Sail Read online

  Copyright © 2008 by James Patterson

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

  First eBook Edition: June 2008

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real-persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-03250-6

  Contents

  The Crew

  Prologue: Family Dunne Alive

  One

  Two

  Three

  Part One: The Family (Un)Dunne

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Two: Mayday

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part Three: Ka-Blam, Ka-Blooey

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Part Four: All Together Now

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Part Five: Finders Keepers

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Part Six: Trust No One

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Epilogue: A Promise is a Promise

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  About the Authors

  A complete list of James Patterson’s books can be found at the end of the book. For more information about James Patterson and his books, visit www.JamesPatterson.com.

  For my sister, Shari—H.R.

  For my sisters, Carole, Maryellen, and Terry—J.P.

  The Crew

  DR. KATHERINE DUNNE, forty-five, is a heart surgeon at Lexington Hospital in Manhattan. Four years ago she lost her husband, Stuart, in a scuba diving accident off their boat, The Family Dunne. As it turned out, Stuart was having an affair, and his mistress was there when he died. From that day on, Katherine’s relationship with her three children has never been the same. Things have only gotten worse since she remarried, bringing the lawyer Peter Carlyle into the family. But Peter is bright, funny, and compassionate, and he won Katherine’s heart.

  CARRIE DUNNE, eighteen, is a freshman at Yale. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Carrie is bulimic and has suffered from bouts of depression. She has always accused Katherine of being more devoted to being a doctor than to her kids. Carrie’s best friend from New York recently told Katherine she was afraid that Carrie was capable of hurting herself.

  MARK DUNNE, sixteen, is a sophomore at Deerfield Academy, where he’s well liked but also the resident stoner. Zero ambition, zero enthusiasm. “Why should I bust my ass like Dad when at any moment, poof!—the Grim Reaper comes and takes it all away from you.”

  ERNIE DUNNE is ten—at least, that’s what his birth certificate says. But in this family, where it’s seemingly every Dunne for himself, he has grown up fast. And bewildered. “Mom, are you sure I’m not adopted?” Ernie asks Katherine at least once a day.

  JAKE DUNNE, forty-four, is Katherine’s former brother-in-law. A true nautical nomad, he dropped out of Dartmouth to sail the world. It was a path far different from that of his older brother, Stuart, who stayed ashore to chase, and catch, millions on Wall Street. But as different as the two brothers always were, Jake and Stuart Dunne did have one thing in common: they were both in love with Katherine.

  Prologue

  Family Dunne Alive

  One

  EASING THROUGH the marina’s sapphire-blue water at a leisurely three-knot clip, Captain Stephen Preston took a long pull off his Marlboro Red, casually flicking the ash into the cool island breeze. Then, after waiting for just the perfect moment, he punched the horn of his forty-six-foot Bertram Sport Fisherman until everyone on the dock stopped to look.

  Yeah, that’s right, boys and girls, take a gander at what Captain Steve reeled in!

  It was a quarter past eleven in the morning. His charter, the Bahama Mama, wasn’t due back to shore until that afternoon at two, the same time as always.

  But today was different.

  Fuckin’ A it’s different, thought Captain Steve, hitting the horn another time. When you spear the biggest, baddest giant bluefin tuna ever seen around the Bahama Islands, you’re done fishing for the day. Hell, you might as well be done fishing for the year!

  “What do you think she’s worth?” asked Jeffrey, the Mama’s first mate and Steve’s brother. He’d been with the boat for eleven years. Never took a sick day. And rarely ever smiled, before that morning anyway. br />
  “I dunno,” replied Captain Steve, pulling on the rim of a Boston Red Sox cap. “I’d guess she’s worth somewhere between a boatload of money and a shitload.”

  Jeffrey continued to smile widely beneath the brim of the tattered green visor he always wore. He knew a tuna this size could fetch upwards of $20,000, cash money, maybe even more if the sushi bidders at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo liked what they saw. And why wouldn’t they?

  Whatever the amount, he was in line to get a very healthy cut. The captain was good that way, a fair man in every sense.

  “Are you sure those bozos signed the contract, Jeff?” Captain Steve asked.

  Jeffrey glanced toward the stern at the six-man bachelor party from the island of Manhattan. They’d been drinking since sunrise, when the trip began, and were already so stinking drunk they could barely high-five each other without falling overboard.

  “Yeah, they signed the contract, all right,” said Jeffrey with a slow nod. “Though I doubt they ever read the fine print.”

  If they had read the contract carefully, they’d have known that no binge-drinking, sunburned tourists would ever pocket a dime off a giant bluefin tuna. No way, not on the Bahama Mama. One hundred percent of the proceeds went directly to the captain and the crew. Period, end of Big Fish story.

  “Well, then,” said Captain Steve, cutting the boat’s twin engines as they approached the dock, “let’s go cause a scene.”

  Two

  SURE ENOUGH, even in the ultra-laid-back Bahamas it took less than a New York minute for a large and curious throng to gather around the fishing boat, the buzz swelling as a forklift carried the humongous tuna toward the marina’s official scale. Christ, was that scale even big enough?

  Captain Preston beamed, giving a hearty slap to the back of the groom-to-be and announcing that he’d never met a finer bunch of anglers in all his life. “You guys are the best,” he said. “And you proved it today.”

  “Rather be good than lucky!” one guy shouted back.

  Of course, the truth would stay strictly between him and Jeff. These big-city misfits had no clue what they were doing. They couldn’t catch a cold, let alone a fish.

  Yet here they all were, basking in the relentless click, click, click of digital cameras—the crowd, the excitement, the anticipation of the weigh-in growing bigger by the second.

  “Tie her up good!” urged Captain Steve as the tail of the tuna was wrapped with double-braided rope, the strongest on hand.

  On the count of three, she was hoisted high into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed appreciatively. This was some fish.

  Six hundred . . . seven hundred . . . eight hundred pounds!

  The arm of the scale shot up like a rocket. When it finally settled at a record-busting 912 pounds, the entire marina let out a tremendous roar, the bachelor-party guys loudest of all.

  And that’s when it happened.

  Plunk!

  Something very strange fell out of the tuna’s mouth.

  Three

  THE MYSTERIOUS STOWAWAY landed on the dock and rolled right up to Captain Stephen Preston’s knee-high black rubber boots.

  “What the hell is that?” someone asked from the back. “Let us in on the joke.”

  But everyone else could see plain as day what it was. A Coke bottle. The old-fashioned kind, real glass.

  “That’s some funny-lookin’ bait you used, Steve,” joked a captain from another boat.

  The crowd laughed as Steve bent and scooped up the bottle. He held it up to the bright morning sun and immediately scratched his head of curly blond hair. There was something inside. What the hell was it?

  Quickly he removed the makeshift seal of a small plastic bag held tight by a knot made of vines. This was getting stranger by the minute. With two shakes he was able to reach the edge of the contents with his pinkie.

  He pulled it out.

  It wasn’t paper—more like some kind of fabric. And there was writing on it.

  “What’s it say?” asked Jeffrey.

  The entire dock was silent as Steve Preston read the note to himself. The words were written in a deep crimson color, smudged but still legible. Could that be blood? he was wondering now. And whose blood is it?

  “C’mon, what’s it say?” asked Jeffrey again. “You’re killin’ us with suspense.”

  Captain Steve slowly turned the note so that those around him could see for themselves. The collective gasp that followed was instantaneous.

  “That family—they’re alive!” he managed. “The Dunne family.”

  In a flash, a vacationing reporter from the Washington Post reached for his cell phone to call his newsroom. He was back on the job.

  Meanwhile, Captain Stephen Preston just stood before the crowd and smiled. All he could think about was how the note in the bottle ended, the part about the reward.

  The dollar sign.

  The number one.

  And all those amazingly beautiful zeroes after it.

  “Jeff,” he said slowly, “this tuna’s worth a hell of a lot more than we thought.”

  Part One

  The Family (Un)Dunne

  Chapter 1

  “I’M CRAZY, right? I mean, I have to be absolutely, certifiably mad to take this trip! This sailboat extravaganza with my family! And Jake!”

  I’ve had this same thought for weeks, but today is the first time I’m saying it out loud. Screaming it, actually, at the top of my lungs. Thankfully, Mona’s Upper West Side office used to be a recording studio for a talk-show host. The walls are soundproof, or so Mona tells me.

  The way I’m acting, they should also be padded.

  “No, you’re not crazy,” says Mona, being her usual calm self. “On the other hand, are you biting off more than you can chew? Perhaps?”

  “But don’t I always?”

  “Yes,” she says, “for as long as I’ve known you, anyway. Don’t say the number.”

  Twenty-seven years, to be exact—ever since Mona and I met during our freshman orientation at Yale and discovered we were both closet General Hospital fans and harbored ridiculous crushes on Blackie, the character played by a very young—and incredibly cute—John Stamos.

  Wow, did I just date myself, or what?

  Anyway, for the past two months Mona has been more than my best friend and the sister I never had. She’s also been Dr. Mona Elien, my psychiatrist.

  Yes. I know. On paper, that arrangement might not be a good idea. But who lives on paper?

  Not me.

  I live on caffeine, adrenaline, and relentless sixteen-hour shifts at Lexington Hospital, where I’m a heart surgeon. I just didn’t have the time or patience for the get-to-know-you phase of therapy. Besides, there’s no one’s opinion I trust more than Mona’s. There’s no one I trust more, period.

  “It’s not that I’m weighing in against the sailboat trip, Katherine. In fact, I think it’s a great idea,” she says. “My only concern is how much hope you’re pinning on it, the pressure you seem to be putting on yourself and the kids. What if it doesn’t work?”

  “That’s easy,” I say. “I’ll just kill them and myself and put us all out of our collective misery.”

  “Well,” says Mona, straight-faced as always, “it’s good to know you have a Plan B.”

  The two of us crack up. How many other shrinks could I do that with?

  Mona’s right, though. I am pinning a lot of hope on this sailing trip, maybe too much.

  Only I can’t help it.

  That’s what can happen when your family is falling to pieces before your eyes and you believe that it’s all your fault.

  Chapter 2

  LONG STORY SHORT—boring personal story made palatable—the problems really kicked in four years ago when my husband, Stuart, suddenly died. It was a devastating shock. Even though Stuart had strayed on me, and more than once, I blamed my career and work schedule at least as much as I blamed him.

  At any rate, Stuart’s death was even worse for ou
r three children. I just didn’t realize it at first. Maybe I was too self-centered.

  For some reason I thought our family would all rally around, that we’d pull through by pulling together.

  I was fooling myself.

  Stuart was the family’s anchor; he was almost always there, while I was more often than not at the hospital, or at least on call. Without him around, the kids became their own little islands. They were angry, confused, and worse, they wanted little to do with me. Not that I could blame them. In all candor, I’ve never been in danger of winning any Mother of the Year award. I’m living proof—like so many other women, I suppose—of how hard it is to have both a successful career and time for a great relationship with your kids. Not impossible, just very hard.

  But that’s all about to change. At least I hope so. Desperately.

  Starting this Friday, I’m taking a two-month leave of absence from Lexington Hospital. Dr. Katherine Dunne is officially checking out.

  The kids and I are setting sail for the bulk of the summer on The Family Dunne, the boat that always used to bring us together when Stuart was alive. It was his pride and joy—and that’s probably why I could never bring myself to sell it. I couldn’t do that to the kids.

  Of course, Carrie, Mark, and Ernie hate this whole idea, but I don’t care. Even if I have to drag them kicking and screaming, they’re getting on that boat!

  “Oh, here’s some good news,” I tell Mona as we wrap up our session. “The kids have finally stopped referring to this as ‘the dysfunctional Dunne family vacation.’ ”

  “That is good news,” says Mona with the tinkly laugh I love.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Now they’re just calling it ‘Mom’s guilt trip from hell.’ ”

  Mona laughs again and I join her this time. It’s either that or start crying and maybe do a swan dive out her window.

  What have I gotten myself into? And how can our family survive?

  Two very good questions that I can’t answer right now.

  Chapter 3

  AFTER A LIGHT DRIZZLE that persisted all through Friday morning, a noontime fog settled over the Labrador Island Marina in exclusive and very tony Newport, Rhode Island.

  Fog.

  How fitting, thought Jake Dunne, stretching his lean six-foot-one frame as he stood on the teakwood deck of his late brother’s boat. Maybe that was because he still wasn’t clear about this trip—what to expect, how it would play out. Would he live to regret it?