His Horizon - Con Riley Page 0,98

alone would cost so much more, last minute. I don’t have anywhere near enough.”

Rob silenced him again with a quick kiss. “I said we’ll make it work if there’s even the slightest chance.” He held up the ticket and squinted. “But until we know, you’re going to get two more bass on, so we can finish this service. Yes, chef?” Rob’s gaze turned steely, another flash of his father, so like him at that moment that Jude couldn’t help agreeing.

“Yes, chef!” he answered, and got back to finishing his first, and maybe last, lunch service of the summer.

Trevor arrived with more than his laptop and charts. He brought a lasting hug for Jude, and warm cheek kisses for Louise that she returned as he passed her a photo album. “Thought you might like to see some of my photos from when I worked with Simon,” he offered.

Lou hugged the album to her chest. “Thank you.” Then her face crumpled as she had an emotional moment Jude could relate to, so similar to one he’d had during the lunch service. “I-I know there’s not much chance,” she got out, stuttering. “Of finding them alive, I mean. And I’m sorry to put you to work like this when you’re retired, but we need to know for certain that we’ve done everything that we can.”

“I’m only semi-retired, sweetheart, and it’s the least I can do,” Trevor answered as if any of this rested on his shoulders somehow. “Give me a moment to get set up, and we’ll run some numbers.”

Jude watched Trevor boot up his laptop and then start to type. “Weather statistics,” he muttered before clicking over to a new tab. “Wind speed and direction, and measured rainfall.” Again and again, he opened new tabs to draw from, pausing often, thoughtful. “This is so much easier now the parameters can be defined, but multiple sources would increase the accuracy,” he mused, his brow furrowed. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he scanned statistics and added more data to a spreadsheet that gradually filled, apart from one blank section.

Ever nosy, Rob asked, “What goes here?”

“That’s where I’ll add any hazards like rocks or particularly shallow waters when we have a better idea of where we’re looking. I can do pretty much everything online initially, like this, but I don’t trust the outcome until I can chart it myself, by hand.” Trevor glanced up. “These are the charts I’ll need.” He jotted the details on a Post-it. “Did you say Simon kept some here?”

“Yes.” Rob took the list and got up. “I’ll go and look.”

Jude stood as well. “I’ll come too.” They’d boxed up so many from his dad’s study, it might take an age to locate them.

“No need.” Rob was gone before Jude could argue, and then back what only seemed like minutes later.

Trevor took a quick look before grinning. “Excellent. They’re exactly what I needed. Now, I’ll need a bit more room for this part. Where can I spread them out?”

“How about in the bar? It’s empty now,” Louise said.

Jude went ahead and cleared tables of their menus and bar mats, and then unrolled several old charts. His “thanks” was gruff as Rob also passed over empty pint glasses to hold down their edges. Out of the hundreds that his dad had kept in his office, Rob had brought exactly the right ones. “How did you know where to find these?”

“That was easy,” Rob said, lightly. “Lord knows I’ve been staring at them ever since I got here.” He smoothed a hand over a patch that was sun-faded. “They were the ones pinned up in the boatshed. Your dad must have liked looking at them when he was building the One for Luck out there. I brought them over yesterday to add more of a nautical feel to the snug bar.”

The right charts had been in the boatshed for Jude’s entire childhood.

His parents’ last location there this whole time.

“Shush,” Rob said as if Jude had spoken aloud, his lips a soft graze against Jude’s temple. “Hush. This place is chock-full of maps. There was no way you could have guessed which ones mattered. We needed Trevor for that, and who was it who dug deep enough to discover his name in the first place?”

The man himself stood in the doorway holding his laptop. Trevor said, “Oh, now this is very lovely,” like he was seeing the bar for the first time. The view over the harbour was idyllic, masts of sailboats