A burst of laughter from somewhere outside had Madeline launching at the doors. “Help! Help us. Is anyone there?”
“Help us,” Sterling yelled as he too thumped on the door.
“Hello.” The woman’s reply came from the very top of the elevator doors. Shit! We’re stuck between floors. “Hello! Help us. Please!”
“Shhh, can you hear something?” The female voice was chirpy which was so, so wrong.
“In here. We’re stuck in the elevator.” Madeline banged her fists on the metal.
“Where’s the elevator?” Someone—no, more than one. Two people giggled again. A man and a woman. Maybe more than two people. “Sorry, we can’t see.”
“We’re in here.” Sterling thumped on the doors.
“Please help us.” Madeline looked up toward the sound of their voices, but still saw absolutely nothing.
“It’s pitch-black out here. We can’t see.” They giggled some more.
Madeline wanted to scream her fury. “Neither can we!” They were acting like fumbling around in the dark was fun.
It was far from fun. It was a house of horrors, with no exit. A living volcano was building inside Madeline; rage was the red-hot lava. She was set to explode.
“What’s going on?” Sterling yelled.
“We don’t know,” the woman said.
“Can you open the doors?”
“I don’t know. Hang on,” a man replied.
Their muffled voices drifted away and Madeline’s fear hit a whole new level. “Are you there?” Panic burned her throat.
“We can’t open them. We’ll go get help.”
“No! Don’t leave us,” Madeline shrieked.
“We can’t get the doors open. We’ll get help, I promise.”
“Don’t go.” A sob burst from Madeline’s throat.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Sterling touched her shoulder and gasping, she shot backward, slamming against the wall.
Her chin quivered and she couldn’t fight the terror a second more.
She slipped to the floor, hugged her knees, and burst into tears.
Chapter Three
“I can’t do this anymore. I want a divorce!” Gabrielle Kinsella glared at her husband and saw both confusion and fury in his eyes. Her own fury came in waves. Waves that grew more powerful every time Max avoided the difficult discussions. In spite of that, or maybe because of it, their fights were becoming more frequent.
Twice before, Gabby had made that divorce statement. But each of those times she’d been a little tipsy and he’d laughed it off as the alcohol talking. This time was different. She’d only had three wines.
This time, she wanted him to know just how serious she was.
He reached for her hand but she snapped it away, and clenching her teeth, she stared out over the ship’s railing. Another couple were standing barely four feet from them and when she turned toward them, their shameless ogling gave her a horrid feeling they’d overheard what she’d said. As Gabby glared at them until they shifted their gaze, she silently prayed they hadn’t recognized her. Last thing she needed was to be the subject of tabloid headlines tomorrow morning.
In an attempt to distance herself from prying eyes, she shuffled a few paces away, pressed her hips to the top rail, and gazed across the Pacific Ocean.
The horizon was a potpourri of citrus colors as the golden sun merged into the indigo water. Its final gasp of the day was postcard perfect—one that several couples on the top exercise deck around them seemed to be enjoying. Not her and Max though. Not with twelve days of bickering coming to a head.
Max had demanded they take this vacation, insisting they needed the time to patch their marriage together. He’d said it was a chance to put their ongoing turmoil behind them and start afresh, and he’d proposed it like the fourteen-day cruise was some kind of miracle potion designed to shed years of frustration and breathe new life into their marriage.
It hadn’t.
Max let a group of joggers run past before easing into the railing beside her. “Come on, Gabby. You don’t mean that.” His gloomy nuisance was laced with dismay. Like he thought this fight was a mere bump in the road.
It wasn’t just a bump. It was Mount Vesuvius, set to explode.
“Yes I do. You’ve changed.”
The vein in his neck pulsed. “Changed? From when we first met. Is that what you mean? That was twenty years ago. Of course I’ve changed.”
Gabby huffed. “I mean now . . . lately. Since. . .” She let the sentence hang. It was an argument that’d been plaguing them ever since he’d decided his days as a stay-at-home dad were over and that he wanted to start a personal training business. But the kids still needed him. If anything, they needed supervision even more now that they were fifteen and thirteen. He needed to be home with them, not gallivanting around with women half his age.
“Go on . . . you can say it,” he said. “Since I started Maximum Fitness. Is that when I changed?”
Although he’d been training for two years, Gabby had never thought he’d follow through with his ludicrous business plans. But he had, and it wasn’t until he’d started securing clients that she’d realized just how serious he was. “Yes, exactly,” she said. “And you know it. You’re never home anymore.”
“And?” Max had an infuriating way of remaining impossibly calm when they fought. While she wanted to scream at him till her throat hurt, he became more passive and composed. They were opposites like that. Too far opposite.
As usual, Max waited for her response with dogged silence that left her no choice but to answer.
“Just that,” she snapped. “Before you started this . . . this thing, I’d come home and we’d all sit down to dinner together. Like a proper family. Now I never know when you’ll be home.”
“Do you realize how hypocritical you are?” He threw his hands out like he was catching a ball. “For ten years, the kids and I have been waiting for you to come home.”
She spun to face him dead on; her teeth clenched so tight her jaw trembled. Gabby jabbed her long red nail at his chest. “Don’t you put this on me!”
He made a show of inhaling a deep sigh and she wanted to slap him. “But it is on you. We made a decision that I’d stay home to raise the kids while you chased your career. I made sacrifices.”
Frustration had her trembling. “You made sacrifices.” Gabby had made the biggest sacrifice any woman could make. She’d given up everything to have Max’s children. She’d never imagined falling in love. But she had. She’d never imagined getting married. But she’d done that too. But the one thing she never ever wanted was to have children. Not after her mother had obliterated her happy family fantasy with her deathbed confession.
Happy families were fictitious. A lie.
But as a woman, it was what she was supposed to do. To be a mom.
To prove her love and commitment to her husband.
Spinning toward the ocean, she inhaled the salty air in an attempt to stem the fury coursing through her.
The sound of sniggering had Gabby glaring at the couple along the railing. They were making amateur attempts at sneaking glances at her and Max. It took several infuriating seconds before the pair retreated from Gabby’s dagger eyes.
“Gabby, we’ve talked about this.” Max leaned into the railing at her side. “It’s time for me to return to work. I want to do this. I like it. I’m helping people again.”
“Exactly, and it’s all you care about. Your clients.” Your young, beautiful clients. She slapped that thought away before she blurted it out.
“You know that’s not true. The kids are the world to me, just like you are.”
She spun to him. “Last month, you were out ten weeknights. School nights, Max. When you should’ve been home with the kids.”
Max lurched back, his eyes finally flaring with emotion. “You counted!”
“Of course. I needed a tally, because I don’t think you understand.”
“Wow. Your hypocris
y is appalling. You have no idea how much of your children’s lives you’ve missed pursuing your stupid career.”
She gasped. “You didn’t mind my stupid career when you purchased that brand-new Mercedes. Or your stupid limited-edition Indian motorbike.”
“It’s not about the money, Gabby, and you know it.”
“Oh my God, you’re so frustrating.” She turned to the ocean again and clutched the railing. Gabby let out a long, slow breath and her eyes snagged on a plane positioned low in the sky. Way too low.
A weird silence had engulfed the air.
She cocked her head. Huh, the music has stopped. Leaving the railing, she strode across the fake-grass running track and looked down to the pool deck below. Along with their instruments, the band’s colorful flashing lights had stopped too. The giant screen that’d been playing the annoying Dumbo movie was now blank. Both above-ground spas had stopped bubbling and the kids’ water park was no longer squirting streams of water into the air. The lights over the bar were off and every light along the running track had gone out too.
A woman emitted a blood-curdling scream and Gabby searched the hundred or so people below for the source of the cries. She found the woman amongst the crowd, kneeling beside an elderly man who lay sprawled on the floor and looked to be unconscious.
“Look at that plane,” someone called out behind her.
Gabby turned back toward the ocean and when she caught sight of the plane again her stomach sank. It was much lower than when she’d first seen it. It wasn’t a huge plane—maybe one of the island hoppers she’d seen in Hawaii. But its angle was all wrong. The pilot should be pulling it up, aiming skyward. But the plane was doing the opposite.
A prickle of excitement teased her journalistic cravings. Her heartbeat upped a tempo. Her senses heightened as she tried to memorize every tiny aspect of what she was witnessing.
Identifying a drop of extraordinary in an ocean of boring was Gabby’s expertise. She was good at her job. Better than good. Her numerous journalism awards proved that.
Her heart beat faster. Something else is wrong. I can’t hear the plane’s engines.
All she heard was the whistling wind as the wings cut through the air. It wasn’t a massive jet airliner, but she’d flown in enough planes to know there would be about seventy passengers on that aircraft. Gabby could picture their panic-stricken faces. She imagined the pilot’s frantic efforts to pull it up. She visualized people screaming. People crying. People praying.
A crowd had gathered at the ship’s railing, looking out to the aircraft. Some had their phones out, but the way they were jabbing at the buttons, it seemed they weren’t working.
The cockpit windshield glinted in the setting sun, creating an eerie beam of light that pointed right at her. Gabby’s thumping heart skipped a beat. None of the plane’s windows radiated any light. Those passengers were in the dark. Something was terribly wrong and she was about to have a front-row seat to a story that could launch her career to the next level.
Gabby plucked her phone from her pocket. Jabbed the buttons. It was dead. “Shit!”
She turned to Max. “Give me your phone.”
He fumbled in his pocket, and shoved the phone at her.
She prodded the buttons. It too was dead.
Gabby handed it back to him, but his gaze remained glued to the horizon. The anger that’d been blazing in his eyes moments ago was gone, replaced instead with something else . . . fear.
She spun back to the plane. Alarm zipped up her spine. Her momentary excitement over a headlining story vanished. “Jesus! It’s going to crash right into us.”
“Shit!” Max clutched her wrist. “I think you’re right.”
As if choreographed, the surrounding crowd hit panic mode in the exact same instant. Women screamed. So did men. Many ran for their lives. Just as many bolted toward the railing.
The plane was barely half a mile out.
“Pull up. Pull up,” Max shouted.
“It’s a terrorist,” someone yelled.
“Suicide bomber,” another screamed.
Pandemonium broke out. People scattered in all directions. Some remained at the railing, either too shocked or too stupid to move.
A quarter mile out.
Max yanked her forward. “Run.” They dodged other passengers as they sprinted along the running track. Unable to tear her eyes away, she willed the plane’s nose to angle upward. It didn’t.
Two hundred yards.
Things seemed to move in two speeds, all at once both lightning fast and at a crawl. Her gaze snapped from one point to another. She wanted to absorb it all. Every critical detail. But at the same time, she wanted to wish it all away.
One hundred yards.
Gabby liked being close to the action, but this was too close. Way too close. Every aspect was frightfully real.
Terrified passengers running and screaming.
Little kids being trampled by the frantic mob.
The white trail behind the plane’s wings as it torpedoed right at them.
The fear in her husband’s chocolate-brown eyes.
The plane’s angle shifted slightly, the right wing lower, but it was still on a collision course with the ship. With them. Her mind slammed to those images of the 9/11 planes that’d been playing on the airwaves for over two decades.
She was about to be dead-center in the middle of the biggest news story of her career and her damn phone was dead.
“Run, Gabby! Run!”
The plane hit the ocean, right wing first. An explosion of water arced up over the aircraft. The plane cartwheeled. It spun in the air. It bounced off the water again; flipping upright so the nose was pointing at the sky.
Then it slammed into the ship.
The sound was horrendous—a freight train crashing into solid metal.
An engine sheared off, and Max tackled her to the ground as the spinning projectile took out the running deck behind them. It careened through the party area below, crushing dozens of people as it skidded across the dance floor and disappeared over the other side of the ship.
Chunks of wreckage crashed into the deck, some as big as cars, some the size of suitcases.
Some were suitcases.
A plane seat slammed into a deck chair barely two inches from Gabby’s feet. The person still buckled in the seat was crushed with a sickening crunch. She snapped her eyes away, hoping that horror was the worst she was going to see.
Yet at the same time, she knew it was just the beginning.
An explosion erupted deep in the bowels of the ship, and the giant mirror behind the bar burst outward. The barmaid’s bloody corpse hit the floorboards; hundreds of tiny shards of glass disfigured her pretty face.
It all happened so quickly. Nobody had time to move.
A moment of stunned silence settled on the party deck.
A heartbeat later, chaos broke out.
Max shifted sideways, and Gabby eased up onto her knees and stared at the carnage.
People were screaming.
People were running.
People were frozen, crippled with shock.
Gabby had seen bloody aftermaths before. But they’d been so different. They’d been five minutes, ten minutes, sometimes hours after the event. Never had she witnessed the initial impact. As her eyes bounced from one bloody body to the next, her mind bounced from the before to the after.
Beautiful young couples dancing. Mangled and broken limbs.
People laughing and sipping cocktails in the spa. Entire spa obliterated.
Family of five eating ice cream. One small girl remaining with her ice cream upended on the floor.
It was like flipping cards on a tarot deck, only every second card was Death.
Gabby spun her gaze ocean side. Through a giant hole in the railing, she watched a plane’s wing disappear. A spout of water signified its demise and seconds later, two bodies floated to the surface. One was a child; no bigger than her son.
A
thought hit her with brutal clarity. A beehive exploded in her stomach. She shot her eyes to Max.
Her heart thumped so thick in her throat she could barely speak. “Where are the kids?”
Chapter Four
Zon Woodrow had no idea what the fuck everyone was doin’. When the lights had gone out earlier, people had started screaming, like the darkness was out to get ’em or something. Then there was the huge bang. One second, the casino had been a buzz of glowin’ lights and annoying music; next second, people were ducking for cover and screamin’ even more.
Idiots had even started running, but they were on a ship. Not like there was anywhere to go. And with the poker hand he had, Zon wasn’t goin’ nowhere. The bang was probably a drinks cart fallin’ over. Now that’d be a reason to scream.
Besides, if it was serious, there’d be sirens and stuff. People were so dramatic.
The card dealer was an Asian woman, and she was about the size of his loudmouthed twelve-year-old step-sister. Not that she was really his sister. His mom had nicked off when Zon was nine and returned seven years later with six-year-old Bitchface in tow. Zon had been forced to accept her as kin.
Like fuck. She weren’t no sister to him. Never would be neither.
Now there was another Bitchface in front of him, and she’d stopped dealing right when he was about to be hit with his next card. She’d even put the fuckin’ deck back in the card holder and was glancing around at the other dealers with a stupid look on her face.
“Oy.” Zon thumped his fist onto the poker table, making the chips on the green felt jump. “What the fuck’re ya doing?”
Bitchface slipped back another step. “Sir, I’m sorry, but we have to stop.”
“Like hell. I was winnin’, you bitch.” Although he could barely see, he peeked at his cards again. Ace, king, jack and a ten. All in spades. For the first time in his life, he was one card away from a royal flush. All he needed was the queen of spades. He was about to win big time. It was his lucky fucking day.
Waves of Fate | Book 1 | First Fate Page 3
