Under Pressure

by Kathy Brandt

  “You’re right, Simon. Let’s go,” I said.

  “Okay, Hannah!” he said.

  We edged out the door, around the back, and took off running across the sand.

  I stopped once to make sure that Zora was not following. She wasn’t. I caught a glimpse of her as she pushed her way inside another cottage, searching for us. Again, I heard her yelling. The wind and rain swept away the words. I grasped Simon’s hand again and we kept running.

  At the salt pond, the ground turned to sludge that sucked us in. We were drenched, our clothes pasted to our skin. I tripped, fell, sprawling into the ooze, pain shooting through my side.

  “I’m okay,” I said as Simon pulled me up.

  We kept running, fighting our way through a smothering curtain of rain and wind that tried to blow us back. Heads down, we pushed against the storm. I knew the butte had to be just ahead. The island was barely a mile across. Right now it seemed like a hundred. Finally our feet found the stony outcropping.

  “Slow down, Simon. We’ve got to be close to the edge.” In seconds we found ourselves looking down into a raging sea. Angry, foaming water thundered against the cliff and exploded into the air.

  I held onto Simon and we started down, struggling to find footing on the slippery boulders. I knew that one misstep would send us over the edge and into the sharp rocks below. We kept going, the wind ripping at our clothes. We were on our hands and knees now, fingering our way down until suddenly we were out of the worst of it, sheltered behind a huge and remarkably sold rock wall.

  “Look, Hannah,” Simon shouted. “It’s a cave.” He scurried into it, and I followed just as the storm hit like a steam engine. Tree limbs, boards, shingles hurled past our sanctuary and swirled into the blackness.

  We made our way into the far reaches of the cavern and collapsed against the back wall, too exhausted to speak. I leaned my head against the granite, closed my eyes, and listened to the bedlam outside. At some point I was sure I heard screaming, like the sound of a banshee screeching in the wind.

  The next time I opened my eyes, it was dead silent. Simon was asleep, his head on my lap, his breathing deep and regular. I gently moved out from under him and crawled to the opening. A sickly greenish-yellow light reflected devastation—trees floating in the water, a rooftop lying below in the rocks, a burlap bag hanging from a bush. I knew it wasn’t over. We were in the eye of the hurricane.

  I heard rocks tumbling down the butte. An unreasonable fear caught me—the image of Zora climbing down the side of the rocks, her face a mirror of evil.

  “Get a grip, Sampson,” I whispered to myself and scrambled back to the recesses of the cave. I awoke one more time to the howling of the storm that once again raged outside.

  Chapter 34

  “Hannah, Hannah, wake up!” Simon was kneeling next to me, gently shaking my shoulder.

  “What is it, Simon?” I asked, immediately on the alert.

  “Come on. Come outside.”

  I followed him out and stood. My whole body felt bruised, and the makeshift bandage was stiff with dried blood.

  “Look, Hannah,” Simon whispered. “It’s beautiful!”

  That it was. Rubble and debris littered the ground, but the ocean was a fine sheet of glass that reflected the first rays of the sun as it crept above the horizon. Soon the sky and water were exploding in color that bounced off the hanging clouds. Gold, orange, and pinks saturated every surface.

  We sat on an outcropping for a long time, numb and grateful to be alive to see this sunrise. Finally, we climbed back up through the rocks and headed to the settlement. The island had been leveled. We walked through the devastation, stopping to examine broken pottery, a torn pair of overalls, a radio with its parts spilling out. A piece of roofing was swaying precariously from the only tree that remained. A two-by-four had pierced the trunk like a toothpick through Jell-O.

  Simon found a stuffed bear, soaked and matted, caught in some brambles. He pulled it out and carried it with him as we headed down to the shore.

  The Mystic was still in the harbor, one side completely submerged, the other tipped toward the sky, no movement on board, no sign of life.

  The Sea Bird was gone. I knew she was lying on the bottom somewhere or in pieces on the rocks, propelled by the fury of the waves. I could see the Mystic Runner, the speedboat Zora had slammed into shore, now just a shattered hull resting in the sand with the engine hanging off the back.

  “Stay here, Simon, okay? I want to have a look around.” I picked up a board with a nail sticking out of the end and headed down the beach.

  I found Zora on the point, floating in a tidal pool. She was lying on her back, her eyes open in an empty stare.

  I left her where she lay and walked back down the beach to where Simon was poking at the sand with a stick.

  “She dead?” Simon asked.

  “Yes.”

  He just nodded and kept poking at the sand.

  He sat on the shore clutching the bear while I swam over to the Mystic through an ocean filled with dead fish and debris. I climbed on board and crouched, listening for any movement, looking for any sign of Burke. The boat was silent except for the occasional grinding of the hull against the sandy bottom. Then a gull cried overhead and landed on the bowsprit. I crept quickly across a deserted deck then up to the wheelhouse, where I found Burke’s body wedged under a bench with a bullet in his head. That had been the gunfire I’d head as Simon and I made it to the beach last night. More than likely Burke would have wanted to forget about us and get out of the harbor. Zora had wanted something else.

  I made my way below. The boat listed heavily to port and the entire left side was underwater. Everything that could float did, including Stewart, whose body had washed into the doorway between the bedroom and the salon. Fortunately, the galley was on the dry side of the boat. There was water and enough food to feed Simon and me in gourmet style for weeks. We wouldn’t be here that long though. I gathered a few items, along with some dry clothes and a tarp and loaded them into a waterproof bag that I’d found under the chart table.

  Finally, I climbed back up to the deck and took the time to survey my surroundings. I was stunned by the devastation. It was frightening to know what the ocean was capable of becoming. All around me things were dead, broken, twisted, shattered. From here the shore looked like a sandbox littered with matchsticks. Simon was sitting in the middle of it all, clutching the bear. I climbed down the side ladder and swam back to shore.

  Simon helped me rig the tarp for some shade and then we took a walk down the beach. Like the water, it was littered with dead sea life. At the end of the beach, we came across a young dolphin, flopping in the sand. Then I saw a fin break the surface. An adult dolphin was circling in the harbor.

  “Can we get it back in the water?” Simon asked, hopeful that somehow we could save the animal.

  We found some old fabric tangled in the wreckage on shore and laid it out in the sand beside the dolphin. Then we very gently rolled the animal onto the cloth. We each took an end and dragged the dolphin out into the water. When it was deep enough, we dropped the fabric away, but the animal just lay in the water, unmoving.

  “Come on, fish, go,” Simon pleaded. Finally it flicked its tail, splashed once, and was gone. We saw it join the other, and they disappeared.

  I thanked God it had not been another death in Simon’s short life. In mine either.

  ***

  We were sitting on the beach eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and drinking from a water jug when I heard the boat approaching.

  It was Calvin.

  He had called the police department yesterday evening when he’d seen me raise the horseshoe, and realized I was in trouble. No one had answered at the office. Then he’d called SeaSail to find out from O’Brien whether I was headed over there. O’Brien had already gone out to rescue the charterers. At that point there was nothing Calvin could to do but get Tilda and the girls to safety and ride out the storm.
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  He’d started looking at first light, saw the wreckage of the Mystic, and motored into Salt. He told us what he knew about the damage in the islands. Information was still sketchy but he’d heard that only a few deaths had been reported. Electricity was out and many homes had been destroyed.

  We weren’t prepared for what we found in town when we motored into the harbor. It was a shambles. Buildings and houses had lost their roofs and glass littered the streets. Scores of boats that had tried to weather the storm on anchors or tied to docks lay grounded on the shore, some three deep.

  Calvin tied up at the dock at SeaSail. It had fared better than other parts of the island—only a dozen boats with damaged hulls and a couple dismasted. Dockhands were already lifting booms back into place, hauling out sails, and storing tires for the next time.

  But O’Brien had not come back.

  Simon and I stayed at his villa and every night I sat on the patio gazing out at the sea, expecting O’Brien to come sailing down the channel.

  Everyone on the island worked together on the clean up. Sammy Lorenzo was in the middle of it—pulling plywood off of windows, sweeping the streets, and flirting with Claire. He hadn’t been surprised about Stewart.

  “Daniel thought he had kept his aberrant sex under wraps, but the rumors were flying all over Hollywood, especially when that prostitute started making accusations. I tried to talk to him, but I was wasting my breath. I had hoped that the stories about his heroics after the crash would muffle the gossip.”

  We were sitting at a sidewalk café, Simon intent on keeping his ice cream from dripping down his cone. Sammy and Claire were holding hands. I could hardly believe it, but in spite of the fact that Claire was a tall Caribbean beauty and Sammy a short, balding Italian guy, I could see the chemistry between them.

  “I’m thinking about staying down here for a while,” Sammy said, smiling at Claire. “We’ve been talking about promotion for Claire’s business out in L.A. I’ve got a lot of contacts there, and after Daniel, I’m tired of representing actors.”

  The Westbrooks had flown out that morning. Evidently, they too had found romance at the peak of the storm.

  “I’ll take what I can get right now,” Debra had said.

  I’d been down at SeaSail checking to see if there’d been any news of O’Brien and stopped by Westbrook’s boat. It had survived the storm without a scratch.

  “We’ll see how it goes,” she said. “Jack’s been contrite, attentive. I don’t know, maybe it was the storm, maybe he’s realized how fragile life can be and how important family is. I never thought I’d see it. He’s given up the idea of a house here.”

  On my way up to the marina office, I’d run into the senator. He gushed about the hurricane, the events out at Salt, the murders, Stewart, and leered at me the entire time. Not much change as far as I could tell.

  When I got back to the villa, the phone was ringing. It was Simon’s aunt. She’d finally found the time to call. She was still in Europe, somewhere in southern France. She made all kinds of excuses. Her secretary couldn’t reach her; she couldn’t get through because of the hurricane.

  She said she’d be back in the States in a couple days and was arranging for boarding school for Simon.

  “I simply cannot manage a nine-year-old boy,” she said.

  “What about vacations, summers?” I asked.

  “The school has a summer program. I suppose he’ll have to stay with me at Christmas.” I could tell by the tone of her voice how put out she’d be.

  “Maybe he should stay with me for a while,” I said before I’d even thought it through. Christ, how could I take care of the kid?

  She never even hesitated. “That would be fine. I can send money for him.”

  “I’m not worried about the money.”

  “I insist.”

  “Fine,” I said. She’d never even asked about me or where Simon would live or go to school.

  She agreed to contact her lawyer immediately to discuss my getting temporary custody and have him place a preliminary call to let the authorities down here know that arrangements were in the works. I told her she needed to make a trip down here soon to see Simon. After that, we’d talk more. Until then, we agreed, that Simon could stay with me, and we’d see how things went.

  But I insisted that she talk to Simon about living with me. I wanted the kid to have a choice. He was out at the pool playing with Sadie. When I told him his aunt was on the phone, his face fell, and he dove under the water. Finally he pulled himself up onto the deck, shuffled into the house, and picked up the receiver.

  I could hear his aunt on the other end going over the options, the first being boarding school. He was close to tears. Eventually, she got to option two.

  “Yes!” he said. “I want to stay with Hannah!” Then he turned to me. “Is it okay?” he asked.

  “It’s okay, Simon. I want you to stay with me.”

  He dropped the phone and jumped into my arms.

  “I love you, Hannah!” he said.

  “I love you too, Simon,” I said. So it was settled.

  ***

  Every day Simon and I went out looking for O’Brien in one of the SeaSail chase boats. We searched a different area using GPS coordinates, but it was a big ocean. For a while, scores of friends, SeaSail employees, and Search and Rescue volunteers were also out searching. The sailors that O’Brien had gone out to find had somehow made it through the storm. They’d been rescued the next day off of Saint Thomas. They’d never seen O’Brien and some speculated that the chase boat had been swamped and had gone under in the high seas. Some said the waves had reached twenty-five feet at the peak of the storm. By the end of the week, most people had given up.

  Calvin, Carmichael, Snyder, and even Stark and Billy were still going out when they could, but I knew they were doing it for me, not because they had any expectation of finding O’Brien. I refused to give up. I knew that if anyone could survive out there, O’Brien could. If his boat had gone down, he would have been prepared with a survival kit that included water, food, flares. Knowing O’Brien, he would have even had sunscreen.

  It was ironic that I had the kid and not O’Brien. God, I wanted him, needed him with me.

  The last time I’d seen O’Brien was that day on the docks when he’d told me he intended to go out and rescue those charterers. We’d agree to talk as soon as we could. We’d both been too caught up in events—storms, plane crashes, murder—to make sure we took care of the important stuff.

  Now I was sitting out on the patio, trying not to let the regret and grief overcome me, when I heard Sadie’s high pitch yip out front. By the time I got to the kitchen, O’Brien was walking through the door.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Ira J. Rimson, Forensic Engineer and specialist in aircraft accident investigation, reconstruction and analysis for his expertise and patience. A special thanks to my sister, Sara Palumbo, for her careful reading and perceptive comments on the manuscript and for her undying enthusiasm. Whenever I was having a bad day, I simply called her.

  I’d be remiss if I failed to recognize the following sources: Arthur J. Bachrach, Ph.D. and Glen H. Egstrom, Ph.D., Stress and Performance in Diving, Best Publishing, 1987; Osha Gray Davidson, The Enchanted Braid, Coming to Terms with Nature on the Coral Reef, John Wiley & Sons, 1998; Robert G. Teather, Encyclopedia of Underwater Investigation, Best Publishing, 1994. Finally, David W. Shaw, Flying Cloud, Harper Collins, 2000 for O’Brien’s tale of the sea and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for Capy’s whaler’s song.

  Most importantly, a huge thanks to my kids for their love and support. And to my husband, Ron, my first reader, my sounding board, and the one who reminds me to eat when I’m so intent on the writing that I’ve forgotten what day it is much less what time.

  About the Author

  Kathy is the author of four mysteries in the Underwater Investigation Series. She is the co-author with her son, Max Maddox, of the bestselling Walks On The Margins:
A Story of Bipolar Illness, which received the Colorado Independent Publishers Association Award. She is the recipient of the Golden Quill Award from the Pikes Peak Library Association and the 2012 National Alliance on Mental Illness Award. Kathy has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Rhetoric and taught writing at the University of Colorado for ten years before becoming a full-time author. She is an avid sailor and scuba diver. She lives in Colorado. Visit her websites www.csi-underwater-mysteries.com and www.kathybrandtauthor.com.

  Books by Kathy Brandt

  Underwater Investigation Series

  Swimming with the Dead

  Dark Water Dive

  Dangerous Depths

  Under Pressure

  Nonfiction with Max Maddox

  Walks On The Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness