“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Bergting turned to gaze across fifty feet of churning ocean, and from the look in his eyes Naomi knew that he understood the choice he’d made. Maybe he hadn’t known when he was making that choice, but he recognized the cost of it now. He held up the black thing in his hand and she saw that it was a phone after all. But he held it in his palm like an offering, then slowly shrugged his shoulders, the apology written on his face. His efforts had been for nothing. His sacrifice.
The first mate of the Thaumas flipped his phone into the roiling sea. The wheelhouse sank deeper. A shark struck the boat and it jerked to one side, nearly toppling Bergting over. He caught himself, then tried to reach the railing, perhaps thinking he could climb to the bow, buy himself a little more time.
A moment later the ocean claimed the wheelhouse, rose to the level of the steps down into the cabin, and the water must have flooded down into that hole, for the last of the Thaumas went down like the Atlantic had gripped it in rigid fingers and dragged it under.
Bergting went under with it, for a moment. Then his head poked out, for just a second, and he tried to swim. Naomi watched in silent hope, sharing his change of heart, thinking that anything was possible, that the sharks might not notice him for a few seconds, maybe long enough.
He jerked to a stop as if he’d collided with something. A gasp came from his throat, like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, and then he went down just as abruptly as the boat had, lost beneath the churning waves.
Had that been the last they’d seen of him, it would have been a blessing for them all. But the sharks were there, the fins rising to cut the surface, and one of them had Bergting in its jaws. Others wanted him, tried to take him away, and together they tore him apart. Naomi glimpsed one scything spray of blood and then turned away, unable to watch.
The others cried out. Turned to comfort one another. Like her, they turned their faces away from death.
The wind whistled through the rusted tower and whispered across Bald Cap. In three directions, they could see only the storm and the raging sea. To the west, though, there was Deeley Island. Larger than Bald Cap, but just as abandoned. Six hundred impossible yards away, but no point in even trying.
A wave crashed on the rocks and splashed much higher than the last one.
They were stranded.
CHAPTER 24
Jim Talbot stood at the edge of the tree line on the eastern edge of Deeley Island and watched the boat go down. He couldn’t fathom what had gone wrong, how they’d managed to scuttle such a boat, but it sank so quickly that it had to have been something major. The sharks had been circling, at least from what he’d seen at this distance, but he had no idea what had sunk the boat.
The rocks, he thought. They’d sailed too close to Bald Cap, staved in the hull on that side. A colossal fuckup on the captain’s part, but the only thing that made sense. Of course it had been the rocks.
A strange calm enveloped Jim, but it took time before he recognized it as helplessness. He breathed evenly, one hand on the bark of a huge skinny old pine that bent and swayed in the storm. Rain pattered his face, stuck to his eyelashes, and he blinked it away. Otherwise, he could only watch, mouth slightly parted, brain barely able to process the truth of what he saw.
Footfalls pounded the ground behind him, branches snapped, and he whipped around with his hands raised in defense, as if the sharks out there might’ve come for him here on land.
“Dad,” his son Kyle said, grinning ear to ear. “Did you see the seals on the rocks? There’s so many of them. They’re almost up to the kayaks. It’s crazy. You have to come and…” He let his words trail off, studying his father. “What’s the matter? What’s that look for? Wait, did you and Lorena already have a fight today?”
Jim’s thoughts were so fuzzy that it took him an extra couple of seconds to process. “Lorena’s still in the tent. She’s … I don’t know if she’s sleeping or not. And don’t hold it against her if she’s not happy out here. Turns out she was right about the storm. In her shoes, I’d be pretty pissed off. All things considered, she’s being—”
A good sport, he almost said. But in the midst of this defense of Lorena, he realized how absurd it was to even be having that conversation.
“Shit,” he said, shaking his head. It felt like waking up from a nightmare. “Kyle, where’s your brother?”
Kyle shifted his weight from foot to foot. “He’s right behind me. Or he was. What is it, Dad? What aren’t you saying?”
Seventeen, skinny, Kyle still looked like a kid even though he’d be a high school senior this fall. His hair needed cutting and he thought the peach fuzz on his chin might manage to be a beard if he let it grow. Still Jim’s boy. But Kyle had a core of maturity that his older brother lacked, and he was the smartest of the three Talbot men.
“Have a look,” Jim said, and stepped aside to give Kyle a better view of the water to the east.
A second later Dorian came through the trees. He held his fishing pole at his side, his bait box and kit slung on straps over his shoulder. With his rain gear on, the whole ensemble seemed unwieldy as hell, but Dorian barely seemed to notice any of that.
“Gonna have to find a different spot to catch breakfast,” Jim’s older son said. “The fuckin’ seals don’t look like they want company.”
Lorena would have chided him for the language, and for her Dorian would have cleaned it up. As strange as it still was for Jim’s sons to see him with someone new, Dorian, at least, seemed to have taken a liking to her. Tall and lean, tattooed and scruffy, he’d set his heart on a life making music. Jim believed in his son’s talent, but he knew the odds and they terrified him. Dorian saw that as his dad not supporting him, not having faith. Lorena, though, had quickly and genuinely become Dorian’s number one fan.
Kyle pushed past Jim. “Holy shit, Dor … come and see this!” He darted back toward the rocks.
Dorian cocked an eyebrow at his father. “What’s his deal?”
Jim felt his face flush with heat, despite the wind and the chilly rain. The image of the boat sinking replayed in his mind. Even at this distance, he had been able to see the man standing on the prow of the boat as it had gone down. With the waves and the rain and at this range, Jim hadn’t witnessed what came next, but he could imagine.
“We’ve got some people in trouble,” Jim said.
“Dor, check it out!” Kyle called. “It’s not just seals. There’re a ton of sharks out there, too!”
Dorian stepped past his father, still laden with his fishing gear. “What are you talking about?”
Jim listened to them talking, but he was less interested in the sharks than he was in the rest of the people who’d been on that boat. He had convinced his sons to leave their phones at home, to make this trip about the family, but his own phone was back at the tent. Service out here had proved to be spotty at best and in the storm, so far out, he didn’t expect much, but he knew he had to try to call for help. The phone had another use, too … the camera’s zoom would give him a better idea of the situation out on Bald Cap.
“Kyle, go and get my phone. It’s zipped into my pack. And ask Lorena to come back with you, and to bring her phone.”
He was a smart kid and didn’t need it explained to him. Zipping off into the trees, he left Jim and Dorian standing at the tree line. For long moments, father and son stood and watched the small figures moving on Bald Cap. One of them had begun to climb the old metal tower.
“They’re gonna be okay now,” Dorian said, sounding sure. “We’ll call the Coast Guard.”
“Absolutely,” Jim replied.
“It’s crazy, though. I’ve never seen so many sharks in one place. Or so many seals. Is it, like, some kind of migration?”
Jim pondered that a moment, then gave his son the tiniest of shrugs. “Not like any I’ve ever heard of.”
Over the roar of the storm and the waves crashing on the rocks, the movements of the people on Bald Ca
p seemed like a grim pantomime. Jim and Dorian kept glancing back through the trees until at last they heard Kyle crashing through the branches and he returned, breathing hard, with his father’s phone clutched in his hand. As he handed it over, Lorena appeared behind him, making her way much more carefully along the path.
“Kyle said to bring my phone,” she announced, her words clipped and precise as always, as if she were talking to a patient. Lorena had a sense of humor that seemed to sneak up on her constantly, but her default position was seriousness. “Something about…”
Her words trailed off when she spotted the seals. Her eyes scanned the storm-tossed sea and she must have noticed the fins as well. Then she squinted, staring across at Bald Cap.
“There are people out there.”
“Their boat sank,” Jim said, tapping in the code to open his phone. “We’ve gotta call nine-one-one. Get somebody out here.”
Lorena started asking about the seals. Dorian began to fill her in, but Jim hardly paid attention. He walked a few paces north, held up his phone, hoping to get any kind of signal. At the moment he had zero bars, so he turned south again and wandered a dozen paces.
“Shit. I’ve got zero signal.” He looked at Lorena. “Try yours.”
Her eyes narrowed further as she stared out at Bald Cap for a second, then held up her own phone, just the way Jim had.
“One bar,” she said.
“Better than nothing,” Kyle said hopefully.
Dorian just stood there with his fishing pole, watching the churning sea. Watching the sharks.
Lorena tried the call, waving the phone ahead of her in the rain like it was a Geiger counter hunting for trace radioactivity. When the call failed, she swore under her breath. The rain slicked the phone’s face and Jim knew she shouldn’t keep it exposed like that for very long, not in this soaking. He studied her face as she tried the call again. Her black hair tied back, she wore a touristy-looking rain hat that wasn’t suited to the weather at all. Lorena had been through physical and emotional ordeals in her life that had honed her body and spirit into those of a formidable woman. She was already miserable about them being temporarily stranded on Deeley Island in this weather. He wasn’t about to make it worse by saying a word about her hat.
She’d put the phone on speaker. They all heard a crackle of static on the line before it started to ring.
Halfway through the second ring, it cut out.
Lorena cursed and tried again.
CHAPTER 25
Wolchko stood a dozen feet from the nearest of the seals. The beasts had been barking at the human arrivals ever since they’d dragged themselves onto Bald Cap, but as he and the others had congregated nearer to the rusty tower the bellowing had calmed down. The alpha males continued to bark now and again, just to remind the humans that they’d claimed the barren rock first, but the seals didn’t seem inclined to attack. Wolchko spotted another seal humping its bulk up onto the rocky edge of Bald Cap, eluding the sharks for the moment. The seals would be exhausted now. They’d been drawn on by his acoustic lure, the signal keeping them moving long after they’d have otherwise stopped to rest. For the first time, it occurred to him that it might have been cruel, but that small doubt—that hesitant regret—seemed just a flicker compared to the mass of other emotions he struggled to decipher.
Captain N’Dour knelt beside Tye, inspecting the shark bite on his right leg. In the rain and the gray storm light, it was hard to be sure from his vantage, but Wolchko didn’t think the wound looked too bad. Tye’s pants had already been torn, so N’Dour ripped off strips of fabric and bandaged the wound as best he could while Rosalie looked on, trying to persuade Tye he was going to be all right.
Kat had sprung onto the watchtower almost immediately after they’d come ashore. It creaked as she climbed. Large flakes of damp rust fell from the metal and were swept away on the wind. Wolchko didn’t want to look too closely at the orange-crusted joints on the tower, but it made him nervous as hell, having Kat up there.
Seals barked loudly. He glanced over and saw Naomi walking toward him with something in her hand. It didn’t surprise him at all to see that it was her cell phone.
“It’s useless,” she said, pushing a knot of wet hair away from her face. “It was supposed to be waterproof.”
Her face had gone pale, features slack. Her eyes were a little too wide, and he knew shock had begun to set in. Shock over the sharks attacking, over the boat sinking, and over Bergting’s death.
Wolchko took the phone from her hand, shook it, and saw droplets of water squeeze out around the small thumb button on the bottom of the screen. “Water-resistant, not waterproof,” he said. “It’s not meant to be submerged and sure as hell not in seawater. Salt water. The phone’s fucked.”
Naomi shuddered as she drew a breath. “We’re fucked.”
Wolchko handed back her phone. She took it and hurled it into the water, skipping it once on a rising wave before it plunked into the Atlantic.
“My phone was in my pack, on the boat,” he said. “I figure everyone else’s phones are just as useless.”
Naomi hugged herself against the rain. Her gaze twitched toward Tye and she looked quickly away. He figured she didn’t want to think too much about the shark bite on his leg.
“Oh, Jesus,” she rasped, lowering her head. “Oh, shit.”
Wolchko lifted her chin, startling them both with the uninvited contact. He pulled his hand away fast, but he had her attention.
“I need you with me, Naomi. We’re all smart people, out here, but the only way this turns out right is if we stay smart. If we fall apart, it’s not going to go well.”
“Go well?” She stared at him. “You think it’s going well for Bergting?”
“That story’s done,” Wolchko said. “It doesn’t matter now—”
“Doesn’t matter? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you think it matters to the guy’s family? To the people who cared—”
Wolchko held up his hands in surrender, but he kept his gaze locked on hers. “I can’t figure out the right way to say things, but you need to start thinking about what I mean, not whether or not I’ve chosen the nicest way to say it. Focus on what happens next, to us.”
Naomi took a breath and he saw her eyes clear, saw the glint of something hard there, something he knew was inside her. You couldn’t go through what she’d gone through and come out swinging at life without developing some steel, down inside.
“All right,” she said. “What does happen next?”
Wolchko glanced around, then up at Kat. Rain spattered his face. Soaking wet, cold, already exhausted, he had gone numb. But they couldn’t afford numbness, not any of them.
“Kat saw it even quicker than I did,” Wolchko said.
“Saw what?”
“We’re even more screwed than you think, and I need you to hold it together, Naomi. You listening to me?”
Captain N’Dour started toward them. Rosalie helped Tye hobble toward the tower. Wolchko ignored them, focused on Naomi.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“Look at the rocks where you climbed ashore.”
Naomi did, and he saw it click on her face. The truth of their situation. Just how screwed they were.
“They’re almost gone.” Naomi put a hand on her forehead, bent over, looking like she might be sick. Then she straightened up and stared at him. “The tide’s coming in fast. But it can’t cover the island or Kat would never have picked this spot to try to get the seals to nest.”
“It was always Bald Cap and Deeley both,” Wolchko said. “But you’re right. Normally this rock stays above the high-tide line—”
“Storm surge,” Naomi said, looking out to sea.
“Bald Cap’s gonna be underwater in a couple of hours,” he confirmed.
Naomi turned to gauge the distance to Deeley Island. Wolchko could practically read her thoughts, because he’d already had them all.
“Too far to swim in this storm—mayb
e without the storm—and that’s not even accounting for the sharks.” Wolchko glanced upward. “That’s why Kat’s testing out the tower, seeing how sturdy it is.”
Naomi’s expression hardened. “Someone will come looking for us. They’ll be expecting word. When they don’t get it they’ll try to contact us, and when they don’t get an answer they’ll come.”
Wolchko didn’t reply. She’d figured it out, but he could see her working through the timetable, sorting out how long it would take for anyone to come searching for them, particularly in this weather.
She looked up at the tower. Kat had reached the platform and paused to rest where the remaining wall fragment provided some protection from the gusting wind.
“How sturdy is it, do you think?” Naomi asked without looking at him.
“Sturdy enough,” Wolchko said.
But he watched the tower sway slightly in the wind and the way rusty rainwater ran down from its joints, and he tried to mentally calculate the combined weight of the six people who had survived the sinking of the Thaumas.
“Sturdy enough,” he said again, but this time he was trying to convince himself.
CHAPTER 26
Walter had the helm. Jamie had one hand pressed against the ceiling of the wheelhouse as they rode the slow rising of a rippling crest. It wasn’t a Perfect Storm sort of wave, none of that Hollywood stuff, but it certainly qualified as rough seas. The kind of seas that would have kept wiser men—guys who didn’t make their decisions in bars over pints of beer—from venturing out.
“We are goddamn idiots,” Walter said. But he laughed when he said it.
Jamie wanted another coffee, but the last time he’d tried to pour something from the thermos he’d spilled half of it onto his pants.
“Don’t shit your pants,” he said. “You been out in worse than this.”
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