To my husband, Doug

Dr. Walter L. “Pete” Johnson,

and my mother, Sally Skaggs Johnson,

with love and appreciation for their help and support over the years

It was a perfect day for everything except dying.

Matthew Grayson lifted his face to the bright April sunshine and sniffed the sweetness of the air, an automatic gesture born of years spent at sea at the helm of his own ship. In those days-were they only a few months ago?-he had thrived on storms and dangers and challenges of every sort, thrived on pitting his courage and skill against anything that sea or sky or man-or woman-could throw at them. Grappling with death had always exhilarated him, making his blood sing with the sheer joy of being alive. Only now, when death was a grim reality and not a faceless chimera, had the singing abruptly stopped.

His eyes flickered once in his otherwise carefully expressionless face as he thought briefly, longingly, of happier days. The first time his men had seen him laughing at death-he had been hurling mocking defiance in the teeth of a killer hurricane that had sunk a hundred ships from one end of the Atlantic to the other-they had looked at one another in quaking disbelief, silently questioning his sanity. Then, when their own ship, the Lucie Belle, had emerged from the tempest unscathed, the more superstitious among them had stared fearfully at their black-haired, swarthy-skinned captain. His teeth were flashing white in an exultant grin as he worked with unflagging energy while the crew was ready to drop from the exhaustion of more than forty-eight hours spent battling the storm. And, one by one, they had crossed themselves. It was then that the whispers began: Matt Grayson had made a pact with the devil, had bartered his soul for his own and his ship’s safety. The Lucie Belle was blessed or cursed, depending on the speaker’s point of view.