by Julie Cannon
“Okay, that should do it for now.” This time it was my turn to be hoarse. Playing doctor with a beautiful woman was one thing, but the last few minutes weren’t nearly as fulfilling. I stood, wiping my hands on my wet clothes that I’d dropped on the floor. “Give it a few minutes to soak in, and you can put on a T-shirt and get some rest,” I murmured. When I looked back at Alissa she was already fast asleep. I tried not to be a voyeur, but I did have to look at her breasts to determine if the gel had penetrated her skin. I winced as I took a good, close-up look. Her nipples were raw, almost oozing. The pain from the salt water must have been unbearable.
I pulled a T-shirt out of the small drawer and tugged it over Alissa’s head. She didn’t wake when I put her arms through and slid the shirt down her torso. Somehow I managed to pull on a pair of my boxers and added some of the magic gel to what looked like a bite mark on her right calf. It didn’t look infected, but I reminded myself to check on it a little later. I pulled the covers up, added another blanket, grabbed a pair of jeans from the drawer, and closed the door behind me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bert
I hustled back to the bridge, making sure Blow had marked our coordinates. When Alissa woke and was able to tell us what happened, I’d notify the coast guard. Rock and Limpet were there, along with Blow. “Tell me what happened,” I said to him.
He reiterated what little Limpet had said, adding a few more details but not much. He had seen a blinking light in the distance, and even though it would put us off course and schedule, his gut had told him to investigate. He hadn’t seen any smoldering debris or sign of a boat. I looked out the windows as if to verify his claim, which was stupid because it was blacker than the bad witch’s cape out there. I probably wouldn’t have been able to see my hand in front of my face if not for the lights on the Dream.
“I just knew something wasn’t right.” Blow was defending himself. “I know it wasted gas and time, but—”
“It’s fine, Blow. You saved her life,” I shot back, my nerves finally rising now that the adrenaline had worn off.
“How do you know her?” Rock asked cautiously. I rarely spoke of my personal life while we were out. They all knew I was a lesbian, and once I overheard Hook complain that I got more women than he did. I smiled because it was true. At least at the time. Now I had a hard time remembering the last time I’d kissed a woman, let alone anything else.
“We met at the market on pier fourteen. I was short of cash and she sprung for the difference. We had a cup of coffee later and that was it. It was the night Homeland Security came aboard to ask about the smugglers we saw.”
“You must have made quite an impression,” Rock said. “Her face sure did light up when she saw you,” he added for clarification.
“She was probably scared to death. Not only had she been in the water for God knows how long, but she was rescued by the likes of you three,” I said, punching Blow in the arm playfully. This was a serious situation, but it could have been much more. It appeared, at least on the surface, that Alissa was okay, but her boat was another story. We wouldn’t be able to see anything until daylight. Not that I expected to. The currents out here were pretty strong.
I was too keyed up to sleep and someone was in my bed, so I took the rest of the night watch, dismissing Blow.
Alissa
My hair was still damp, but I was a lot warmer when I woke than when I lay down. Bert had left me a pair of sweatpants that were a little too long and a flannel shirt that was far too big. A pair of thick, black socks were on my feet. I slid my feet into a pair of old, worn boots next to the bed.
After a few wrong turns I found the bridge. “Permission to come aboard?” I asked weakly from the doorway. My throat was ragged from crying, screaming, smoke, and salt water. It didn’t matter which. All that mattered was that I was out of the water. I’d slept a little but woke when a nightmare became a little too vivid.
I’d thought I was going to die. Really and truly going to die. I’d never felt so alone in my life. I’d been alone before, quite a lot, as a matter of fact. I lived alone, traveled alone, and went out on my boat alone. But when I was in the water there was no one. Absolutely no one. I had no idea how long I’d been there, but it was a lifetime.
I’d thought of my parents, my sisters, my friends, and my employees. How long would it take, if ever, for someone to find my body? Would they think I just left with no word? That I could actually do that? How long would Alissa Cooper Advertising survive? How long until they gave up hope and declared me dead? How long before they could do that—seven years?
My mind had gone to terrible places when I let it, so I’d tried to keep it occupied with good thoughts. I remembered the Christmas when the whole family got bikes and we spent the day riding around the neighborhood. I was eight and quite the show-off, at least until I wasn’t paying attention and ran into the light pole. I still have the scar on my knee to prove it. I remembered when I went back to school after a bad bout of the chicken pox in the second grade. I got to wear a sweatshirt and long pants, which was a big deal. I remembered the smile on my sister’s face as she walked down the aisle, the fear in her eyes when her baby got sick. The joy in my father’s eyes when I graduated from college. My first girlfriend, my first kiss, my first time. I thought of everything to keep my mind away from the present. I was so far out of it I didn’t even see Bert’s boat until it was practically on top of me.
“Kind of a moot question since you’re already here,” Bert answered.
God, it was good to hear a voice. “Better late than never,” I replied, coughing until I thought I might toss a lung.
“Let’s get you something to drink,” Bert said, and she took me back to the galley. She put a pot of water on the small stove and pulled a tea bag and a small container of honey from the cupboard.
Every time I tried to say something she shushed me, and it wasn’t until I had finished two cups of the soothing tea that she asked, “Feel up to telling me what happened?”
I nodded, pulling the large shirt closer around me, a chill running through my body. “I woke up, smoke everywhere, grabbed a life vest, and jumped.” That was the Cliff Notes version, and by the look on Bert’s face not what she expected.
“I went to bed around midnight. I’d been out all day and was tired. The mast was down, everything was buttoned down, and my running lights were on. I checked and double-checked everything like I always do and set the perimeter alarm before turning in.” Admittedly I was a bit OCD when it came to that procedure. “I secured the stateroom door, climbed into bed, pulled up the covers, and fell asleep almost instantly. The next thing I knew the smoke detector was screaming, and when I opened the door, smoke poured in.” A tremor ran through me as I remembered the acrid smell of the smoke, and I fought down a cough.
“The entire galley and main cabin were engulfed in flames. I grabbed a life vest from under the bed, shimmied out the porthole above my bed, and jumped. I swam for several minutes to get away, the heat from the flames intense, and with all the fuel on board and the propane tanks in the galley, I thought it would explode any minute. Somehow I got into the life vest, activated the emergency beacon, and that’s it. She went down in minutes.” In all actuality it had happened just about as fast as I recounted it, and my voice cracked on the last few words.
I remembered watching her sink and thinking of the scene in the movie Titanic when the survivors watched in horror as the greatest ship in the world slowly drifted under the frigid waters. Adventures wasn’t quite so elegant. It just burned down to the fiberglass hull and then silently sank into the dark water.
Bert looked at her watch and frowned.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Six fifteen,” she said, almost apologetically. We picked you up at one forty.”
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“Thursday?” Holy shit. I’d been in the water almost forty-eight hours. No wonder I was totally e
xhausted.
“What day did you think it was?”
“I had no idea. When I went to bed it was Tuesday.”
“And you were out alone?” Bert asked.
“Yes.”
“This far out?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
Now I was mad. My nerves were shot, I was completely exhausted, and my throat felt like sandpaper. “Yes, alone,” I snapped. “All alone, just me, myself, and I,” I added sarcastically.
“Do you often go out by yourself?”
“Yes, I do.” I was getting angrier. I expected for the coast guard to question me, but not for a tuna-boat captain to grill me. “I’m a seasoned sailor with over twenty years on the water and have never run into any trouble.”
“Great way to start,” Bert said with her own sarcasm. “What was your boat?”
“She’s a…” I stopped. That was present tense. I need to shift to past tense. “She was a thirty-nine-foot sailboat with a forty-horsepower engine. She had a beam of thirteen one and eight hundred square feet of mast. She held forty gallons of fuel and one hundred of water.” I provided all the specs because Bert obviously knew her boats, and I wasn’t about to let her think I was a stupid rookie on the water. Judging by the way she nodded and quirked her lips, I knew I’d succeeded.
“I need to report this to the coast guard,” Bert said officially. “What was the name and number of your boat?”
I recited the particulars, and Bert wrote them down in a small black book. “Would you like to use the radio to call home?”
I thought for a minute. “Nobody to call at this hour.”
Bert looked at me, a question on her face. “Nobody’s missing you?”
“No. I’m not due back into port until Sunday.”
I couldn’t read Bert’s expression. Finally she asked, “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”
“Sure. Go on and do what you need to do. I’ll have another cup if I don’t drop over from exhaustion.” It wouldn’t surprise me if, the instant Bert left, I laid my head on the table in front of me and fell asleep instantly.
“Since we’re all up I’m fixing breakfast,” a man said and started puttering around the galley. My stomach growled loudly. He held out his hand. It was stained, and he was missing the end of his right index finger.
“My name is Francis, but people call me Lefty.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lefty.”
“Can I get you some coffee?” he asked in a slow Southern drawl.
“Yes, that would be nice, thank you.”
“How do you like your eggs, Miss Cooper?” he asked.
“Please, call me Alissa. Um…” I hesitated. “Scrambled?” I asked, not sure this really was a short-order kitchen.
“Scrambled eggs in five,” he said, turning back toward the stove and reaching for two eggs in the container to his left.
I was still coming to grips with my situation when two of the men I recognized as my rescuers came in.
“Good morning,” I said.
“You scared us pretty good, ma’am,” the scrawny man to my left said. He looked incredibly familiar but I couldn’t place him.
“Have we met?” I asked, wracking my brain to remember how I knew him.
“No, ma’am. I would have remembered. You’re way out of my league.”
“You got that right, Limpet,” the man to his right said. He held out a big, beefy hand with a pristine white bandage around his thumb.
“Rock, nice to meet you. This sap here is called Limpet.” He nodded to the scrawny man. “What’s your real name by the way, Limpet?”
“Roger,” the man said, the name obviously distasteful coming out of his mouth.
Then I realized who he looked like. I almost said so but didn’t want to insult my hosts. But there was no need when Limpet stated the obvious.
“Everybody says I look like that old-time actor Don Knotts when he played in the movie The Incredible Mr. Limpet.”
“I can definitely see the resemblance,” I said, relaxing a little. An industrial thick, white ceramic coffee cup was placed in front of me along with a twelve-inch plastic dinner plate, no less than half of it filled with a heaping pile of scrambled eggs, the other half with golden-brown hash browns and five strips of crispy, thick bacon hanging off the edge. Talk about food overdose, I thought, looking at the plate in front of me.
“Dig in,” Limpet said, getting his own plate. “It’s a long time till lunch.”
*
The food smelled delicious, and my empty stomach echoed the thought. My hands were still shaking when I reached for the salt and pepper, but not nearly as much as they had when I first came aboard. I wasn’t warm, but the chill had abated a bit so it was probably delayed shock.
When I was in the water I’d more or less been calm and clearheaded and conserved my energy. I had no idea if I’d be found before or after I died, or ever. I suppose I should have panicked or freaked out, but I didn’t. Now it was setting in just how close I’d been to dying, and the adrenaline was starting to wane. I would crash in a few minutes.
“I notified the coast guard,” Bert said as she came back in. She sat down across from me, her face serious. Shit, what now?
“They’re tied up with a storm off the coast of Florida, and since you’re not injured you’ll stay with us till they can get here or we arrive back in port.”
“How long will that be?”
“They said they’d get here as soon as they can.”
“Can you take me in?”
“No, I’m sorry, but we can’t.”
“I’ll pay you.” I ventured what I thought was a good compromise.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t afford me.”
“You don’t have any idea what I can or can’t afford,” I shot back.
“Sorry, no. First of all, there’s a storm behind us I don’t want to go through again, and second, we’ve been out six days and won’t reach our fishing area for another four or five. I can’t afford to lose the time to take you back.”
I looked around and, along with Lefty, I knew at least three other men were on board, as well as Bert, whom I knew very little about. Quite disturbing, if I do say so myself. I must have given myself away because Bert said, “You’ll be all right here. You can use the ship-to-shore phone to call.” She hesitated and looked at my naked ring finger. “You can let whoever you need to know you’re okay and won’t be back for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks! Are you kidding me?” I know I sounded ungrateful to the people who’d saved my life, but I couldn’t stay on this boat for that long. Bert’s expression told me she thought so too.
“I’m afraid so. That’s if we don’t run into any problems,” Bert said calmly.
Her explanation made sense and I did the math, but I still couldn’t stay on the boat for a month. “I have obligations, a job, and people depending on me. Client presentations,” I said, listing just a few of my To Do’s.
“I do too,” Bert replied quickly but firmly. “If we don’t work we don’t get paid. Every one of my guys depends on me for his paycheck. There’s no paid time off. We can’t reschedule the season. You can reschedule a meeting.”
“You mean you won’t.” I realized that I sounded more than a little snarky. If I wasn’t so tired I might be a little more diplomatic. Who was this woman who refused to turn around and take me back? Where in the fuck was the coast guard? Wasn’t that what I paid taxes for?
“In this case they’re one and the same.”
“But—”
“No,” Bert said firmly.
The way she’d shut me down really pissed me off. I detected something in her eyes but obviously didn’t know her well enough to understand what it meant. It could have been regret or it could have been victory. I thought about hiring someone to come and get me, but it would probably cost an arm and a leg. Even if I could find someone, no one would come this far out with the storms brewing around us. Either way I wasn’t
going anywhere for far longer than I’d like. And I hoped not an hour longer. I stifled a yawn, too tired to argue about this issue anymore.
“Let’s get you to bed,” Bert said. “You look like you could sleep standing up.” She stood and put her dishes and mine in the sink. “Come on. You can stay in my cabin.”
I had no choice but to follow her. She was the captain and I was completely exhausted.
CHAPTER NINE
Alissa
I looked around Bert’s cabin. It was small, about eight feet by ten, and contained the single bed behind me, a small desk, and a dresser. In the corner was what looked like a MacBook tucked into one of the cubbies. The contents of each cubby were secured with a screen, snapped tight to keep the items from spilling out in rough seas. A reading light was clipped to the edge of the desk, and a few papers lay scattered across the top. A floor-to-ceiling bureau stood to one side, flanked on either side by square windows.
A few framed pictures adorned the walls, and even as exhausted as I was I had an overwhelming need to know more about the woman who would control my life for the next few weeks. In one photo Bert was standing with her arms around a man that could only be her father, the resemblance unmistakable. Judging by the smile on their faces and the dimples in both cheeks, I had little doubt who the man was and even less doubt that they loved each other. In another was a little girl, obviously Bert, who looked about four or five years old. She was holding a fishing pole twice her size in one hand, and a fish equally big was hanging from a hook to the left. I don’t know much about fishing, but I gathered it might have been the first fish she ever caught. The other photos showed Bert with other people, and in all of them her smile was dazzling.
Exhaustion finally drove me to the bed, and I crawled between the covers. They were warm and smelled of sea air and Bert. The pillow was soft, but when I laid my head down my mind started racing.
