Miguel took a deep breath, shaking his head, then stopped himself from saying whatever he wanted.
“Sorry. Just freaking out a little.”
“We all are,” Angie said, forcing herself to put on a face that would pass as forgiveness, when what she wanted to do was lash out at the chief mate. How would she get hold of the PLB now? It wasn’t as though she could knock them both out, and when would she have another chance to get to the beacon?
The awkward moment stretched out between them. Eventually, Angie relented.
“I guess I’d better—”
Someone began shouting outside the wheelhouse. Miguel frowned and turned away from her, hauling the door open. Angie glanced back at Suarez, who’d looked up from the radar screen at last. Then the shouting came again, and this time she knew who that voice belonged to.
“Dwyer?”
Miguel stepped out onto the landing and Angie followed, practically colliding with him as she rushed out. They hung over the railing and looked down to see Dwyer hustling up the last flight of stairs to reach the wheelhouse.
“What’s the matter with you?” Miguel asked as Dwyer arrived on the landing.
Dwyer bent over, one hand up to gesture for patience as he caught his breath. “Down in the boiler room … something’s banging … on the hull.”
Angie didn’t think she had ever seen Dwyer frightened, but he looked scared now.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Someone’s—”
“Not from the inside,” Dwyer said, his frantic eyes silencing her. He turned to Miguel. “There’s something in the water, Miguel. It’s ramming against the ship.”
“Something what? Like a shark?” Miguel asked. “Or you think we got FBI divers down there?”
Dwyer steadied his breathing and leaned back against the railing. He’d settled down a bit now, but he still looked spooked. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
“It’s not the FBI. But there’s something down there, that’s for sure.”
Miguel ran a hand through his hair. Angie had always thought him good-looking — though never as good-looking as Miguel obviously considered himself — but he looked like crap now. Too much stubble, not enough sleep. He must have been a competent first mate, but in that moment it was clear that Gabe Rio had been made captain over Miguel by virtue of more than being the older brother.
“All right, listen—” Miguel started.
Only to be interrupted by distant shouts.
“What the hell is that?” Angie said.
All three of them turned toward the island. Standing just outside the wheelhouse, they were high enough to see over the derelict ships half-sunken in the water around the island. One of the lifeboats had made it partway through the maze of wrecks, but it had overturned.
As they watched, a sailor tried to grab hold of the overturned lifeboat. He screamed, attempting to haul himself up, then somehow the lifeboat broke apart in his hands.
“Jesus Christ,” Dwyer muttered, his brogue emerging.
The sailor vanished beneath the water.
“Did something just …” Miguel began, but trailed off, as though unwilling to finish the thought.
“Pull him down?” Angie said. “That’s what it looked like.”
Dwyer seemed to shrink, leaning on the railing for support. “Told you, man. Something’s in the water. And not just out there. It’s right here, too. Around us.”
They watched Hank Boggs pull himself out of the water onto a sunken cabin cruiser, and saw Gabe and Tori and a few others scramble back onto shore from the other lifeboat. For perhaps a minute, the three of them said nothing.
Then Suarez opened the door behind them. “Miguel. Radio.”
Angie could hear the static crackling inside. Miguel took one last look toward the island, then hurried into the wheelhouse. Suarez stayed out there with Angie and Dwyer, and as the door swung shut behind Miguel, they watched the water around the broken-up lifeboat turn dark with blood.
“Lord help them,” Suarez muttered.
Angie agreed. If there was ever a time for prayers, it had arrived.
She ran for the stairs. Dwyer called after her, wanting to know where she was going, but she didn’t slow down. They needed help, and she could only think of one way to get it. There were things she couldn’t do anything about, but she could damn well bring about change.
43
For twenty or thirty seconds after he’d spoken to his brother on the radio, Gabe didn’t want to be the captain anymore. His heart seemed to have shrunken in his chest, and memories flooded his mind. Maya liked to lie in bed on rainy mornings, tucked beneath his arm, her head on his chest, just listening to his heartbeat. Gabe could watch an old movie or a baseball game and she’d be entirely content just to cling to him like that. In happier times, she had always told him it made her feel safe. Protected.
When they wanted to escape, they would drive south to the Keys, find a place on the water, drink margaritas, and listen to Bob Marley. Hell, sometimes he and Maya would even listen to Jimmy Buffett, the hero to middle-aged white stoners everywhere. Buffett knew something about relaxing. Like margaritas, that music made him feel like he was on vacation.
At home, Maya relished the days when neither of them had to work. She always had some project for him to do — putting up a floral border in the spare bedroom or repainting the bathroom or reorganizing the furniture in the living room just so she’d have the perfect place to hang the new painting she’d bought. Gabe had bitched about it, but he had loved it, too, turning up the radio and singing along as they created and re-created their home together.
The home he spent most of his time leaving, out of fear that one day he would become too comfortable and become trapped there.
For that half-minute, Gabe lost himself in thoughts and memories and regrets.
“Captain!” Kevonne shouted. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Sweat beaded on his forehead and he gesticulated wildly, pointing at the reef of sunken ships and at the Antoinette in the distance, then at their lifeboat and at Bone and Pang and Tori. He kept shouting, but Gabe found himself unable to focus. Shock, he thought. It’s shock.
It occurred to him that they were in paradise. Perfect blue sky. Sun moving lower, throwing the long shadows of palm trees across the sand. All the ingredients were there. If he had a margarita, Maya, and Bob Marley, it would have been like heaven.
A small sound — half-chuckle and half-grunt — came from his throat and he shook his head in disbelief.
“Gabriel-fucking-Rio!” Tori shouted.
She gave him a shove with both hands and he staggered back, then narrowed his eyes, glaring at her. Tori stood in front of him, somehow managing to look more angry than afraid. With her hair back in a ponytail and her bronzed skin and tight tank top, she only added to the illusion of some tropical vacation. But Gabe had woken from that dream.
Bone had dropped to the sand twenty feet from the water and hugged his knees to his chest, muttering “what the fuck” over and over again. Pang strode along the shore, alternately staring out at the place where the other lifeboat had just gone down and peering into the shallow surf for some sign of anything that might threaten them.
Kevonne still shouted at Gabe. “Captain. Come on, man! What do we do?”
Gabe locked eyes with Tori. “Sorry. I was just thinking. I’m okay now.”
Tori barked a dry laugh. “Are you? Me, I’m not so much okay as scared out of my mind. We’ve got to get off this island and back to the Antoinette, and I’m pretty sure it’s got to be now, Gabe. Before nightfall.”
That woke Bone from his shock-coma. The boy looked dreadfully old as he turned toward them. “Are you nuts? I’m not going out there, Tori. Something’s under the water. You see all those bones? It’s what killed them. That’s why all those boats are sunk out there. People came ashore, to do a little fishing or take a swim or whatever. Tiny little island in the Caribbean, right? But once they’re here, they can’t leave. That was the mistake they made, don’t you get it? Trying to leave! We’re safe here. Here is good.”