Sail by James Patterson, Howard Roughan Read Free Book Online Page A

assumed it was Mark, maybe even Ernie. But when I poked my head up through the hatch to listen for them, I couldn’t hear anything. Then suddenly there it was again.”
    I’m confused. “So it was one of the boys after all?”
    “No. The laugh was coming from inside the engine room, and I realized why it sounded so familiar. It was Stuart. It was his laugh. And when I turned around to get back to fixing the cooling hose, I —”
    He stops, not wanting to finish the sentence.
    I press him. “What? What happened?”
    “For a brief second,” says Jake, “I could swear I saw him. I know I didn’t, but I felt like I did. It was scary, Kat, especially because it seemed so real.
As if he
was
really with us.
”
    Chapter 20
    I’M NOT SURE how to respond to this. Is Jake wigging out on me? Did he smoke some of the pot he confiscated from Mark? Maybe he hit his head earlier?
    “I told you it was crazy,” he says.
    “No, it’s not so crazy,” I try to assure him. “There are times when I’m out at a restaurant or walking down the street back in New York and I think I see Stuart.”
    “You’re talking about seeing people who look like him. I’m talking about seeing . . .”
    Again he can’t finish the sentence. So I do it for him.
    “A ghost?”
    I’m no psychiatrist, but I can’t help strapping on the shoes of my best friend, Mona. If Jake were telling her this while sitting in her Manhattan office, what would Mona say? Honestly, I’m not sure. I guess it would be something better than the obvious “There are no such things as ghosts, Jake.”
    That’s when it occurs to me. The two of us have never really talked about it.
    “Do you think it’s the guilt?” I ask.
    He looks at me as if I just pulled back a giant curtain on his innermost thoughts.
    “I was Stuart’s
brother.
”
    “Yes, and I was his
wife.
I was going through a really rough time in our marriage, and you were there for me. Neither of us expected it to happen. It wasn’t the right thing to do, and after a while we both realized that.”
    “You sooner than me.”
    “I had to think about the kids, Jake. And Stuart, even though he was no angel.”
    He nods ruefully. “I know you did. You were right.”
    “The thing is, we’ll never be able to change what happened. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to.”
    “No. Neither would I.” He reaches over and touches my hand, then takes his away.
    Jake forces a smile, and the subject is dropped for now. We finish off the wine and even manage a few laughs about our first day at sea, unmitigated disaster that it was.
    But as I say goodnight and settle into bed, my conversation with Jake begins to echo in my mind. I know all too well about the guilt our affair caused. It wreaked havoc on my conscience and still does to this very day.
    Especially because even Jake doesn’t know the whole truth.
    If there’s any silver lining, though, it’s this: I learned my lesson. I’ve been given a second chance at love and he’s waiting for me back in Manhattan.
    No matter what, I could never cheat on Peter. I love him more than life itself.
    Chapter 21
    BAILEY TODD SLOWLY, teasingly opened the door to her one-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment. She was wearing a devilish smile and not too much else. Only a black bra and panties, to be precise.
    Exactly
what Peter Carlyle was hoping she might pick out for tonight.
    Sometimes Bailey wore fire red, other times it was lily white. But nothing got Peter’s blood pumping to all the right places more than black. Jet black was dirty, and Peter liked that the best.
    “Hello, handsome,” she purred, putting it on a little, but not too much, he hoped.
    Peter remained in the hallway for a few moments, eyeing Bailey up and down as he would a spectacular and very expensive work of art. The thick auburn hair, the smoky eyes, the twenty-five-year-old killer body, still tight as a drum. And the sweet face, the look of an angel, what made her the masterpiece that she was.