The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Amelia Wilde

  The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Connect with Amelia

  Also by Amelia Wilde

  1

  Ashley

  The best thing about this weekend getaway is this incredible tan.

  Nothing but miles of sunlight and ocean to take my skin from beige to deep bronze. I’m reclining on a deck chair now, phone in hand, a martini beside me.

  I know it’s a life that anyone would envy. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, but it doesn’t feel real. It’s like I’m watching someone else scroll through Instagram and double tap. I was created to be this doll with blue eyes and dark hair. But inside, I’m empty.

  “Looking good, babe.” That’s Robbie. He takes in my Gucci bikini with an appreciative groan.

  I know he only goes out with me because of my appearance, but I can’t judge him harshly. I go out with him for the same reason. Sure, he’s handsome with a clean-cut, wholesome look. More than that, he gets good grades, gets along with his parents, and has the same friends as me.

  “Thanks,” I say, raising my martini glass in a toast.

  He’s perfect for me in every way, except the ones that matter, which my friends remind me of whenever I think about breaking up. “You’re so lucky to catch a Morrison,” Jessica said last week before I agreed to this yacht trip. Robbie’s family owns a chain of burger restaurants down the east coast.

  At least I know he isn’t with me for my father’s money.

  He smacks my ass, and I hide a wince behind my sunglasses. There’s no chemistry. None. Or maybe it’s just me? I’m dreading tonight when he’ll expect us to sleep together. I’ll have to fake an orgasm, the same way I’ve done every time we’ve had sex.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, nodding toward my phone.

  We have the same group of friends, and that’s what he’s asking about.

  Espionage probably requires the same amount of skill as our text messages. There’s a chain for possible configuration, this one adding her, that one excluding him. When someone says something wild in a group chat, there are a hundred side discussions. It’s exhausting, but it’s my life. These are the people I grew up with, the only friends I know.

  “Kristyn broke up with James,” I say with a half shrug.

  He snorts. “They’ll be back together by tomorrow. What is this? The fifth time?”

  A text message pings on my phone, but this one isn’t from the group. It’s my dad.

  Hey, honey. How is your girls’ weekend? Send me your smile.

  Guilt squeezes my chest. It may be the twenty-first century, but it might as well be regency England as far as my father is concerned. He sent me to an all-girls’ academy when I was younger, and now I attend a women’s college. Majoring in… women’s studies. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m learning knitting and baking instead of intersectional feminism.

  I shoot back a text right away before he can worry. We’re having a blast. Kristyn says hi.

  Attached to the text, I send a photo of Kristyn and me grinning at the camera. We took it last week. I feel bad about lying, but I can’t live like a nun just because he doesn’t trust men.

  My father was once a normal man, happily married. Then the research team he led had a breakthrough in the way silicon is created. A very tiny change meant that transistors could stay cooler. Which meant that phones could become even thinner and even faster. Fast forward through an arduous patent process and deals with the major circuit manufacturers, and he was no longer normal. He was rich. His picture was on the cover of Forbes and Wired.

  That was when disaster happened. Someone decided to capitalize on his newfound wealth. They kidnapped my mother when she was at a Pilates class.

  Demanded a ransom, which my father paid. They killed her anyway.

  It changed him. He became withdrawn and paranoid. Hyper-focused on his work except to check in with me. I’ve lived with more than losing my mother.

  It’s like I lost my father then, too.

  We have money. Piles of money. But what I really want is my family back.

  “Fuck,” Robbie barks, pacing the deck.

  My pulse spikes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing, babe. Just go in the cabin, okay?”

  Robbie and I have been dating for a year. At first he was sweet, and then he became distracted. But lately… lately, he’s been kind of scary. Intensely romantic and suddenly angry. And I know the reason.

  We’ve always done a little recreational pot. No big deal. But now Robbie goes for the harder stuff, and it’s changing him.

  “Why do I have to go in?”

  “Don’t question me,” he says on a snarl.

  I sit up, concerned. “Robbie. What’s going on?”

  He sits down, his eyes pleading. “Look, I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to even meet these people, but I really needed a fix.”

  There’s a knot in my throat. I swallow hard. “I don’t understand.”

  “They’re coming.” He glances behind him, and I stand up. Sure enough, there’s another ship in the distance. This one doesn’t look sleek and modern like Robbie’s pocket yacht. It looks like a shipping vessel, industrial and harsh. “Go to the cabin, okay? Just stay there, and don’t make a sound. Whatever happens, don’t let them see you.”

  “Who are these people?” The answer to that is a little obvious. Drug dealers. But who deals drugs on the open seas? This isn’t like exchanging money in a back alley.

  “Bad people, Ash.” His skin has gone pale. He looks less like a Hollister model now. More like a little boy. “It will be fine. I can handle them. I just don’t want them to look at you like this.”

  My Gucci bikini had seemed cute in the store. It was pretty when I put it on earlier this afternoon. Now it feels like a glaring red flag to these nameless scary people coming our way. I grab my beach towel from the chair and wrap it around myself. “This is messed up, Robbie.”

  There’s more I want to say to him. You’re in too deep. You’re addicted.

  Now isn’t the time, not when he’s starting to sweat. I’ll go to our room, then I’ll figure out how to stage some kind of intervention for him. Our friends will help. We may not be true love, Robbie and I, but I owe him that much at least.

  There are windows in the main cabin, and though I’m nervous, I’m far too curious to read a book while this goes down. An ocean drug deal? It feels like a reality show. Maybe a reality show following a coast guard. I trade the bathing suit and towel for a sundress, quick as I can. A window shaped like an oversized porthole looks out over the deck, so that’s where I go.

  A man steps over the deck railing as casually as you’d step off the subway.

  Another man follows. A third. A fourth.

  They’re too rough. Too muscled. One of them has a scar that runs from the top of his head to his cheekbone, visible because of his shaved head.

  My breath is a wheeze. Everything in me pulls down, down, down. I want to let my legs go out from under me. To collapse to the ground, where they can’t see me.

  The one in front cros
ses his arms over his chest, and I tear my eyes away from him to look at Robbie.

  He stands tall, hands in the pockets of his coral shorts. Easy. Relaxed.

  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.

  “Practicing again?”

  “Practicing what?” He has one hand under his head, and a fool would mistake him for a man at ease. That’s never true. He’s got the balls—or the suicidal nature—to go toe-to-toe with me, and that means he is always waiting for our next confrontation.

  “Being a useless piece of shit.”

  He huffs a laugh. “Everything’s fine out here.”

  “How recently was it fine?”

  “Five minutes.”

  It is true that I have attempted more than once to throw his petulant
ass into the ocean and leave him behind, but I never follow through. Last time I did it, he caught himself on the railing. I never thought I’d see that out of anyone but my brothers.

  I scan the deck, not because I don’t trust him but because anything can happen in the space of five minutes. That’s part of the reason I live on the sea.

  He’s right. It’s clear.

  The only other crew member in sight is Jason, who’s sitting up near the bow on a cargo crate with his legs dangling over the deck.

  “Did she call yet?”

  Nicholas shifts on the hammock. “Supposed to call soon.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, then. You’re relieved.”

  He launches himself out of the hammock and disappears into the murky shadows at the opposite end of the ship. I keep the lights to a minimum. Some cargo ships sail like floating carnivals. Not this one.

  I bought the Trident for its more discreet size and faster speed, not because I want to announce my whereabouts to every asshole with a pair of binoculars. It also has the virtue of a hybrid design—welded steel on the outside, antique wood on the inside. I about died laughing when I saw it. Whoever designed it was lovesick for the sea.

  The ship had to be mine. At least for a little while.

  I make a mental note to fuck with Nicholas about his phone sex schedule later.

  I’d do it now but that feeling has settled into my bones. The railing next to the cargo crates is cool on my palms. It’s keeping me from the water, the same way the ship does. Sometimes, I don’t mind it.

  Other times, like tonight—

  “Everyone says you can see the end of the ocean.” Jason’s voice floats down from above me.

  “No one can see the end of the ocean. We live on a sphere. Christ, why did I hire you?”