“No, no,” Sami said, grabbing his wrist. “Don’t do that.”
Gabe looked sick. “See, that’s the sort of thing that worries me. How bad is it?”
“It’s bad,” Sami said.
“You need a hospital,” Alex added. “Preferably an ER visit.”
“Truth is,” Sami went on cautiously, worried about upsetting him, “until you started stringing words together, I’d have given you about a twenty percent chance of regaining consciousness before we got you back to Hawaii, and maybe an equal chance of dying before we got you there.”
Gabe lowered his hand slowly. “So, what are my odds now?”
“There are so many factors—” Sami started.
Alex put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, baby, but no. We don’t have time to play nice here. Be blunt.”
Gabe stared at Alex for a second, then turned a reluctant eye toward Sami. “By all means, Dr. Simmons. Blunt away.”
Sami took Gabe’s hand. “You being conscious and talking is a good sign, but you’ve got an open cranial wound. Given that this conversation is happening, I’d say the swelling in your brain has lessened considerably, so the intracranial pressure isn’t a problem. Right now. You could still suffer a hemorrhage, or any number of other complications. I’ll want to clean and sterilize and bandage your wounds again, but right now I just want to get you to a neurosurgeon as soon as possible—”
“And there are problems with that,” Alex put in.
“—There’s also the matter of my other patient on board,” Sami continued. “The guy who attacked you. His name is Isko.”
Gabe frowned. “You’ve got a responsibility. I get that.” He glanced at Alex. “But do me a favor? If I die, throw the asshole overboard.”
His chin bobbed a little. Exhaustion from his ordeal and his pain, she hoped, rather than any further complications.
“Gabe, listen,” Sami began.
“I heard some of what you were saying,” he went on. “But maybe you need to lay it all out for me.”
Sami glanced over her shoulder at Alex, silently communicating with her husband. How much should they tell Gabe? How much did he need to know?
In the end, they told him everything—about Isko and the Coast Guard station, about the storm moving their way, about their debate as to whether to wait for help or sail for Hawaii … and about the sharks. About Harry.
Wincing, Gabe let his head loll toward the window. “I thought I’d heard some of that. I hoped I was dreaming.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “Really.”
Gabe fixed him with a hard look. “I know you guys weren’t friends anymore. He told me you hated him.”
“I didn’t hate—”
“Either way, he knew you hadn’t considered him a friend in a long time. But he also told me he hadn’t always been worthy of friendship,” Gabe said. “Thing is … I never knew him as anything but the best friend a guy could have. Harry had real faith in me. That’s more than I can say for anyone else I’ve had in my life. It’s not something I could ever take for granted.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I know it can’t be easy for you.”
Gabe blinked hard, fighting off exhaustion or emotion or both. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. There are plenty enough of you all to sail this boat. You won’t be able to get her up to top speed—not even close—because I’m not going to let you run under full sail. But I’m gonna give you some instruction right now and you’d better pay attention before I pass out. I’m not waiting for help to get here. Not when the beautiful doctor here is obviously still very worried I’m going to die. So you guys will radio in—it’s pretty damn simple—and then you’re going to set sail for home using a combo of the motor and the mainsail. Nalani’s got some knowledge and so does Patrick. It’ll be enough.”
Sami felt a terrible trepidation. “Are you sure? This seems crazy to me. Without you and Harry … this isn’t some little sailboat.”
“If there’s a storm on the way it’ll slow down a rescue even more,” Gabe said. He wetted his lips with his tongue and his eyes fluttered. Sami gave him a sip of water from a bottle on the nightstand. Gabe gestured his thanks and glanced back and forth between her and Alex.
“Get me home,” he said. “I don’t want to die out here.”
The words echoed in Sami’s head, and she nodded.
“You won’t,” she said. “You won’t.”
It sounded like a promise. She hoped it wasn’t a lie.
* * *
Luisa wiped her eyes and nose, sniffling a bit. She felt like a total ass. She wore a black string bikini she’d bought from Victoria’s Secret three years earlier and never had the guts to put on outside a changing room. If not for the tank top over it, she’d have felt like even more of a fool.
“You okay?” Cat asked.
“Not even a little.”
“It’s just that you’re sitting in my lap.”
And she was. Luisa tousled Cat’s hair and kissed her cheek. “You know you’ve always wanted me to give you a lap dance.”
Cat sighed. Smiled. Pressed her forehead against Luisa. “There’s the girl I know.”
“Not really. Shit, maybe not ever. That was the most … I don’t think I’ll ever get today out of my head, and it’s not even over yet.”
“We’ll be okay now,” Cat said. “I don’t know what’ll happen to Gabe, but the rest of us … whether we stay here or try sailing back, we’ll be okay. Sharks are not going to get us here.”
Luisa touched her face. “Thank you. For being you. For being my friend, despite me being the lunatic I am.”
Stronger than she looked, Cat slid Luisa off her lap. “For the record, you were never my type.”
“For the record,” Luisa said, standing up and brushing off her butt, “you never had a type.”
Cat had started to agree with her, but Luisa had stopped listening. She spotted something on the water—out beyond the ring of the atoll—that made her grin. She laughed to herself as relief flooded through her.
“What is it?” Cat asked. “You thought of a great punch line?”
But then Cat must have seen that Luisa’s focus had shifted, for she turned to follow her friend’s gaze. Only Cat didn’t have the same reaction.
“Oh, shit,” she said.
Which wiped Luisa’s smile from her face. They’d both seen the boat a few miles off, seemingly headed their way. Luisa’s first thought had been of rescue, but hearing the tone in Cat’s voice, she realized there was another, far more likely truth unfolding.
“My God,” she whispered. She reached out and took Cat’s hand.
We’ll be okay, Cat had said. Sharks are not going to get us here. And she was right. It wasn’t the sharks they needed to fear.
* * *
Alex stepped into the wheelhouse with too much information in his head. Gabe had gotten so tired that he’d started to mumble, triggering a fresh examination from Sami. She’d decided it was exhaustion and not brain damage, but that had been it. Gabe needed to rest. The first mate had argued, but in the end, after extracting a promise to wake him if two hours had passed and they hadn’t gotten under way, he’d surrendered to the ship’s only doctor.
“So, I don’t know if you guys are having any luck,” he said as he entered, studying the backs of Patrick, Nalani, and James. “But I’ve got good news on Gabe, and on getting the hell out of here.”
They kept talking as if he hadn’t spoken. Something that sounded like a math problem, trying to figure out how long it would be before they met up with the rescue ship.
“Am I a ghost now?” Alex asked. For half a second, he thought maybe they were blaming him for Harry’s death, treating him like he wasn’t even there. “Hello? Nobody wants good news? I can tell you how to get the radio working.”
Patrick turned to him, charmingly self-satisfied. “We figured it out. Already sent a distress call and had a conversation with the Coast Guard in Honolu
lu. It won’t be fast, but they’re coming. We were just debating how much time we could save by trying to meet them halfway.”
Alex clapped his hands together. “Yes. Let’s do that.”
He hurried over to examine the instrument panel. This part of the wheelhouse was cramped even with two people, but now there were four of them. Nalani and James moved aside while Alex put his hands on the wheel. He ticked through Gabe’s many instructions in his head, scanning the instrument panel. He spotted several of the buttons and gauges he’d been told would be there, and for the first time he thought they might actually be able to do this.
“Did you suddenly remember you knew how to sail this thing?” Patrick asked.
Alex smirked. It felt so nice to have good news. “Gabe’s awake.”
“What?” James said. “His skull is cracked open!”
“He’s awake,” Alex repeated, then waved a hand through the air. “Well, not now. Not this very second. But he was awake and lucid and Sami thinks there’s a good chance he’ll be okay in the end. But we’ve got to get him and Isko help as soon as possible, obviously. I mean, time is incredibly important with this stuff.”
“Wow,” Nalani said. “That’s fantastic.” She rubbed at her eyes, which were just a little damp. So were her husband’s.
Alex sobered. “He’s not out of the woods. So every minute is valuable. Not just for him, but for Isko. His leg needs to be amputated, and Sami sure as hell doesn’t want to do that out here, on the boat.”
“Fuck that guy,” Patrick said. He spoke in a sort of bitter growl.
The four of them shifted awkwardly. The argument over Isko had been the thing that brought Harry and Alex to blows. Alex hadn’t killed him, hadn’t thrown him to the sharks, but that fight had put them both in the water.
“You have something to say?” Alex asked.
Nalani and James just looked at Patrick.
After a moment, he shrugged. “No, man. Sami’s doing what she has to. My husband’s in there looking after Isko right now, and the guy’s obviously been through hell. It’s just hard to wrap my head around. If Isko hadn’t bashed Gabe’s head in, we’d be getting ready to sail to our next destination with Harry at the wheel. I barely knew him, but this is his boat. He brought us all out here just so he didn’t have to be alone to make peace with his father’s memory. To die like that…”
His voice trailed off.
Nalani took his hand. “I know. We all feel like that.”
Maybe Patrick didn’t mean to, but he glanced at Alex then, as if dubious about the word “all.”
“We do,” Alex agreed. “It’s not right. But it’s also over. As soon as everyone’s back on board, we’ll see if Patrick and Nalani can get the mainsail up, and if Gabe told me enough about piloting this thing that we can get out of here. Honestly, how Harry and Gabe were running this ship with just the two of them I have no idea.”
Patrick nodded grimly.
Nalani glanced over at her husband, James. “Where are the others, anyway? Can you go out on deck and see what’s taking so long?”
James kissed Nalani on the cheek, then went to the starboard door and slid it open. Immediately, they heard shouting from outside.
Cat’s voice. Calling for Alex. Calling for Nils. Calling for Nalani.
“What the hell—” Patrick began.
James stepped back as Cat’s voice grew louder. They heard her steps on the stairs, coming up from the cockpit, and then she was there, popping her head into the wheelhouse, staring at all of them.
“You guys,” she said gravely, breath coming hard. “Search the boat for weapons. And make it fast.”
Alex flinched. He’d been expecting something about the sharks, that maybe something had happened to Luisa or Alliyah or Dev on the way back from shore. But weapons?
“Say that again?” Patrick asked.
“Weapons,” Cat repeated, her gaze ice-cold now, her jaw set. “Guns if there are any. Even a flare. Something to fight with.”
They all just stared at her, not comprehending until at last Cat scowled.
“There’s a boat coming,” she said. “You saw the bullets and the maps in the Coast Guard station. There’s a boat coming right now, and you can bet your fucking ass it’s not a coincidence.”
CHAPTER 15
When Alliyah saw the new boat arriving, her first instinct was to cheer. She shot a fist in the air and turned to Dev, but instead of celebrating, he swore and grabbed her arm and tried to make her crouch down.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.
Dev shot her a dark look, eyes blazing, and crouched without her. He went to his knees, head ducked, glaring at her.
“Use your head. I’m not putting any faith in whoever that is. Cat said they’re talking about smugglers. Guns, drugs, fucking pirates, or whatever. If they called for help, it cannot possibly have come this fast. Even if there are other boats nearby … Come on, Alliyah. Just get your head down. If that boat isn’t here for a rescue, I don’t want them knowing we exist!”
Out of spite alone, years of bitterness she thought she’d put aside, she wanted to jump up and down and wave her arms to get the newcomers’ attention. But when she glanced again at the boat making straight for the Kid Galahad, she found herself ducking without making any conscious decision to do so.
Within a minute, she and Dev had retreated to the place Nalani and James had been screwing in the water, on the ocean side of the rock and coral ridge that ran along the spine of their little fragment of the atoll. The small rise in the land and scrub was enough to allow them to lie down and to think they might go unnoticed by those on board the newly arrived vessel.
Only after she’d lain down on her belly, like a sniper trying to get a good angle, did she spot the debris of their picnic spread across the sand on the lagoon side. There were red and blue and green towels, colors bright enough to draw the eye, but there was nothing she and Dev could do about that now.
Quietly, her chest aching, gooseflesh rising on the backs of her legs from the cooling breeze, she lay next to Dev and watched the new arrival—a big long-range-style fishing boat—circle around the Kid Galahad and then drop anchor fifty yards away. A gray pontoon boat went into the water off the back. Half a dozen crewmen climbed into it and the motor buzzed and whined as they zipped over to the yacht.
Dev swore under his breath.
Alliyah put a hand over her mouth. She needn’t have worried about making any noise. No words rose to her lips. She could barely think. The paranoid nightmare Dev had been afraid of had just come true.
The men in that pontoon boat had guns.
* * *
The moment Alex saw the guns, everything changed. Nils and Patrick and Cat were just behind him on deck. They’d gathered what weapons they could—the wickedest knives from the galley, a gaffing hook, and the flare gun—but the men in the pontoon boat carried pistols and assault rifles. Alex felt sick, a twist of nausea in his gut, but he knew they had no choice. If they tried to stand against these men with these weapons, right now, they were going to die.
“Patrick,” he said. “Take this shit below.” He handed over the flare gun. “This was a stupid idea.”
“What?” Cat said. “We can’t just … Alex, at least let’s get the ladder up. Don’t let them board.”
She rushed over to the railing, grabbed hold of the heavy chains at the top of the ladder. Alex followed, put a hand on her arm. Cat turned toward him, and he saw the same sickness in her eyes that he knew must be in his own.
“We’ll just end up putting it back down. With those guns—”
“At least we’ll buy time!” Cat argued. “We’ll hide below. When they come down, we’ll fight them. What else can we do? We need time.”
Alex hesitated a second, seeing it now the way she saw it. Why help them? It would be many hours before help arrived, but the gunmen didn’t know that. Pirates, smugglers, whatever they were—they didn’t know how long the Kid Galahad had
been sitting here.
He nodded. Side by side, he and Cat grabbed hold of the ladder. Together, they started to raise it up.
Gunfire ripped the air over their heads, echoing across the lagoon. Cat grabbed Alex and dragged him down. The ladder slapped against the hull as they dropped to their knees. Alex spun around and saw that Patrick and Nils were gone. They’d hide the weapons, and that was good. His thoughts raced. They might need those weapons later—if they had a chance to use them.
“Cat, go below,” he said. “Someone’s got to stay up here. I want them to know how many are on board and what condition we’re in. I’ll make them think help’s coming soon. But we don’t need any extra targets on deck.”
“I’ll stay,” Cat said. “Sometimes your mouth gets you into trouble.”
“They’re shooting at us,” he said incredulously. “You think I’m going to mouth off?”
The engine of the pontoon boat revved loudly, like a lawn mower had just pulled up alongside, and then it cut out completely. Something thumped against the hull. The ladder went taut. Alex could see it from where he knelt on the deck. He thought of Sami, of all the things he wished he’d said to her just now, before he’d left her down below. He told himself that she knew what she meant to him, but still his heart ached. His mouth formed the unspoken words.
Then he stood up. Cat rose beside him.
Both of them put their hands up as the first man reached the top of the ladder. He hung away from the hull as if he might swing on it, one hand grasping and the other aiming an assault rifle through the bars of the railing. Even as the big man grabbed hold of the railing and hoisted himself up and over, Alex could only stare at the gun. The other details he was aware of—the white man’s powerful build, his stubbly shaved head, the sleeves of tattoos on his deeply tanned skin—were all periphery. Only the gun mattered.
Till his boots hit the deck and he turned the weapon toward Cat. Then Alex noticed the man’s smile and the brilliant blue of his eyes, so vivid they seemed unreal.
“Well,” he drawled, his accent unmistakably American. “Ain’t you a pretty one?”
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