Windswept by Anna Lowe Page B

through.
    “Nothing to it,” he nodded.
    “Right,” she muttered and disappeared out onto the deck.
    Seconds ticked by, then ponderous minutes, as the icon on the GPS inched closer to the dark line of reefs. Closer. Closer…
    “See the obelisk?” Mia called from the bow.
    He couldn’t see a goddamn thing.
    “Got it,” Meredith replied in a tight voice. “There’s the pass. Our angle’s no good, though. We’ll have to try on the next tack.”
    Try. The operative word in that sentence. Not good.
    He looked at the chart. The pass was narrow enough as it was — eye-of-the-needle narrow — and with the wind on the nose, they were going to have to zigzag in. A tricky proposition even by day. Suicidal by night.
    The muted sound of foam grew louder.
    “How much closer, Mia?” Meredith called anxiously.
    “Just a little more…a little more…”
    “Mia, the reef’s right there!”
    “Just a little more…ready…ready… Now! Now! Come about!”
    Meredith spun the wheel hard, and the boat leaned over the other way. The boom came over with a dull thump just as Mia came running back to help haul in the sheets. The cacophony of sound and motion settled into an edgy kind of quiet a minute later, when Mia scampered back to the bow to keep lookout again.
    They repeated the nerve-racking maneuver three times: edging right up to the reef before jerking away, inching closer to the pass every time. He kept a finger on the thin line of the pass on the chart and called out depth and bearings. The swishing sound of waves smashing into the reef became a roar from all sides.
    “Straighten up! Straighten up! Ten degrees to port!” Mia cried from the bow.
    He waited for the crunch of hull against reef.
    “Ten degrees to port,” Meredith echoed in a shaky voice.
    The reef was thundering now, swallowing them up, the boat bouncing in the turbulent waters of the narrow pass. He gripped the chart table with both hands and watched the depth-sounder plunge. “Thirty feet…twenty…” he called out. “Fifteen…”
    Serendipity’s
keel was five feet deep, and the chart showed ten feet at low tide. Plenty of water — theoretically.
    “Back five!” Mia called.
    The stern lurched sideways with an errant wave. It was like stumbling into a boxing ring where two prizefighters — the ocean and the reef — were duking it out, and all
Serendipity
could do was duck the punches — or try.
    “Mia!” Meredith yelped.
    He didn’t hear Mia’s answer because the fight escalated until they were in a deafening arena. The waves rushed. The rigging creaked. The wind moaned and—
    Shhhhmmm.
From one moment to the next, the noise faded to a murmur astern.
Serendipity
was through the pass and into the sheltered bay.
    “I see the mooring!” Mia called with a heaven-be-praised note in her voice.
    The boat glided forward, and he popped up onto the deck just in time to see Mia catch a white mooring ball. The boat glided to a graceful stop as Meredith let the sheets loose, and that was it. They were in.
    He sat down hard, heart still pumping in double time.

Chapter Thirteen

    Mia clutched the mooring line so tightly, it dug into her palms. Long after she looped it around a cleat in a double figure eight, she kept right on clutching, because they had made it.
Serendipity
was safe.
    She tipped her head back, found Orion in the sky, and muttered a little thank you to whatever god or ghosts had let them squeeze into that tiny, sheltered bay. Pretending her heart wasn’t beating halfway out of her chest, she examined the bay as if she sailed through narrow passes with no engine as backup in the middle of the night all the time.
    God, they’d done it. They really had.
    The bay was theirs, and theirs alone. A high ridge of land curved around that little scoop of water, protecting
Serendipity
from the wind, the waves, and from the view of casual passersby.
    She’d barely dropped the mainsail and jumped into the cockpit when her sister caught her