by R. R. Banks
Suddenly I saw two dark figures appear at the rail of one of the lower decks. I tightened my grip on the wheel and straightened, keeping my eyes locked on the people who were moving swiftly along the side of the ship as if at once trying to get away from something and trying to figure out what they were going to do next. The figures paused and they seemed locked in an argument for a brief moment before the larger of the two reached down and released one of the lifeboats from the side of the ship. Another shadowy form appeared several yards away and started running toward them, confirming to me that their speed was because they were trying to escape pursuit. I couldn’t tell who it was that might have been chasing them. They looked pretty frantic to get away, but for all I knew they could have smuggled the pistachios and a couple tiny bottles of liquor out of a room refrigerator and be trying to duck security.
I watched as the larger of the first two figures released the other side of the lifeboat so that it fell into the water below, then scooped the smaller figure up and tossed it over the rail into the water. The scream that I heard told him that the person flailing down toward the water was a woman and she was less than pleased about how this course of events was unfolding.
That was most certainly not the action of someone who didn’t want to pony up for their cabin snacks.
The larger person jumped down after her and they both scrambled to get into the lifeboat as the third figure leaned over the rail above them, shouting something indiscernible. The lifeboat started moving and I realized that it was moving directly toward me. A few moments later it bumped into my boat and I heard the soft metallic clang as the two people clambered up the ladder hanging from the side. I ran to the other end of the boat and watched as a small woman caught her foot on the top of the ladder and stumbled onto the deck. A man followed seconds later, catching her before she fell.
"What the fuck just happened?!" I asked, dumbfounded. “Who the hell are you?”
"We need to get away from this ship. Now!" the man demanded.
I shook my head looking, between the two. This wasn’t happening. I didn’t have time for this shit. I had somebody to find and I wasn’t going to be able to do it if I was playing Junior Coast Guard with these two. The longer that I looked at them, though, the more I knew that I couldn’t just pitch them off of the deck into the cold water and go about my business. The woman's wet clothing clung to her and her hair stuck wildly over her face and her arms. She was barefoot and her makeup was running, but by the look on her face I was sure it was more than just the unintended swim that had caused her to be so disheveled. Despite all of that, it was evident that she was one of those women who only got better with age and now that she had tipped the calendar over into her forties, she had a confident, well-polished beauty about her. At least, she would when she wasn’t dripping saltwater onto the ground around her. She was obviously going through something difficult and I had the immediate human compulsion to help her in any way that I could. I’d figure out what to do about the job later.
I turned back to the angry-looking man who accompanied her. He had looked much larger than the woman when he tossed her over the rail into the water, but now that I was seeing him this close, I realized that he was an average-sized man. Glasses had somehow miraculously remained perched on his nose during the ordeal and he glared at me through them with an intensity that looked as though he somehow thought that I was responsible for the other man who had been chasing them on the cruise ship.
"Who are you?" I asked again. "What are you doing on my boat?"
I heard the muttering of voices that were dulled by the wind around us and looked back up at the ship. I saw that several more people had gathered at the railing, one with a large light that they were trying to set up so that they could shine it down on the water, and a shot of panic went through me. I couldn't risk someone seeing me and possibly being able to recognize me later.
"I'm Hunter," the man in glasses said as if it were some kind of password that would instantly make me willing to help him. "Now get us out of here."
I didn't move and Hunter took two long strides toward me, shoving past me toward the wheel.
"Get the fuck out of my way," he said, "I'll do it myself."
I followed, grabbing at Hunter's shirt as he started the engine again and forced the boat in a sharp turn away from the ship. The turn went smoothly, but I had the distinct impression that he was not well-versed in the ways of steering a ship. Considering we were far away from shore and the only other vessel that I had seen capable of providing us with any type of assistance should he capsize us or destroy the equipment was the very ship that he had just escaped from, this didn’t bode well for any of us aboard.
"What do you think you're doing?" I asked, stepping up to him.
Hunter reared back to shove me away from him and accelerated the boat even faster. I grabbed at him again and he turned to me, reaching out and grabbing me by the front of my shirt with a ferocity that I wouldn’t have expected to come from someone who looked like him. This man should be in an office somewhere or hunched behind a desk in a library, not jumping into the ocean off of a cruise ship and playing Pirates of the Caribbean stealing other people’s boats.
"This woman is about two minutes away from becoming the topic of a Dateline Special Edition about mysterious disappearances at sea. If you don’t cooperate with this, they’re going to be rolling credits on you, too, and some struggling actor who looks nothing like you is going to be playing your corpse. If you don’t want that to happen, I suggest you get off of me and let me get us away from that ship."
I felt like someone had punched me in the chest. I turned away from Hunter and toward the woman, who was now sitting on the deck, her knees pulled up and her head rested against them. I crossed to her and crouched down beside her.
"What's your name?" I asked.
She looked up at me.
"Eleanor," she said softly, her voice sounding weak and exhausted.
Shit. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
I drew in a breath. I didn't know what to do. I had no idea who the man now driving my boat was or why he was here, but I did know who this terrified woman was – and that she was the one I was after.
Chapter Four
Hunter
I looked back over my shoulder to see how far we had gotten from the cruise ship, but what caught my attention was the man who had been driving the ship now crouched down talking to Eleanor. She looked tiny and vulnerable curled against the side of the boat, her eyes darting around her as though she would rather jump overboard and take her chances in the water again than continue to listen to the two of them argue. It was a look that I would never have expected to see on this woman’s face. There was something about her that had struck me as strong and powerful from the first moment that I encountered her at Noah and Snow’s wedding, and it was disconcerting to see her suddenly looking so fragile. I could see the sheer terror in her expression and the thought of what must have happened to her during her marriage to not only instill that fear in her, but also to make it linger even after the marriage ended made my stomach turn.
My mind wandered to that first night at the wedding and how our encounter had gone downhill so drastically and so rapidly. Then my thoughts went to earlier that evening when I grabbed her and kissed her to distract the men who were chasing her. It had been an impulse, something that I hadn’t though all the way through before I did it. I had no idea why those men would be pursuing her the way that they were and what type of danger they might pose to her, and I wanted to do anything that I could to protect her, even for the next few seconds. Of course, that had meant getting us into much the same uncomfortable situation that we had been the last time that we saw each other, and as soon as our lips touched I felt a flicker of regret at my decision. I couldn’t deny the attraction that I felt for Eleanor, but the same reservations that I had had at the wedding were there and I couldn’t put them behind me. Whatever was happening with her, I wanted to help her, bu
t that had to be it.
Suddenly the boat lurched, startling me out of my thoughts. The engine fell silent and I felt my heart sink into my stomach.
That can’t be good. Boats aren’t supposed to just turn themselves off on a whim.
The other man appeared beside me and shoved me out of the way unceremoniously. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something that I was entirely unfamiliar with. High school had not been particularly kind to me. Being less than athletic and needing glasses just to breathe had not endeared me to the football players or even the slackers. I was kind of an island in and of myself. Working out and trading out my hand-me-downs for clothing that actually fit in the years after graduation had helped give me some confidence, but most of the time I still felt like that skinny, outcast nerd navigating the hallways like I was running the gauntlet just to get to chemistry class. The way that this man was treating me was bringing those memories back with a vengeance and I suddenly felt like I could commiserate more with Eleanor. I wondered who was still living inside of that beautiful, polished shell and how that person was still affecting her.
"What did you do?" he demanded angrily as he flipped switches, trying to get the engine to turn over so that we could continue on away from the ship.
"I didn't do anything," I shouted back. "It's your boat. What did you do to it? Did you forget to put gas in it?"
"I didn't fucking forget to put gas in it," the other man growled, the anger in his voice sounding as though the very suggestion that he might have forgotten to do something like put gas in his boat was an affront to his masculinity. "You don't know how to drive a boat and you probably flooded the engine."
"How do you know I don't know how to drive a boat?" I asked defensively. “You just automatically assume?”
"I’m not assuming anything. I just watched your attempt."
The man performed a few more maneuvers on the control panel and finally I heard the rumble of the engine starting to turn. As if the other man's fury had reached beyond the boat and into the sky itself, there was a tremendous clap of thunder the moment the engine roared back to life and a sheet of rain came pouring into the boat. I shouted a few creative obscenities toward the foreboding black clouds that had rapidly blotted out the moon and stars, positive that this was all just to test me. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be proving, but in that moment, I didn’t feel as though I was doing a very good job of it. A blinding bolt of lightning sliced through the sky followed by another, even louder crash of thunder and I heard Eleanor scream behind me.
The ocean started to toss the boat around angrily and I suddenly felt like a bathtub toy. A wave washed up over the side of the boat, soaking me in cold water.
"Help me!"
I turned toward the man's voice and saw him struggling to tie down supply boxes with thick ropes and secure the doors to the small cabin in the middle of the boat. I rushed toward him, knowing that the friction between us from the moment that Eleanor and I stepped onto the boat didn't change the fact that this man was the only way that either of us was going to have even a chance at escaping the cruise ship. Though I was still shaky on why exactly we needed to escape in the first place. I rushed toward him and together we lashed the supplies to the deck and ensured that the cabin was secure. The rain stung on my skin and blurred my vision as I made my way back toward the front of the boat. The vessel tossed violently beneath my feet and for a moment I was positive that it would capsize under the power of one of the tremendous waves that pounded down on us.
Worst carnival fun house ever.
"Hunter!"
Eleanor's shrill voice was barely audible over the roar of the waves and the wind, but I turned to see her clinging to the ladder that we had used to climb up into the boat. I ran as fast as the shifting of the boat and the slickness of the rain-soaked deck beneath my feet allowed. I could see Eleanor's hands slipping and hear her desperate cries as I got closer. I dove forward, channeling every bit of my ill-advised three weeks of Little League to slide on my belly until I reached the edge and could grab her.
"Climb!" I shouted down at her. "I've got you, but you're going to have to help me here."
Eleanor's feet finally gained purchase on the ladder again and I was able to pull her up toward me. She grasped at my back, climbing over me toward the deck. As she brought her leg up, I felt myself slipping. The sky split overhead with a bolt of lightning that lit up the sky like daylight, and the boat tilted to such a drastic angle that I felt my body toppling headfirst toward the water. The white-topped sea lapped up toward me, ready to accept me into its black depths.
Moby Dick didn’t do this shit justice. Where the fuck is the giant whale that’s supposed to teach me about myself?
Just as I was confident that I was going to end up being the saddest article to ever grace the front page of The Apple, I felt strong hands grab me, dragging me back onto the deck of the ship by my pants and the back of my shirt. The man captaining the boat pushed me aside so that I slid into the corner and then slammed the small hatch that opened onto the ladder, securing it closed with a metal handle. When it was closed, I saw the man crawl toward me as if not sure enough of his feet to stand.
"Are you alright?" he yelled through the sound of the storm around us.
I nodded.
"Thank you," I called back, hesitating when I realized I still didn't know the man's name.
"Gavin," the man shouted back.
"Thank you, Gavin," I said.
This wasn’t exactly the moment for handshakes, so I gave a nod of acknowledgement. Gavin nodded back and turned toward Eleanor. I watched as he checked her hands carefully and then started guiding her toward the cabin. The door on the side where we were hadn't been locked closed and Gavin yanked it open, ushering Eleanor inside and then turning to me.
"Go in," he shouted.
"I'll stay out here with you," I shouted back.
"No," Gavin protested. "It's too dangerous. The waves are getting higher and the storm is only going to get worse. I have to try to keep the boat on course."
"I can help you."
We locked eyes and finally I saw Gavin nod at me again through the rain.
"Eleanor," Gavin said into the cabin, "you stay in here. Stay away from the windows and doors as much as you can."
Gavin closed the door and rushed back to the wheel with me at his heels. We lashed ourselves to the boat with the safety harnesses attached on either side of the wheel, and then latched ourselves to each other. We fought against the waves, gasping for breath as the wind swept water into our faces.
"Are we on the right course?" I shouted, fully acknowledging to myself that I really had no idea what the right course was or where we should be headed now that we were getting away from the cruise ship.
"I don't know," Gavin replied. "I think so, but I can't tell. We won't really know until the storm quiets down."
The sea had other plans, however, and a towering wave rose up beside us and crashed onto the ship with a terrifying impact. I felt myself leave my feet and the safety harness strained against the wood of the boat as I fell. I reached out for Gavin, but my hand only grasped water. I couldn't see anything in front of me and the only sound that came to my ears was the deafening roar of the wave rushing around me. I tried to look up to see how deep we were, but there was only darkness. I couldn’t fight any more. The strength in my muscles gave out and I relinquished myself to the storm.
Chapter Five
Eleanor
I was lying in the berth of the cabin, my arms draped over my head as I tried to resist the feelings of seasickness and terror coursing through my body. As accustomed as I was to cruising, I had never been on a ship during weather like this and I was not responding well to the behavior of the water. This was not nearly as much fun as lounging by the pool or watching the gaudy shows at night. I wished that there was a cruise director I could complain to, but at that moment the only one controlling what was happening was a little bit more powerful than the capt
ain of the cruise, so I didn’t think that putting in a formal complaint would be a very good idea. The sound of the storm outside was deafening and I reached for a pillow to hold around my ears to try to muffle it. I felt like I should be crying, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was as if I had cried so much over so many things that my body was simply unwilling to go through the motions any more. It was in protest.
The rocking of the ship was so intense that I felt like it would toss me onto the floor at any moment. This couldn’t be the only storm that had ever been like this and I didn’t see any sign of a seatbelt to hold me in place on the bed. I didn’t understand how anyone could get any kind of rest in this place if they spent more than a couple of hours aboard. Almost as suddenly as the storm had come on, though, it began to calm down. The shaking of the boat slowed and then nearly stilled. I wanted to get up to find out if the men had gotten through the storm safely, but I couldn’t bring myself to climb out of my place. It was almost as though I was positive that if my feet hit the floor of the cabin, I was going to find out that it was all just a cruel trick of the storm and it was going to start up again. Without even removing the pillow that I had used to muffle the deafening noise of the storm, I let my eyes close, and soon fell asleep.