The winds had blown the clouds from the sky, and a pale moon hung low, illuminating the harbor like an enormous lantern. The wind blew briskly, rattling loose halyards and sending small waves skimming across the water. A couple of hundred feet away, Salty Mist’s outline was just visible in the moonlight, and its anchor light glowed softly.
“Perfect night for a bit of snooping,” Olivia whispered. “I brought a flashlight, but the moon is so bright, I don’t think we’ll need it.”
I nodded. “And it’s good that it’s a bit windy. It’ll help cover any noise we make.”
Olivia pulled on the tow rope that attached the dinghy to Jeopardy, coiling it into a neat bundle and unfastening the end from around the stern cleat. “Let’s go,” she said. She stepped over the stern rail and onto the swim ladder. Then she stepped down into the dinghy.
I hesitated. If Patrick found out, he’d freak. I wondered if he could fail us for something like this. Olivia’s face was pale in the moonlight, but she looked perfectly calm. “You sure you want to do this?”
She nodded impatiently. “If those men really are taking abalone, someone has to stop them.”
“Okay.” I stepped into the dinghy, sat down facing her and started rowing.
There was a slight current behind us—the tide coming in—and we were soon skimming along the water. It wasn’t glassy calm like it had been that first evening, but it wasn’t too bad: enough wind and waves to muffle the sound of our oars dipping into the water but not enough to make our lives difficult. Olivia was right—it was a perfect night for snooping. My nervousness started to fade. After all, it wasn’t like we were really doing anything wrong.
As we approached the cabin cruiser, I stopped rowing and let the current carry us closer. Olivia held out one hand and, standing up carefully, grabbed onto the stern of the boat. I stood beside her. The cockpit was broad and open, quite different from a sailboat’s. I strained my eyes staring at it but couldn’t see much beyond the usual assortment of ropes and storage bags and at least a dozen empty beer bottles. If there were really only two guys onboard, they’d sure been putting it away.
I turned to Olivia. “Well?” I whispered. “Do you see anything?”
She looked disappointed. “When we rowed over before, I thought I saw shells on the deck. I mean, I know I did.”
“Maybe you just...” I hesitated, not wanting to make her mad. “I mean, back in that restaurant in Port Hardy, you were talking about abalone and asking where it came from. Maybe, you know, because your dad’s girlfriend did all that research on it—”
“You think I imagined it?” Olivia asked seriously. She didn’t sound mad. “I guess it’s possible, but honestly, I could have sworn those shells were abalone.”
I shrugged. “Well, I can’t see any shells now.”
“No.” She pointed at the open runabout fishing boat that was tied off the stern. “Let’s just check in there. Maybe with the dive gear...”
We let go of the stern, and the dinghy started to drift backward toward the runabout. I pushed us away from the sharp propeller and steered us alongside. Olivia shone her flashlight into the boat, scanning from side to side. The dive gear wasn’t there, nor were shells of any kind. The whole boat looked like it had been scrubbed clean.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Olivia said flatly. “Maybe you were right, Simon.”
I interrupted her. “Doesn’t it seem kind of odd though?” I gestured to the runabout and then back to Salty Mist. “They’ve cleaned up everything. The dive gear, the shells you saw...why would they do that if they were just on holiday?”
“Maybe they just felt like cleaning,” she said. “Not everyone’s a slob, you know.”
I ignored the implied insult. “Maybe.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Olivia turned off her flashlight. “It is a bit of a coincidence,” she said slowly. “Maybe when Patrick went over, they suspected something.”
“He’s not always the most subtle,” I agreed. “If he asked too many questions, they might have got nervous.”
“We have to get a closer look, don’t we?” She looked at me. “There’s only one way to do that.”
I nodded. My hands were starting to sweat the way they always do when I get nervous. I knew exactly what she meant. We were going to have to get aboard that boat.
chapter twelve
As I tied the dinghy’s towrope to Salty Mist’s stern, I was grateful for the wind and the slight swell rolling into the anchorage. On a dead calm night, I wouldn’t even have considered doing this. To be honest, the beer bottles made me feel a bit better too. If they’d drunk all of those tonight, it’d take more than a slight movement of the boat to wake them.
I remembered Olivia’s cat feet and glanced down at my own runners. “We can’t talk once we’re aboard,” I whispered. “Just signal to me if you hear anyone moving, okay? If anyone even stirs, we get the hell out of here and start rowing.”
She nodded. Her eyes looked enormous.
Trying to move as slowly and quietly as possible, we stepped into Salty Mist’s cockpit and stood motionless for a moment, listening. Not a sound. Olivia held up her flashlight and raised her eyebrows questioningly. I shook my head. Not worth risking. Besides, between the full moon and the anchor light hanging over the cockpit, we could see pretty well.
Of course, that meant that anyone looking would see us pretty well too.
I hadn’t been on a cabin cruiser before. It didn’t have a small companionway with steps or a ladder leading down below like a sailboat; instead, it had full-height Plexiglas doors that opened directly into the cabin. I couldn’t see inside—there were no lights on—but if the men woke and looked out, they’d see us right away. It was creepy, knowing that they could see us but we couldn’t see them.
I gestured to Olivia that I was going forward. She nodded and indicated that she’d walk down the other side of the boat. Trying to walk as silently as possible, I crept toward the bow. Olivia was out of sight, on the other side of the cabin, and I had to fight a sudden irrational flood of fear that we shouldn’t have separated. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just some ropes hanging over the side of the boat and some water jugs strapped to a stainless-steel railing.
Something crunched under my foot. I froze, holding my breath. Nothing happened. Moving carefully, I bent down to pick up what I’d stepped on. A shell with an iridescent pearly sheen, now broken into three sharp-edged pieces. I slipped them in my pocket. Still crouching, I looked over my shoulder nervously. The cabin had large dark tinted windows all the way to the bow, and all it would take would be for one of the men to wake and glance out. Worst of all, the window right by me was open a few inches. I was only a few feet away from where the men were sleeping, without even a sheet of Plexiglas between us.
“Ssss.” Olivia hissed softly, stepping out from behind the tall cabin and reappearing at the bow. She gestured to me to follow her.
I followed her across the wide flat deck at the front of the boat and back down her side of the cabin. “Look,” I whispered, pulling out a piece of shell to show her.
She nodded and pulled a whole shell out of her own pocket.
I raised my eyebrows in a silent question and she nodded. “Abalone,” she mouthed.
“Let’s go then,” I whispered. I figured we could show Patrick the shells. That’d convince him. We had to go back to Port Hardy anyway, and with a little luck, Salty Mist would still be sitting here when the authorities arrived.
Olivia held up her hand like she was telling me to wait a minute. Then she pointed to a rope hanging over the side of the boat. I shrugged and shook my head. I just wanted to get off this boat.
She started to pull up the rope, hand over hand.
“Careful,” I whispered. Moving slowly, so as not to rock the boat, I bent close to see what she was doing. I don’t know what I expected to see—just rope I guess, or maybe a fender—but what came up was a mesh bag, dripping wet. I leaned over th
e side and Olivia cupped her hand around her flashlight, pointed it at the bag and turned it on.
Abalone.
“Is it...are they alive?” I whispered.
She nodded. “They wouldn’t be keeping them in the water if they weren’t.”
I glanced along the side of the boat. Rope after rope descended into the water. I remembered all the ropes that I’d seen hanging over the other side of the boat. More abalone, probably. A whole lot of abalone. “Let’s go,” I said. “Now.”
Just then, a loud crackling voice shot out. Olivia grabbed my arm, and my heart just about stopped beating. We both froze, crouching low against the deck, right under that open window.
“Don’t move,” Olivia mouthed.
I shook my head. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to—my muscles seemed to have stopped working.
“Salty Mist, Salty Mist,” the voice said, and I realized it was someone calling on the radio. The men would definitely be awake now, but maybe if we just stayed low and stayed still, we could sneak back to the dinghy after they went back to bed.
“Yo, Salty Mist here,” someone on the boat responded. He sounded annoyed.
“Hi, it’s Jeopardy. Switch to sixty-eight.” Patrick’s voice was tense.
Olivia shot me a startled look. There was a pause while the man changed his VHF to channel sixty-eight; then I heard Patrick’s voice again.
“Hi, guys. Look, I’ve got a bit of a problem here...I woke up to take a leak and found a couple of my crew missing. They’ve taken the dinghy. Damn teenagers...Don’t suppose you’ve seen them?”
My heart practically stopped. There was a click, and bright light suddenly spilled out the window. “Christ. What time is it?”
“Midnight. Look, I’m sorry I woke you but...”
I heard someone shuffling around inside the cabin and hoped like hell he wasn’t going to come out here. If he saw the dinghy, we were screwed.
“Let me guess,” the man said sleepily. “A girl and a guy, right?”
“Yeah.” Patrick sounded worried, and I felt a flash of guilt.
The man laughed. “They’re probably making out somewhere.”
“They’re the ones who rowed by your boat last night,” Patrick said.
Right above our heads, the window slammed closed and we couldn’t hear anymore. We stared at each other. “What now?” Olivia mouthed.
“We wait.” My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my whole body. I tried to breathe quietly. We kept looking at each other, eyes locked together, and for some stupid reason I noticed that Olivia was actually quite nice-looking under all that black hair.
Obviously, stress does odd things to the brain.
I heard the cabin door open, and I held my breath, waiting for the outraged shout of discovery when they saw the dinghy. But nothing happened. The door slid closed. After a minute, I started to breathe again. We must have left the towrope long enough that the dinghy had drifted back and been hidden by the runabout.
Finally, the light went off and all was still. I looked at Olivia. She held up five fingers. We waited—the longest, slowest, most agonizing five minutes of my life. Then we both crawled back to the cockpit, staying low enough that we wouldn’t be seen in a casual glance out the tinted windows. As I untied the dinghy and tugged on the rope, I heard Olivia gasp.
Patrick was sitting in the dinghy, soaking wet and absolutely furious.
chapter thirteen
I jumped down into the dinghy.
Olivia crouched on Salty Mist’s stern. “Patrick, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m really, really, really...”
“Did you swim over?” I asked, staring at him. “The water must be freezing.”
His face was stiff with anger: his mouth a thin line, his eyes cold, his brows low. “Get in the dinghy, Olivia. What the hell are you two playing at?”
“Just listen,” I said. “We can explain...”
“I woke up to take a leak, decided to go outside for a smoke and saw the dinghy gone.” He pushed his wet hair off his face. “Thought one of you guys had tied a crappy knot and we’d lost it. Then...just in case...I checked your beds.” He shook his head. “You have any idea how worried I was?”
“How’d you know where to find us?” Olivia asked.
Patrick stared at her like she was an idiot. “You’ve been like a broken record, going on about this boat. I figured it was worth checking. Swam halfway here, and then I spotted my dinghy.”
“Look, we really are sorry,” I said in a low voice. Please let me pass this course, I thought. I felt sick. If I failed...after all my saving and studying and planning...I couldn’t even imagine telling my parents. I’d flunked enough at school, but sailing was supposed to be different.
“We didn’t mean to worry you,” I told him. “And we weren’t just, you know, just goofing off. The thing is, we were pretty sure, well, Olivia was anyway, that those guys were poaching.” I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out the shell. “See? It’s abalone.”
He ignored me. “Get in the dinghy, Olivia.”
Olivia didn’t move. “They’ve got bags and bags of it hanging over the sides of the boat. Hundreds of abalone.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “It’s so awful, Patrick. To do that... knowing a species is on the verge of extinction and to do that anyway, just to make a few bucks...”
“More than a few bucks,” he said. “A lot more. On the shell, live abalone—well, they’re probably getting forty or fifty dollars a pound.” He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. “Come on, Olivia, get in the damn dinghy. We should get out of here.”
My mouth was open. Man, no kidding these guys didn’t want anyone to know what they were doing. This was big business. Criminal, obviously, but big business nonetheless. I had to agree with Patrick—hanging around was not a good idea. “Yeah,” I said, “let’s get out of here.”
She shook her head. “We should take the live abalone with us. Maybe it could still be saved.”
Patrick’s voice was low and urgent. “Olivia, these guys are making a small fortune off this. You don’t want to mess with them.”
Still squatting at the stern, Olivia struck her knees with her fists. “How can you put a price on the survival of a species?”
“It’s not my price, honey. I’m just telling you what the market pays.” He looked up at Salty Mist. “Mind you, they’ll get a lower price for the meat they’ve already shucked and frozen.”
“You think they’ve already...killed some of them?” she asked.
“I know they have. They’ve got a massive freezer.” He sighed. “Here’s how it works. They take their runabout out to dive for abalone to shuck and freeze. They spend a few days doing that—it’s faster than trying to keep them alive, because they don’t have to worry about damaging them.”
“That’s sick,” Olivia breathed. She looked up at me. “Abalone are hemophiliacs, you know? If they’re cut, they’ll bleed to death.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. I was feeling stunned, like things were moving too fast, like there was some important piece I hadn’t quite figured out yet.
Patrick shrugged. “Then they spend a couple days diving and taking live abalone. The restaurants prefer it and it brings a higher price.” He stood up and tried to grab Olivia’s wrist, but she stepped backward. “Olivia, get in the goddamn dinghy,” he hissed. “I’m not kidding around.”
Olivia was staring at him. “Do you really know all this? Or are you just guessing? How do you know so much about it?”
I had a sudden flashback to sitting in that restaurant our first night in Port Hardy: Patrick’s family’s restaurant. Olivia spotting the abalone on the menu and Patrick saying, “Relax, it’s imported.”
“You buy it, don’t you?” I said. “That aba-lone at your restaurant...it wasn’t imported.”
Olivia gasped. “Simon! That’s an awful thing to say.”
Patrick shrugged and his eyes slid away from us. “Lots of people buy it.”
“How could you?” she said, raising her voice. “How could you do that?”
“Abalone sells,” he said. “People don’t ask where it comes from. And believe me, it’s a whole lot cheaper to buy from Keith and Victor than to buy imported.”
Above us on Salty Mist a light turned on, and the cabin door opened. A beam of light swept across the cockpit and landed on our dinghy. “I see you found your little runaways,” a man’s voice said. Then he laughed. “Did you swim over, Patrick? You’d better come aboard. I’ll give you some dry clothes.”
Patrick shook his head. “Thanks, Keith, but we’ll just go. Sorry we disturbed you. Come on, Olivia.”
Keith reached out and grabbed Olivia’s arm. “I think you’d better all come aboard. I’d like to have a little talk with these two.”
Olivia tried to pull her arm free, but the man held her tightly. “You’re not going anywhere,” he told her.
My heart was pounding. Patrick gave a resigned shrug, turning his hands up at his sides like there was nothing he could do now. He climbed up into Salty Mist’s cockpit and reached out a hand to me. I held back for a moment. I didn’t want to go back onto that boat. Patrick and Olivia stood there, waiting for me. What else could I do? Jump overboard? Besides, I couldn’t just abandon Olivia. I shrugged, and against all my instincts, I stepped aboard Salty Mist.
chapter fourteen
Olivia and I sat in the cockpit, side by side. My heart was racing and I felt shaky—anger, or nervousness, or both. Keith sat across from us, tugging on his short blond beard and not saying anything. He lit a cigarette and smoked, watching us.
“Go on in, Patrick,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on your runaways.” He raised his voice. “Victor! Get Patrick some dry clothes.”
Patrick nodded and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The lights in the cabin were dim compared with the deck light outside, and I couldn’t see a thing through the dark Plexiglas doors. Keith stared at me, unsmiling. Beside me, Olivia’s eyes were fixed on her running shoes. I hoped she wouldn’t say anything that would make matters worse.
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