The sway of the ship had intensified so much it was difficult not to bounce off the walls.
Since day one of the cruise, she’d been cursing about their cabins being on the lowest deck. The kids were too old to be sharing a cabin with them but Max had insisted they have adjoining rooms, so he’d booked the cheapest rooms available . . . on the lowest level, right in the middle of the ship. Their rooms didn’t even have a window.
They entered a corridor that was pitch-black, and the flickering of her vanilla-scented candle created ghostly shadows that raised the hairs on her neck and had a shiver creeping up her spine. Gabby hated that she was spooked. She’d always prided herself on her level-headedness. That skill alone had allowed her to access many bloody massacres that’d stopped other reporters at the door.
Max called out the room numbers as they strode past the doors. “Four thousand and seventy-four . . . four thousand and seventy-six . . . four thousand and eighty-two. Stop!” He spun to her.
Her heart lurched at the fear in his eyes. “What?”
“Smoke! Do you smell it?”
She inhaled. “Shit. Yes I do. Oh my God.” Her brain scrambled. Unexpected fire anywhere was not good. Fire on a ship was a major catastrophe. It made finding the kids even more urgent. “We have to keep going.”
Max clenched and unclenched his jaw, his eyes darted left and right. His uncertainty was tangible.
She went to push past him, but he stopped her. “Why haven’t the sprinklers triggered?”
“Must’ve been affected by the EMP.”
“By what?”
She wanted to shake his shoulders, to yell at him, to get it through his head that they didn’t have time for this shit. Instead, clenching her fist, she said, “I heard the crew say we were hit by an EMP strike. It’s destroyed all the power.” Confusion drilled across his face and she huffed. “Look, if you’re scared, I’ll go first.”
His jaw dropped. His eyes bulged. “I’m not scared, Gabby. I’m cautious.”
“We can be cautious once we have the kids.” She pushed past him and as she strode along the corridor, shielding her candle, his feet stomped to catch up behind her. A glow ahead caught her eye and she increased her pace.
The smoke intensified. It stung her eyes. A foul taste lacerated her throat. Her foot fell into nothingness.
Screaming, she dropped into the void. Her candle went flying.
Max clutched her wrist, saving her fall.
Her body slammed against mangled walls, punching the wind out of her. The chocolates spilled from her pockets.
Shredded metal clawed at her legs.
“Gabby!” Max’s voice was shrill, unhinged. “Gabby! Are you okay?”
Gasping for breath and dangling by just one hand, she stared wide-eyed at the giant chasm before her. It was a disaster zone—equal parts plane wreckage and destroyed cabins. Fires dotted the enormous cavern. A central column flickered with flames providing enough light that on the other side she could see a cross section of at least four decks.
An enormous area of their deck had caved in.
A horrifying thought shot through her like venom.
Their cabin could be gone.
Chapter Twelve
As water lapped at Gunner’s feet his mind skidded through all possible scenarios that could’ve caused the flooding. Burst water mains. Pierced holding tanks. Drinking fountains damaged.
Ruptured hull.
That last thought was horrific. None of his training had prepared him for a situation like this. Major catastrophes on cruise ships weren’t unheard of. Costa Concordia. Titanic. But considering the thousands of cruise ships touring the world on any given day, incidents were extremely minimal.
Gunner was dead center in the middle of a cruise ship disaster that would make the history books. He just hoped that both he and his ship would fare well in the retelling of the Rose of the Sea disaster in the years to come.
He stepped through the double doors into a holding area that was stacked to roof height with cubes of recyclable rubbish. Cans. Bottles. Cardboard. Paper.
If the fire was in there, the whole place would’ve disintegrated in minutes. Confident it wasn’t, Gunner sloshed through the water to another set of fire-safety doors.
Beyond this doorway was a small holding room that had the sole purpose of keeping the engine noise contained. He pushed through, stepping over the elevated threshold. Water streamed through the tiny gap in the next set of doors.
Thankfully, the pressurized spout was only knee high.
Out of nowhere an image of his daughter spilled into his mind. She was playing in knee-deep water in a blow-up pool. Her smile radiated in the sunshine. Starbursts of light glimmered off the rhinestones on her tiny bathing costume. He could still hear her giggling as she stomped around, splashing water over the sides. Gunner squeezed his eyes shut and his knees just about buckled beneath him. I’m coming home to you, baby girl. You and your beautiful mamma. I promise.
Swiping that image away, he forced bulletproof bravado into his voice. “Okay, this is it.” He met Cloe’s gaze, then Quinn’s. Their jaws were set as if they were determined to do what had to be done, yet their wide eyes betrayed their semblance of courageousness. “It’s not too late to change your minds.”
“We know, sir.” Quinn said. “If this all goes to shit, being next to you is exactly where we should be, right, love?”
Cloe gave her husband a lopsided grin and reached for his hand. “Exactly.”
Gunner repositioned the fire extinguisher beneath his elbow and pulled the pin. Cloe and Quinn followed his lead. “Just aim the nozzle at the fire and squeeze here.” He indicated to the trigger.
“Yes, Captain,” they said in unison.
Gunner nudged the door open with his boot and a flood of water spilled into the holding space. It was too dark to see inside. But that was a good thing. It confirmed there was no fire immediately beyond the doorway. “Here we go.”
He kicked the door open, stepped over the elevated threshold and sloshed through the knee-deep water. The stench was horrific. Gunner gagged and swallowed hard, forcing back bitter bile. Smoke, thick and black, filled the air. It reeked. Bitter and corrosive. Gunner cursed the strip lighting that illuminated the room with a green haze.
Water rained upon them and a wobbly sigh burst from his throat. “Thank God! The water’s from the sprinkler system.”
“And not the ocean, you mean?” Quinn’s nervous grin was justified.
“Exactly.” Gunner’s eyes adjusted to the dimness and he got a visual of something that would haunt him forever.
A body slumped at a computer console with smoke wafting from his scorched orange overalls. The skin on his face and hands were a sickening combination of red raw, charred black, and peeling chunks.
Flames licked at the monitors and what looked like a series of clipboards. Gunner blasted them with the extinguisher.
With that done, Gunner cringed as he searched for a pulse on the man’s neck. There wasn’t one.
Barely four feet away was another body. “Jesus Christ!” Gunner searched his memory, trying to recall how many crew would be in this area. Best guess was twenty. He hoped it was less.
“What happened here?” The plaid mask failed to hide the horror stamped on Cloe’s face.
“Looks like a flash fire.” Gunner confirmed the second mechanic was dead too. “There must’ve been a gas leak. The superheated air would’ve killed them almost instantly.”
He dashed to another small fire and extinguished it too. Continuing farther into the engine room, within a hundred feet he confirmed twelve dead and had to put out several small fires, each of which required just a short blast from his extinguisher.
These ships were built to withstand combustion. Humans, however, were not.
The blast zone was massive, carving a hole that spanned three decks in height and was big enough to swallow ten dump trucks.
A giant bank of tubular pipes that thr
eaded from a deck below right up through to the ceiling had been ripped to shreds. Colorful wiring spewed from the pipes that fed the electricity into the ship. The EMP was like a million-volt lightning strike overloading the circuit, and the entire cabling system had exploded.
Every single piece of electronic equipment on the ship had been incapacitated in a nanosecond.
In 2013, an engine fire had rendered the Carnival Triumph cruise ship powerless and without propulsion, which had caused five days of havoc for more than four thousand passengers as the ship was towed to shore. After that incident, Blue Earth Cruise Lines, that owned twenty-two ships, including Rose of the Sea, declared that their fleet would each have an additional engine installed. But it wasn’t that easy. A new engine required a large footprint, which on a cruise ship was a precious commodity. Then, once it was installed, it required duplicate wiring throughout the entire ship. All that required space, time, manpower, and billions of dollars.
Rose of the Sea wasn’t slated for her additional engine though. In fact, she had never been scheduled to receive it at all. She’d served the company for twenty-five years and had served well, but her cruising life was nearly over. It was impossible to believe that her unblemished history was now obliterated.
Shaking his head, Gunner studied several giant pieces of equipment that were spewing thick black liquid from burst piping into the knee-deep water. “Careful you don’t slip.”
Gunner sloshed past a bank of computers. Every one of the charred and melted monitors were dead.
A flickering light in the distance caught his attention, and he headed for it.
Seconds later, he saw a visual that had his brain splitting in two.
The plane wreck.
It appeared like an apparition through the smoke.
The cockpit had taken the full brunt of the impact and had fully concertinaed upon itself. What remained of the plane’s fuselage was upright, a streak of white against a charred black background. Every window was shattered. The plane’s impact had been curtailed when it had somersaulted in the water before ploughing into the ship. If it had hit full-on, it would’ve been the equivalent to being hit by a loaded torpedo. He shook his head, trying to free that shocking thought from his brain.
His eyes whiplashed to one of the plane’s shattered windows. A passenger was still there, slumped in the seat. “Oh, shit!” Gunner wanted to punch himself. He’d been so consumed with his ship’s fatalities that he hadn’t stopped to consider the aircraft’s casualties.
As Gunner scrambled over charred wreckage and indistinguishable chunks that were once part of the well-maintained equipment of the engine room, he braced for another round of horrific carnage inside the plane.
The sounds of water pouring from the sprinklers and the odd hiss when it hit a hot surface added a strange staccato to the groans and creaks from both the plane wreck and Rose of the Sea.
He entered the fuselage through the gaping hole where the wing had been. Miraculously, some of the chairs were intact, but his brain screamed at him to be realistic.
No one could have survived that crash.
Hauling himself from one seat to the next was like climbing a mountain. The seats were all horizontal and some bodies were still strapped in, like a horror ride at a theme park. Except nobody got off at the end.
“Hello, is anyone alive? Hello?” His voice echoed about the eerie void as his phone light streamed through the smoke like an alien’s eye, seeking life amongst the mounting death toll.
“Is anyone alive?” Quinn and Cloe joined the search and together, the three of them trawled what was left of the wreckage.
Each time Gunner checked for a pulse on a charred corpse, he held his breath and prayed he’d be able to wipe the sickening stench from his memory.
It seemed an eternity before he’d confirmed there were no plane survivors.
With that done, he exited the plane’s carcass and, jumping onto a pile of debris, he turned his attention back to his ship.
Above the nose of the plane was a giant chasm. It was a couple of beats before he realized it was the crater he’d initially looked into from Petals restaurant. As he’d estimated, six decks had been impacted by either a direct hit from the plane or the resulting explosion.
Both Quinn and Cloe had black streaks of soot across their faces by the time he rejoined them against the wall. Their shoulders sagged as if bearing the weight of the horror around them. When they looked at him with pleading in their eyes, he felt the pressure to say something reassuring. To convince them they would be okay.
But he couldn’t form words. His brain was as scrambled as the wiring dangling from the ceiling. He gazed across the catastrophic damage. In the distance he spied the water holding reservoir. The entire side had ruptured, like a colossal monster had clawed its way out of the million-liter tank. Farther behind the reservoir, the mutilation to the desalination plant was brutal. Although the discoveries helped explain why there was so much water on this deck, any hope Gunner had of sourcing fresh water from the main water supply was gone.
Despite that major handicap, there was some good news. The hull seemed to be intact. That was a good thing. Maybe the only good thing.
But without the experienced crew, or power, or computers, or complete wiring, there was no hope of starting the engines again.
His empty stomach twisted as a wave of utter hopelessness curled through him.
Rose of the Sea was officially dead in the water.
Chapter Thirteen
Sterling eased in beside Madeline and squeezed her to his chest. His heart pounded in her ear, the beat equally terrifying and therapeutic. She fought the urge to shove him away. Fought it hard. Madeline didn’t do embraces. Not with men. Not ever. And especially not with people she didn’t know.
“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t cry. We’re not going to die.”
Her hands remained at her sides. Her fists curled into rigid balls. “I’m so scared.”
“Me too.” He glided his palms over her back.
Panic was a living, breathing thing, scurrying through her insides and brain like a million spiders. Her mind slammed from those cold days in the dungeon to the dark silence of the elevator. One second, she was with her kidnapper; the next, she was being hugged by a complete stranger.
Professor Flint stunk with a putrid odor. Decaying fish or rotten teeth. When he left the dungeon, the stench remained. It would invade her nostrils. Rot her tongue.
Sterling was nothing like that. His cologne was lovely . . . delicate hints of citrus and spice.
Focusing on his thumping heart, she forced her panic attack down. Unfurling her fists, she did something she hadn’t done in years—she curled her arms around a man. Despite the smoky air, she inhaled deep, breathing in Sterling’s scent that was at once both manly and elegant.
It was the reality check she needed.
She was not alone.
History was not repeating itself.
The worst aspect of her childhood horror wasn’t being imprisoned in a hideous dungeon. It wasn’t the monster who abused her at will. No. The worst part was the endless solitude. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to share her grief or pain with. Nobody to hold.
Nobody.
Solitude had carved away at her sanity. Second by second. Minute by minute. Week by week.
It was why solitary confinement was considered barbaric. Being forced to be alone with nothing but your own thoughts for an extended period of time was the worst kind of hell.
Her current nightmare was very, very different to her last one. Sterling was there. And although he was a stranger, she already felt like he was a friend. She inhaled to the count of five, exhaled, and eased back from him. “Thank you. I’m sorry about that.”
“There’s no need to thank me or say sorry.” He glided his hand down her arm, and when he squeezed his fingers around her palm she squeezed back. It was a brief connection between them, but just like the hug, it was more than she’d allowed any man
to do in a very long time.
“Thank you.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m just glad I’m not alone.”
“Yeah, me too. We’re in this together.”
The ship groaned, reverberating around them. Deep and mournful, like they were trapped in a giant with a bellyache.
“Shit.” Madeline blinked at the blackness around them. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here. There must be another way out.”
Swallowing back the bitter taste of smoke, she reached out to touch the wall, and realized it was the door. She attacked the tiny groove between the doors, desperate to pry them apart with her fingers, but it was useless.
The ship groaned again, like it was warning them to stop. As Madeline glided her fingers inch by inch over the cold metal, her mind yanked back to Professor Flint. He’d told her she’d never escape. He’d told her to stop trying.
Flint had yielded total control over her existence.
Her food and water had been rationed by him. Sometimes she’d go for days without a meal. Her hunger pains had been crippling. But her thoughts that he’d abandoned her were worse.
Not once did she shower or bathe. When she was finally rescued, she was still wearing the same clothes she’d been abducted in.
Flint had also controlled her light. The room had a single bulb that hung from the ceiling like a pregnant spider dangling on a web. Each time he switched it on, the glare was so blinding she could barely open her eyes. But once her eyes did adjust, she was torn between squeezing them shut again and watching his every move.
Shoving that thought from her mind, Madeline shifted her searching from the side wall to the back wall. Nothing but cold metal.
Nothing but blackness.
One day, a mouse had appeared in her dungeon. It’d terrified her at first. But her squeak had been so sweet and delicate . . . the most beautiful sound Madeline had ever heard.
Waves of Fate | Book 1 | First Fate Page 10
