Sara stared at the ocean like it was a murderer. All the horror stories she’d heard from seamen while on cataloguing runs and there was nothing more terrifying than a man who straight up vanished. The calm water lapped the ship’s hull the same way a guilty dog licks its master’s hand to apologize for shredding couch pillows.
Sara had seen stuff in her line of work, but this was the first time that the ocean’s beauty felt completely sinister.
She shouldn’t be surprised. On one of Sara’s past voyages, the men had described the discovery of a corpse on the ocean floor, trapped beneath rocks. Turned out to be a missing spring breaker in a wet suit. Crabs had gnawed the flesh away from his exposed skin. He was little more than a meaty torso when they discovered him, a skull face and skeletal limbs picked so clean its bones nearly glowed.
Holloway ordered most of his men to their bunks. One would take navigation duty and another would keep watch in the crow’s nest. But it was sleep for everyone else while the captain figured out next steps.
Holloway was all slouched shoulders and quiet anger. He shambled below deck and pulled a bottle of Stoli from storage. Sara followed at a distance.
“You going to call this off?” she asked with rising optimism.
The captain tossed the vodka’s bottle cap in the trash and took a parched swig. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shook his head. “Can’t, darlin’.”
His face wasn’t all that weak. Sara studied it and saw determination carved into his age lines.
“Mind if I drink with you?” she asked.
Sara led the way to her stateroom. His bunk, really. She locked the door as Holloway entered. She eyed the bed with a trundling heart. God, it’d be nice to feel something good tonight. One of these nights. At her back, the captain continued to go at the vodka like it was water.
“Best guy I ever knew,” he said.
“Kahega?”
A smile passed through his features, warming his eyes for just a moment before vanishing like a ghost. “I was at Stanley’s one night... that’s a lousy dive right outside Toliara. A few ship captains there got word I was intending to compete for the affections of area tourists. Wanted to know why I needed to be here, of all places, and shouldn’t I fuck off back to the states?”
“How territorial.”
“Humans are like every other kind of animal.”
“Animals don’t usually take things personally.”
“Okay, professor,” Holloway said. “I’m staring down the barrel of a bunch of switchblades and machetes and it’s like those old westerns where the bartender disappears because there’s about to be trouble.”
“Knew you were shady,” Sara said.
“Anyway, Kahega, a guy I never met beyond a few quick exchanges at port, appears out of nowhere and tells them they cannot harass his cousin. And you wouldn’t think that’d work, right? Everyone in the place looks at us like, bullshit. He starts in on this story about how their fathers were brothers and how my daddy made me promise to come back to Africa and do right by it... just enough detail to sell the lie.”
“No offense, but why’d he do that?”
“Thanks.”
“I’m glad he did, but what prompted him to stick his neck out for a stranger?”
“Asked him that,” Holloway said. “He had no answer. Just thought we needed to be better. As a species.”
“God,” Sara said, thinking of the way she’d dogged him all the way to the coast. It’d been justified, of course, but as she told Holloway before, humans were too complex to be viewed in simple terms of good and evil.
“You’re glad he did, ay?”
Sara gave a weak smile. “Very glad.”
Holloway put the vodka down and leaned in. His breath was 80 proof and he looked at her like she was a snack.
Sara closed her eyes as their noses touched, pushing in so her lips could reciprocate. They kissed. The simple touch was electric, energy that discharged across their bodies.
Her fingers reached for the bottom of his shirt and lifted it. He helped wrestle it overhead and then her hands roved his carved physique, fingers tracing the contours of his muscles. She moaned while his hands cupped her breasts, squeezing them together while his mouth worked on her neck. He lifted her shirt so her breasts spilled free. She moaned softly, thinking of her husband asleep in the next room.
This was wrong, and that excited her. Brain chemistry was a traitor. She dug her nails into his back and he growled excitedly. But then she pushed him off so their foreheads touched.
She shook her head no and then Holloway nodded in agreement.
“Sorry,” he said and rolled over to face the wall.
Sara stood and the heat flushed from her body. She was so worked up she thought she might’ve gone through with it if he’d wanted. Just two people desperate to escape the pain. And to think, it was the roguish ship captain who backed away.
“Nothing to apologize for,” Sara said.
“Oh, I’ve got plenty.”
“You want to feel something other than pain.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“If you want to talk, I—”
“Look,” Holloway said. “I shouldn’t have tried to take advantage of you. That’s on me. And since I’m already the bad guy, let me get one more thing off my chest.”
“Can’t wait to hear this.”
Holloway was leaning up on one elbow now, neck craned to face her. “You’re a thousand times better than the schmuck you married, no offense. That’s not me coming on to you. It’s me saying that you deserve a lot better than being stuck in the middle of the ocean in a bunk with some barnacle twice your age.”
“I could be offended by that,” Sara said. “But I think I’m gonna read it as a compliment in your own socially inept way.”
“Read it any way you like, darlin’.” Holloway dropped back onto his side and scrunched the pillow up beneath his head.
And before Sara could continue the conversation, he was already snoring.
Twenty-One
There was no walk of shame for Holloway.
He didn’t have the ability to skulk back to his own bunk since this was technically it. He lay on his back with his arms stretched against the headboard, snoring like a pig.
Sara showered, scrubbing away the guilt that came with infidelity. No, it wasn’t sex, but she’d wanted it. And for everything that Blake had put her through, those vows... well, they’d meant something to her. At one point not that long ago, they’d meant something.
She brushed her teeth twice and slid into white shorts topped off by a grey tee that hung loose off her shoulders. Cotton wouldn’t stick or itch and she needed every edge in this godforsaken climate.
Because she wasn’t staying in here.
Isabella’s notes sat folded on the chair. She scooped them up and hurried out, standing with an elbow against the wall as she caught her breath. Behind her, dueling snores from the two men she’d given herself to. Sara hurried on, eager to escape the noise.
The only spot aboard the Frozen Cocktail that afforded any privacy was Holloway’s little drinking nook. She settled there. The floor space was clean and if she concentrated hard, she could pretend she was alone.
When she was at sea, she did her best work inside the engine room where the electric hums were so loud that every other distraction got tamped down.
Sara spread Isabella’s pages out around her in a semi-circle. “What happened to you?” she whispered, touching the original notepaper with her fingertips, as if the answer might be absorbed through osmosis. She drifted back through time, moving through the corridors of Roche’s keep where the air was stale and flickering torchlight made everything smell of scorched wood. She imagined that place sitting out there somewhere, just waiting for the right person to rediscover it.
Would it really be them? Could a band of misfits ever be so lucky?
“Why do you think she was so vague?”
Blake stood
in the hallway, his palms tapping the stair treads nervously. He was unable to make eye contact.
“You should be sleeping,” Sara said.
Blake ignored the advice. “I, uh, looked for you in your room. Found him.” He wasn’t being confrontational, but self-reflexive. “I shouldn’t have brought us here.”
That was the damn truth, but funny he needed to lose his dignity in order to realize it.
“I want to find her,” Sara said.
He looked at her finally. “Really?”
With a shrug, she added, “Someone should.”
“We’re going to,” he said and fought the smile that threatened to twist his face. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot, and knew it.
“I want to give her closure,” Sara added. “These notes, the life she lived... she deserves that much.”
“Her life on that island was a death sentence. I think she wrote those letters hoping that someone would help.”
Sara tapped the pages splayed around her. “These were written specifically and altruistically. These first two entries, at least. She wanted her true love to find her. This guy, what’s his name... Martine Vernier.”
“Think they were really in love?” Blake asked.
Sara thought on that, figured the likelihood wasn’t so great. For some reason, she couldn’t say that, though. “I guess we’ll never know.”
Did it matter? The girl stood around waiting for someone to save her. People always looked at history through an excusatory lens and with stupid rationalizations like, “it was a different time then.” So what? A girl ran off with the wrong guy. It happened every day in every part of the world.
It was happening now.
She pictured herself in Isabella’s shoes. Imagined standing on the shore of some hidden beach, fingers tugging her bodice collar without realizing that the suffocation was coming from inside. Riled waves served as the world’s most unflappable jailor. What could you do? Wish the appearance of a rescuer on the horizon? And then die a little each day when he never showed?
Maybe there was nothing to do. Maybe Isabella had died trying.
“Back to bed,” Sara said, realizing Blake was still standing in place, looking glad to be on speaking terms. She flicked her wrist back toward his bunk. “Go.”
“I’m not—”
“Look, I need a minute.”
“Yeah, okay.” She could almost feel his slumped shoulders and defeated posture while listening to his scuffing feet scrape sadly toward his room.
Sara turned the gemstone over in her hand and wondered if its discovery was intended to be proof of concept for explorers who needed a little certainty at this point in the hunt.
The next hint was even more baffling.
Travel along the path of the plate to the glaring twins, who watch the sky in order to see the sign.
Sara’s fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Zimmer, would kick off lunchtime with a riddle. The winner got a few pieces of candy, and then burned off their sugar rush on the playground.
Sara was the only kid to go the entire year without answering a single one. It wasn’t that she overthought things. It was more like her brain would simply sputter and refuse to catch, like a failing engine. And to this day she had nothing but disdain for minds that were quick enough to find those answers.
“Not going to let you beat me, Roche,” she whispered and lifted the page an inch from her eyes. Who even knew if this had been translated properly?
Sara put the pages back into the protective sleeve and decided she needed a walk. A warm breeze gusted across the deck. She looked overboard as the hull continued to slice through placid waters. Even the fizzing whitecaps were dark tonight.
Whatever time it was, and Sara wasn’t keeping track, the Emerald Tides’ party barge had gone quiet. They must’ve gone back to port until her eyes adjusted enough in the dark to see a large, yacht-shaped silhouette bobbing up and down in the distance, further away than it had been, but still unmistakably there.
“Anyone else see that?” Sara said. One of Holloway’s men stood at the helm, and one other circled the deck with an automatic weapon in hand. Neither responded to her.
Sara leaned against the wall and slid down, stretching her legs and throwing her neck back in order to watch the stars. This expanse was the same one that Isabella had watched, and somewhere up there was a sign that was going to lead them right to her.
On the path of the plate.
Whatever that meant.
Twenty-Two
Blake never got back to sleep. He watched the ceiling and tortured himself over all the ways this had gone bad.
People always said to forget the past because it cannot be changed. Those people hadn’t made his mistakes. He counted errors like sheep until his forehead began to roast in the sunlight reaching through the port window.
Then it was time to get up.
He dressed in whatever was nearby, reaching for any twisted wrinkle of clothing. It didn’t matter. Anything so long as it got him out of this room.
Sara and Holloway were nowhere to be found. He was glad for that.
Breakfast was a granola bar that had been stuffed inside the pocket of his linen shirt. He reached the deck and stayed aft of everyone else, watching mild green water lap the hull. The chatter coming from the bow was either agitated or excited, and given what happened last night, probably a little of both.
Without Kahega here to keep things balanced, Blake wondered what kind of double-cross the son of a bitch captain was fixing to pull.
He’s already got your wife and that’s your fault.
Blake was defeated. The treasure was everything, even though he’d lost the person he wanted it for. It was sort of meaningless now that Sara was a stranger. He watched her from a distance, speaking to Holloway with the familiarity of old friends and probably more. He wondered how many times they’d fucked last night as he felt a swell of shameful arousal pass through him.
None of that was rational, Blake knew, but he didn’t care. Every bit of trust they’d built steadily over seven years was extinct. He’d done that. But he resented Sara for letting it all go to hell without a fight.
“Shit,” he grumbled.
Shrieks sprang into the sky like fireworks. Everyone aboard rushed to the port rail in one mass, gasping at something he couldn’t see. Blake followed their line of sight and found a speck rising on lazy waves in the distance.
Holloway ordered the helmsman to bring them around and the Frozen Cocktail cut sharp through the water. There was a capsizing ship growing fast on the horizon. They closed the distance and caught sight of the Emerald Tides branding just as the logo slipped beneath the sea.
Last night, this barge had been so full of life that there had been ecstatic screams and DJ booms from a couple hundred feet away. It was almost impossible to believe this was the same ship.
“Life boats were dispatched,” Holloway said, pointing to empty hooks. “Must’ve hit trouble out here and abandoned ship.”
“Wouldn’t they have come to us?” Blake asked.
The captain didn’t answer. He squinted toward the wreckage. The one side of the hull they could see looked like Swiss cheese.
Horror overtook Blake. He felt sick, knowing that something out there had done this. The same something that took Kahega, he knew. “Whatever’s down there is after us.”
Holloway glared.
Sara didn’t look at him at all, almost is if there was a physical barrier between them.
Good, Blake thought. Let the guilt of what you did eat you alive.
The Frozen Cocktail floated close enough to the barge for them to reach out and touch it. Except nobody wanted to. The walls were stained by erratic splotches of blood so dark it was nearly tar.
The people that had spent last night grinding against sweaty and scantily clad bodies were a memory, and Blake knew that if they were to call the resort and check to see if any had made it back, the answer would be no.
“
Coast Guard will be back this way before long,” Holloway said. “Looking for whatever caused this mess.”
“Ocean’s about to get a lot smaller,” Blake said.
Holloway barely acknowledged him. He raced to the Frozen Cocktail’s bow at the sight of a second ship suddenly materializing in the distance. The captain screamed “incoming” and brought his rifle to aim.
It was a yacht, far bigger than the Frozen Cocktail. It moved with purpose, and Blake thought he knew what had the captain so concerned.
It was headed straight for them.
The helmsman above saw this too and brought their boat full throttle. Holloway’s men took defensive positions with weapons ready. Orders and strategies were exchanged, some of the shouts lost beneath the fury of whipping wind and agitated water.
The sky overhead dimmed as if someone had turned down the lights. In the distance, the horizon cracked with blinding white light as thunder rumbled in stereo surround.
“Kill them all before they get close,” Holloway shouted. “Or they’ll do the same to you.”
Blake and Sara were side-by-side, strangers at a bus stop. Whatever death they faced was nothing compared to the trial by fire that had singed his soul last night. Down there, his life had flashed before his eyes. Up here, they had enough firepower to take Madagascar by force if necessary. He hadn’t gone through all that to die.
The yacht was close now and everyone saw the solitary figure standing at the tip of the bow. A blonde woman in a bikini that was closer to dental floss. She waved her arms back and forth, desperate to be noticed.
Everyone aboard the Frozen Cocktail held their fire as the approaching yacht eased off its throttle. A second thunder crack tore a hole in the sky and one of Holloway’s men on the starboard side dropped his gun on the deck, spinning like a top. Half his head was gone, blown into the sea, leaving streams of gore to splatter like a lawn sprinkler.
On the opposing ship, the blonde Trojan horse screamed at the sight and hit the deck, falling prone as a second shot tore off. The man nearest Holloway leapt back, propelled through the air as a hole the size of a cannonball was blown through his back.
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