"No. Not unless you want to climb a short cliff."

"Then steer us to the best place," Kira directed. "If you mess up, it's your boat that will suffer."

The man got up and grudgingly took the tiller from Jason. Kira and Jason moved forward a bit where they could talk privately. "I was just thinking something," Jason murmured. "If I was chasing some people and knew they'd taken a boat, I'd send someone to the best place to land nearby."

Kira grimaced. "How did you think of that?"

"It's what would happen in a game."

"A game?" But it made sense. It made way too much sense.

"Whoever they are," Jason added, "they seem to have a lot of people." He glanced back at the boat's owner. "I don't trust that guy. I think he'd do or say whatever it took to get us off his boat as soon as possible."

"We did hijack his boat," Kira pointed out.

"I thought we borrowed it."

"That was before we hijacked it." Kira glanced at the boat owner, who had the look of someone who was nervous for the wrong reasons. "Take it a point to port," she ordered the owner.

The owner glared back at her. "I know this harbor."

"Take the boat a point to port and hold it there." The man didn't move. "Do it now or you're going over the side."

He nudged the tiller as directed, his fear obvious. Jason was standing as far forward as he could get, peering into the darkness. He looked back at her briefly. "Why didn't they steal some boats, too?"

"I don't know. They didn't—" Because they're watching this boat on the water and they've got people waiting just like Jason guessed and we're heading for the ambush.

She rounded on the boat's owner. "Two more points to port." He hesitated. Kira whipped out her pistol and pointed it at him. "Now."

The boat had barely begun to turn when Jason cried an alarm from the bow. "Hey, there's a beach real close."

"Get back here, Jason!" She didn't need foresight to know what was about to happen.

He'd just started to move when lights flashed on the shore, so close that Kira realized they would've run up on the land by now if she hadn't made the boat turn. The roar of the shots merged into one sound as splinters flew around the owner at the tiller. The owner, having apparently had all that he could take, leaped overboard without a word.