As if he’s one of them, but that’s an act. He may take drugs, but he’s a good person. A kind person. Soft on the inside. His statement shorts make the wrong kind of statement.
The man in charge is saying something, cocking his head to the side. I can only hear the low vibration of their voices, not the words. None of them can be good. We’re alone in the ocean. Us against these people.
Robbie puts his hands up, laughing, the same way he does at frat parties when he’s being offered too much to drink. There’s a line, with people like us. When your parents donated a building to the university, like his did. Or an entire department, like mine did. There’s a line. When access to your trust fund is contingent on good behavior, there’s a line.
I focus all my energy on reading his lips.
No, no. I’ve got it.
Got what? Money? His access to money is a technicality. Even with good behavior, he’s not going to have full control of his trust fund until he’s thirty. He can’t give these men the yacht. We wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
The other man leans in, and this time, I understand what he’s saying.
It’s not enough, pretty boy.
Robbie makes a desperate motion with his arms. Wait, he says without words. I have more.
I’d scream if my breath weren’t choked off. I’d slap him if my fingers weren’t locked around the porthole’s frame. I’m so busy swallowing a howl of betrayal that I don’t see the gun.
The man is a foot or so away from Robbie. His hands are empty, and then one of them is wrapped around a pistol. Shiny. Black. The way they always are in the movies.
I open my mouth to say his name.
In that instant the man raises his hand, presses the gun to Robbie’s forehead, and pulls the trigger.
He drops in a spray of blood that makes my stomach lurch up to my throat. Blood on blood on blood, staining his white T-shirt and coral shorts. I don’t—I can’t—
The man turns around and gestures to the others. Two of them climb back over the railing and he shouts loud enough to hear through the window. A name I don’t recognize and a command I do: “You’re steering.”
They’re taking the yacht.
And taking me with it.
My conscience twists around my spine and threatens to snap it. Help him, it screams. But Robbie is dead, and nothing I do will take that bullet out of his skull.
Nothing in the world can undo it.
They’re taking the yacht.
I run without thinking, hitting my shin on the corner of the bed hard enough to break skin. I skim my phone off the dresser and run headfirst into the back door.
I can’t get it open, the damn thing won’t open, and with every heartbeat I can feel them coming closer. Hear their footsteps on the way up to the bedroom.
“Oh, shit.” My curse comes out as a pathetic whisper. There are four of them and one of me. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Open, you fucking thing, let me out—” My fingers brush protruding metal and on instinct I flip the lock.
The yacht has a narrow diving deck in the back.
A rumble comes up from below deck along with a horror that shakes me twice as much as the engine. They’ve started it up, this yacht, they’ve started it. I don’t want to find out where they’re going or what happens on the way. I can’t find that out. I won’t make it. I have a better chance of staying alive in the ocean.
Even though I can’t swim.
A round red-and-white buoy sticks out from the wall. I wrench it off and fold it into my arms like a throw pillow. “Jump in,” I tell myself. “One, two, three.”
On two, I stumble forward, and on three, I’m past the railing, and then there’s no more counting. I hit churning water and it shocks me into motion. I’m not going to die like this. I’m not going to die getting sucked into the engine of the yacht that’s now a floating grave for my dead boyfriend. The splash I hear—his body going over—that has to be my imagination.
It can’t be real.
I kick hard away from the boat, the buoy keeping my chest above water. My head. That’s all that matters, right? If I can keep my head above water I’ll be okay.
I do not think of the bullet that could punch a hole in my back.
I do not think of Robbie, falling like a boneless puppet.
I do not think of the creatures in the ocean below.
I think about kicking. About getting away.
My legs are jelly, tired, almost instantly. I never learned how to do this, clearly. I failed at swimming lessons, and no one pressured me into learning. Becoming an all-state swimmer would have made this less of a challenge. An ocean ripple slaps me across the mouth. The ocean doesn’t care that I’m fleeing for my life.
It wants to swallow me whole.
The yacht moves away.
By the time I look back, it’s far in the distance, a second boat in front of it.
I turn in an awkward full circle. Kick, kick, kick. The waves seemed so placid before. I was wrong about that. The sea is constantly moving. It pushes me this way, then that, tugging me where it wants me to go. There’s no land for miles. I’m alone. I’m adrift at sea.
2
Poseidon
A man can only have one great love, and mine is the sea.
On a night like tonight, there’s nothing better to do than look out over my lifelong obsession. And why not with a sextant I bought at auction a few years ago? It dates from the early nineteenth century and is made from brass, unlike the modern bullshit, which is all plastic. Sure, sure. I have all the digital navigation systems money can buy, several times over. They’re always getting upgraded when I move from ship to ship.
I do that often.
Who cares about the vessel when the true magnetic pull is to the water? Some poetic bastards say the water calls to them. I’ve never been able to decide if that phrase is a willful understatement or totally inaccurate. The sea does not call to me any more than gravity whispers in my ear. It’s an elemental force, alive with sound and fury and the kind of gleeful violence that makes my blood sing.
An old, familiar restlessness moves over me like a chilled sea breeze. I put the sextant back in its case. Stand up. Pace my cabin. This ship has enormous captain’s quarters. I don’t need this much room. I tried convincing my first mate to take it. He’s too superstitious to pull rank.
There’s a prickling sensation on my skin.
Something is off. That’s what it means. It’s been flowing in for a while now, but I didn’t notice. My thoughts were elsewhere. Now they’re on the full-bore alert happening in the deep reaches of my body. Hairs rising on the back of my neck. It’s almost like a storm is coming.
Or something else.
The last time I felt like this, we got ambushed by Somali pirates with a death wish. Those fuckers never know when to give up. They were a green crew, down on their luck, and by the time I was finished with them they belonged to another country. But it’s not necessarily a threat. It could be a thing I’ve been searching for.
I go out onto the deck.
My first mate, Nicholas, who has a bruise under his eye from our last argument, stares up at the sky from a hammock stretched along a frame bolted to the deck. He’s been running a hand over his auburn hair, pretending not to be impatient.