by Diane Noble
“Ms. MacIver,” said the captain in the lead. He passed without another word.
The others followed suit, almost acting as if I wasn’t there. Monica Oliverio walked slightly behind the others and had the grace to at least give me a curt nod as she passed.
“Ms. Oliverio,” I called after her, unwilling to let her go by without at least a word.
She turned and didn’t look pleased. “My time is limited,” she said. As if I had all the time in the world and how I used it didn’t count toward anything important.
“Did you make a decision about investigating Dr. Baptiste?”
She frowned. “I thought it was clear when you left—”
I interrupted her. “There was obviously no interest in going to the island, but I thought Interpol, perhaps even the local authorities, might see the value of at least looking into how the abductions, the poisonings might lead back to him.”
“When I get back to my office,” she said vaguely, “I’ll definitely make a note in the file.”
“Note in the file?” I almost shouted the words. “By then it may be too late.”
She held up a hand. “Please, Ms. MacIver, let the experts take care of this. You’ve been a great help, really. But let us take it from here.” Her expression held something akin to pity. Along with having all the time in the world on my hands, she probably thought I didn’t have anything better to do than poke my nose into matters far beyond my comprehension.
“Ms. Oliverio,” I said, “one of the missing girls is very close to my family. Her mother asked me to keep an eye on her while I was onboard. I feel responsible—”
“Ma’am, there wasn’t anything you could have done to prevent this.”
“I’m not going to give up,” I said, “even if it means confronting Baptiste myself.”
“Stay out of this, Ms. MacIver. Leave it to the authorities to investigate.”
I was still seething as I returned to my stateroom to get ready for the rendezvous.
At 1:24 precisely, I proceeded to the gangway amidships. Though we were in the tropics and the rain might come in torrents, wind chill probably wouldn’t be a factor. Nonetheless, I had changed into jeans, wadded up a sweatshirt and tucked it in my backpack, and grabbed a waterproof windbreaker to wear over my travel vest. I thought about taking an umbrella, then I remembered it would only serve as a lightning rod. Which brought up another set of worries—as if I didn’t have enough to start with.
I knew the dangers we were about to face, but how could I not go if it meant saving Carly? Her mother would be flying in as soon as the storm cleared. What better gift than to greet her at the airport with the news that Carly had been found?
Thunder. Lightning. Fog. Wind. Torrential rains. Any of it, all of it, might be just ahead. How could I let Max face those dangers? It was one thing to take the risk myself; it was quite another to ask this good-hearted student to risk his life.
“Hey, Ms. M.,” Max said as I approached the gangway.
The corridor was empty. “Where is everyone?”
He pointed to three signs, one blocking the end of each passageway that led to the gangway. They were the bright-yellow, A-frame, caution signs similar to those you find on freshly mopped floors or in front of rest rooms when they’re being serviced. Each had a polite notice on it:
PARDON US WHILE
WE CLEAN FOR YOU!
A mop and bucket stood near each sign.
“Good thinking,” I said.
“It was Price’s idea. He took them from a utility closet he found open.” He turned back to the open gangway door. “Your chariot awaits, Madam.”
“Max?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
He looked at me. “I know.”
“You can get me started, pointed in the right direction, and with the wind to my back, I’ll get to shore in two shakes.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.”
I stepped closer, touched his arm. “Hey, bud. Look out there. This storm is moving in. I’d rather you didn’t go. I’m serious. If anything happened to you—”
“Not a problem,” he said. “My dad’s an attorney.”
“Now that’s something to worry about.” I donned my life vest and splash skirt, then he helped me position myself at the top of the rope ladder. Warily, a step at a time, I descended until I could drop into the kayak. As soon as I slid into place, the craft rocked with the choppy waves.
I watched Max scurry down the ladder, my chin resting on the thick foam-encased vest surrounded by an equally bright and bulky splash skirt. A fluorescent orange abominable snowman. Nothing like trying to blend in with the surroundings.
Max unfastened the tether, and in tandem we paddled away from the ship. I glanced up to see if anyone was watching us, wishing I’d thought to bring a dark blanket to drape over our neon-hued selves. Because of the storm, the decks were deserted, and it was impossible to see faces inside the glassed-in areas. I needn’t have worried because we hadn’t gone more than a few yards when we disappeared into thick fog.
“I hadn’t counted on this,” Max said, his voice sounding small. “Bummer.”
“Just hold a steady course,” I said.
He pulled the oars, fell into a rhythm, and we were once again gliding across the water. “I just hope we’re going the right way.”
“We are,” I said.
“How do you know?”
Truth was, I didn’t. The kayak rose and fell, and the waves seemed higher than before. The wind picked up again. Then, just as quickly as we entered it, we were clear of the fog. We had drifted slightly off course and were farther from shore than when the fog had first enshrouded us. Max said to hold off on my paddling while he made a correction, turning us to the left. Then we counted out a rhythm and started to paddle again, dead-reckoning for the wharf.
“That’s odd,” he said, after a few minutes.
“What?”
“We’re paddling hard, but we don’t seem to be making any progress.”
I cast a worried look at the approaching storm. Suddenly it quit the stall.
Dark rain poured from the distant clouds, perhaps only a few miles from us. Bright flashes of lightning cracked open the dark skies. The rumble of thunder echoed across the water.
My knees were shaking beneath the splash skirt. If the wind hadn’t been so loud I was sure I would have heard them knocking against the sides of the kayak. We were helpless out here. And the storm was on the move. How long could we keep the waves from flipping the little craft, filling it with water, and pulling us under?
“How’s it going?” I asked, willing my voice to sound calm.
“The current’s against us. We’re still not making any progress.”
“Okay, what if we go back? There’s got to be another way. Get back to the ship, ask the harbor-patrol officers for help. We can still get to the wharf, find out about Carly.”
“No good,” Max said. “Look where the ship is.”
I turned, my heart sinking. We had been carried south of the ship, and in the deepening fog and drizzle, it was barely visible. “It still may be our best shot,” I said.
A jagged bolt of lightning lit the sky, then a rumble of thunder reverberated across the water. “We’ve got to get to shelter,” I said. Talk about an understatement.
Max looked around again, obviously estimating distances. “The current is carrying us south, maybe we should just go with it—”
“Right into the storm.”
“We’ll head for shore before we get into it. There seems to be a small peninsula or something jutting out. With luck, maybe we can hit it.”
“With prayer,” I amended.
In truth I hadn’t stopped praying since I’d slid into my end of the kayak. But my ways weren’t God’s ways, and judging from the happenings on this cruise, he had brought me here by design. For what purpose, I didn’t exactly know. What I did know was that being in the
heart of his will didn’t necessarily mean that I would be in an easy place. That’s the way it is with God. I thought about what Mr. Beaver said about Aslan in C. S. Lewis’s book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he’s not safe. But he’s good.”
Right now I prayed for God to shower us with his goodness even as the rain fell.
The sky grew darker, and the drizzle turned to a steady, fog-shrouded rain. The kayak lifted with the waves, higher than before. Max knew enough about boating to point us into the waves, hitting each swell head on so we wouldn’t flip.
I held on to the handles on each side of the little craft, my hands clenched so tightly they were numb. My knee-shaking had moved up to include all of my insides. I thought I might be sick. We didn’t speak now, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I looked for the peninsula Max had pointed out earlier, but it was obscured by clouds. My heart fell.
A lightning bolt danced across the black sky, followed by a loud clap of thunder. Too close.
Max and I looked at each other, and I read his thoughts as I was sure he read mine. We were human lightning rods waiting for a strike.
A larger wave than we’d yet seen rose up before us, seeming to hang majestically in place before crashing down on us. A whirling surge of foam and water covered us, sucked us down, then suddenly it was gone. I came up gasping and spitting, still in the kayak, and miraculously, so was Max.
“Whoa,” he said, white faced, then he looked down and grimaced. “My paddle! I just lost my paddle.”
“Not to worry,” I said calmly. “I’ve still got mine.” Then I felt a cold slosh of water at my feet. Ankle deep. My voice wasn’t quite as calm when I shouted, “We’re taking on water!”
“I know.”
“Do we have anything to bail with?”
“You can’t bail from a kayak.”
I turned to look at Max. His face was paler than before, and now his hair was plastered to his head, and water was dripping from his eyebrows.
I touched my own head and realized that my “You Go, Girl!” ball cap was gone. Funny how you focus on small things during times of catastrophe. Suddenly I wanted that cap almost more than life itself. I scanned the waters, ready to dive for it if I saw it floating nearby. But I could see only the dark, foamy sea raging around us, whipped up by the howling winds.
I tried to remember what I’d read about kayaks being unsinkable. I didn’t want to put it to the test. If we were in calm waters, we could get out and tip the kayak to get rid of the water. But these waters were far from calm. And if we were hit by another wave? I didn’t want to think about it. At least we had the life vests—and I would never again complain about the color. But who would know to look for us? And how would they know where to look? We had drifted a long ways from the harbor.
I didn’t have time to voice my thoughts. From a distance, the sound of a boat engine rose above the wail of the wind and rain.
“You hear that?” I yelled to Max. “Someone to the rescue already!”
“How will they see us?”
He was right. The rain was heavier now, sheets so thick I couldn’t see farther than a few yards in any direction. “You bring a flashlight?”
He shook his head. With a grin I reached into my soggy travel vest, yanked open one of the Velcro pockets, and pulled out a high-intensity emergency light. I flipped it on and held it up in triumph.
It had a flashing strobe light on one side, a red light on top that cast a powerful beam straight into the heavens, and a regular incandescent flashlight opposite the strobe.
Max was grinning. “Cool,” he said.
I listened for the engine to come closer, ready to yell and wave my arms. At first the boat seemed to travel away from us, then it circled around and made its way back. I held the light higher, waving it slowly so that whoever was coming to rescue us would know it was being held in human hands.
“Please, oh please, oh please,” I whispered. “Come closer. And hurry.”
With each wave that crashed, the kayak took on more water. I thought about toeing off my shoes, knowing they would weigh me down if I had to swim. But help was on the way, so I decided to wait it out.
The sound of the engine grew louder, and I lifted both hands to cheer.
Then Max said, “Wait! Get down! What was that?”
I sat, frowning. “What?”
“Turn off the light. Hurry!”
“Wh—?”
“Turn it off!” He was screaming and crying at the same time.
Then I heard the sound. I sat in stunned disbelief, paralyzed, afraid to move. Max dived for the light and grabbed it out of my hands. Then in one quick movement, he put the kayak into a roll.
Another hail of bullets slapped the water around us.
The whine of the boat engine receded. Then the boat seemed to circle and idle, as if waiting. The kayak was upright again, though water sloshed at my feet. Max and I sat up and looked out into the storm-roiled waters. We would soon turn into two fluorescent corks bobbing in the waves. I didn’t want to think about our smallness in comparison to the sea. It was too much like my nightmare.
Instead, I concentrated on the young man behind me. He had a lifetime ahead of him compared to me. I didn’t mind so much that mine might be over, but I hated knowing that, because of me, his might be too. And I hated to abandon the search for the abducted girls. No one had connected Baptiste to the crimes, and if Max and I perished out here, no one would know how it happened. No one but Adam—if he survived.
“Someone really wants us dead,” Max said, stating the obvious.
“Makes me think I’ve stepped on some toes.”
“Big time.”
Around us the rain fell steadily. The kayak was filling fast. It was time to toe off my shoes, except my feet were numb with cold.
“It’s about time to go to plan B,” I said.
“And that would be?”
“Getting in the water. Flipping the kayak so we can have something to hide under if they come back. This thing’s bulletproof, right?” It was futile if we were fired at again, but it was the best plan I could come up with.
“Yeah, right.”
I looked back at him, and with a nod of agreement, we unlatched our splash skirts from the lips of the openings and slithered from the rocking craft. As soon as I plunged into the water, a series of waves pressed me under. Then I popped up like a cork and felt the rain pouring over me. I coughed, sputtered, and looked around for Max. He was already by the kayak, leaning over the front opening.
“You forgot your flashlight,” he said and tossed it to me.
I missed, but it surfaced only a few feet away, so I paddled awkwardly toward it between waves. “A lot of good it did us,” I shouted.
“Hang on to it. You never know,” he shouted back.
I stuck the light in a pocket, then tried to move through rolling waters to the kayak. Max reached out and pulled me toward where he clung. “Think we can turn it over?” I yelled above the whine of the wind.
“We’ve got to move fast. Otherwise, it will take on more water as we flip it.”
“That’s a happy thought.”
“It won’t sink. It’s made to stay afloat.”
“Okay, on three,” I shouted cheerfully. “I am woman; hear me—”
Max frowned and held up a hand. Something had changed. We both felt it and clung to the kayak, not moving.
A heavy, pregnant silence settled over us. It was more frightening than all that had come before. More frightening than the crash and wail of the storm, this silence pressed down on us, pricked our senses, and caused us to stop talking.
The eye of the storm was over us now. I could sense it. Whether at the center of a tropical depression or a hurricane, the eye is utterly, eerily silent. The winds dead calm. The waves without a chop. It was like this now.
If we could get back into the kayak, we could make it safely to shore before the storm picked up again.
But instead of moving out of the water, we stared at each other, and in our fear, each of us knew the other was feeling the same sudden hopelessness.
Max identified the source of that fear first. “They’re listening,” he mouthed.
Of course. Sound travels exceptionally well over water. The calmer the sea, the better sound travels. In restricted visibility, the sound is amplified. In the eye of the storm, conditions were just about perfect to amplify any sound we made.
The motorboat had not left, as I’d hoped. Whoever was in it was waiting, engines cut, in utter silence. Waiting for us to make a sound.
Unless they had heard us already.
They had.
The engine sputtered, revved, came to life. I clung to the kayak, closed my eyes, and prayed. Beside me, Max whispered a prayer of his own.
The boat engine seemed to scream toward us.
“Go under!” Max yelled and yanked my arm. “Take off the vest and dive!”
My fingers fumbled with the ties. Max worked his, ripping and pulling, trying to wriggle out of it. A zinging spray of bullets cut through the water around us. The kayak splintered, and I thought I heard Max scream. I flung off my life vest, swam to him, and saw blood.
He gave me a weak grin. “Dive,” he said.
“You ready?”
He nodded.
I grabbed his arm and dived. He kicked, trying to help. Another hail of bullets slapped the water around us.
More bullets, more blood. My lungs were ready to explode.
A spotlight beamed above the water, sweeping, searching. I knew that all was lost.
I woke in a hospital. At least that’s what I thought it was. It might have been a clinic. The thought froze me. La Vida Pura!
I was hooked up to an IV, and my head was wrapped in some sort of gauzy bandage, low enough to cover my eyebrows. I tried moving my extremities one at a time. Toe, fine. Both feet, arches okay. I wiggled my fingers on both hands—left side, restricted somewhat because of the IV; right hand, apparently sound enough to pound keys on the Underwood.