Read Online Riptide by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child - Free Book Online

wind picked up, and Hatch could feel the droplets of
     moisture begin to evaporate from his face and hands. He did not look back. But the simple knowledge that the fogbound island
     was quickly shrinking into the horizon eased the constricting feeling in his chest.
    “You should know that we’ll be working closely with a first-rate archaeologist and a historian,” Neidelman said at his side.
     “The knowledge we’ll gain about seventeenth-century engineering, high seas piracy, and naval technology—perhaps even about
     Red Ned Ockham’s mysterious death—will be of incalculable value. This is as much an archaeological dig as a treasure reclamation.”
    There was a brief silence. “I’d want to reserve the right to stop the whole show if I felt conditions were growing too dangerous,”
     Hatch said.
    “Perfectly understandable. There are eighteen clauses in our boilerplate land-lease contract. We’ll just add a nineteenth.”
    “And if I become part of this,” Hatch said more slowly, “I don’t want to be a silent partner, looking over anyone’s shoulder.”
    Neidelman stirred the dead ashes of his pipe. “Salvage of this sort is an extremely risky business, especially for the layman.
     What role do you propose to play?”
    Hatch shrugged. “You mentioned that you’d hired an expedition doctor.”
    Neidelman stopped stirring his pipe long enough to look up and raise his eyebrows. “As required by Maine law. Are you suggesting
     a change of personnel?”
    “Yes.”
    Neidelman smiled. “And you’re comfortable taking leave from Mount Auburn Hospital at such short notice?”
    “My research can wait. Besides, we aren’t talking about all that long. It’s already the end of July. If you’re going to do
     this, it’ll have to be over and done within four weeks—for better or worse. The dig can’t continue into storm season.”
    Neidelman leaned over the side of the boat and knocked the dottle from his pipe with a single hard stroke. He straightened
     up again, the long dark line of Burnt Head framing the horizon behind him.
    “In four weeks, it
will
be over,” he said. “Your struggle, and mine.”

5

    H atch parked the car in the dirt lot next to Bud’s Superette. It was his own car this time, and it was strangely unsettling
     to be viewing his past life through the windshield of a vehicle so much a part of his present. He glanced at the cracked leather
     seats, at the faded coffee stains on the burled walnut of the gearbox. So familiar, and somehow so safe; it took a supreme
     effort to open the door. He plucked the sunglasses from the dash, then put them back. The time for dissembling was over.
    He looked around the small square. More stone cobbles were peeping up through the worn asphalt of the street. The old newsstand
     at the corner, with its wobbly wire racks of comic books and magazines, had given way to an ice-cream shop. Beyond the square,
     the town fell away down the hill, as impossibly picturesque as ever, the slate and cedar-shingled roofs gleaming in the sunlight.
     A man walked up from the harbor in rubber boots, a slicker over his shoulder: a lobsterman coming back from work. The man
     glanced at Hatch as he passed, then disappeared down a side lane. He was young, no more than twenty, and Hatch realized the
     man wasn’t even born when he had left town with his mother. An entire generation had grown up in his absence. And no doubt
     an entire generation had died, too. He suddenly wondered if Bud Rowell was still alive.
    Superficially, Bud’s Superette looked exactly as he remembered it: the green screen door that didn’t shut properly, the ancient
     Coca-Cola sign, the weathered, tilting porch. He stepped inside, worn floorboards creaking under his feet, and pulled a cart
     from the small rack by the door, grateful for the emptiness of the place. Moving down the narrow aisles, he began picking
     up some food for the
Plain Jane,
where he’d decided to stay until the old family