The first man notices me and his brow furrows. He’s right—I don’t belong in here with my sundress and my dog. I obviously don’t have a reason to be hanging around and staring at everything. Except I do. I’m looking for Nicholas. The shipbuilder, Mark, said he was in here, but I don’t see him.
Until he steps out of one of those offices. It’s a big room, but he spots me right away. The lavender sundress probably helps. Nicholas waves me over. His eyes cut to both sides, checking to see if anyone else is looking. They’re not. Buddy scampers along with me. We dodge three men carrying a crate into one of the open areas and meet Nicholas on the other side.
“Hi.” I feel slightly breathless from the air-conditioning and the fluorescent lights. There weren’t many of those on the Trident, and none in the mansion, and it feels weird to be in a space like this. It feels weird to be in a life like this. “Mark said you were in here.”
“I’ve been in a meeting with one of the engineers.” He launches into a high-speed and detailed explanation of how modern ships have hundreds of computerized parts and the design Poseidon needs requires them to be 3-D modeled before they can be installed on the ship. I grew up with a phone in my hand, but I have no idea what he’s talking about. Nicholas doesn’t go on very long. “We’ll be ahead of schedule if I can make it work. Are they waiting for me?”
“No.”
Another set of men with another crate come through, and Nicholas takes me by the arm and steers me back toward the entrance. Buddy’s nails click on the metal floor as he follows. A second row of offices is here, and we stop outside one of the doors, where we’ll be out of the way. “You doing all right?” he asks in a low voice.
Not really. I still miss my dad, and I’m more worried for Poseidon with every second that passes. I still haven’t told him about the man with the tattoo. “Yes.”
“Ashley.” His jaw works. Nicholas is Poseidon’s first mate, and he takes that role seriously. He only argues with Poseidon when he has a good reason. “I’m moving this as fast as I can.”
“I know. You’re even in here with the computer guy.” Wait. I peer at him. At Nicholas, with the scar on one of his cheekbones and his tousled blond hair and his white T-shirt. The shirt is for working on a ship and so are his muscles, but the way he explained the modeling and the computers and the parts fitting into the ship—he’s good at those, too. He wasn’t repeating a set of facts. He understands them, and if he understands something as complex as shipboard computers, he’d probably understand a USB thumb drive. It’s back in the metal box, which is in the top drawer of the dresser in the master bedroom. It hurts too much to see it out in the open. “Can I ask you about something?”
Guilt puts two hands on either side of my heart and squeezes, and Nicholas raises his eyebrows. “About the ship?”
“No. Someone delivered a safe-deposit box that only came to me after my dad—” No. Nope. No tears today. Not about him, anyway. “After the Trident went down. The box was from my mother.” Nicholas knows about her. I told him—and several other people on the crew—about her when I was high on laudanum after the whipping. I only vaguely remember doing it, but Nicholas has confirmed that it was real. He pats my shoulder in a way that’s surprisingly not awkward, and I find it within me to keep going. “There was a letter and some jewelry, but there was also a USB drive.”
“Big or small?”
“A thumb drive. There’s a computer at the mansion, so I tried to see what was on it, but it gave me an error message.” Nicholas opens his mouth, but I cut him off. “Yes, I put it in the right way.”
“I was going to say that you could bring it with you the next time you come, and we could take a look at it here. Or you could just send it with Poseidon.”
The guilt presses harder on my heart. My chest aches. For a moment, it’s too much to meet Nicholas’s eyes, but I do it. His eyebrows go even higher, and his mouth drops open. Nicholas has spent years at sea with Poseidon. He’s not easily shocked. The fact that he is makes me feel even worse.
“You didn’t show him?”
Now it’s a knot in my throat, impossible to swallow past. “He’s just under a lot of stress right now, and I—”
A shout from outside cuts into our conversation. Not just any shout—Poseidon, thundering at the shipbuilder, who’s shouting something back about the island code and being on schedule. There’s an even louder crash. I squeeze my eyes shut as stony silence drops down like a hammer outside. Buddy barks, one time, and circles my feet.
It only takes a heartbeat for the racket to return. Noise from the shipyard pours in again but I can still feel the rift of that quiet. A silence like that of any length isn’t normal in this place.
Poseidon is not himself here, and a brief panic rises that he’ll never be himself again. That losing the Trident was the last straw. That one day he’ll slip into the ocean and he won’t come back.
It terrifies me to know how reasonable that would be. How like him, to walk into the ocean and swim until he can’t swim anymore. There would be a point where even Poseidon couldn’t keep his head above water. I’m not sure he wants to be above water anymore. I’m not sure about anything. I’m only sure I need to be with him. I’m only sure I won’t be okay if he disappears like that. I won’t get over it.
That’s what I’m bracing for now, not silence or shouting, and my cheeks burn. It’s embarrassing to be wincing in this warehouse when nothing has happened. I force my eyes open and take a deep breath. Buddy’s tail wags tentatively again.
Nicholas is watching the door, his expression pensive. He looks torn between staying here with me and going out to try and salvage whatever’s happening with Poseidon. The doubt in his eyes is as familiar as looking in the mirror. He doesn’t know if he’ll be enough to help him. I don’t know if I’m enough to help him.
I don’t know if anyone is.
But if there’s something Nicholas knows, anything....
“Have you ever seen him like this?”
His eyes come back to mine at the question, and the answer is there on his face before he speaks. His eyes are shadowed with the memory. “Yes.”
“What did it take to fix it?”
“Nothing I did.”
“Tell me.” It feels urgent to know. It feels like another storm might break over the island, and if that happens, Poseidon will crack. There’s no doubt in my mind.
He doesn’t want to, but Nicholas takes a deep breath. “We went hunting.”
“What does that mean?” I don’t have unlimited time in this warehouse. It was risky enough to come in here. It’s always risky to be out of Poseidon’s sight. He hates it, and frankly, so do I. “Whatever it is, just say it. I can handle it.”
“He took a job we didn’t have to take. A hit job.” He grimaces. “The jobs we do aren’t always pretty, but that one—we didn’t have to take that one. It could have been someone else’s, and I wish—” He shakes his head. “He made the rest of us stay on the Trident while he boarded the other ship himself.”