of the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self-interest.

We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities, but of their advantages.

—Adam Smith

Ten years in San Francisco, and the only island in the bay I’d heard of was Alcatraz, though I’d never been there. But Tor, who had only left New York that afternoon, had found another one. He loved to impress people with that sort of omnipotence. But I couldn’t say I minded much. It was absolutely lovely.

It was small—perhaps one hundred yards—with a rocky coastline, and lawns still green after the winter rains. With the lights of Berkeley on one side and those of the city on the other, it seemed a refuge invisible from without—a lake isle in a womb of water—the gentle sloshing of waves eradicating the sounds of those real worlds on the farther shores.

“How did you ever find this place?” I asked Tor.

“The same way I found you,” he told me, “by magic or intuition.”

It made no difference—I loved it. We went hand in hand from the pier across the lawns. There was a little frame two-story house at the point, with cheery light inside. When we reached it, he fumbled in a pot of gardenias for the key, and unlocked the door.

“I’m very tired,” he told me, opening the creaky door. “It’s three hours later for me—nearly five A.M. If we were in Manhattan, I could hear the birds already chirping in the trees. I think I should call it a night.” A night?

“You surely don’t plan to sleep here?” I said.

“You don’t think I’d spend a night in that coffin you call home?” he said irritably. “I need space, and time to unwind. It’s been quite a day for me—thanks largely to you. And it should be really lovely, waking here in the morning.”

“Now look—” I began, but he cut me dead with a glance, took me by the hand, and led me to a soft, puffy sofa there in the living room. He shoved me down into the stuffing.

“No—you look,” he said in anger. “I’ve known you twelve years, and in all that time, have I ever moved to put one finger upon you? There is no historical precedent for these fears you seem to be harboring.”

“We’ve never stayed alone in a deserted farmhouse before,” I pointed out.

“Do I possess the character traits of a traveling salesman?” he snorted, going over to the trunk near the fireplace, on which were stacked linens and towels. “There are nightshirts and blankets and quilts—and there are half a dozen bedrooms here—or so I’ve been assured. No man in his right mind, weary as I am, would trouble with all that complexity, to secure the holy temple of your person. Why don’t you go choose the room you want so we can get some sleep?”

I was being ridiculous, of course. All that he said was true—but that wasn’t what was bothering me. The fact is, I felt afraid—more than an hour ago, under the stark lights of the data center, when I’d had something genuine to be terrified about. The only danger here was … it was absurd even to think of it. There was absolutely nothing to be nervous about at all.

I plucked a nightgown from his arms without a word, and headed upstairs to find a room. Tor stayed below, rummaging about in the kitchen off the main room, and came upstairs at last with a bottle of brandy and two glasses.

He set one on the oak washstand near my bed, poured me some, and said: “Drink your nightcap—you deserve it. I’ll come back and