Close Reach Read Free Page B

modafinil in her hand and offered it to Dean, but he waved it off.
    “Sixty-five degrees.”
    Dean stood at the winches, and she dialed in the new course. Freefall banked to starboard, picking up speed as the wind moved aft of the beam, and Dean eased the sails out to catch the wind coming from astern. When the turn was complete and the sails were trimmed, she looked at the GPS and saw they’d gained another three knots.
    “We’ll know in about five minutes whether that boat is following us,” Dean said.
    She looked from the GPS to her husband.
    “How’s that?”
    “I mean if it matches our new course. Maybe it’ll keep heading north.”
    They watched the radar, the beam rounding the screen as the antenna swept the horizon. The target held course for three minutes.
    And then it turned.
    Kelly felt her stomach sink, felt the skin on her arms break into bumps.
    “It could mean anything,” Dean said. “Maybe it’s going to Puerto Williams and needed to make its easting, same as us. Or maybe the waves were getting too big for it to take on the beam and it decided to run off in front of the storm.”
    “Or maybe it’s following us,” Kelly said.
    Dean nodded. She knew he had to agree with her. The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence.
    “We’ll know pretty soon,” Kelly said. “It picked up six knots on the new heading.”
    “Maybe I’ll take one of those, after all.”
    She handed him the pill bottle and watched him struggle with the cap. She’d never seen his hands tremble like that. Finally she took it from him and opened it.
    * * *
    They first saw it that afternoon. They were both in the pilothouse, which was colder now that they were running downwind. The wind and sometimes even spray could blow directly over the stern and through the broad opening from the aft cockpit. Kelly was bracing herself against the aluminum frame of the window, leaning against her safety tether, pressing the waterproof binoculars against her eyes. She knew that it was within visual range and that she’d only have to wait and watch along the direction of their wake. She’d see it when a moment finally came when the other boat and Freefall were riding the crests of waves at the same time.
    That moment came but didn’t last long.
    She felt the deck pitch underneath her as they began to surf on the face of the twenty-foot wave that was overtaking them from the stern. They rode with it a while, their foamy wake curving up its green face and disappearing past its peak, and then as their momentum slowed, the wave slipped farther up their hull until at last they were balanced for a moment at its crest. She put the binoculars tightly to her eyes, listening to the rush of churning water, and that was when she saw it.
    At ten miles, it was too far away to tell its color. Or maybe it had no real color at all but had just been left to rot in the sea like so many other working boats in the far corners of the world. Green slime worked its way topside from the waterline, where it mixed with fish blood and rust cascading from the gunwales so that the meeting place in between was left an indeterminate ocher. But she could see it was a big fishing trawler. Its bridge deck sat high near the bow to leave room on the aft deck for working gear.
    Then Freefall began its slow slide off the crest and down the back of the wave into the swirling trough, and the motion made her lose sight of the other boat. She scanned with the binoculars and saw nothing but water and sky, each so gray and dark and roiling that it was almost impossible to tell the one from the other. She gave up and turned to Dean.
    “I saw it. Maybe an old trawler. In Alaska, I’d say it was a crab boat, but I don’t know if they have crab boats down here.”
    “They might,” Dean said. “You’re sure it’s not a cruise ship or a research boat?”
    She shook her head. “No way it’s a cruise ship. It’s a working boat. And it’s too dirty to be a research