My Secret to Tell

by Natalie D. Richards

  They’re coming back.

  Deacon hauls himself into the boat, and I hear the soft snick of a pocketknife. Thorpe says his name like it’s a filthy word, but Deacon doesn’t answer. He cuts the rope and starts the engine. Thorpe’s feet are pounding closer. I’m sure he’ll leap from the dock, land right on top of me. But then Deacon opens the throttle wide, and the skiff surges with a whine.

  We are flying.

  I stay on the floor of the boat for what seems like hours, fixated on the layer of grimy water and God-knows-what-else beneath me. Deacon weaves in and out, heading around boats or little marshy bits. I don’t know. I don’t care.

  Wet as I am, I can still feel the filth on the bottom of the boat. I imagine it soaking through my clothes, right into my skin. I push the thought away and focus on the drone of the engine instead. The motion of the ride and my pumping adrenaline roll through my belly until I’m half sick.

  I don’t know where Deacon is heading, but at some point, he slows down. The scream of the engine drones to a soft purr, and I open my eyes, willing my stomach to settle.

  A star-dotted sky rolls above me. I smell trees and the earthy tang of waveless water. He took us into an inlet. I wouldn’t know one from the other, so I don’t bother to ask for particulars. The Carolina coast is a maze of shallow shoals and barrier islands. It’s not a hard place to stay hidden.

  “Can I sit up?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Deacon says, looking down. “God, I’m sorry. Yes.”

  He slows the boat even further and helps me. I feel stiff and half-frozen, and the air is twice as cold up here. I ease onto a bench seat, hugging my middle. Deacon finds a couple of towels under the driver’s seat, and I do what I can to dry my clothes.

  “We’re safe for the moment,” he says.

  He’s hatless now, and soaked from head to toe. Though he doesn’t have a towel, he’s not shivering like me. He finds a sweatshirt down there too. I peel off mine and put the dryer option on. It’s still cold but so much better.

  Deacon stops the boat in a marshy patch, grass rising four feet high on both sides. We bob gently in the water, but he keeps the engine at an idle, not dropping anchor.

  “The phone was in my pocket,” he says. He pulls it out, and I can tell it’s trashed by his expression alone. “I’m sorry, Emmie.”

  My shoulders sag, but he touches my wrist, pulls me over to the driver’s seat. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got you, right? You’ll have a plan before you know it.”

  Sure. I’ll plan us right out of this. Thing is, Deacon’s looking at me like that’s exactly what I’ll do. I love him so much in this second that it physically hurts. Because I don’t know what to do, but he still believes in me.

  I sniff, trying to find strength. “Where are we? Can we get to Emerald Isle? To that Coast Guard station?”

  He shakes his head. “North of Beaufort. Near Harker’s Island. Nowhere near enough gas for Emerald Isle. I’m not sure we’d make it to Morehead City.”

  My laugh is humorless. “Of course we’re low on gas. Is there an iceberg nearby? Seems like a fine time to bump into one.”

  Deacon grins. “We could easily make it back to the old Carmine place. My bike’s still there.”

  My shoulders hunch, the wind blowing like January through my wet hair. “There’s no phone.”

  “I’ll admit, I’m not crazy about it anyway,” he says. “It’s closer to Beaufort than I’d like. I’d rather stay out of the sheriff’s jurisdiction until we have help.”

  I adjust on the vinyl seat. “Could we shoot flares?”

  Deacon chews his bottom lip. “I don’t know. I’m sure Thorpe’s looking for us. Not exactly the guy I want rescuing us.”

  “Agreed.” I shudder, looking around. Thinking of Thorpe and Charlie in the cabin. “I’m pretty sure they know you have that bag. Whatever it is, they want it pretty bad.”

  “That’s because it’s proof that they’re up to something. Falsified passports for ex-cons? I’m thinking that alone would be really serious jail time for both of them.”

  Deacon adjusts on the seat, pulling the strap over his head. He sets the bag on my lap and unzips it. I flip through it too, looking at the contents under the faint dashboard lights on the boat. Maps and a list of coordinates with dates and ticks lined down the right margin of the page.

  “They’ve got red dots all over this map,” he says. “Pencil lines too. Wonder if they’re tracking Coast Guard patrol routes?”

  “Makes sense, I guess,” I say, feeling over the back of the backpack. There’s something hard and rectangular in there. My fingers brush the tag on the inside, but something catches my finger. A tiny zipper head, buried in neoprene folds. I push the folds apart and run my finger along the smooth teeth.

  “I found something,” I say, working out the head of the zipper and tugging it free. The whole lining unzips, revealing another black vinyl layer behind that.

  “Is that the waterproofing?” Deacon asks.

  “I don’t think so.” I peel the Velcro loose on the next layer. Then I pull it back, finding a slim plastic box with two latches. It rattles when I take it out, making me think of my old bead organizer from my bracelet-making phase in junior high school. Sturdy clasps for such a cheap-looking box.

  I pull it open. There are close to thirty compartments inside, and every single one has a rock or two. Maybe more. It’s hard to count them in the low lighting.

  “Deacon, is that…is it crack?”

  He frowns, looks confused. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly a specialist.”

  I shift the box closer to the dashboard lights to get a closer look. The rocks vary in size—garden peas to lima beans—and they’re all sort of translucent. Glassy.

  “I don’t think crack is clear like that,” I say. “Is it?”

  Deacon leans in closer to the box. The rocks are organized by size, smallest to largest. There are numbers etched on the sides, I think.

  “I have no clue what the hell we’re looking at,” he says.

  I tilt the box until I can see the numbers better: ¾–1½, 1½–3. It goes on this way up to 5–6, and there are tiny letters on the side, so small I can’t make them out.

  “What are those letters?” I ask.

  Deacon squints and shifts the box this way and that. He shakes his head, carefully handing it back. “Maybe c-f? Or c-t?”

  Ct?

  I bite my lip and try to think. And it hits me like a sledgehammer. Carat.

  “Diamonds.” The word comes out like a sigh. Like I barely believe it’s true, and I don’t. Because it can’t be. But I look again, and it is. “Deacon, these are uncut diamonds. They’re smuggling diamonds.”

  He seems tempted to argue, but then his gaze roves the box again before meeting mine. The fear I see there is undoubtedly a reflection of my own.

  He swallows hard, and I can hear the lump that tries to stop him. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit,” Deacon says again. I just nod this time, because I’m trying to do the math. Mom had a two-carat diamond engagement ring when she and Dad were married. She kept it after the separation but commented more than once that she was a sentimental fool for letting fifteen thousand dollars sit in a dish on her dresser.

  “Emmie, do you have any idea how much all this might be worth?”

  I glance over the box, and my mental calculator goes up in smoke. A guesstimate doesn’t matter really. I feel the blood drain out of my face. “A whole, whole lot.”

  • • •

  We’re bobbing along in the reeds, trying to figure out what to do. Staying out here is too dangerous. Running out of gas and relying on whoever might be out in these waters at two in the morning sounds like an equally bad idea.

  Deacon suggests breaking into an empty rental on Harker’s Island,
but I don’t like it. “We are not adding breaking and entering to the list of crimes we’re committing.”

  “We’re not committing a crime. We have proof of a crime.”

  “We have a box of diamonds that we technically stole,” I say. “You have an outstanding warrant, and I’m already in trouble for helping you. Now we show up—after running from the sheriff, mind you—with this?”

  “It’s the truth,” Deke says.

  I rub my shaking hands over my eyes. “I don’t know that the truth is enough this time. People are going to see what they want to see. We need somebody we can trust.”

  “We need Joel,” he says. “Or your parents. Or police who aren’t being paid.”

  Joel would be better. My mom called the sheriff on me tonight. Not sure I’d list her among those I trust to help right now—but desperate times. I glance over at the dark sliver of land dotted with the occasional light. “Are there any pay phones on Harker’s Island?”

  “Doubtful there are any phones at all,” Deacon says with a scoff, only half joking. “Just suspicious Down-Easters and the ferry to Cape Lookout. Perry’s family lives on Harker’s Island. I mean, the chances are slim…”

  “With the way our luck is going, we’ll end up in Perry’s dad’s living room. No thanks.” I scan the northeast horizon, where the lighthouse should be. There’s nothing for a second. Two seconds. Then the light comes, bright white and whirling toward us. It rotates past as suddenly as it arrived.

  “Does the lighthouse have phones?” I ask.

  “No. But it will in the morning. Tourist phones.” Deacon perks up and leans forward, and the boat shifts. “We can hunker down there until dawn. We’ll snag a tourist phone and call Joel. We should still have enough gas to get back to the Carmine place. Worst-case scenario, we can claim an emergency and have the park service that runs the ferries take us back to their office. We can call the state police from there.”

  “Maybe we could just go there now?” I ask, eager to be done with this backpack.

  “They’re not staffed overnight, and we could run into the police. It’s only a few hours until sunrise.”

  I shiver, watching the light swirl past again. The wind kicks a wave underneath us, and the boat bobbles. “The lighthouse is outside of Perry’s jurisdiction, right? Is it patrolled?”

  “Not overnight, I don’t think.”

  “Would Thorpe look for us there?”

  “Look for us in a tourist trap?” he asks. “Seems like the last place we’d go. Thorpe will expect us to get help. Or to run.”

  I hunch over, still hugging myself. “This is running, isn’t it?”

  “This isn’t running,” Deacon says. “It’s hiding.”

  It feels like both, but I nod anyway, and Deacon puts the boat in gear.

  Cape Lookout is a typical barrier island, scrubby trees and sand crowned with a single slender lighthouse. That lighthouse is all I can see at first, black-and-white diamonds trailing up its sides. It hasn’t been manned since the fifties. Back then, ships depended on the lighthouse to warn them away from the deceptive shallows of the sound. Now, it’s little more than a tourist attraction—a North Carolina icon for key chains and refrigerator magnets.

  Still, I feel safe under its watchful eye as Deacon motors us closer. We bring the skiff right up to the beach on the sound side of the island. It’s imposing tonight, the diamond pattern too stark against the black sky. It’s quiet on this side. You can hear the wind moving through the yaupon and switchgrass.

  I glance up at the top of the lighthouse, which is dark, dark, dark. Then light. It rotates into view, impossibly bright and strong, casting a beam over our heads and into the water. Then it’s gone, rotating around once more. I turn away, trying to tune out the pins and needles rolling up my ribs.

  “Tourists will start showing up as soon as the sun rises.” Deacon slips from his Southern drawl into a Midwestern twang. “Got to get those shells, don’t-cha know?”

  I laugh as Deke hops into the water, looking like a modern-day pirate as he hauls out the front anchor. I follow after him—less swashbuckler, more drunk puppy—sloshing through the water in my soggy sweatpants. I wobble, almost losing a flip-flop, plunging my arm into the dark water to retrieve it.

  Deke laughs at me from the shore, so I chuck my wayward shoe at him. “Laugh all you want. Next time we’re at Clawson’s, you can talk about who’s clumsy as I wipe the floor with you at the dartboard.”

  Deacon hauls the rope up the beach, securing it around the trunk of a shrub. “I still say you put a hex on the darts.”

  “You have crap aim. Stop making excuses.”

  I collect my shoes in one hand, letting my toes press into the cool, damp sand. Maybe three hundred yards down the beach, there’s a dock where the ferries drop off tourists to view the lighthouse. I’m guessing that’s where we’re headed. Deacon pulls the zippers shut on the backpack and slings it over his shoulder.

  “This feels like a horrible idea,” I say with a glance at the bag.

  “Well, I can’t leave it here, can I?”

  Probably not, but I still hate it. I force myself to look at the island instead. You can hear the faint roar of the ocean on the other side, but this side is just cicada song, rising and falling in a different kind of wave. I frown at the barren docks.

  “When do you think the first boat will come?”

  He shrugs, falling into step beside me as we head toward the walkway that cuts across the island. “Seven? There’ll be private boats earlier than that. We’ll be able to steal a phone before you know it. Try to relax.”

  “I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of relaxing. And we’re not stealing a phone.”

  He shoulders into me. “We can say ‘borrowing’ if you like that better.”

  “Let’s just keep walking. If we walk, I don’t have to think about the black-market diamonds strapped to your back.”

  “If we stop, I could pick one out for you,” Deke offers. At my look, he laughs. “Kidding!”

  “I know. It’s just…they almost got away with this, Deke,” I say, the wind blowing my damn hair across my face. I push it back. “How are you so calm with that?”

  “Because they aren’t getting away with it now.” His mouth hardens, his cheekbones going extra sharp under the moonlight. “They won’t leave without this bag, and they won’t find us here. They’ll get caught. And I won’t pay for what they did to my dad.”

  I stop and look at him, seeing the anger he’d been missing for so long. “You thought you were going to go down for this, didn’t you? And you accepted that.”

  He shrugs. “I wouldn’t say I accepted it. I obviously chose to dodge Perry. I’ve been living on the run or whatever.”

  I tsk, looking up at the lighthouse as we pass. “It’s lucky you know me. Joel’s going to retire eventually, and you’re obviously going to need lawyers in your life.”

  “I’m still not convinced you’re going to be a lawyer.”

  “Joel thinks I have a good shot at the prelaw program.” We’re halfway across the island, and you can hear the Atlantic now, waves curling in and out, slave to the moon above.

  “You have a shot at anything you want. I just think you’ll come to your good senses.”

  “I seem to be lacking in good sense these days,” I say, smirking at him.

  “Too true. Running from the law. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “Me either.” I pause to look up at the lighthouse. It’s strange being close to it, seeing the cracked exterior and faded paint. Still, it’s an imposing thing, this black-and-white sentry standing guard in the darkness.

  The wind is up on the ocean side. It cuts through my wet clothes the second we hit the sand. I cross my arms over my chest and pull up the hood on my sweatshirt.

  “You’re cold,” Deke says, putting
an arm around me. “We can go back.”

  “No, I like it here.”

  The sea is pretty at night, dark waves lapping at the untouched sand. The sky’s just starting to lighten, the coming dawn veiling the stars. God, my mom is probably worried sick, but there’s no helping that now. I nod toward a disrupted area on the sand.

  “That could be a turtle nest, you know.”

  He smiles at me. “Then it’s a good thing we don’t have a flashlight, yeah?”

  I squeeze his hand and grin. “What are you going to do when you’re free? When this is all just a bad memory?”

  Deacon stops, his expression turning somber. “You asked me what would happen after this, and I didn’t answer you.”

  Given his look, I’m not sure I want him to answer now.

  His brows pull together, and my stomach tenses. If he busts out any version of a “you’d be better off without me” speech, I will smack him.

  I start first. “What’s going on?”

  He shakes his head a little and steps closer. “You do realize this is not a match made in heaven, right? I mean I’m—” Deacon pauses, watching me carefully. “Okay, I can see by your face I’m saying this badly.”

  “Then say it better.” My words come out pointy. “Because this feels like a ‘we should be friends’ talk, and frankly, Deke, if you wanted to be friends, you shouldn’t have kissed me. You should have just left it alone.”

  “Hey.” He reaches for my shoulder and sighs when I pull away. “I wanted to kiss you. I told you I wanted to kiss you for a while. But you’ve wanted to kiss me for a lot longer.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “So it’s a contest? Who wanted who longer?”

  “No, it’s…” Deke looks skyward. “Man, I’m so bad at this. I just think you’ve got me on a pedestal, and I’m not going to live up to the hype.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” I snort and push my windblown hair behind my ears. “You can spare us both this awkward talk. I get it.”

  “No, you definitely don’t,” Deacon says. I start walking, and he growls behind me. “Damn it, Emmie, would you stop and let me get this out?”