“This is fucked,” Kevonne said.
Tori blinked, startled from her reverie. She glanced at Gabe, but his focus remained on the island, as though he didn’t even notice the wrecks they were navigating past. Pang steered them carefully, throttling down even as he gazed around with the smile of a teenager discovering the world’s coolest video game.
Kevonne glanced from Tori to the captain and back again, expecting a reply. When none came, he swore under his breath and peered at the nearest of the wrecks. Tori wondered what he wanted her to say.
“Slow down,” Gabe said.
Pang throttled down even further and they all got a better look at the derelict ships around them. Though it forced them to approach at an angle, a clear path — perhaps fifty feet wide — lay open before them. The cove seemed ordinary enough, save for the jagged black rocks that jutted out to either side. Once they cleared the graveyard of ships, their course would be simple and swift.
Tori understood why Gabe had wanted a better look at the wrecks, though. The ships were weathered to varying degrees, depending upon how long they had lain off the island’s coast. They passed a fishing boat whose cabin had partially rotted. The hull had several holes in it, each two or three feet wide. But adjacent to it — nearer to the lifeboat — was the sort of pleasure craft that rich men hired crews for just so that they could call themselves captain. The wheelhouse had been damaged by fire, but otherwise it seemed in excellent shape until they passed close by. Under the crystal blue water, they could see a broad dark area on the white hull.
“Did you—?” Bone began, then stopped himself.
Gabe looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Just fish.”
But Tori had seen something darting back into that hole as well. “An eel, maybe?”
Bone nodded. “Probably.”
To their left lay the sailboat they’d seen earlier, its twin masts canted over the top of a small, rusty freighter. Tori stared at it as they passed, noticing that all but one of the lifeboat berths were empty, and wondering where the rest of them had gone. Against the vividness of the blue sky and the crystal water, and washed by the brilliant sunlight, the conjoined wrecks looked bleached and lifeless. Yet the morning made the shadowy interiors of both vessels that much darker, and a stray thought ran through Tori’s mind about rats leaving sinking ships.
But not these, she thought, nonsensically. They didn’t leave these.
And that was it, she realized. The ships were derelict wrecks, half-sunk and ruined, but they didn’t feel abandoned. She glanced again at the pleasure craft and tipped her head back, staring at the trawling nets that had been roped together and strung from the prow across the fifty-foot span that separated it from the twin-masted sailboat. Pang piloted the lifeboat beneath that high-wire array of nets. They had all noticed many other ropes and chains that had been used to connect some of the wrecks to others like some kind of web. The one above their heads hadn’t sagged much, which meant it hadn’t been there very long.
“It just doesn’t feel like we’re alone,” she said, her voice small.
Gabe shot her a dark look.
“Thank you!” Kevonne threw up his hands. “That’s what I’m saying. It’s freaky. The back of my neck is itching something fierce, like someone’s watching me.”
Bone looked up at Gabe. “My skin’s crawling, Captain. I’m with them. Think we ought to hail whoever’s here?”
Gabe looked like he was going to argue the point, and Tori felt sure he would say he hadn’t felt it at all.
“There could be people on the island,” she said quickly. “Or out on some of these wrecks. Might be survivors from the Mariposa, or whoever attacked them.”
The captain shook his head. “You guys are spooked, that’s all. None of these ships are seaworthy, and whoever attacked the Mariposa’s crew wouldn’t just be hanging out here. They’d have taken the guns and gone.”
“If they found the guns,” Bone said, shifting in the lifeboat, looking like he’d never needed a joint more in all his days. “If they didn’t, maybe they’re still on the island, man. Maybe they left some guys here to look and are coming back for them.”
“You’re getting paranoid,” Gabe said.
Bone gave a little laugh and turned, wide-eyed. “Dude, I’m freaking out, okay? Someone killed all those guys, we got an FBI on the boat, and fucking look around you! Paranoia’s the healthiest reaction I can muster, okay?”
Gabe’s nostrils flared.
“Dude,” Kevonne said. “Captain.”
Bone gave a sheepish smile and an apologetic shrug and looked at Gabe. “Sorry, Captain. Sure as hell feels like we’re not alone, that’s all.”
Gabe relented. “Go on, then. Hail them, if you think they’re here.”
Bone nodded and licked his lips, then got on his knees in the lifeboat and started to call out to the wrecks as they passed. His voice echoed off hulls, sometimes drifting away on an errant breeze or hissing into the shush of water against the boat or the roar of the motor. He kept calling as Pang — lost in his music — steered them clear of the graveyard of ships and then upped the throttle, churning them faster into the cove and toward the shore.
No one called back. Tori didn’t see any movement on any of the boats, or on shore. Bone finally relented and quieted down, and for a few seconds, no one said anything at all.
Then Tori shuddered, her spine stiffening, a chill dancing up the back of her neck.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
Gabe, Kevonne, and Bone all looked at her.
“What?” the captain asked.
She frowned, glanced back over her shoulder. Pang sat behind her, and past him Hank Boggs and the other two sailors they’d brought followed in the second lifeboat, making their way through the derelict ships.
“Nothing now,” she said, studying the shadows aboard those wrecks again. “For a second, I thought I heard singing.”
“Pang’s got his damn iPod up too loud,” Kevonne said.
Tori glanced at the smiling sailor, hidden behind his sunglasses. She listened hard, but she couldn’t hear a single note of his music, and couldn’t believe that bit of singing had been an errant snatch of a tune from his iPod. She considered asking if she could listen a moment, but told herself she was being foolish. Of course the music had come from Pang’s iPod.
But when Tori turned toward the island again, she found Bone watching her anxiously, eyes wide with a fear that made him look like a small boy. Had he heard the singing, too?
“Here we go,” Gabe said, gesturing to Pang.
The lifeboat knifed through the shallows and bottomed out, sliding onto the shore even as Pang raised the motor blades out of the water. Gabe jumped into the shallows and Kevonne stepped out onto the sand.
They’d arrived.
28
Angie stood outside the rec room on the starboard side of the accommodations block’s third story, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she watched the two lifeboats run aground on the island’s sandy shore. She wondered if she could make it down to the galley where Josh had hidden his locator beacon without anyone noticing that she’d left the door unguarded. Captain Rio and that bastard Boggs were gone, and they were her two greatest concerns. Miguel Rio worried her, too, but not as much as the captain. The chief mate could be a real bastard, but he wasn’t as smart as his brother.