Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [142]
They pulled up and Gunther walked her to the verandah steps.
‘This has been a very special evening. Thank you, Karl.’
‘I hope there are going to be more opportunities to enjoy your company. I have plans that might interest you. Seeing as I now understand better what you might be interested in, where you are going, so to speak. You are an independent woman. I like that. We should discuss things further.’
‘No more merely social occasions?’
‘That, too, of course. It’s up to you and how you handle your … personal situation.’
‘Well, if you’re leaving matters up to me … ’ Amy leaned forward and kissed Gunther on the mouth.
He kissed her back, roughly drawing her body to his and running his hands around her buttocks. Briefly he pulled back from her. ‘There’s a rule—never mix work and pleasure,’ he murmured.
‘What a shame,’ whispered Amy. ‘Which side of the fence does that leave me? On the business or the pleasure side?’
‘I should add, that was a rule I broke long ago.’ He kissed her grinning mouth once more and she thrust her breasts against him, leaving an invitation hanging in the air.
They drew apart, Gunther giving her a friendly squeeze.
‘I’ll see you again, I’ll send a message,’ he offered.
‘I look forward to it.’ And she did. Suddenly life was a lot more interesting. Amy’s hips gave a saucy twitch as she climbed the verandah steps and disappeared indoors.
As Gunther departed, a figure stepped out of the shadows then turned into the house.
Ahmed sailed to the rendezvous point in the Bulan and, within a day, learned Tyndall had sailed north and no one had sighted the Shamrock since, though none of the fleet had ventured off the pearling grounds. While it was feasible he could have found a good patch of shell, for him to miss their rendezvous was unusual. Ahmed waited one more day, then left a message with the nearest lugger that he was sailing north to look for Tyndall. After conferring with the first mate they set out on the course always taken by their skipper.
Ahmed was worried, it wasn’t like Tyndall. Even if he wasn’t himself, being depressed over the situation with Amy and Olivia, he was always on top of things at sea. A gnawing sensation in Ahmed’s gut told him Tyndall was in trouble.
If Tyndall had sailed up as far as the Buccaneer Archipelago they could miss each other between the many islands that rose straight from the sea. But Ahmed held his course and patiently waited for some sign.
When it came, his heart sank. The crew dragged on board a splintered piece of wood with a sodden lifebuoy tangled around it. SHAMROCK was written in red letters on the lifebuoy.
Slowly they backtracked, searching the sea in a pattern. The crew kept careful watch, for they knew they were sailing through badly charted waters.
They came across some more wreckage but found no signs of life. They continued in the same search pattern until forced to anchor for the night.
Tyndall was sick of turtle eggs and had managed to catch a bird and eat what he could raw. He had also found some rain-water in the hollows of rocks. But he was not prepared to wait and hope for an unlikely rescue. Estimating the coast to be about twenty miles away, he decided it was too far to swim in his condition, but with the currents and wind in his favour, not too far to paddle. He still had his knife strapped to his belt so he cut some supple young branches and bound them together with vine for a makeshift raft. Clinging to this, he stroked his way back across the channel to the reef exposed by the low tide.
The abandoned dinghy was a shell, a mere buttercup, but it was better than his raft. Using a broken plank, he managed to lever the dinghy free. With the next surge of water over the reef he pushed off. Crouching in the fractured dinghy and using the plank as a paddle, he struck out for the distant line of land.
Ahmed’s searching was proving