“Oh, I see where you’re going, Doc.” I turn to face him. “You think even though I hate my father I’m attracted to men like him? Out of some childhood need. Or genetic echo. Like my mother was attracted to my dad—you think this weakness runs through my DNA? That. And a susceptibility to addiction.”
He says nothing.
“Maybe it does. I don’t know.”
“What about Martin?”
“What about him? He’s dead now, isn’t he? Doesn’t matter what I feel about him now.”
“Except it does. If they put you on that stand.”
I smile slowly. “Well, there’s your answer to the legal team right there, Doc. Yes. I wanted him dead.”
THEN
ELLIE
Over one year ago, October 27. Jarrawarra Bay, New South Wales.
“Ellie! Hold the damn boat steady!” Martin yelled at me through the open window of his truck as he pulled the empty boat trailer up the concrete ramp. I stood barefoot in knee-deep water struggling to hold tightly on to the bowline of the Abracadabra so the boat wouldn’t float away or come broadside onto the sand. He’d left me to hold the boat while he took the trailer to find a parking spot.
“She’s drifting, Ellie! You’re letting the current swing her around—she’ll run aground, damn you!”
I winced at his words but was too afraid to respond. Already my muscles ached and the polypropylene rope burned my palms. The tide was pushing in hard and the currents swirled powerfully around my calves. I couldn’t hold the Abracadabra at the correct angle for much longer. She was swinging sideways.
“I didn’t listen to the ‘captain.’ . . . We were going out from the river mouth, and big waves started to break over the sandbar . . . My brother was hit, broke his back . . .”
Anxiety sank deeper talons into my heart. I shot a terrified look at the sandbar at the river mouth. Waves were breaking on the bar, getting bigger. Spectators were starting to line the tops of the cliffs to watch. My thoughts looped around to Chloe. My heart began to hammer.
I felt her slippery little hand in mine, water swirling around my legs. Suddenly I was back in the Waimea Bay being tumbled and churned in monstrous surf. I felt her slipping from my grasp. Tears burned into my eyes. This was a mistake. My head hurt. I could barely remember anything about our visit to the Puggo last night, apart from arriving at the pub and meeting Rabz and Willow. After that everything was a blank, and while Martin had been as sweet as sugar this morning, I felt something very wrong had happened.
I looked out to sea again. The waves were getting even bigger. Rolling in more consistently. Wind whipping now. A glop of foam slapped against my face. I blinked, but it stuck near my eye. I had no free hand to swipe it away or to wipe my nose, which was starting to run. The tide pushed harder. Panic started. Amping higher with each beat of my heart. Any minute I would tip into a full-throated attack. I thought of the pills in the pocket of the cargo pants Martin had loaned me for fishing. I couldn’t reach them without letting go of the rope.
“Need help?”
I whipped my head around to see Rabz in her jogging gear. She had her hands on her hips, bright-yellow shorts, was breathing hard, cheeks pink, her hair gloriously wild in the wind as it fought to free itself of her hair tie.
I nodded, desperate, close to tears. Rabz took off her runners, tossed them up onto the bank, waded into the water, and expertly pushed against the side of the boat, bringing it round. Her muscles rolled smoothly under sunbrowned skin. Silver bracelets jingled. By repositioning the craft we were able to use the new angle against the current to hold the boat in position. It eased the strain on the painter line and thus on my arms.
“Thank you. More than I can express.”
“Hey, no worries.” A curious look entered her dark eyes. I noticed the tiny freckles spattered over her nose. Her long, thick lashes. We stood close, side by side, her tanned arm contrasted against my less toned and very pale one. I could smell her scent. That soft hit of patchouli and lime or bergamot.
“How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.
I gave her a blank look.
“You made quite the dramatic exit from the Puggo last night,” she prompted. “Martin drove you home in my car. Don’t you remember?”
Heat flared into my face. She regarded me steadily. Something darted through her eyes, and a slight smile curved her mouth as she took in my gear—my royal-blue windbreaker, Martin’s oversize cargo pants, my pale-blue Nike ball cap. My ponytail blew over my shoulder, and strands of my hair had stuck to the lip balm on my lips. Rabz thought I was a loser—I could tell that was what she was thinking. Inside her head she was laughing, mocking me. In this environment she had the upper hand. She was in her element, and I was a fish out of water.
“So where are you guys headed, then?” she asked.
“Fish aggregating device.”
“The FAD?” Her brows crooked up. “Zog said they were hauling heaps of tuna off the FAD early this morning, but it’s getting a bit choppy now.” She glanced up at the sky. “Weather is turning. The sea at the FAD can go from safe to suicidal in minutes. You guys should have gone out earlier.”
Anxiety tightened in my chest. I glanced up at the people gathering atop the cliff, watching the bar. Kiteboarders whipped across Little Jarra Bay.
Finally I saw Martin coming toward us. Relief rushed through me, but flipped right back into tension as I noticed the angry roll of his shoulders as he strode toward our boat. A man called out to him. Martin stopped to address the man, who had a boy with him.
“Zog and his son,” said Rabz, following my gaze. Zog’s kid looked about twelve. Zog was wiry and nut brown with sun-streaked hair. We had yet to eat the fish he’d given us.
“Oh, look—” Rabz raised her hand and waved to someone up on the headlands. “There’s Willow.” She pointed. “See that big flat-roofed house with all the glass windows?”
I squinted. I could make out a woman standing in front of the big windows with a telescope. Blonde. Slender. She waved back. I wondered how long Willow had been watching us through her scope, whether she’d seen the distress on my face.
“She can see everything with that piece of equipment,” Rabz said. “The telescope comes with the ‘architecturally designed’ house. What does that mean, anyway—‘architecturally designed’?”
“She doesn’t own it?”
“God, no.” Rabz adjusted her position. “Here, let me hold that awhile.” She reached for the painter line.
I let her take the yellow-and-blue rope and checked my palms. They looked raw and they hurt.
“She rents. Most of those houses up there are holiday homes. Owners live in Sydney, or in China, or some other country. Lease them out for a bomb. It’s pricing us locals right out of the housing market. But Willow earns good money from her chicanery.” Rabz chuckled. Her nose stud winked.
Was that a note of rivalry?
“Thank you, Rabz,” Martin said in a great big bellow of a voice as he marched up to us. “Ellie was running us aground there.” He laughed. It sounded harsh.
My mouth tightened. “If you’d at least shown me how to—”
“Get in, Ellie, while Rabz is holding her steady. Climb up over the side.”
I hesitated, then moved into deeper water as Rabz turned her head. The wind caught her scent. And I froze. Slowly I looked around and stared at the back of her head. Suddenly I knew exactly what had been niggling at me before we’d arrived at the Puggo. And what had given me that sinister feeling upon meeting Rabz. Not a doubt in my mind.
My gaze shot to Martin.
They have a secret.
From me.
“What’s the bloody holdup, El? Get in.”
THEN
ELLIE
Every muscle in Martin’s body was taut as he fought to hold the Abracadabra steady in the channel by powering the engine forward, then reversing, his gaze riveted on a distant set of swells rising like giant, swollen, silent ribs a
cross the sea, gathering in size as they rolled toward us. I sat at the back of the boat and clutched the gunwale, unable to breathe. People lined the cliff. I saw the houses, including the glass one Willow had waved from. Could she see us? Could she read the desperation in my eyes? Would she send help? Martin’s words from the night I’d met him, when he’d spoken about his brother, surged back into my mind.
“You need to time everything just right—it’s when most boating accidents happen—going in or out when the bar is breaking. I didn’t listen to an order . . . the boat hit a wave as it was breaking, and we went nose-up into the air and the boat flipped over backward. My brother was hit, broke his back.”
Martin suddenly gunned the engine, and we surged forward, bow lifting, stern settling into the sea. The motor roared as we headed up the face of the first wave. It began to curl at the top. We smashed through the foam lip and smacked down onto the powerful shoulder as the wave crunched behind us in a foamy roar. Martin immediately gunned for the next one coming at us. The bow lifted again and we went up the face. The Abracadabra’s nose crashed through the curl. Water washed over the bow and down the sides, and I heard the engine cough, stutter. But suddenly we were through. The engine choked a few more times, then growled smoothly again. My heart drummed in my ears. The thundering of the waves was suddenly behind us. The rigidity of shock released me from its grip. I started to shake like a leaf.
I shot a glance back at the waves we’d come through. While we’d been powering through them, they’d appeared so monstrous. Deadly. Like Waimea. Like when they’d pummeled me down into the deep and snatched my baby right out of my hands.
Martin looked over his shoulder.
“El, you doing okay?”
“You did this to me on purpose, you idiot!” I screamed at him. “You knew this would happen.”
“What?”
“Are you trying to terrify me?” I yelled over the engine. “You’re mad, you know that! Totally mad. This is how your brother almost died!” Adrenaline fueled my anger, and it rode up into white-hot rage as I suddenly thought about Rabz, and what I’d realized back at the boat launch. “Do you have some fixation with your brother, with your father? Are you trying to repeat the accident? Just like you’re trying to develop Agnes to prove something to them?” Fury burned tears into my eyes. My knuckles were white as I clutched the sides of the boat. “What in the hell are you trying to do to me, Martin? You know I am afraid of powerful water. Is this who I married? Are you trying to kill me?”
He blinked in shock. He freed one hand from the controls and reached for me. “Ellie—”
“Don’t! Do not touch me.” I cringed backward in the boat.
“Just—” The radio crackled and he swore. We were nearing the orange cliffs. He glanced up at the massive rocks. Waves smashed and surged at the foot of the sheer walls. “I need to log in with marine rescue before we go into the lee of the cliffs. They block radio signal to marine rescue.”
He reached for the radio mouthpiece, keyed it.
“Calling Jarra Bay Marine Rescue, calling Jarra Bay Marine Rescue. Jarra Bay Marine Rescue. This is vessel AIS387 November, AIS387 November, this is AIS387 November. Do you copy?” He waited. Cliffs loomed closer. Waves heaved and sucked at the base. Skeins of foam ribbed the surface of the swells. We seemed to be getting pulled closer. He repeated his call, then said, “Come in, please, over.”
The radio crackled to life as a distant voice arrived in our boat.
“This is Jarra Bay Marine Rescue. Copy, AIS387 November. Can you go to channel sixteen?”
Martin switched channels. I watched his movements like a hawk. If something happened to Martin out here, I wanted to know how to call for help.
He keyed the radio. “This is AIS387 November. We’re heading out from Bonny Bay to fish the FAD. But if I hear that the fish are going off at the shelf, I’ll call in again before we head over that way. Over.”
I swallowed and looked out over the Tasman Sea. Clouds were gathering along the horizon to the east.
“Copy, AIS387 November. Estimated time of return?”
“About four p.m.”
“Righteo, sixteen hundred. How many on board?”
“Two adults on board.”
The boat lolled and was sucked on a massive backwash swell from the cliff. Water slapped at the hull. Martin steered our prow to face the direction of the swells so they wouldn’t hit us broadside. We entered the shadow cast by the cliff. The voice on the radio started breaking up.
Martin signed off. He eyed me. My heart pounded. I waited for him to say he was not trying to kill me, or terrify me to death. He didn’t. I didn’t provoke him further, either, because it struck me how alone we were out here. Nothing but sea in all directions. I was at his mercy. No one would know if I fell overboard or was pushed. I swallowed and looked away.
“Hold on,” he said.
Before I could register, he suddenly increased engine power, angling our prow into the incessant swells. Wind increased as we continued to gather speed. I held my ball cap down on my head. He engaged full steam ahead, and the bow rose and bashed forward against the swells, again and again and again, like they were made of concrete. The regular beat of the impacts jolted through my bones, through my jaw. Through my brain. I clenched my teeth and tried to brace my body in ways that would lessen the force as we thump, thump, thump, thumped for miles straight out into the ocean, each smack rattling my kidneys. Wind drew tears from my eyes.
I looked back. Jarrawarra Bay, the headlands, the orange cliffs, were all vanishing away into a pale blue haze over the landmass that was Australia. He saw me looking.
“See those hills north of Jarrawarra?” he yelled and pointed. “That’s the mouth of the Agnes River up there. Boaters can go all the way up the inlet to the sales office from here.”
Land vanished completely into the hazy mist. Then there was nothing but heaving swells ribbed with foam as the sea went from gray green to a deep cobalt.
A few terns wheeled up high, and an albatross began following our boat.
The boat lurched. I opened my eyes a crack. My lids were swollen. My lips thick with salt. I was on the bottom, lying on my side. Bottles—wine cooler empties—rolled around me.
I heard a yell again.
“Ellie!”
I blinked and tried to get up. I fell as the boat rocked. I was drunk. I was going to throw up. The bow was rising and falling dramatically on the passing sea.
“Ellie! Help me, for God’s sake!”
I turned my head, saw Martin. Shock slammed through me. He had his rod base rammed into the leather holder belted around his waist. The top of the rod was bent almost double as he fought a massive fish. The line screamed as the fish took line and dived in an effort to flee. I watched in a confused daze, trying to figure out what was going on. When the fish seemed to tire, Martin began to furiously wind it in again. His brow dripped with sweat. His face was red.
How long has he been at it? How long has he been yelling to wake me?
“It’s foul-hooked. Grab the net, Ellie, for God’s sake!”
I looked around the boat.
He swore viciously. “Bring me the fucking net! It’s in the side compartment there, with the gaff. Bring the gaff, too.”
I scrambled up onto my hands and knees and reached for the net. I gripped it with one hand, and with my other I pulled myself into a standing position. The boat pitched and lurched violently back and forth. Martin had let go of the controls. We were going in a circle, and the waves were beginning to hit us broadside. I clung to the targa bar for balance as I held the net out to him. But the boat tipped as a swell surged against the side. My support hand slipped. I dropped the net in order to grab for support with both hands. The net hit the top of the gunwale, then toppled overboard. It floated briefly on the heaving sea. Then sank.
The fish was now thrashing and fighting for its life at the side of the boat, bashing against the hull.
“Jesus. Gaff!
Hurry, dammit!”
I got back down onto all fours and scrabbled to get the silver gaff. I handed it to him. He snatched the gaff from me and swung it down toward the fish. The boat tilted as another swell broadsided us and Martin lost balance and missed solid aim. The hook of the gaff dragged a trough through the back of the fish. Blood poured red into the water, trailing pink in the skeins of foam. The fish wriggled to free itself of the treble hook, which I could now see was stuck into the outside of its gill. Another swell hit and the Abracadabra yawed and pitched me straight into Martin. He stumbled backward, jerking the rod up as he struggled to regain balance. The treble hook that had been foul-hooked into the side of the fish’s gill ripped free. The fish dived. The hook jerked back into the air. And rebounded at Martin. He screamed as it came at his face.
Horror rose in my throat. I started to faint.
THEN
ELLIE
Two hooks from the treble hook lure had sunk into Martin’s throat. The fake purple squid designed to hide the hooks and attract fish dangled below the hooks in his neck. The rod and reel had gone overboard. They were being sucked down into the ocean, and the force was pulling on the line and on the hooks in Martin’s throat, tearing skin. He wrapped the fishing line around his hand in an effort to stop the line from ripping the hooks through his skin, but the rod was going deeper and the line was cutting into his hand.
“The knife,” he whispered hoarsely, terror in his eyes. “The knife. It’s on my hip—cut the line quick—quick.”
I stared at the blood welling around the line cutting into his hand. And a strange, dark, and evil seed cracked open somewhere down deep inside my subconscious. It began to unfurl and ooze up into my conscious mind . . . Martin is at my mercy.
“Ellie,” he pleaded. “Help me.”
I shook myself and reached for the knife hilt at his hip. I drew the knife from the sheath. The boat lurched, and I tipped toward Martin, blade in hand. I couldn’t stop myself or the knife. The sharp end of the blade sliced across his arm, slitting through his sleeve and cutting skin.
In the Deep Page 17
