by Kate Genet
‘No,’ she said. ‘I'm not going to, you’re right.’ Dropping her arms, she leaned close, ignoring the knife and staring Danny full in the face. A smile appeared on her own, no humour in it.
‘You know what I'm going to do instead?’ she asked, matching his previous tone.
‘No idea,’ he said, refusing to flinch away.
‘Well, I'm not completely decided yet,’ she said. ‘But I'm leaning toward gutting you like a fish and throwing you overboard for the sharks to finish.’ They stared at each other again.
‘Now that’s just harsh,’ Danny said. ‘And what a thing to say in front of this innocent child.’
Claire straightened and pointed to the life jacket. ‘Put that on her,’ she said. ‘Because, like you say, she is an innocent child. And we’re not going anywhere until you do.’
Arms folded again, Claire waited for what would happen next. For a long moment, she thought the stalemate would continue.
‘Okay then,’ Danny said, and the blade suddenly disappeared. He tucked the pocket knife inside his jacket and shrugged the blanket sling off his shoulder, catching Rose as she fell back, loose. Then the lifejacket was in his hands and he looked quickly at it, turned it around the right way, and slipped it over Rose’s head. She sat perfectly still in his lap, eyes lowered. Claire wanted to snatch her up, run from the boat, jump to the dock and away. She calculated her chances. If she got as far as the car, she could wrench open the door, let out the dog, and she was pretty sure the animal Rose had named Pilot would be more than happy to take a chunk or two out of Danny Fry. Ecstatically happy, come to that.
But she held herself still. Didn’t move a muscle even though they screamed for her to snatch, run.
‘And the crotch strap,’ she said.
He leered at her and fiddled around under the blanket. Then wrinkled his nose and Claire guessed Rose had wet herself. She closed her eyes briefly, making the child promises.
They would get out of this.
Somehow.
73
He pulled Rose back tight against his chest and arranged the makeshift sling so that she was held there, snug, immovable.
‘There,’ he said with a grin. ‘Happy now?’
Claire didn’t bother to answer. The knife hadn’t made a reappearance. She turned to the helm on the forward starboard side without a word and turned the key. The instrument panel lit up and she gave it a quick look. Amps, volts, oil pressure, tach, fuel. Danny fidgeted behind her.
She pushed the port shifter forward, throttling up, then pressed the starter for the port engine, breathing through her nose, keeping every movement smooth and deliberate. Ten seconds and the engine hadn’t caught. She tried again. Pushed the throttle further, fifteen seconds, then the rumble-roar she was waiting for. It was the same for the starboard engine and she listened to them, listened to the way the engines ran, heard the water exiting from the exhaust, and glanced again at the fuel gauge. She’d never met an honest one of those in all her years on boats.
But then, this whole thing was hit and miss.
Refusing to glance behind her at Danny, she turned on the radar, depth sounder, secondary GPS. They glowed in the cockpit light, and she realised it had grown completely dark outside. If there was a moon, it was currently out of sight behind the clouds.
‘What are you doing?’
She switched on the chart plotter and navigation lights. ‘Exactly what you want me to.’
‘You’re turning a whole lot of things on.’
‘Well, it’s a boat, Danny. There are a whole lot of things to turn on.’
‘No.’
She gave a laughing bark. ‘What do you mean no?’ Her hand hesitated no more than a moment and she snapped the VHF on, knowing it would be already on emergency channel 16.
‘No way,’ Danny said behind her. She heard him get up and she flicked the VHF volume to mute and locked the mic on.
‘Sit down, Danny,’ she said. ‘If you want to steal a seventeen-meter pilot boat from the Lyttelton docks, that’s fine. If you want to hold a three-year-old child at knifepoint so that I will take you out in that boat, then I guess I’ll do it. But I'm turning this shit on, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘No,’ he said again. ‘No lights, nor radar or GPS or whatever the fuck you’ve got going on there.’
Claire rolled her eyes and didn’t move. ‘Danny,’ she said. ‘Do you even know how any of this works? Do you know why lost aeroplanes and lost boats take so long to find? Because, you moron, you can’t fucking track them and I’m pretty damn sure we don’t have a black box on board.’ She waved a dismissive hand at him and turned her back on him, aware she was playing a dangerous game, but doing it anyway. She pretended to scan the instruments in front of her, but they were all switched on the way she wanted them. On a deep breath she turned and moved past him.
‘I want to feed you to the fish, sure, but I'm keeping the boat on the top of the water where she belongs.’
She headed for the aft deck and lifted the stern line, throwing it onto the dock before marching up alongside the wheelhouse to the foredeck where she repeated the exercise with the bow line.
The stern was drifting nicely off the dock when the navigation lights went out and she stepped back through the hatchway to find Danny at the helm and jabbing a finger at the VHF. He turned with a grin, Rose a blanketed bulge around his middle. A moment later he sat down again and waved her towards the helm.
‘Let’s go, shall we?’
She looked at the helm, saw the light on the VHS was off.
‘You didn’t think I was that stupid, did you?’ he said. ‘I saw how handy you were on the VHS when we were in your mother’s little frog car.’ His smile widened. ‘And I’ve been around boats – I know you don’t need that on to keep afloat.’
The knife was back in his hand although the blade wasn’t extended. But she noticed it anyway and hoped like hell the Coast Guard had caught the conversation on the open mike before Danny turned it off.
Turning away from his grin, Claire got on with it, shifting both engines into reverse until they were far enough from the dock to head out to sea.
74
‘Fuck,’ Moana said, squirming around. ‘I did not see this coming.’ She raised her eyebrows in the tight space. ‘Might not be underground,’ she said, grateful for the lack of tremble in her voice. ‘But this is sure a squeezy damned place.’ Ah, the irony of it.
The dog’s barking echoed in the tin can space. ‘Pilot!’ she yelled, turning her head towards the back seats. ‘Close your damned pie hole.’ She blinked, her voice back at conversation level. ‘Unless you happen to see someone strolling in the near vicinity, in which case, bark your giant heart out. Tell them all about my keys and phone on the ground and me here in the boot, of all goddamned places. Fuck.’
She closed her eyes and concentrated on lowering her heart rate. It was edging dangerously near explosion levels and she needed it back down at the point marked competent-bitch-about-to-find-herself-a-way-out-of-the-boot-of-her-car.
That was the one. She pressed a hand in the dark against her chest and willed her heart to act less like a percussive instrument and more like the organic and reliable valve it was supposed to be.
It reached acceptable levels about the same time Pilot’s barking trailed off. Cocking her head toward the rear of the car, Moana listened, wondering if she was imagining the throaty growl that sounded a good deal like a boat leaving the dock.
‘You’re an idiot, Danny Fry,’ she whispered. If that was him slipping out into the darkness on a goddamned boat, he didn’t stand a chance. The motherfucking Navy was parked just down the road. The Coast Guard was…somewhere.
Despite the darkness, the tin sardine can she currently found herself in, Moana let herself smile. There was something else Danny Fry wasn’t counting on.
Claire Wilde.
They’d only hung out this one day, but if you asked her, and since there was no one in the boot o
f her car with her, Moana contented herself by asking the question rhetorically – it really wouldn’t pay to underestimate Claire Wilde. The woman didn’t say much, but Moana would bet she was pretty much prepared to do anything to make sure Rose was okay.
She’d read just that morning – so long ago – the account of the rescue in the Southern Ocean where, to her mind, conditions weren’t even fit for penguins. Or whales, or whatever liked it that far south. She shivered in the boot and heaved a sigh. The point was, that Claire might have strengths Danny Fry didn’t even know of, and he was about to run full steam up against them.
Moana wanted to be there to help. She wanted Rose safe and sound, tucked up warm and tight.
Which meant she had to get out of this current predicament.
Cursing the squeezy position and the man who had put her in it, Moana wriggled around as best she could, glad she had recently cleaned out the boot of all Ari’s bicycle crap, which would have committed indignities to hip and breast that she didn’t even want to think about, and got her hands on the side panel of carpet. An awkward tug and she had her hands on the jack.
She’d never tried this before. Ari was forever showing her YouTube videos he thought would be useful for someone in her line of work. She’d always giggled her way through them, an arm comfortably slung around his shoulder, sweet to think he cared like that.
There’d been one about how to get your wrists free if someone had bound them with duct tape. She’d actually thought about giving that one a go.
She closed her eyes a moment, then went back to work. How she was going to manage the job, she didn’t know. There was barely any room and while she wasn’t really large, she thought after this she was going to give up the pastries and switch to skim milk in the coffee. Maybe.
She got the jack situated under the latch and struggled in the dark over the next job, getting the handle in place. Pilot was barking again, and a greasy sweat broke out on her forehead. Moana gritted her teeth and thought of as many colourful words as she’d ever banned Ari from using.
She was going to enjoy handcuffing that sonofabitch Danny when she got hold of him.
The boot lid groaned as the jack expanded, putting how much pressure on it she didn’t know, but enough hopefully.
Moana decided the next car she bought would have rear seats that folded down. That way she’d just have to execute a couple well-aimed kicks and voila, freedom.
Although, this was a better bet considering the dog with huge jaws barking from inside the car. He was a very unhappy fellow and she wouldn’t have trusted him not to take out a few of his frustrations on her shin bones.
There was a screeching of tortured metal and Moana pressed her lips together against the burn of the muscles in her arms and the cramp threatening to pull a muscle or tendon or whatever in her back, and she cranked the handle anyway. She was getting out and then she was getting the bastard who had put her in there.
The rush of salt air was cold against her sweating skin, but she heaved a great gulp of it anyway, collapsing back to stare at a marvellous slice of cloudy, silvered darkness. Never had the night sky looked so beautiful.
Arms and legs shaking, Moana heaved herself out of the boot of her car and stood there on the dock, eyes closed, waiting for the blood to figure out it had unfettered access to her limbs again, then looked up.
She couldn’t remember much of the boat that had been docked right there when she was forced to climb into her own boot space, but she knew one had been there.
And she also could very clearly see it was gone.
Which made her smile and look around for her phone. Pilot stopped barking and looked at her through the car window.
‘Hey boy,’ she said. ‘Know the number for the navy?’
The dog didn’t answer except to stare intently at her as she bent for her phone.
But that was okay, because she knew how to call the police and the coastguard.
75
‘So Danny,’ Claire said, watching the night spread over the waves. ‘You’re the mastermind here, you want to tell me where we’re going?’
‘Far, far…’
‘Away. Yeah, I got that bullshit last time you said it. Not much use however in knowing in which direction to point the boat.’
‘Don’t go getting all testy on me,’ Danny said, and Claire turned to watch him blinking in the dim light of the wheelhouse. He didn’t know which way to go. This was just the dangerous scheme of a cornered man. It was doomed to failure, but she’d already seen his arrogance and knew he wasn’t about to admit that anytime soon. Which meant he’d keep going until the very end – and it was up to her to make it end quickly, and at least for Rose, safely.
She sucked a deep, calming breath in. ‘How’s Rose doing?’ she asked, changing the subject.
He didn’t even look down at the child strapped to his chest. ‘She’s fine.’
‘You’ve hurt her, you know,’ Claire went on.
‘She’s fine.’ His voice was harder, the words spat out.
A sniff and shrug from Claire. ‘You could have left her behind. She would have been perfectly okay, and you would already be out of here and away. Bit of a strategic error, if you ask me.’ She cocked her head at him. ‘Why didn’t you leave her?’
‘Because she’s mine. She’s my daughter and I'm not leaving her with you and your goddamned parents. And nobody asked you, just by the way.’ He turned as though to look out the windows but, perhaps at the sight of the water out there, he spun back in his seat, wiped an arm across his forehead and closed his eyes. Claire smiled.
‘Feeling a bit green around the gills, are you?’
‘Fuck off, Claire,’ Danny said. ‘Don’t talk to me. Just do your fucking job and drive the boat.’
‘Ah, but where to, Danny?’ They were out of the harbour now. ‘Time to make a decision. North or south?’ She’d already decided in which direction to go, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. A quick glance at the fuel gauge again, a fast calculation. Maybe six hours before they ran out of diesel. Way too long. Not that the gauge was likely to be reliable.
‘South,’ he croaked. ‘Away from this fucking place.’
She nodded. ‘That’s better. I thought you might choose that.’ She flicked him a glance, adjusting the course of the boat so that the swell was smack on the beam, bow toward the north. She allowed herself a smile. ‘We will not be going gentle into this good night, however.’
‘What the fuck? Speak English or don’t speak at all.’ His eyes were still closed, and she looked with satisfaction as the rocking of the boat made him grimace.
‘Bit rough out here tonight,’ she translated. ‘You know – rain, swells, waves – all that good shit.’
He groaned and leaned forward over his knees, as much as he could with Rose strapped to him.
‘Don’t worry, Danny,’ Claire said cheerfully as she watched him, balancing against the helm as the sea heaved against them. ‘I'm sure you have a most excellent plan in place for when we get where we’re going.’
Even in the dim light, his skin had turned a shade or two paler. His hair stood out against it, oily, the stubble on his face a dark shadow.
‘How long’s it going to take?’ he asked.
‘Until the Coast Guard catches up with us?’
‘You’re not going to let that happen.’ He lifted his white face to her. ‘They won’t be able to find us out here anyway.’
It was, unfortunately, almost true. With no way now to hear or answer a VHF call, and running with no nav lights, they’d be little more than a ghost on the water. Claire turned back to scan the ocean. Visibility was low, and she was out far enough that the lights from Christchurch were just a smear on the horizon. They’d be looking though, if someone had heard her on the VHS and taken it seriously. Get close enough and she’d turn up a blip on their radar.
But for now, she was alone out there. A grid search could take an awful lot of time. She steered the boat so that i
t rode the waves like a battering ram.
Bracing herself against the roll of the boat, Claire felt with satisfaction the way it smashed and lurched against the waves, the noise of its bucking and rolling echoing loud against the aluminium hull.
Danny groaned. ‘Are you trying to kill us?’
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Feeling a little seasick?’ She sniffed. ‘That’s rough. I’ve seen people practically throwing up their stomach linings being seasick.’ The boat slammed down into a deep trough.
‘I bet you’re wishing you’d come up with a better idea now,’ she said, her voice conversational, bantering.
‘Fuck off,’ Danny said. ‘I ought to just stick this knife in your jugular and be done with it.’
She kept her back to him. ‘Yep. Except then you’d be wallowing around out here drifting far, far, out to sea, where the waves will be ten times as big.’ Ten times wasn’t a serious guess, but it sounded good.
Rose whimpered from her positon strapped against his chest. A glance their way and Claire saw he was drooping closer to the floor.
‘Need a bucket?’ she asked. ‘I recommend throwing up over the side. Fresher air.’ She spun the wheel a fraction to port. ‘Although Rose is going to get in your way, if you’re going to be sick.’
‘Fuck off, Claire,’ he said again, and spat at the floor then sniffed. ‘I know you’re just trying to get her away from me.’
She rolled her eyes, playing her part. ‘Danny, we’re on a goddamned boat. There is no away from you.’ She shrugged, not caring if he was watching her or not, it was all part of keeping the act up. ‘I'm just trying to keep her safe and puke-free.’ She made a slight adjustment and the boat lurched harder.
