by J. Haymore
Ethan stands up as he steers, and I sit on the nearby leather bench. Except when we check the compass with the flashlight, there’s very little light—only a hint of illumination from an indefinable source that keeps complete blackness from pressing in on us and offers us the slightest hint of shapes.
Ethan and I are both subdued tonight. I’m still trying to process what’s happened. He’s been quiet all day, pulling against a taut leash of control that never snapped. Now, though, he slams his hands down on the wheel so hard I jump.
“I should have predicted it,” he growls. I can hardly hear him, so I stand and move next to him, using a wide stance to balance myself on the pitching deck. He doesn’t touch me, but the vibrations of anger in his voice do. “I’m so fucking pissed at myself for letting him come on this boat.” He gazes straight ahead, and I can only see the shadow of his profile in the dimness, and it is rigid with fury.
“How could you have? Nobody could have predicted this. Mick seemed so…” Well, actually he seemed…nothing. But that doesn’t sound right, so I finish lamely, “Nice. At the beginning.”
He gives a small snort. “I never trusted him. Even at the beginning. Something was always off about him.”
I tilt my head, considering this. I didn’t see anything odd about Mick at all. There were really no signs, as far as I could tell. Until that one time when Ethan and I were on the trampoline and he was watching us so raptly—that was weird. That was when I started to know, deep in my gut, that something was off.
“The background check I did before we left LA came up clean,” Ethan continues. He makes a sound of disgust. “Why didn’t I think to dig deeper then?”
“Wait, you ran a background check on him? Why?”
Ethan is silent for a minute, then says, “I ran one on everyone. I didn’t want to be stuck on a boat for three weeks with anyone who might be untrustworthy. But he was untrustworthy. I’m such a fucking idiot.”
“You never trusted him,” I remind him gently. As I say this, I’m thinking of how naïve I am, that I just expected everyone to be…normal. You’d think, after the life I’ve led, I’d be suspicious of everyone.
“I should have acted on that distrust. Instead, I let it go. I thought I was keeping an eye on him, but in the meantime—Jesus—he tried to make you fall overboard, he tried to poison you, and now this.”
“Maybe…” I hesitate, then just say it. “Maybe you were distracted.” Maybe this is the reason he doesn’t want a relationship back home—because he’s busy running an insanely successful business and can’t handle the distraction of one.
“That’s no excuse,” he snaps. Then he turns to me, and his expression softens. “I’m glad you’re okay. No thanks to me, but you’re okay, and I’m grateful for that.”
“Are you kidding? Definitely thanks to you. You were the one who had the EpiPen. If you hadn’t…” I let the thought hang, then thrust it out of my mind. It’s too bizarre, too surreal, to even consider.
“Right,” he says shortly. But he doesn’t seem mollified—tension still flows off him in waves.
Ethan, this man who stands so close to me, was a stranger just a few weeks ago. But now I trust him to my core. He’ll do his best to protect me, fight for me, keep me safe. I want to reach out to him and provide comfort, but it’s not easy to steer and remain on course in this weather, so I hang back.
Me…giving Ethan comfort. The idea is novel. He’s provided so much comfort to me. I think of the day Kyle fell overboard, how deeply soothing Ethan’s arms around me felt. And since then, he has held me many times, and every single time I have felt safe in his arms. Cherished. But now, I want to soothe him, and it feels somehow right.
A flickering thought runs through my head: Maybe I am naïve to trust him too. But, as always, I slam the lid shut on that thought immediately. He’s made it clear over and over again that he cares about me. Sometimes I wonder why—how it could have happened so fast, how he seems to just know me. But then, I fell for him at light speed. If I fell so quickly, then he could too, right?
I move behind him, slip my hands around his waist, and lay my cheek between his shoulder blades. As the boat rocks and strains beneath our feet, his body is strung taut, but then his chest rises and falls, and some of the tension bleeds away.
I think I love you.
The words float around in my head as I wrap him tightly in my arms. I can’t love him. Loving him is dangerous. But how do you stop yourself from falling in love? It’s like…a runaway train. There’s no stopping it.
How can this be? This was not what I predicted from this voyage across the Pacific Ocean. None of it has been what I anticipated.
But what did I expect? Big waves, brisk winds, white-knuckle sailing, a roller coaster of excitement? Or maybe a resort-like feeling—lying on the trampoline in a bikini top and my white capris, staring at a blue sky and watching my skin color from its typical pasty white to golden bronze in the tropical sun?
I’m not sure what I expected. But not in my wildest dreams did I expect what’s happened here.
Wrangling the wheel with one hand, he presses a hand against mine that are flat on his ridged abs. We stand there for a long time—me holding him in silence. Him pressing his hand to mine in a gesture of acceptance, of oneness.
Kyle comes up yawning at one a.m. There hasn’t been much of a change in the weather—it’s still pouring rain, the waves are enormous, and the wind is blowing steadily with stronger gusts here and there. We have no instruments to tell us for sure, but Ethan guesses the winds are averaging about twenty-five or thirty knots. As Nalani said, it’s nothing the Temptation can’t handle. It’s even a bit milder than predicted.
Still, my entire body trembles with fatigue. Handling a sailboat in gale conditions is hard work, and after fighting the elements for a couple of hours following a day that’s been so physically and emotionally draining, I feel like I’m going to keel over.
Kyle ignores the fact that my arms are wrapped around Ethan and my head’s on his shoulder. Instead, he moves the beam of his flashlight until the pool of light washes over me and Ethan. “Nalani ordered me to make sure you go down and get some rest,” he tells me flatly. “Tomorrow’s going to be tiring and busy.”
Kyle’s still hurt. His pain trembles in the tenor of his voice, and my heart squeezes.
I want to kiss Ethan and tell him I’ll see him in a couple of hours, but Kyle’s watching, and…again, I don’t want to make things even more awkward between us. Instead, I squeeze Ethan tighter for a second, then let my hands slip from around him. “Okay.”
“I’ll go with you,” Ethan says.
I shake my head. “Kyle needs you up here.” That’s the truth. Sailing the Temptation right now is not a one-person job. In any case, now that Mick’s gone, there’s no need for Ethan to watch over me like a hawk anymore.
He nods, tightlipped, and his gaze follows me as I head back inside. After I shut the companionway door behind me, I unzip my PFD, then stow it in a cabinet. It’s dripping wet, but drying it off seems so unimportant right now, the thought of doing it is no more than fleeting.
Hesitating at the entrance to the port-side cabins, where Ethan’s and my cabins are, I decide I need to do one more thing before I fall into bed. I do an about-face and walk with determined steps the other side. Curiosity and a pounding desire for information spur me on. Maybe there’s something buried somewhere in Mick’s cabin that will give me some clue as to why he’s done this to us…to me.
I grab a flashlight from the galley table and try to be quiet as I walk down into the hull that contains Nalani’s and Mick’s cabins. Nalani’s is in the stern of the boat, and Mick’s is in the bow, where the front of the right-side hull comes to a point.
I haven’t been down here at all for the duration of the trip—there’s been no need for me to come to either Nalani’s or Mick’s cabin, and the thought is kind of odd. On a fifty-foot sailboat, a tiny space, really, I’ve disregarded almost hal
f the living area.
At the bottom of the two steps and to the right, the door to Nalani’s cabin—the captain’s cabin, which brims with beautiful varnished teak and mahogany—is firmly shut. I bet she shut it against Kyle. Against all of us, maybe. Anyway, she’s in there sleeping, and she needs her rest. Today has been taxing for her, and there’s lots of work ahead if we want to get to Hawaii safely.
Mick’s cabin is to the left. With a dim sense of foreboding, I turn to it. We searched it quickly earlier today, but a more thorough examination wouldn’t be amiss. Just in case there’s something…something that can give me some answers.
Mick’s cabin door is also closed, but it’s not locked. The bed is unmade, which is unlike Mick, who prefers everything to be “shipshape.” I close the door behind me, feeling mildly nauseated to have just enclosed myself in a space that’s been wholly occupied by a deranged man for the past nineteen days.
To the left is a small sofa built into the wall, and to the right is the built-in armoire. With something thick, something like dread clogging my throat, I push the button to unlock the first cabinet and shine the flashlight around inside. There are clothes in here, Mick’s clothes, and they’re hanging in a neat and orderly fashion. A thorough search reveals nothing on the bottom of the cabinet, nothing in his pockets. It’s just clothes.
I repeat the process with the other side and in his drawers. Just a few more items of clothing, sailing books, a couple of thrillers, and three pairs of shoes. There seems to be nothing significant.
Then again, Mick isn’t stupid. His attempts to…whatever he was trying to do to me…failed, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t have left any evidence. What am I doing? This is futile.
I don’t understand any of this, and it’s so overwhelming—every cell in my body is overflowing with confusion and fear. Defeated, I sink down onto the little sofa, shining the flashlight around, my gaze skipping over the books, his alarm clock, an empty cup on the side of his bed. Everything is so damned normal. Just like Mick himself seemed.
I haven’t looked in the head he uses yet, though there isn’t likely to be anything of importance inside the tiny bathroom. I intend to check it anyway, for the sake of thoroughness.
I switch off the flashlight and take a few deep breaths, refusing to let a panic attack come. Staving it off takes several minutes. Finally, feeling a little calmer, I click the flashlight back on and rise resolutely to go check out the head.
Boom!
The noise, a long, rumbling, explosive burst of sound, is so loud that it goes inside me, inside my bone marrow. Like I’m detonating from the inside out. Some invisible force sends me flying forward, and my body smashes against the opposite wall.
My legs crumple, pain shoots through my body, and everything goes suddenly, terribly silent.
Chapter Eighteen
I cannot hear the wind or the waves or the ocean slamming against the hulls of the Temptation. There’s nothing. No sound beyond the strange buzz of static in my ears.
Boneless and shocked by pain, I sink into a puddle on the floor. Or is it the floor? I can’t see anything besides the bright beam of the flashlight cutting through the dark in a widening swath of foggy light.
Just now, that one bit of brightness feels like a lifeline, and, ignoring the painful complaint of my limbs, I lunge forward on hands and knees to grab the flashlight.
Is it the armoire’s door latches that are digging into the flesh of my knees? I can’t be sure. I’m not sure of anything right now. The boat bucks and heaves beneath me, the stability of the catamaran gone, as if each bit of chop and each wave toss the Temptation like a child’s plastic toy in a bathtub.
The silence is deafening, so loud only a screaming panic can beat it down.
“Help! Help! Ethan? Kyle? Ethan!” But I can’t hear myself shout, only a hollow echo.
Smooth wood lies beneath my hands, and the latches still dig into my knees. I haven’t moved. Not only do my muscles refuse to respond to my body’s commands, the boat tosses around me so forcefully, it’s all I can do to hold my position steady.
I shine the light around in jerks and starts, grabbing on to something—a lip of furniture, maybe the edge of the couch—but nothing makes sense. Nothing is where it should be. Everything is tumbling about. Clothes rain out from the drawers, the coverlet isn’t on the bed, books lie open and slide across unrecognizable surfaces. And then my flashlight points to the closed door of Mick’s cabin.
The door appears to be horizontal rather than vertical, but that’s not what horrifies me. No, what makes my blood turn to solid ice is the water that’s pouring in around the sides of it.
I freeze for a moment, unable to move, unable to even think beyond the terror that locks my body in a vise.
And then I scream, “Kyle! Ethan!”
Nalani is close, and I yell her name too. What’s going on with the rest of the Temptation? The thought is too horrifying to contemplate. All I know is that my time here is limited. That door is going to burst open soon, and then I’m going to drown.
I still can’t hear a damn thing, and that’s so scary, but it’s also infuriating. Maybe Kyle or Ethan or Nalani is yelling at me, telling me what to do. But there’s no way to know. I’m on my own. Completely on my own.
“I can’t hear! I can’t hear anything!” I call out, just in case they’re somewhere close and wondering why I haven’t responded to them.
The cabin door bulges from the water pressure behind it. The water laps at my wrists. Gripping the flashlight firmly, I begin to crawl away from the door, toward the bed. But my flashlight reveals the bed is vertical.
And then the boat rolls, and I lose my balance, falling, smashing against a fiberglass wall as the Temptation seems to rotate around me. The flashlight slips from my fingers, and that terrifies me more than anything. I search frantically for that small source of light, my hands groping, my eyes trying to make sense of all the foggy images.
There it is! Lodged into the crevice between the wall and the floor—or the ceiling—beside an unrecognizable piece of furniture. I lunge for it.
Just as my fingers wrap around the handle, the Temptation rolls again. This time I clutch the flashlight with a death grip as the wave pummels me against another side of the cabin.
And then it happens. The door bursts open. The hull trembles as the water rushes into it. I scurry as far back as possible, trying to get away from it. Cold water crashes into me, propelling me farther back, knocking the wind out of me as my sternum smashes into something. Pain bursts through my chest, then the mattress digs into my hip as the force of the water flings me against it.
There’s a hatch above Mick’s bed. An escape route. If I can get it open…
I scramble up to the bed, which pitches and rolls beneath me so steeply I can’t stop losing my balance. I keep my death grip on the flashlight and try to shine it up at the hatch. Each inch toward it feels like it takes an eternity, and it does, because the movement is so violent, and the water has risen to my ribs, and pushing through the boiling force of it takes every ounce of my body’s waning strength.
The boat tosses me yet again, and this time, the water drags me under.
Which way is up? Where’s the surface? Completely panicked, I flail uselessly, pressed in on all sides by seawater that fills my mouth, cold and unforgiving.
My arm brushes over the rough texture of the sodden mattress, and I thrust myself off it, breaking through the top of the water so forcefully, my head slams against the roof of the cabin. Stars shoot across my vision.
Miraculously, I can hear again. I suck up great, gulping lungfuls of air. The snap of popping wires and crunch of breaking wood and fiberglass add to the roar of the water as it rushes around me, trying to suck me up into its deadly vortex.
The water’s rising fast—it’s at chin-level now. The flashlight is gone again. It’s so dark. I grope around, trying to find the hatch.
The singular focus of locating it consumes my m
ind. The water has risen to my nose, and I have to tilt my head up to continue to breathe, but that seems insignificant compared to my need to find the hatch.
And then…I feel the slight depression in the ceiling and smack my hand up into Plexiglas. I hear mewling, then realize those weak little whimpering sounds are coming from me. My fingers fumble for latches that keep the hatch shut and locked. I feel one of them at the edge of the glass, grip it, and try to turn it.
Another roll, and again water sucks me under. This time, my fingers remain wrapped around the lock, even as it cuts against my hand with the force of the water. I grip it like the lifeline it is, and when the wave passes, the water has risen to the ceiling. There’s a tiny area under the hatch, a little pocket of air, and I turn my head into it and gulp in a deep breath.
But then the water consumes me completely.
I still work. I don’t think about anything but the hatch. The hatch. Getting it unlocked. Getting it open. Beyond the hatch, there’s air. Blessed, beautiful, life-giving air. I’m going to open it. I can and will do it, because there’s no other option.
I twist the first lock open as surging water thrashes my body. I grope around for the second lock, my lungs bursting.
Air. I need air.
I find the second lock and wrench it open. I push at the hatch, but the angle is wrong. There seems to be pressure on the other side of it, and I’m not strong enough. I’ve wasted my strength. I don’t have enough for the final push to freedom.
It hurts. More than anything I’ve ever experienced, the feeling of drowning is like a bomb within your chest. The pressure growing and growing until it finally explodes and you’re nothing. No longer of this world.
I kick and thrash desperately, trying to get above the water, anything to get out of this horror. It’s the worst panic attack of my life, but it’s not just that.
It’s real.
I breathe in water. It burns as it goes down. It hurts, but I’m becoming a fish. I’ve grown gills, and I’m going to be a mermaid and swim out of this, and everything’s going to be okay. Tomorrow, I’ll be swimming with the dolphins.