Chapter 1

Will Wainwright never knew what hit him. He was two days out of St Peter Port Guernsey, on route to Gibraltar, where they would pick up a crew. Normally his wife, the actress Samantha James, would have flown ahead and met him in Gibraltar, but the weather forecast was so good she decided to accompany Will and Ryan on board Bee Jay II.

Bee Jay II was Will’s pride and joy. One of the few regrets he would admit to was not spending enough time aboard her. Sixty feet long, with every imaginable luxury. She had extensive computer control, power winches and auto-helm. She was capable of being sailed single-handed, a remarkable thing for a boat of her size. He could have flown down to Gib with Samantha and let the crew look after them, but for him this week was the best part of the holiday. Just him and his boat battling the elements. Ryan, the wayward son of the owner of the boatyard that looked after Bee Jay, was his only full-time crew member. Once they reached Gib, Ryan would take over as skipper.

This morning, with breakfast behind them and making fifteen knots from the moderate tailwind, Will watched as Sam climbed out onto the deck and sat with her back to the mast. He’d tried to persuade her to wear a life jacket but she’d said she couldn’t get a suntan with a life jacket on.

‘Besides.’ she said, ‘You wouldn’t enjoy looking at me half as much if I was all covered up with a life jacket.’

Will checked the compass and the GPS, referred to his charts, then went back to the wheel. He looked up to see his lovely wife pulling her book from her bag. Sam saw him looking at her. She smiled and waved to him with her fingers. Suddenly her smile turned to a look of horror and her hand came up to her mouth. Will didn’t get the chance to look round before something hit him extremely hard on the right side of his head. Everything went dark as he felt himself stagger trying to stay on his feet before he fell to the deck and blacked out.

He started to regain consciousness and could hear Sam’s screams. Someone dragged him across the deck then sat him down at the side of the cockpit. The shock came when whoever had dragged him, eased him over the side of the boat. They lifted his legs and he slipped into the water. Consciousness left him again.

The pain in his head blotted out almost everything. He was trying to get his head around the fact that he was floating in the water. He tried to get to grips with what was going on. He looked around and saw something he recognised, Bee Jay II. He couldn’t see her hull just the sales appearing to stick up out of the water. She was moving away, still under full sail. He tried to call out but that just resulted in him coughing. He brought his hand up to his head. As he pulled it away, he could see his hand was red. The blood was running down the side of his head and neck, staining the water around him.

I watched the muscles in his back ripple as he reached for the GPS. His buns were tight as he stood, feet apart, look forward over the boat. He, of course, would tell me it was not a boat it was a motor yacht. I smiled to myself, Will would say there’s no such thing, a yacht is a boat with sails not motors. Bruce turned and smiled at me.

‘You alright there, babe?’

His pecks and abs glistened in the sunshine. What a shame I thought, a man with a body like that really ought to be more rewarding to sleep with. Why, when they put so much effort into making themselves attractive, do they not follow through by learning how to please a woman?

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I said, looking up from my laptop. ‘I’m just getting a little work done.’

‘Working? I thought this was supposed to be a holiday? You can bet your life that your boss isn’t working.’

‘He’s sailing his boat to Gibraltar and so far he’s beating you.’

‘Yeah well he got half a day start on me, and I was distracted. The more I look at you in that bikini the more distracted I get.’

I put the laptop down and stood up. ‘I’m going to get a cold drink. Do you want a beer?’

‘Is the pope a Catholic?’ he responded and I kissed him gently on the lips.

I came back out of the cabin, handed Bruce his bottle of beer, took my fruit juice back to my chair and sat down. No sooner had I picked up the laptop than an alarm sounded and the screen changed. I studied the screen trying to make sense of what I was seeing. There were two dots on the screen one red and flashing the other blue. The blue dot was moving away from the red one. Each dot had coordinates printed alongside. It took a moment for me to figure out what I was looking at.

‘Oh my God.’ I got up and took the laptop over to Bruce.

‘Bruce, how long would it take you to get to this position?’

He checked the GPS, picked up his chart and marked our position on it. Then he looked at the computer and marked the position of the red dot on the chart. He measured the distance between them, did a quick calculation.

‘An hour and a half to two hours. Why?’

‘That’s too long. He’s in the water.’

‘Who is in the water? What are you talking about?’