Waves of Fate | Book 1 | First Fate

by Talbot, Kendall

  Gunner snapped his gaze to where the life-jacket storage box should’ve been in the corner. But it was gone. Obliterated in the plane crash.

  There was nothing he could do to save them.

  A blaze of lightning lit the sky, giving Gunner a perfect view as another two dozen or so people vanished over the side. Despair stabbed at him like thousands of ice picks.

  The wrath of the storm was bad enough. But the twin doorways on either side of the bar were bottlenecks. As the terrified passengers rushed forward, people were crushed in the stampede. The pile of trampled bodies grew as others stomped over the top of them in their rush to exit the maelstrom.

  A sense of utter uselessness swept through him. His mind exploded with caged terror.

  His gut twisted. The pain behind his eyes stung like a million bull ants.

  A bolt of lightning blazed through the blackened cloud like a billion fluorescent lights. He snapped his eyes to the ocean. His heart was set to explode.

  An enormous wave, forty or fifty feet high, was headed right for them.

  “Hang on!” he yelled. “Hang on!”

  He screamed over their terrified cries. But getting their attention was impossible.

  Cloe and Quinn appeared through the tangled bodies. Cloe’s eyes were wide, terrified.

  “Cloe! Quinn! Fucking hang on,” he yelled.

  Pauline and Jae-Ellen were running toward him, dodging people and deck chairs, slipping on the steeply angled deck. He shot a glance at the wall of water.

  Ten seconds.

  Shoving off from the bar, he ran with his hands wide, hoping to scoop up both Pauline and Jae-Ellen.

  Eight seconds.

  Rose of the Sea slammed down, knocking Pauline off her feet. She screamed as she tumbled over and over, gaining momentum.

  Six seconds.

  Port side was rising. But it was too slow. Time seemed to stop, and he saw things with perfect clarity. A small child standing with her hands at her sides, screaming. A woman on the ground by the door with a man in board-shorts stomping across her back. Cloe and Quinn peering over the bar at the enormous wave. The whites of Jae-Ellen’s fear-riddled eyes. And a giant wall of water, dozens of feet high, barreling right at them.

  Three seconds.

  He dove at Jae-Ellen, tackling her to the ground, and used the momentum to collect Pauline. As port side heaved upward, ready to take on the wave, he slid with the two women to the starboard side. He was counting on the railing to save them from going overboard.

  One second.

  They hit the railing in a tangle of limbs.

  “Hang on!” He wrapped his arms and legs around the metal, flattened his body to the deck as much as possible and turned to face the rogue wave. One of the women screamed as the wave barreled over the deck. Rose of the Sea was nearly at the pinnacle of her rise when the wall of water slammed into them.

  Gunner snapped his face away, sucked in a huge breath and squeezed his eyes shut.

  The sound was a freight train crashing into solid concrete. Glass smashed. Metal squealed as it buckled and sheared off. People screamed.

  It hit with the intensity of a Mack truck. The railing bit into his cheek. The water crushed his back, pinning him down. He couldn’t move.

  Rose of the Sea bucked beneath him and released an almighty groan as if furious over the attack.

  The wave was gone as quickly as it came and gasping for fresh air, he peeled his body off the railing.

  Lightning blazed through a cloud, giving him enough light to scan the deck behind him. It’d been wiped clean. Passengers. Crew. Deck chairs. The spa. Every single thing that hadn’t been bolted down was gone. Even things that had been bolted down were gone. His heart was in his throat as he glanced at the bar where Cloe and Quinn had been hiding. It was still there. Thank God.

  “Are you okay?” He touched Jae-Ellen’s shoulder.

  Her chin quivered as she shoved wet hair from her eyes. “I think so.”

  “Pauline! Pauline!” He crawled to her. Her arms and legs were tangled around the railing. Her eyes were clamped shut.

  “Hey, it’s over. But quick, you need to get inside.” He pushed to stand, and glared at the ocean as the ship dipped again to port side. The timing of the ship’s roll had been their saving grace. If they’d been port side down when that wave had hit, they would’ve been slammed with the full force of that water.

  It would’ve been a thousand times worse.

  His heart thudded to a halt. I’m lucky to be alive.

  Gunner twirled his wedding band around his finger. Please God. Please give us more of that luck.

  Lightning lit the sky and the flash provided enough light for Gunner to confirm that the wave that’d hit them was indeed a rogue one. For now.

  He turned to Jae-Ellen and Pauline. “Go inside. Quick.”

  Gunner left them and moved to attend to a limp body farther along the railing. The woman was wedged between the rails; her hips had been what’d stopped her from disappearing forever. “Are you okay?”

  The woman didn’t move. He eased her back and flinched at the hideous wound on her face. Gunner felt for a pulse. “Yes. Okay, I’ve got you.” He weaved her body free and hoisted her into his arms. Clutching her to his chest, he strode to the doorway. “You’re okay. You’re going to be just fine.”

  Quinn ran forward, his arms outstretched.

  “She’s alive.” Gunner handed the unconscious woman to Quinn and raced back out to the deck, searching for more survivors.

  He rode the ship’s momentum in the twenty-foot swell. Lightning flickered on and off like strobe lighting, brightening the nightmare around him in one-second grabs.

  Bodies dangling from railings.

  Sheets of metal wrapped around poles like they were merely ribbon.

  The kettle drum impaled on a post.

  The entire rear section of the running track . . . gone. Nothing but jagged pieces of metal remained.

  Twenty minutes ago, hundreds of people had been looking down at him from that very section of the boat. The loss of life had already been huge after the plane crash.

  Now it would be staggering.

  No matter what happened from then on, Rose of the Sea would be permanently etched into the history books. And not for the right reasons. His name would be alongside her . . . Gunner McCrae, the cruise ship Captain who lost half his passengers at sea.

  Scraping his thoughts together, he silently prayed there weren’t that many fatalities. Yet as he glanced around, hoping to see someone alive, he conceded it was too late for prayer.

  In the bolts of light before the wave hit, there had been at least three hundred people within his line of sight.

  Now every one of them was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gabby smacked her lips together, trying to produce moisture on her tongue. The taste in her mouth was both familiar and revolting. Suddenly, she pitched sideways on the carpet and although her brain urged her arms to save her, they didn’t. She slammed face-first into a mangled pile of twisted metal and plush burgundy cloth. Searing pain shot up the left side of her face and pounded behind her temple. Rolling to her side, she flicked her jaw from side to side, testing her movement.

  Blinking with confusion, she sat and the bitter taste in her mouth confirmed she’d had another seizure. It’d been more than a year since her last one. Two in one day was simply contemptible. Fighting a bout of self-loathing, she pushed up onto her hands and knees. Bolts of memory came flooding back.

  Fighting with Max. The plane crash. Bloody gashes up her legs.

  “Adam, can you get down?” Max’s panic-filled voice cracked through the eerie silence.

  Gabby suddenly remembered where Adam was. And what had happened.

  “Look around,” Max hollered. “Is there a rope or something?”

  “No! I can’t find anything.” Adam’s voice was shrill, verging on hysterical.

  Max had been so engrossed in their son that he�
�d missed her seizure. Relief washed through her. She didn’t need him fussing over her like she was an invalid. Not when their son was trapped twenty feet above them.

  Clutching a distorted chair, she begged her legs to hold her upright. She paused, praying the dizziness swirling across her eyes would subside. Her panic needed to subside too or she was likely to tumble into yet another blackout.

  The ship started tilting sideways again and she planted her feet, ready to ride out the imbalance. But this wasn’t a gentle roll like the others had been. It went farther. Much farther. “What’s happening?”

  Max turned to her; the terror in his eyes confirmed her worst fears.

  They were capsizing.

  Loose chairs flew across the room. Debris and chunks of mangled wreckage and lifeless bodies did too. The curtains on the stage swung in a wild arc and a large box on wheels zipped across the dance floor like it was possessed.

  Gabby didn’t have time to scream when a wall of water charged through the hole in the ship’s side like a billion-gallon spout. She was swept up, jammed into a row of chairs and pinned in position by the liquid battering ram.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

  Her face was driven into the rough fabric.

  The giant spout abruptly stopped and she toppled to the carpet. Gasping for breath and shoving her hair from her eyes, she dragged herself upright.

  But when the ship rolled back the other way, the water now trapped inside, came with it. It hit her dead center, tossing her around like she was entombed in a giant washing machine. She slammed into another chair, powerless to escape.

  Screams penetrated her brain, and they weren’t her own.

  Adam!

  She clawed at the water, at the seat, at her hair, desperate to see. A flash of lightning blazed through a cloud and it was a couple of thumping heartbeats before she realized she was looking outside through an enormous hole in the ship.

  Now she understood what the water was. A wave. A giant wave.

  Shoving her hair from her eyes, she clutched a padded seat, trying to steady herself as the ship leaned heavily sideways again. It paused at that angle, like it was steadying itself, then rolled back the other way. The trapped water went with it, barreling over everything in its path like a tsunami. She used a flash of blinding lightning to scan the wreckage for her family. “Adam! Max!”

  The upper balcony was empty. “Adam!”

  Her heart speared her throat. “Adam!”

  The ship groaned as if it were crying. Ignoring the eerie sound, she scrambled over mangled chairs, trying to get closer to where she’d last seen Max. “Adam! Max! Talk to me.”

  She couldn’t see. But a roar confirmed the wall of water was coming again. Screaming, she ducked below a row of chairs and hung on as the wave barreled over her. The timing of its departure matched a lightning flash and she studied the upper balcony.

  Water poured through a giant gash in the landing. “Adam!” Flicking away tears, she screamed his name until her throat burned. “Adam! Max!”

  “Here. I’m here.” Max’s deep voice was muffled, distraught.

  Gabby spun around and the angle of the ship and another wave joined forces to rip her feet out from under her. She hit chairs as she fell and a metal bar slammed into her ribs, punching the wind out of her. Gasping at the pain, she pushed up from the floor and scanned the blackness. “Max. Where are you?”

  Gabby scrambled over the chairs, aiming for where she’d heard his voice. “Max! I can’t see you?”

  He groaned. The agonizing sound was like nothing she’d ever heard from him before. Lightning flashed a blaze of light across the room and the extent of the damage made it impossible to recall just how grand the theater had been. “Max, I can’t find you.”

  “Here. I’m over here.” Another flash highlighted his raised hand on the other side of the theater. The force of the water had shot him right across the room.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  She scrambled over twisted rows of chairs blocking her way, and the boat continued to roll from side to side. Thankfully the quantity of water in the internal wave had diminished, and it no longer knocked her flying.

  As she clawed her way across the room, Gabby did something she’d never done before . . . she prayed. For both Max and her baby boy. Adam’s silence was a clamp squeezing the life out of her heart.

  Finally, she saw Max in a theater aisle, pinned beneath a row of upturned chairs. “Oh God, Max. I’m here, babe.” She fell to her knees and clamped his hand in her own.

  “Are you okay?” It was so typical of Max to be thinking of others.

  “I’m fine.”

  He was beneath a row of chairs. The large metal bar that secured them together was pinned across his chest.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m just stuck.” His voice was brittle, damaged, lacking his usual confidence. “Can you get this thing off me?”

  With another blaze of light, she studied his position. He was in an aisle. His back was against a row of stairs. Gabby clutched the bar that secured the chairs together and groaned as she lifted. To her surprise, it moved a fraction.

  “That’s good.” Max wriggled around so he could put his right hand beneath the bar. “Let’s do this together.”

  “Okay. Ready?”

  He nodded.

  “One. Two. Three.” Gabby clenched her jaw and pulled.

  Max shoved upward.

  Her arms and legs quivered with the strain. The chair stack scraped against metal, emitting a sharp, grating noise as they lifted. Flashes of lightning strobed across the theater giving Gabby millisecond images of their progress. It was slow, too slow. We need to find our boy. Now. “Come on!”

  “I think I can get out. Can you hold it there?”

  “Yes!” Gabby bellowed her response, desperate to keep her pledge. Her back buckled. Her fingers burned. Her knees wobbled. She wasn’t sure she could do it. “Hurry! It’s slipping!”

  Max’s face contorted as he squirmed beneath the bar. Inch by inch, he wriggled, and when he released an agonized howl, Gabby realized he was hurt.

  Her knees burned and trembled. Her fingers did too. But she was determined to do it. To prove how strong she was. “Hurry, Max! Hurry.”

  “Okay, nearly there.” He twisted his head and neck at an awkward angle and suddenly, he was free.

  Gabby dropped the bar, and ignoring the new aches and pains accosting her already battered body, she dropped to Max’s side. He was sucking air through his teeth. She’d seen that involuntary reaction in many crash victims. Max fought agony.

  When a crack of lightning flashed across the theater, Gabby gasped.

  That split second was all she needed to confirm he was in serious trouble.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Madeline clutched the elevator shaft grill as the ship rolled to her left. But instead of a slight pause before it swung back the other way, it kept going. Tipping farther and farther.

  “What’s happening?” Sterling’s terrified voice echoed from his position a few feet below her.

  The ship shuddered. The metal screeched.

  Her heart thundered in her chest. “Oh my God, the boat’s tipping.”

  An explosion boomed somewhere far away and the shaft trembled as if it’d been hit with a million-watt Taser.

  “Jesus!” Sterling hollered. “We’re capsizing!”

  Madeline screamed as her legs were wrenched out from under her and dangled across the void like an act in one of her high-ropes shows.

  “Hang on. Hang on!” Her fingers clutching the metal grill were the only things stopping her from plunging to her death.

  “Ohhh, shit!” Sterling’s terrified cry ricocheted about the metal walls.

  Madeline snatched a glimpse downward, and in the dark, fragmented light, Sterling’s legs were also suspended across the shaft. But he was gripping by just one hand.

  “Jesus, Sterling, hang on!”
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br />   “It’s tipping over!” His voice was shrill. “I’m slipping!” His free arm flailed. His legs swung wildly.

  Gritting her teeth, Madeline fought gravity and dragged her legs back to the grill. Dangling upside down, she glanced at Sterling. “Hang on! I’m coming.” But the second she moved, her feet slipped out again. Realizing it was pointless, she hooked her fingers into the grills and scrambled down the wall like she was climbing giant monkey bars.

  “Jesus Christ!” Sterling bellowed.

  His panic carved another layer of terror through her. “I’m nearly there. Hang on!”

  He was just five feet away, but it might as well have been twenty.

  Her heart thundered in her chest as visions of him tumbling into the flaming cavity invaded her mind.

  Finally, she reached his grill. Clinging on with just her fingers, she stretched out with her legs and wrapped them around his torso. Just as his free arm clutched her thigh, the ship jolted back the other way like a released pendulum.

  Together, they slammed face-first into the grills. Madeline squealed as an explosion of pain erupted behind her eyes.

  In a tangle of arms and legs, they gripped each other and the grills as they rode another roll of the ship. Thankfully it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the last one. She used the reprieve to settle her frazzled breathing.

  After two more rolls of the ship that didn’t have either of them screaming for their lives, she eased back from Sterling. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks to you.” He rested his hand on her leg and the warmth and comfort it provided was so unexpected that her heart seemed to dance. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Even with Aiden. Her ex-fiancé hadn’t been a very affectionate man, which had suited her just fine.

  Maybe their near-death experience had her emotions going haywire. She shook her head at his comment. “It was nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.” Sterling eased his fingers behind her neck, pulled her to his chest and squeezed. “Thank you.”