Swept Away 2

by J. Haymore

  I feel it—that last glimmer of terrified, excruciating consciousness, before I slip away.

  A hand grabs my arm, and then I’m being hauled up, my body scraping against something.

  I feel oddly dissociated. The scraping doesn’t hurt, but I know it’s happening—heavy metallic edges grinding against my torso as I’m being lifted by one arm. It’s a very strange sensation, like my body’s still there, but I’m not part of it. I’m floating around my body, maybe. Or above it.

  I fall onto the deck. Or maybe it’s part of the deck. Nothing makes any sense.

  On my hands and knees, I cough and gag, throwing up seawater. It hurts coming up almost as much as it hurt going down. When the last of it is gone, I collapse down onto my stomach.

  And then, I see someone. The dim shape of Ethan’s face. The feel of him. The sound of his voice.

  Ethan!

  He’s talking to me, and while I can still hear, his words are a jumbled mess, and I can’t wrap my head around them, can’t understand what he’s telling me.

  He curls an arm around my torso and hauls me up again, which hurts. I want to tell him to let me lie down, but I don’t have the energy.

  It’s dark and wet and cold. Spray slams against my body, the drops hitting my bare arms like spitting darts, and my clothes are heavy with water. The deck pitches wildly beneath my feet.

  We stumble forward, Ethan and I. We’re on the trampoline—no, that’s not right. We’re on what’s left of the trampoline. I can’t see the rest of the Temptation—it’s too dark. Ethan’s arm slips away as he kneels down and opens a storage hatch. My hands reach for him, but he doesn’t notice.

  I sag to my knees behind him, my throat and lungs burning. The boat is wet and rocking, and the waves are so tall, I’m certain they’re going to crash down on us and drown me again.

  Wait... Where’s Kyle?

  I search around frantically, first crawling then stumbling back to my feet, gripping a handhold on the deck so I don’t slide off it. The darkness consumes my vision. It’s as if nothing and no one exists beyond the wind, the waves, the small piece of deck, and the outline of Ethan just beside me.

  “Kyle!” My voice comes out as the stupidest, weakest whisper ever. “Kyle, where are you?”

  There’s no answer. Nothing but the roar of water and rain and wind.

  The Temptation is slanted, tilted, one hull up out of the water—though that’s only a guess; I can’t actually see it—and the side we’re on dips deeper into the water every time a wave passes beneath us.

  It hits me. The truth I’ve been avoiding since the explosion.

  The Temptation is sinking.

  Something blew up. It was Mick—it had to have been Mick. He’d intended to kill us all.

  Ethan yanks out a huge cylindrical container. It appears black in the night, but I know it’s bright orange. It’s the lifeboat. He heaves it onto the slanted deck, then plants his feet in front of it so it won’t roll off. He fumbles at his PFD, then shrugs out of it.

  “Here!” He has to shout to be heard. The wind and waves pummel us so there’s hardly room for any other sound.

  He pushes the PFD into my hands, and I stare at it dumbly until he yells, “Put it on.”

  I struggle to do as he tells me, forcing my sluggish muscles to go through the motions of slipping my arms into the armholes.

  Me using his PFD means he’s left without one. I resist the urge to take it off and make him wear it. But that would be a waste of time. He won’t take it back.

  “I need to get this into the water. Hold on to my shirt, and hold on to this with your other hand,” he shouts, handing me the end of a rope. “Whatever happens, even if you’re separated from me, don’t let go of it. Do you understand?”

  I nod.

  With each wave, the sea swallows more of the Temptation. We slide down the deck until Ethan stops us by gripping one of the shrouds—a thick wiry metal line that leads from the top of the mast to the outside edge of the deck. The Temptation dips lower, and water drags at my thighs, doing its best to pull me under yet again.

  One-handed, Ethan manages to throw the life raft into the water. It can’t be easy—the thing is damned heavy. The canister pops open, the metal edges breaking apart and sinking immediately, leaving a half-submerged mass of wrinkled rubber.

  For a moment, waves batter it, and I’m sure it’s sinking. This is not going to work.

  But then a loud hissing fills the air, and in a matter of seconds, the life raft self-inflates into a dome over a circular boat that looks like it belongs in an amusement park, not on the open ocean in a storm.

  The rope is slack in my hand because it’s extremely long, but I can see the other end is attached to the raft. Ethan drags the rope in until each wave smacks the raft against the deck. It bobs and tips with the force of the waves. How can this fragile thing keep anyone safe?

  “Get in,” he calls.

  “What about Kyle? Where’s Kyle? Where’s Nalani?”

  “Get in, Tara,” he snaps. It’s an order. “We need to take care of ourselves first, then we can try to find them.”

  “What about you?”

  His jaw works as he grinds his teeth. “You first.”

  Dismay washes through me. He should get in the life raft first. I want to refuse to get in until he’s safe, but there’s no point in arguing. He won’t budge on this point either.

  “I’ll come in right after you,” he promises, then takes my arm and nudges me toward the life raft. “Go.”

  I search around desperately one last time for Kyle, but there’s no sign of him. Even if he was ten feet away, he’d be invisible in the darkness. It’s unclear how much of the Temptation is above water, but it seems like Ethan and I are already standing on the small bit of what’s left of it.

  There’s nothing else to do. Gulping down a sob, I leap through the doorway of the life raft.

  The thing bends and twists under my weight, and it seems ten gallons of seawater enter the raft with me. Ethan jumps in as soon as I’m out of the way. The raft jerks, making me fall against the inflated rubber side.

  Crouching, I stare at him, fascinated. I want to tackle him and kiss him until we forget everything that just happened. At the same time, I want to leap out of this uncomfortable, enclosed space and find Kyle.

  Kyle.

  I gulp, then gasp it out loud: “Kyle!”

  I rush to the doorway flap of the raft, pushing Ethan out of the way. “Kyle,” I yell hoarsely. “Kyle! Nalani!”

  Nothing. Only the breaking waves and the crashing water. The Temptation is already several yards away—we’ve drifted in the wind and the current, while the catamaran is anchored down by the water filling its hulls.

  I don’t see anything except the dark lump, barely above water now, that was once the Temptation.

  “Kyle!” My voice is a ragged scream, and my throat hurts, and tears stream down my face as I take great, gulping sobs of air. “Kyle!”

  Ethan appears beside me, and we both try to hand-paddle toward the Temptation as we shout Kyle’s name. I shout myself hoarse. Soon, the catamaran is out of sight, and I have no idea if it’s half a mile or a hundred feet away.

  Ethan gives up first, sitting with his knees drawn up and his head pressed into his hands. A few minutes later, I collapse in a state of such grief and fear for Kyle, I feel that I’ll just lie here forever, crumpled on the floor of the life raft, pitching in the weather and water sloshing around me, because I’ll never be able to move again.

  And then Ethan lifts me up and brings me into his lap. And as the storm rages around us, I cry and cry for hours, until sheer exhaustion finally takes my consciousness away.

  Justine

  August 17, 2007

  On April 23rd, my father came into my office. I was coding frantically, as I have been for the last couple of days. I was trying to hack into Stanford’s administrative system to clear up the problem of a B I got in one of my upper division theoretical
math classes senior year. That B is a stain on my record, and I’ve wanted nothing more over the past year than to have it eradicated.

  God knows I’ve tried to hack into Stanford in the past, and I’ve failed. This time, I was close, though. So, so, so close.

  So I was completely blindsided when Daddy told me the news.

  My worst fears came to fruition. Ethan left me. He’s gone. He’s been gone for four months.

  Let me back up.

  Last year, after Ginny had her “accident,” a terrible skiing mishap on the slopes of Aspen, Colorado (could’ve happened to anyone!), Ethan started asking questions. I have to give it to him, the man’s not dumb. His intuition was telling him there was more to Ginny’s death than met the eye.

  A couple of months after she met her untimely demise, Ethan found a little piece of incriminating evidence. He was messing around in the files in my office and discovered a payment I’d made to the man I’d hired to bug Ginny’s phone.

  “What’s this?” he’d asked me.

  I shrugged and said I thought it was the man who was planting the annuals in front of the Palo Alto house.

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed even as I realized my mistake. He hadn’t dealt with the gardener, but I’d mentioned his name once. Robert. The man’s name on the check was Roland.

  He knew I was lying.

  I monitored his e-mails, and sure enough, he made an inquiry into the identity of the man I’d written the check to. A week later, when we were in bed, he rolled over and gave me a searching look.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had Ginny’s phone tapped?” His voice still broke when he said her name. He mourned her death like a normal person should mourn a good friend, so that never bothered me. His continued grief over it irritates me, though. (Get over it, people!)

  Anyway, at that moment, panic surged through me. It was the panic that always comes when someone is close to discovering what I really am. But I pulled it together and shrugged. “I was…paranoid,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Remember how upset I was about all the phone calls she’d made to you?”

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  “Well…I just wanted to make sure nothing was going on,” I said quietly “It was stupid, I know. Really, really stupid.”

  He took me in his arms and kissed me soundly, and murmured against my lips, “I’m not the kind of man who’d lie to you, Justine. You know that, right?”

  But he did lie to me. I know that now. He continued digging, asking questions, researching Ginny’s death. And then he started to suspect that I had a hand in it.

  I denied the problem to myself—using the excuse that both of us were busy, that we had a lot going on, that Ethan was stressed about the Oracle deal. But deep inside, I knew it was happening. He was growing distant. He stopped talking to me about things that really mattered. He stopped looking at me the way he used to. And we stopped having sex.

  When Daddy came into my office on April 23rd, he told me that Ethan had figured out that I was the one who killed Ginny. He was worried about me, my father said. He didn’t know who I was anymore. He’d presented Daddy with the “evidence”:

  The Robert/Roland discrepancy.

  The e-mails I’d hacked from Ginny’s computer, containing my highlights and notes. (Ethan doesn’t do much hacking anymore, but his skills once rivaled mine. He’d never tried to hack me before, Diary...but I guess there’s a first time for everything. I also guess I’ll be needing to increase security measures on my servers.)

  My unknown whereabouts during the three days surrounding Ginny’s death. My alibi was that I was on a business trip to Prague—airtight, as far as I knew, but, again, Ethan is wily. He actually flew to Prague without my knowledge and discovered that although I had checked in to the hotel, no one actually could remember seeing me until two days after Ginny’s death.

  A receipt from Starbucks in the Denver airport dated the day before Ginny’s death, found buried in a coat pocket.

  Several sightings of a single woman who matched my description at the resort that weekend.

  He knew about Susanna. That bitch Ginny must’ve blabbed to him.

  Of course this was all circumstantial, and Daddy’s lawyer could’ve swatted each annoying bit of “evidence” away as if it were a mosquito buzzing in his ears.

  But it was enough for Ethan. I’d made enough small errors that Ethan lost faith in me.

  In the end, it was my own fault. Chalk it up to another learning experience. I will not make the same mistakes again.

  “You did do it, didn’t you?” my father asked me gently, after presenting Ethan’s position. “You killed Ginny?”

  That was so unimportant. So completely irrelevant.

  Ethan was leaving me. HE WAS LEAVING ME.

  “Where is he?” I screamed.

  “He’s gone, Justine. He’s just gone.”

  The rage that consumed me was all-powerful, more consuming than it’s ever been. The only two people in the world that I loved had betrayed me. I hated them both.

  And Daddy was right there. I yanked open my drawer and pulled out the scissors.

  “Justine…?” My father looked so sad at that moment, like I’d disappointed him beyond measure. Well, too bad.

  I’ve never accused my father of stupidity, and I still don’t. He was ready for this. As soon as I rose with the scissors and pointed them at my father, men rushed in—men that I’ve never seen before. They wrestled the scissors from my grip. I screamed and screamed as they carried me away.

  Four months, Dear Diary. That is how long I’ve been separated from you. And from Ethan.

  I’ve been locked away, with no computers, no way to communicate with the outside world, no diary. I’ve been hounded incessantly by shrinks. They treated me for a major depressive episode precipitated by the breakup. I was doped up on meds again in the hospital, but I’ve already stopped taking them.

  Daddy didn’t tell them about Ginny. He only told them I was overwrought and deeply depressed about my breakup with my boyfriend. I love him again, for that alone. He’s a loyal man, my father.

  Still, Ethan’s final visit scared the hell out of my father. I’m all he has left, and even that paltry evidence was enough to make Daddy quake in his boots. Thoughts of spending the rest of my life in prison danced in his head, and he did what he could to nip that horrible image in the bud, his loyalty and love for me his only motivation.

  He told Ethan that the thought that I might have done something to Ginny was ridiculous, and the situation with Susanna was a huge misunderstanding that was exaggerated due to his own wealth and position.

  Then he told Ethan that if he really felt he could no longer trust me, he should leave. Daddy made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He bought out Ethan’s part of the company with a more than fair premium and a ridiculously huge sum as a “bonus.” What it really was was hush money. The implicit agreement being that Ethan would never reveal what truly happened to Ginny.

  Ethan left me a letter. It was short—Ethan is not one for writing long, flowery declarations. Here it is in its entirety:

  Justine,

  I’m sorry. I know that leaving like this is the worst thing a man could do, but your dad promises me that this is different, that it’s actually the only thing I can do.

  I love you, but I can’t do this. I don’t need to explain myself, because I’ve never been closer to anyone than I’ve been to you, and you’ll know, better than anyone, why I had to leave.

  I hope you find help, Justine. There’s a good person in there buried behind all the anger and pain. I hope you’ll be able to find her again one day.

  Love,

  Ethan

  The letter was good for me. It gave important information. The most important of which, of course, was “I love you.”

  Ethan still loves me. If nothing else, I can hang on to that.

  Ethan took the money and left, covering up his tracks as best he could. But honestly,
he knows it’s useless. He’s an important man now, with all that wealth my father has shared with him. And he knows I can manipulate technology to my whim.

  Ethan Williams knows there might be distance between us, but the way I feel about him will never change.

  I will be with him wherever he goes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It is like a never-ending nightmare. I awaken, cry, sleep again. The cold is paralyzing. My dreams are of drowning. Of Kyle drowning. Pain covers me like a blanket, inside and out, physically and emotionally. There’s a fog of coldness and misery and pain that I’ll never break free from. I’m going to be here forever. In this frigid, dark place…

  Ethan moves around, checking things, doing things. Then he notices me stirring and comes to me, again and again, holding me, stroking my terribly matted hair, until I doze off in the safety of his arms. He does this all night long, and by the time dawn washes its gray sheen over the horizon, he hasn’t taken a moment to himself to snatch a second of sleep.

  Morning comes slowly, listlessly, reflecting how I feel. The sky is dull, and the ocean isn’t the angry, churning death trap it was last night but a sullen thing, the color of slugs, with no rhyme or reason to the lumpy waves that roll under us, tossing us this way, then that.

  I’m awake but unmoving, gazing up at the orange peak of the covering above me. This cover is supposed to protect me from the harsh effects of the sun. But it can’t protect me from losing Kyle.

  I close my eyes. He could be fine. Ethan and I are fine. Kyle could be fine too.

  And Nalani. So consumed by everything else, I’ve barely thought about her. Guilt swarms me. I know what it feels like to drown now, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Ever. Nalani has to be okay. And so does Kyle. If he’s not okay…

  I imagine his face, all the smiles he’s given me over the years. Each of them feels like a little gift. The clownish smiles, the wicked smiles, the friendly smiles, the exuberant smiles. All of them make Kyle who he is, the boy who was my first friend when my parents died. The man who stood by my side, day in and day out, after fate took Emily from me.