He looked up with a bland expression. "He ran the Avilda up and down and around the island, looking for signs of life through the binoculars. When he couldn't find any, he pulled the hook and set course for Dutch."

Kate was speechless. Jack's smile was bland. "It gets better. When the Coast Guard fired up a chopper and took a run out there, it seems that Gault had given them the wrong coordinates, so they searched the wrong part of the island."

When Kate found her voice it was only for a very weak, "You're kidding me."

"Nope. The Coasties didn't discover this until a couple of weeks later, when the operator who took the call compared notes with the pilot. So they went out again.

Didn't find anything that time, either."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nope."

"Not even a jerry can? An oar? A hat or a glove?

Nothing?"

"Nothing." Jack refiled the list of boat names in the folder, just missing losing the entire mass on the floor.

"Why the hell hasn't Gault been fired?" Kate demanded.

Jack smiled. "Because Captain Harry Gault had the forethought to marry a daughter of one of Alaska Ventures' board of directors. Just last January, in fact."

Kate folded her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling. After a moment, she said thoughtfully, "How very strategic of him."

"The guy is slick," Jack admitted. "And of course, no one has been able to prove otherwise, Skinner and Nordhoff back Gault up, so no charges have been filed."

"But."

"But," Jack agreed. "The board of Alaska Ventures is as nervous as a cat with two tails in a room full of rocking chairs."

"Alcala and Brown have family?"

Jack bestowed an approving smile on her. "Yes, they do, and they want to know what happened, and they're starting to get loud about it. Marine insurance is not exactly cheap or easy to come by, so the board of Alaska Ventures has begun a little discreet investigation of Harry Gault's past."

"And now the state's getting into the act."

"You and me, babe."

She twisted her head to stare at him. "What's this 'you and me babe' crap? I don't see you out on the deck of the Avilda, soaking wet and freezing cold and up to your ass in tanner crab." And puking your guts up over the rail every five minutes, she could have added, but didn't.

Jack managed to look hurt. "You're the one with the fishing experience."

"Fishing for salmon in Prince William Sound and a couple of months fishing for king crab out of Kodiak isn't quite the same thing as trying to drown myself in the Boring goddam Sea," she retorted. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this. The Aleutians. In October.

I must be out of my mind."

"You never did answer me. About why you did come.

I would have lost money betting you wouldn't."