At Risk by Judith E. French Page A

long since Liz had been on the open water. Another day, she would have reveled in the sound of the waves and the feel of salt spray hitting her face. But being with Jack, under these circumstances, kept her from fully enjoying the experience.
    She twisted to look at him. One bronzed hand was on the tiller; the other rested on his left knee. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he had a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. He looked as though he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. “Where are we going?” she asked.
    “What?”
    She raised her voice, trying to make herself heard above the wind and tide. “Where are we going?”
    “You’ll see.”
    At forty-four, Jack was as infuriating as he’d been at twenty. He revealed what he was thinking when he wanted to or not at all. The habit annoyed her no end, and she knew that he was aware of it.
    They passed a lone fisherman anchored in the shallows in an aluminum pram and an older couple heading north in a twenty-four-foot Grady White. Gradually, Liz felt herself relaxing. She didn’t know why she was here, but she felt better than she had since she’d found Tracy’s body. She found herself caught up in the familiar sights and sounds of the bay: flocks of migrating shore birds wheeling in formation overhead before descending to the beach in search of horseshoe-crab eggs, a black and white osprey carrying twigs to her nest atop a channel marker, and the wind-blown shrieks of laughing gulls.
    Maybe she was crazy, but she’d always seen beauty here. For all of California’s balmy weather, white sand, and blue water, the West Coast had never stolen her heart as the Delaware Bay did. “Bay water in your blood,” Daddy had said.
    At Bowers Beach, Jack turned right and headed up the Murderkill River, past the public boat ramps and docks. An old man throwing bread to the ducks looked up and waved, and Liz waved back. The commercial fishing boats were all out on the bay. Private craft bobbed against their moorings on the South Bowers side, but Jack didn’t let up on the throttle. He continued on past the houses and businesses lining the waterway.
    “Where are we going?” she asked again.
    “Not far.”
    They rounded a bend, and he pointed toward a boat ramp ahead on the left. An ambulance, an aging fire truck that read
South Bowers
in white letters painted on the side, and three police cars were drawn up at the landing. At the water’s edge, a crowd gathered around a large wrecker in the process of winching a blue Ford truck out of the river. Several divers in wet suits waited nearby.
    Jack steered the boat in a slow circle, then aimed the bow back toward the bay. “Wayne Boyd’s truck,” he said. “I heard they found it this morning.”
    “Tracy’s boyfriend?”
    He nodded. “Cops never caught up with him.”
    “Suicide?”
    Jack shrugged. “He wasn’t launching a boat. Apparently, somebody drove straight off the dock at a high rate of speed.”
    Stunned, she stared back at the truck. “Did they find a body?”
    “Not yet. If they had, the divers wouldn’t be going back in the water.”
    “You think Wayne deliberately drove the truck off the ramp?”
    “No loss if he did. Wayne was a shit.”
    “But why kill Tracy and then himself? It doesn’t make sense.”
    “Shits don’t always make sense.”
    She was quiet as they motored past the restaurant and rows of pilings lined with squawking seagulls. “If Wayne did it, then it’s over, isn’t it? The other kids at Somerville are safe?”
I’m safe
.
    Jack didn’t answer.
    That had always been his habit, as well. He didn’t believe in stating the obvious. Liz shut her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to stop jumping at shadows.
    Once they were out in the bay again, Jack turned the boat north. “I heard you have a kid in college,” he said. “Just the one daughter?”
    “Yes,” she answered, grateful to be talking about Katie. “She’s living in Dublin—Ireland.