“Now you’re getting personal, Murphy.” Carter heads toward the door as Sammy walks over with one of the metal stools. “I’m going to ask my parents to get you fired when we get back. Gray, remind me to get Murphy fired when we get back. Make a sticky note so you don’t forget.”
“Done,” Gray says.
“You want to get me fired?” Murphy asks, his eyes glinting with real amusement. “Be my guest! You’d be doing me a favor, for sure. They don’t pay me enough to deal with you spoiled rich brats.”
“We prefer the term economically advantaged punks,” Gray says.
“As I was saying,” Murphy continues, shooting Gray a sidelong glare, “our only hope is putting out some kind of SOS call and getting rescued by the Coast Guard or something. Between the captain, the chimera and the hurricane, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in a tropical summer of making it to Rio alive. Agreed?”
We all nod, sobering.
“But we’ve got no working cell phones, not that we’d get a signal in the middle of the ocean, anyway,” Murphy continues, “and no satellite phones and no carrier pigeons or magical owls that I know of. Which means we need to get into the communications cabin somehow and hope we can raise a nearby ship on the hopper.”
“That’s never going to work,” An says flatly. “Did you see the keypad alarm system outside the door? We’ll never break that code. And even if we could, you saw how twitchy the guy inside the cabin was when we got too close to the window. All we need to do is give another one of these rabid crewmen an excuse to shoot us.” She flaps a dismissive hand. “We may as well march up to Captain Romero and ask him if we can phone home. We’d have a better chance.”
“Jesus!” Sammy says. “Do you think you could manage not to be the voice of doom for once?”
An shrugs. “Not if that’s the quality of ideas you’re coming up with, no.”
“Well, what ideas have you got, Madam Einstein?” Sammy demands. “‘Cause I’m sure we’re all dying to—”
A quiet knock on the cabin door makes all of us jump. An image of Captain Romero arriving with the crew and firepower to shoot us all sends my heart rate into triple time.
We freeze and dart panicked, what-do-we-do-now? looks at each other.
“Shhh,” Murphy hisses over his shoulder, already in motion toward Carter and Sammy, who have, by now, rigged the metal stool in front of the door with glass tumblers from the water tray. “You children keep your yappers shut and let me do the talking. Understood?”
We nod.
“Who is it?” Murphy shouts aggressively.
“Cortés,” comes the muffled answer.
My pulse skitters, but this news sends Gray into full freak-out mode, and his eyes widen as though he’d discovered a terrorist wired with explosives has come to call.
“Cortés?” he asks as he gets up and follows Murphy, pausing only to nail me with a narrow-eyed look. “What does he want?”
“Open up,” Cortés replies, “and I’ll tell you.”
After a brief hesitation to think things over, Murphy shrugs and reaches for the handle. “We’ve nothing to lose.”
“Nothing to lose?” Gray cries. “Are you crazy? Don’t let that guy in! I don’t trust him! Maybe his sociopathic dad sent him!”
“That’s ridiculous,” I scoff. “In case you didn’t notice, there’s no love lost between him and his dad.”
“Maybe it’s a trap or something,” Gray persists, his face tight and stubborn.
“Come on, man,” Carter interjects. “Paranoid, much?”
“A trap?” I say. “Are you kidding me? This whole freaking ship is a trap! Where are we going to go? And, since you seem to be falling behind on breaking events, genius, he could have had us all killed about a hundred times by now if he wanted to.”
“Maybe he’s here to spy on us,” Gray says. “How should I know?”
“Maybe he’s here to help,” I say.
“Maybe I’m here to take your breakfast orders,” Cortés says from the other side of the door.
“Or maybe you could let me in, I’ll tell you what I want, and we can clear up the mystery. Up to you.”
With a final warning glare at Gray, Murphy waves a hand at Sammy and Carter, who scramble to move their makeshift alarm system out of the way. Murphy then unlocks and opens the door. Cortés hurries inside, and Murphy locks the door behind him.
Cortés’s hair is windswept, and his jaw line is roughened with the dark beginnings of a beard. His face is lined with exhaustion and yet still, somehow, alert. His keen gaze sweeps the group, lingers on mine for a beat or two and then settles on Murphy.
“I’m with you,” Cortés says. “Whatever you’re planning to do to get out of here, I’m in.”
“Who says we’re planning anything?” Gray demands. “And even if we were, why should we trust you?”
“Look, man,” Cortés says, “I don’t want to cause problems. I want to help—”
“Help?” Gray snorts out a laugh. “What, like your father’s helped us? Thanks, but no thanks.”
“I believe I’m the adult in charge here, unless I’m much mistaken,” Murphy says, scowling. “And I want to hear what the young man has to offer, if that’s quite all right with you, Graydon Johnson.”
“We don’t need his kind of help!” Gray shouts.
By now, I’ve really had it with Gray’s bewildering belligerence, and I can’t stop myself from yelling. “What is your problem, Gray?”
“Maybe I don’t like his bloodlines!” Gray thunders, his face developing splotchy red patches. “Maybe I don’t like the way he—”
“Dude. You don’t want to go at it like this.” Carter steps up to Gray and rests his hand on his shoulder in a gesture that’s quiet and supportive. Gray shuts up immediately, hanging his head and muttering something indistinct.
Gray wheels around and paces several steps away, all but vibrating with frustration.
“As far as I’m concerned, we’re on the same side, Gray,” Cortés calls after him.
Gray looks back. His turbulent gaze flickers in my direction for a quick second. I want to give him an imploring look, but, for reasons I can’t let myself think about right now, I can’t even meet his gaze. My face feels too hot.
After an excruciating beat or two, Gray addresses Cortés.
“As far as I’m concerned, we’re not,” he says flatly.
No one seems to know what to say to that, so we all fidget uncomfortably.
“Well, then,” Murphy says finally, clapping his hands together, “I don’t have the first bleeding idea what that’s about, but I’m glad it’s settled.” He turns to Cortés. “You do understand our concerns about your loyalties, don’t you?”
Cortés hesitates and goes very still. “I’m not my father, Mr. Murphy.” Another pause, his expression darkening as he touches the bruises now circling his throat. “And after today, I plan to forget I have a father. Does that answer your question?”
“Aye.” Murphy regards him sadly. “It does, I’m sorry to say.”
“Good.” Some of the tension in Cortés’s shoulders eases visibly, but he still looks uncomfortable. Vulnerable, as though he’s realized just how tricky and desperate our situation is, new alliance or no.
“Great,” An says briskly, stepping forward. “Maybe you can tell these hotheads it’s not a great idea to break into the communications cabin and try to call for help.”
“Break in?” A confused frown grooves its way down Cortés’s forehead. “Why would we bother to break in when I know the code?”
Everyone gasps with excitement.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, man,” Murphy cries. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did. Don’t get too excited, though,” Cortes says. “I can get you in there, but I don’t know anything about the satellites or relaying our position or anything like that.”
“I know a little,” Sammy says. “I spent some time exploring the bridge on our cruise to
Barbados last summer.”
An shakes her head with some mixture of admiration and exasperation. “And I spent my cruise working on my tan on the fiesta deck. In case anyone was wondering.”
We grin at her.
“Let’s get our plan together, then.” Murphy rubs his palms together. “Every second we stand around picking our noses is a second closer to the hurricane and Rio. It won’t be easy, though. We’ve got to think this thing through, careful like.”
“We’ll get there,” Cortés says easily. “You know what the Aborigines say.”
Dead silence.
Cortés looks incredulous. “What’s wrong with you people? ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ Ring a bell?”
“That’s what I was about to say,” Sammy reassures him, and then, glancing over his shoulder to Gray and Carter, he shakes his head and mouths, No, I wasn’t.
Everyone, including Cortés, grins.
“All right then,” Murphy says briskly. “Joke time’s over. We’ve got work to do, and a lot of it, if we want to send out our distress signal and get ourselves rescued before it’s too late.”
“Remember,” Cortés whispers to Murphy as we quietly assemble in the corridor outside the communications cabin a few minutes later, staying well clear of the glass window, “I just need you to lure him out here. I’ll take it from there. It shouldn’t be hard. It’s Duke tonight. He’s not that bright. But he’s mean, especially when he’s been drinking. And if he’s awake, he’s drinking. Leave him to me.”
“What’re you going to do to him?” Maggie asks fretfully.
“Nothing fatal,” Cortés says.
“Will you get your priorities straight?” I tell Maggie, also keeping my voice down. “You need to be worried about what Duke’ll do to us if he figures out what we’re up to. What if he raises the alarm?”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it,” Murphy says. “Everyone know where your lookout posts are? And you know the signal, so you won’t leave Sammy and me flat-footed with no warning if someone’s coming, will you, now? But we’ll need a good ten minutes or so to take a look at the radio and figure out our position and such. I’m hoping his computer brain won’t fail us now, eh, Sammy-boy?”
Sammy looks pale but resolute. “No worries.”
“Don’t screw it up,” An says, jabbing a finger in her brother’s face. “This is our best and probably only chance. If they figure out what we’re doing, they’ll put us on lockdown in the cabin with a guard posted twenty-four-seven, if not worse, and I don’t want to walk any planks tonight, okay? Don’t. Screw. It. Up.”
“I’m so grateful for the vote of confidence,” Sammy says, bumping his fist against his heart. “Verklempt, even.”
“Oh, whatever,” An says, glaring, as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Well, then,” Murphy says, looking at all of us. “Let’s do it. Godspeed.”
“Godspeed,” we all murmur.
With that, we silently fan out. Gray and Carter dart down one half of the corridor to act as lookouts, clinging to the rail so they don’t lose their balance as they go; Mike, Maggie and An head down the other half to keep a watch there.
Several steps out, however, the ship rides a nasty wave and Maggie hits the floor in a tumble louder than cannon fire in the late night silence.
We all stiffen and wait with strangled breath, our eyes huge, for Duke to storm out of the cabin and confront us. Maggie, who looks like she’s ready to grab her samurai sword and commit seppuku for disappointing the team, frantically mouths sorry to anyone who’ll look at her. I put my index finger in front of my mouth and make shushing gestures, hoping she’ll stop before she does something else potentially disastrous.
We wait some more.
When nothing happens, Murphy gives us the sign to continue.
Cortés and I drop to our knees and crawl beneath the giant window that looks into the communications cabin, taking care to stay well under Duke’s line of sight. Midway, Cortés pauses and slowly eases up just enough to peer into the window to see what Duke’s doing. Then we continue past the cabin’s door, and emerge in the area that will be Duke’s blind spot when he comes out.
Murphy and Sammy walk up to the door, knock and then make a show of peering into the window and waving at Duke. Then Murphy thumbs the security code Cortés has given him into the keypad. I can’t see Duke from where I’m standing, but I do hear his outraged cry at this intrusion, and it doesn’t take long for him to hurry through the open door and appear in the corridor. He’s facing the other way, toward Murphy and Sammy, but I notice at a glance that he’s a short, barrel-chested, thick-necked blond guy.
With a Napoleon complex, a Jersey accent and a silver flask in one hand.
“What do you think you’re doing, Pops?” He widens his stance, jamming the sausage fingers of his free hand onto his hips and hitching up his chin to get in Murphy’s face, who’s a good half foot taller than he is. “Did you steal the code? Eh? You know you can’t just march up in here, causing a ruckus. The cap’s gotta approve any communications, and he ain’t approved nothing. What gives?”
Sammy gulps audibly.
Murphy doesn’t so much as bat an eye. “I’d like to go into your fancy little communications cabin and radio for help so we can get off this accursed ship.”
There’s an arrested second when Duke pauses and cocks his ear as though he wants to make sure he’s hearing correctly, and then he throws back his head and lets loose with a booming laugh.
“You got some balls, Irish, I’ll give you that,” he says, reaching for some radio thing he’s got hooked to his belt. “But I’m still gonna hafta tattle on you.”
Cortés stirs beside me.
In a silent flash, he raises his arm and throws something I can’t make out. There’s a whistling whoo-whoo-whoo sound as it spins toward Duke, who turns to see what the noise is. His face is ruddy and unattractive, with a nose that looks like it’s been broken badly and often, and the effect is intensified by the way his jaw drops open in a befuddled gape just as the whirling thing hits him in the forehead with a decisive thunk and clatters to the floor.
Duke sways for a couple of beats, long enough for me to think that we need to come up with a Plan B, and quick, because this isn’t going to work.
Then his eyes roll up in his head and he keels over backward in a dead faint, forcing Murphy and Sammy to dodge out of the way or be taken out with him.
Astonishment glues me to my spot. I blink, dividing my gaze between Duke spread-eagled on the floor, and Cortés, who darts out to retrieve his thing and comes back to where I’m standing, looking rather pleased with himself.
I stare at him. My peripheral vision catches the others creeping out of their hiding places and also staring at him with dropped jaws.
Cortés’s grin wavers. “What?”
“What’re you?” Carter demands. “Some kind of kid ninja?”
“Hell no,” says Cortés.
“What kind of weapon was that?” I cry.
“Say hello to my little friend.” Cortés holds it up for me to take a closer look. “Boomerang. Non-returning.”
The thing in his hand is a battered old piece of wood about two feet long. It’s brown, flat, slightly bent on one end and has grooves in it. Cortés lets me hold it, and I discover that, in addition to it being really ugly, it’s surprisingly heavy.
“Boomerang?” I ask. The boomerangs I know are the brightly painted and lightweight V-shaped ones Mona and I saw at a specialty toy store one time and couldn’t manage to throw. “Boomerangs don’t look like this.”
“I know. She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Cortés is now working with Murphy and Sammy to grab Duke by the ankles and drag him back into the communications cabin. “See the carvings?” he continues, grunting with effort as they struggle with Duke’s stocky body. “It’s mulgawood. Probably about seventy years old. The indigenous people used it for throwing and hunting. This guy in
Alice Springs, near Uluru, taught me to—”
“Excuse me. This is not the time for a boomerang lesson,” Murphy snarls, straightening up. Duke’s body is now near his desk chair in front of one of the computer screens. To make the scene more realistic, Murphy tips over the chair. “Flask,” he tells Sammy, who dashes back into the corridor to retrieve it. “And aren’t all of you kids supposed to be on the lookout in the hallway? So we don’t get found out before we can even make the bloody distress call? Now, get!”
“Right.” Cortés grabs the boomerang from me and shoves it into an ankle strap beneath his jeans like some undercover cop hiding his piece. “Sorry.”
He, Mike and I run out of the cabin to resume our separate positions. The last thing I see as I glance back through the window is Murphy unscrewing the flask and pouring some liquor across Duke’s gaping mouth.
“Do you think that’ll work?” I ask Cortés quietly as we round the corner and take up our post at the shadowy base of a railed staircase at the far end of the corridor. “Making it look like Duke passed out drunk?”
“Oh, yeah.” Cortés divides his watchful gaze between the stairs and the corridor, but there’s no sign of action. “He’s going to be pretty out of it when he wakes up. I doubt he’ll remember what happened.”
We pace back and forth, alert for any movement.
“You didn’t tell me you had skills with a boomerang,” I say.
Cortés shoots me a wry smile. “You didn’t tell me you had skills with a champagne bottle.”
That makes me snort. “I don’t. I improvised.”
“Yeah? Well, thanks for saving my butt earlier.” His darkening expression makes something in my chest tighten uncomfortably. “Looks like I won’t be getting dear old Dad a Father’s Day present next year.”
“How can you joke about it?” I ask urgently.
Cortés’s face falls. He turns sharply, rubbing the back of his neck and pacing away from me in a clear signal that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but I can’t let it go.
“It wasn’t the first time,” I say.
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