by Sarah Graves
“We can’t just leave them here, can we?” I mean, sure, they were killers. But we weren’t. And the boat was leaning a lot.
I seized the shoulders of the prone form lying nearest me; Ellie looked impatient but bent to help. Then Amity Jones rose unsteadily from behind the deck chairs, now sliding across the ever-more-rapidly-tilting deck toward the opposite rail.
Amity looked stunned, but I still thought she could probably save herself without our assistance. Karen Carrolton was going to need help, though. Blood ran from her nose, and a big bump rose on her forehead.
The boat lurched again suddenly. I hauled Karen by her sleeves; Ellie already had Willetta Beck propped against the rail, which was a lot nearer the dark water than before as the boat listed acutely.
“Hurry!” called Ellie. “We’ll dump them overboard, and someone onshore will come out and—”
“I’m coming!” I called back, but then I wasn’t, as Amity Jones tackled me suddenly, spinning me to face her.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she snapped, hurling me down and jumping on me. Eyes wild, she straddled me, reaching for my throat.
“You think you’re so smart,” she snarled. “Think you’re so . . .”
Well, no, actually I didn’t. See mistakes I’d made, above. But what I did think was that I’d had enough of this little bully.
So who knows, maybe in that moment there was some killer in me, too, as in one swift infuriated motion I drew my knees up, kicked my feet out, and slammed Amity Jones so hard in the chest that it was a wonder she didn’t just fly up off that damned boat into the water.
Instead of getting pushed off, which is what actually happened.
* * *
I’m not going to go through all the details of hoisting those half-conscious women over the rail of a sinking boat, but it was no picnic. Each big splash was like a gut punch.
People onshore waded in to fish the floating forms out of the drink while Ellie, who’d pushed Amity Jones off the Jenny and jumped in after her, now grabbed Amity’s hair and yanked her, fussing and fighting, into Tim’s little rowboat.
When Amity saw the other small boats gathering and realized that her escape window was closing, she made even more of a ruckus, bucking and kicking until Ellie grabbed her feet and with a quick flip upended her right back into the water again.
This time I didn’t feel sorry at all; I may even have dusted my hands together in satisfaction, watching Amity splutter.
But not for long, because the foundering vessel I was still on was now almost in position to fire those below-deck guns at the crowd. Like fish in a barrel.
“Go!” Ellie urged when I hesitated at the rail. Jump, I thought, but somehow I still just couldn’t.
It wasn’t far to the water with the Jenny so nearly capsized, and the smoke pouring from the hatch flickered sullen orange, encouraging me further. But there was something I had to do, something my frazzled brain still hadn’t thought of . . . and then I had it.
“Phone!” I yelled. Ellie looked up at me as if I was even crazier than before, and by then I really was, of course. But Tim’s phone had rung a little while earlier. That meant the phones were working again.
And that meant if only I could—
Find it. The two older women had already been ferried to safety; now the crowd onshore was fixed on the spectacle of Amity Jones, swimming away from a newly arrived dinghy whose occupant was trying to pluck her from the chilly water.
“Jake, damn it, get down here,” Ellie said flatly.
Which gave me some pause, as did the new harder lurch sideways that the Jenny took, her deck so nearly vertical that I half expected an orchestra somewhere to start playing “Nearer My God to Thee.”
But instead I finally found Tim’s phone, which had slid under that pile of deck chairs. This time Bob Arnold answered at once.
“Bob? You’ve got to—”
A torrent of angry verbiage erupted from the phone as the deck shivered under my feet. And still those guns vibrated beneath it, too, their whine now audible between the shouts of the crowd.
Tim must be getting ready to fire them. Had to be, since soon they’d be under water. And so would we . . . but with the Jenny on top of us.
“Bob!” I tried interrupting his tirade.
I couldn’t imagine how Tim thought he would escape. But things were happening too fast for me to worry about him.
“Jake!” Ellie cried urgently from below me on the water. “Come on! She’s going over!”
“Bob, shut up and listen,” I said into the phone. “Get the people away from the shore. He’s got guns on this boat, Bob, and any minute he’s going to—”
The phone went dead. Either Bob had gotten the message and hung up, or the little device had given up the ghost at last. With a curse I flung it away, scrambling uphill on the deck to cling to the rail.
“Ellie!” I yelled, but she didn’t respond to me, instead staring past me in horror at something I hadn’t yet seen.
But now I did. The fireworks barge, with at least a third of its original supply of fireworks on it, I estimated, had motored in toward shore without my noticing; well, I’d been a little busy, hadn’t I?
Now the barge floated fifty yards from the Jenny, between us and the people onshore. So if those guns fired, they’d all get blown to bits, unless—
Suddenly Ellie appeared right there in front of me, drenched and furious, perched on the rail.
“Damn it, that’s the last time I’m climbing that freaking rope,” she said, only she didn’t say “freaking.”
“Promise me,” she entreated. “Tell me that this time after I go, you’ll jump, too.”
So I promised. And then I pushed her. She went over the rail like an angel, arms outstretched, unafraid even after I gave her the shove.
“Promise me!” she cried again as she fell, and I called back, “I will!” And then...
And then of course I didn’t.
* * *
I don’t want to make it sound like I was . . . well, I was angry and scared, was all, and I think that something inside my head had already gone haywire. But the demolished remains of the hatchway leading below were in flames, and I wasn’t about to jump through them. So I rummaged around on deck until I found a toolbox, and inside it—yes! Tools.
Then I scrambled precariously around to the Jenny’s foredeck, where I found still another hatchway door to the helm. It was locked like the first one, but a hard bash with the pipe wrench I’d grabbed out of the box took care of the darling little brass door latch that somebody had installed, and then I was through.
The boat slanted sharply, water lapping the deck. Tim sat in the captain’s chair with his feet braced on the console so he wouldn’t slide off.
He hadn’t heard me; a sinking ship makes a lot of agonized creaking and groaning sounds, it turns out, like a body made of wood that is being torn limb from limb.
“Tim.” Sweat-drenched and grimacing, he gripped the throttle in one white-knuckled hand and the wheel with the other. A rifle that I hadn’t seen before leaned against the chair he sat in, but I couldn’t quite reach it.
And anyway, there was no time; the boat shuddered. I grabbed his shoulder. Snarling, he shook me off without turning. He was still trying to steer while shoving the throttle forward desperately, but this ship wasn’t going anywhere except down.
“Tim, it’s over. We’ve got to get off right now or we’ll—”
Drown, I was about to say, but before I could finish he slammed both fists down on two flat gray knobs mounted on the console.
The rattle of automatic weapons came from behind us, those ports in the stern, I realized. Bursts of gunfire were erupting from them. That’s what the knobs were—firing buttons. Someone had reengineered this vessel very thoroughly, and not just in the galley kitchen.
“Tim!” I cried, hauling at him, but he left off leaning on those guns only long enough to shove me away.
I stumbled backward until my h
ead hit something hard. The world flipped over, and suddenly I couldn’t see straight. While my eyes were still struggling to refocus themselves, the guns fired again in a long murderous-sounding chatter.
Through the spray-smeared windshield the shoreline was almost vertical, we were over so far. Then water began rising up through the carpet on the floor, and I knew this was it; I had to get out right now.
But first I was going to end Tim Franco’s deadly shooting spree—
Because I had to. Wade, Sam . . . and if those fireworks exploded so near to land, half the people onshore would be killed, too.
Gathering what few wits I had left, I wrapped my hand around that pipe wrench again. Then I raised it, which was when I finally realized how truly difficult it is, hitting a person on the head.
Emotionally, I mean. Like stabbing, I suppose, it just goes against the grain for most people. That was why I hesitated, and while I did so the most amazing thing happened:
The windshield burst inward, not shattering but crackling in a sudden starburst, then ripping away from its metal frame as something big hit it.
It was an anchor, as it turned out, and behind the anchor loomed Lionel, rising in front of me like something vomited out of the water.
Pale, drenched, and shivering really hard, his curls hanging in wet, wormy tangles around his face, he looked like death, if death got really angry and crazy.
Dragging himself through the torn-open windshield frame, he grabbed Tim’s throat with one hand and punched him so hard with the other that I thought Tim’s eyes might fly out the back of his head like a cartoon character’s.
But this was no cartoon. Cold water slopped around my ankles, and I kept sliding downhill, meanwhile trying desperately to climb toward the hatchway opening, not yet quite submerged.
But it was going to be. Lionel grabbed me and shoved me out through the windshield. On my way, I grabbed hold of the chain he’d unclipped the anchor from and hauled myself along it.
Waves churned foamily around me. The deck lurched as if trying to fling me off. I scrabbled for the rail, intending to leap over it.
Then Lionel heaved himself up through the windshield opening and began crawling toward me. Tim was still back there in the cabin as it filled with cold salt water. Lights bobbed toward us, boats coming to help. A spark of hope warmed my frozen heart. But then I saw him:
Tim clambered out and hoisted himself atop the cabin roof. There he stood, splay-legged, balanced unsteadily and lifting—
That rifle. Lifting and aiming it, straight at the fireworks barge . . .
“No!” I screamed, but too late. He squinted through the gunsight, and although I couldn’t see his trigger finger tightening, I felt it. A bitter grin stretched his lips.
“No!” I cried again, and then the Jenny’s stern dropped abruptly, tipping the foredeck up hard and knocking Tim backward. Scrambling to save himself, he overcompensated, sliding forward and landing in front of me.
But he couldn’t hold on. “Tim,” I said, reaching out a hand.
He snatched at it, missed, slid downhill farther from me in the attempt. “Tim, crawl, damn it—”
His eyes implored me as he tried to obey, pumping his feet uselessly against the foredeck’s wet, sharply inclined surface. Lionel hurled the end of the anchor chain wildly, hoping Tim could grab it.
But it was no good. Cracking and splintering sounds filled the air amidst the angry hissing of water reaching the fire that still raged somewhere belowdecks.
And then her stern went under. “Jump!” Lionel yelled. “Now, right now, we’ve got to—”
I got one leg over the rail and looked back, hoping to find that Tim Franco had somehow made it back up the slanting deck behind me.
But he hadn’t. Now he clung desperately with one hand to the thin shaft of the doomed boat’s slender radio antenna. Then it broke off, and he whirled away as if down a waterslide, vanishing into the waves.
He was watching me as he went, his eyes wide, pleading with me to help him. But there was nothing that I could do about it.
And then I did jump.
* * *
The last day of the Eastport Pirate Festival dawned clear and bright.
“Morning,” said Wade, wrapping his arms around me as I stood at the bedroom window. “How’re you feeling?”
“Excellent.” I forced a smile, trying for the fiftieth time not to relive the awful moment when that cold water closed over my head.
The truth was, I felt as if I’d been hit by a ton of bricks. My head thudded, my throat was still raw from all the screaming I’d done the night before, and every muscle in my body hurt.
But I wasn’t dead, which I could easily have been. “Fabulous,” I added, pulling my clothes on.
It was only six in the morning, and I’d had about three hours of sleep, but downstairs in the kitchen the daily circus had begun and I didn’t want to miss any of it; funny how when all of your minutes get nearly taken away from you, each one becomes so precious.
“Toast!” Ephraim’s funny, fiercely determined little-boy voice floated up the stairs. “Toast, toast, toast, toast . . .”
Wade looked unfooled by my declarations of health. But he could also see that I didn’t much want to talk about it.
Not yet. “So,” he said instead. “There really is going to be another one, I guess.”
Baby, he meant—Mika and Sam’s. They’d broken the news after we all got home the night before. Which was early this morning, actually, but never mind.
Wade sounded just as conflicted about it as I felt. He loved little Ephraim as much as I did: truly, deeply. But if we put any more people in this house it might burst, and I still didn’t know what to do about it.
Glimpsing my worried look, Wade changed the subject again. “There are two more mowers in the yard,” he observed, peering past me out the window.
Yes, there certainly was another pair of riding machines out there, each with a mowing deck that looked as wide as a freeway. They’d been in the yard when we got home from the hospital.
I’d been taken there in an ambulance despite my protests. Once brought into the emergency room, I’d been looked over very thoroughly, with special attention to my poor noggin—not to mention the X-rays, reflex tests, various neurological examinations, an EKG, and intravenous fluids.
And as it turned out I’d probably had a concussion since I fell and hit my head on the rocks out at the campgrounds. Now I had strict instructions not to exert myself and to avoid a whole list of foods, drinks, and activities that might stress my bruised brain.
Not that I intended to follow many of those instructions, being as today I felt . . . well, not fine. But I was alive. And that, it seemed to me, was a lot to feel good about right there.
“So I guess they don’t think I’m a murder suspect anymore,” I said, bending to get my shoes.
Only about half my blood rushed up into my head, which made it feel as if it were about to burst like a balloon, and the rest dropped to my feet, which left my knees quivering weakly.
“Yeah, nearly being another victim does tend to dilute suspicion against you,” said Wade, retrieving the other shoe from under the bed.
He motioned for me to sit, then slid the shoe gently onto my foot and tied it, and of course I didn’t burst into tears at this kindness.
One did leak down my cheek, but I brushed it away quickly before Wade saw it. Bob Arnold had been kind, too, when he’d stopped by the house after we got home, regarding my cuts and bruises with horror.
“Bob filled you in on what Amity said, did he?” Wade asked. Even though it had been late, once he knew I was okay he’d gone back down to secure the rest of the fireworks, stowing them all in a padlocked closet at the Coast Guard station and keeping the key.
“Uh-huh.” By the time Amity got yanked out of the frigid water in the boat basin she’d been so cold she’d been delirious, and gabbing about pretty much everything she’d been up to.
I gather
ed myself and stood, still waiting for what Wade wasn’t saying—that is, what an idiot I’d been for ever getting onto the Jenny in the first place.
Or maybe it was me saying it, silently but emphatically. “Okay, now,” I breathed, trying not to yelp when I moved.
Or when I breathed, or blinked, or . . . crossing the bedroom, I got a look at myself in the mirror. The red raised bump in the middle of my forehead made me appear to be trying to grow a third eye.
Note to self: Don’t go jumping off any more boats. Cautiously, I began descending the hall stairs.
Walking down, the interesting sensation of being smacked by a bag of hammers returned, along with the suspicion that maybe that bump on my head was actually a hatchet wound: ouch. The pain went right into my brain, it felt like.
Wade followed me, collecting dropped toys and toddler clothing as he went: a stuffed frog, a small red shoe, a sweater—
An adult-sized sweater, emerald green. I plucked Ephraim’s new stuffed parrot from its perch on the bannister, then took the sweater from Wade and put it on with a shiver.
“I doubt Bob Arnold was supposed to tell me anything,” I went on in the kitchen as I poured coffee; yes, it was on the don’t-drink-it list and, no, I didn’t care.
The first sip was heaven; the brain cells that still worked came to life and the rest quit hurting. So much for medical advice.
“But he felt terrible, he said, like it was all his fault that I nearly drowned.” Which I nearly had; that last leap I’d taken off the half-sunk Jenny hadn’t worked quite the way I’d hoped.
For one thing, the boat had chosen that moment to turn over in a death roll, coming down almost on top of me.
Bella stood at the stove. Frizzy-haired and hatchet-faced in a pink chenille bathrobe, a pink hairnet, and pink fuzzy slippers, she was like someone’s nightmare version of a kitchen goddess.
But she was our goddess, and in that moment I could have kissed her, I was so glad to see her. Just then my father came in, seized her by her bony shoulders, and did kiss her.
“Oh, you,” she exhaled, escaping his try at dancing her around the kitchen but looking pleased nevertheless. She carried a platter of hot pancakes to the table, where it was at once pounced upon by Sam, coming out from behind his newspaper.