Hunter’s Treasure

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Being lost on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean seemed romantic in the movies, but in all those movies the captains were handsome, capable men, not the drunkard woman I hired.

I should have known better than to venture into the South Pacific on a whim and while this wasn’t my dream, it had become my nightmare.

Trying to focus, I reminded myself that every challenge could be turned into a learning opportunity, but it didn’t work.

The only wisdom I could extract from this particular situation was not to trust strangers, and not to be so cheap the next time I chartered a boat. If there was a next time.

Below deck, I slammed a drawer shut and glared at the mess of clothes, charging cables, books, kitchen tools, towels, broken Christmas lights, and other whatchamacallits now on the floor.

I’d turned this piece-of-shit boat upside down twice and still nothing.

Leaving the galley in chaos, I marched up to the lounge and found Bambi—the halfwit captain I’d hired a month and a half ago—on a chair near the helm.

The small?framed woman with leathery, sun-darkened skin had fallen asleep in the sun.

Eyes closed, her head bobbed from side to side, lolling with the boat’s movement.

Her right arm hung down with the other curled inside her light windbreaker.

“Wake up!” I yelled. She didn’t flinch. “Where’s the GPS? And the satellite phone?”

Bambi mumbled something incoherent.

At the last marina, I caught her trading my solar charger for a small bottle of liquor. I leaned in closer to hear better. “Did you sell them?”

She opened her eyes and squinted at me. “Hi, Sydney,” she said with a crooked smile. Her breath reeked of alcohol. “Whatcha want, babe?” she garbled, sounding exactly like the radio on the boat, and took out a nearly empty bottle from under her shirt.

I grabbed it from her hand, almost pulling Bambi out of her seat along with it.

“What is this?” I made a big show of checking the label on the bottle as if I didn’t already know what it was. “Where’d you get it?”

Soon after we’d sailed from Australia, I’d learned Bambi was a not-so-recovering alcoholic.

She had conveniently forgotten to mention this detail during our interview regarding captaining a sailboat for a three-month journey.

Her face was kind, but battered by weather and sun.

She spoke knowledgeably about the areas where I intended to scatter my father’s ashes on the tropical islands.

Her résumé listed as many years of experience as any other captain I’d met.

But I was a thirty-year-old software engineer, with no self-defense training.

If a man were to attack me on a boat in the middle of nowhere, all I could throw at him would be complicated algorithms and lines of code. Bambi seemed a safer bet.

Turned out, I was wrong. Shocker.

Bambi’s head sagged, and her body started to slide off the chair. I caught her just in time and propped her up, steadying her against the back of her seat. “We agreed you wouldn’t buy any more booze.” I fought to keep my voice even.

After her last bender, Bambi had surrendered her cash willingly and showed me where she had stashed bottles, which I poured out.

At each island, we shopped together for provisions, then a taxi would take us to a peaceful cove.

Bambi would stay in the car with our hired driver while I said goodbye to my father one more time.

Not much booze-buying to be done there. The only other times we’d been separated on the trip were when she had to do whatever captains did to take care of their boats—maintenance or whatever.

I’d used that time to find a place with decent Wi-Fi and reconnect to the life I’d left behind.

It wasn’t that much of a life, really. Still, I needed to check my email and send my friend Tina an “I’m okay” note at every stop or she’d worry.

“Open your eyes, Bambi.” My hands started to shake from anger or nerves (or both) and I inhaled the salt air and slowly let it out. “Tell me the truth. Did you sell my GPS and the phone to get this brandy?”

“It isn’t brandy. It’s rum,” Bambi slurred.

I gritted my teeth. “Answer the question.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe?” My eyes went so big they hurt. “What the hell? How are we supposed to know where we are or where we’re going? The navigation on this stupid tin can of a boat has failed, and you sold our only backup. We have no way to call for help.”

“We’ll be okay. The stars will guide us.” Bambi threw her arm out toward the sky, nearly falling out of her chair again.

“Damn it!” I hurled the glass bottle into the ocean.

A brief wave of regret coursed through me—should I have placed a message inside?

A harsh chuckle escaped me. We were probably goners.

In all my meticulous research I knew that in normal circumstances, a sailboat would have at least one backup GPS device, if not several.

But Bloody Mary was clearly anything but normal.

In retrospect, the boat name should’ve been my first red flag.

I walked as far as I could from the drunken fool, making it to the foredeck. A full forty feet away. Not far enough.

“Well done, Dad,” I muttered staring into the vast expanse of nothing but blue water and sky. “Well. Done.”

Okay, so it wasn’t technically my father’s fault I was in this predicament. He wasn’t to blame for my rock bottom after mom died and he got sick, and it certainly wasn’t his fault that my husband had filed for divorce.

It took two years of suffering before I decided to change my life.

At first, the thought of me chartering a boat for three months was absurd.

But the more Tina pressured me into it, the more the idea grew on me.

Until in the end it seemed to be cathartic, necessary even, and with each passing minute, the idea of not sailing worsened.

Until now.

Standing at the bow’s edge, holding onto the lines, I let the cool mist from the waves bring back some semblance of normality.

Returning below deck, ignoring a moaning Bambi, I tidied my stateroom and the galley, both in shambles after my frantic search.

I ran my finger over the engraving on the urn, allowing myself a smile, “Follow me at your own risk.” My father had always been a wisecracker.

He’d written those words into his will, but I bet he hadn’t thought it would be used before he turned sixty.

Or that I’d follow his mapped-out sailing pipedream.

I carefully placed my father’s ceramic urn back into its bright green flotation bag, having pulled it out earlier in my frenzy—even though there’d been no reason the GPS or phone would’ve been inside it.

Damn it, Bambi. The reason I’d bought a portable GPS at our second stop a month earlier was because she didn’t have navigation aboard the Bloody Mary—correction: the navigation was spotty.

Up until tonight, secured with a functional GPS (or I foolishly thought we had them), things had been going well.

Bambi taught me to catch and fillet fish, some boating etiquette, and how to tie different knots.

I got used to short showers and sleeping without air-conditioning, and I enjoyed sunny days filled with trouble-free tasks.

Except nothing Bambi had shared about sailing was valuable right now.

For the next two hours, with my head clutched between my hands, I studied the nautical charts strewn across the desk, trying to guess where we were.

I had no clue, but we for sure had arrived at Destination Fucked.

Our last stop had been Talava Arches, Niue, and we were supposed to be on our way to the Cook Islands.

With no major issues, it would’ve been a six to seven-day trip.

Today was day nine, and the weather conditions had been mostly perfect.

“Shit.” A frustrated groan left my mouth, and I shoved the maps off the table, as I spotted that the cooktop—on a gimbal to keep it level—swayed more than usual.

Double shit. I’d been so consumed with figuring out our location, I hadn’t noticed the increasing rocking of the boat.

Thunder rolled not far away. Peering through the narrow window, I realized the line where the ocean met the sky had disappeared, both blending into blackness.

On the horizon lightning flashed every few seconds, piercing the dark.

Abandoning the maps, I hurried into my berth and yanked my lifejacket from its spot.

Just in case we’d have to desert the sailboat, I stuffed the plastic baggie with my passport and wallet between my chest and the vest. With alarm settling deep inside my bones, I climbed to the main deck to check on Bambi.

The wind was no longer a friendly breeze but a full-on gale.

Lightning lit up the unsettling skies, and a chill of panic pelted me along with the cold rain.

In the distance, two monstrous waterspouts scudded across the ocean.

They were miles away, but Bloody Mary was in their path.

This was the moment when I needed a stronger word than “fuck.”

Loose strands of hair lashed my face. I tried to smooth them away, but it was pointless. Bambi was lowering the mainsail. Bracing against the wall for balance and gripping the lines, I staggered to help her.

“Sydney, tighten the—”

The wind in my ears blocked most of her instruction, but I scrambled to snatch the line she threw at me, my fingers missing it by inches. Bambi rushed closer, grabbed the rope, and began to secure it. She finally looked like a captain, her face sober with fear.

“Where’s your lifejacket?” I shouted.

“You’ll go overboard. Get back inside.”

Bambi was a captain, but I wasn’t about to take her orders and let her risk her life. “I’ll get it for you.”

Waves buffeted the boat as I struggled to make my way to the galley.

The cabinet doors flapped open, their contents rolling around on the floor.

Every single thing had fallen out: books, papers, cans, water bottles.

I’d envisioned this situation countless times—what I’d do if we were caught in a bad squall—but right now, my thoughts were scattered in different directions.

Standing near the door to Bambi’s cabin, I pressed my hands hard against the walls on either side as another big wave hit, and the books, secured by a wire, broke free and showered down on me.

My hands flew to my head. The next wave jolted the boat and drove me headfirst into the table.

Ignoring the sting of pain in my forehead, I braced myself on hands and knees and moved through the mess to where Bambi’s lifejacket hung on a hook.

I snatched it, then crawled as fast as I could to the steps leading up to the deck.

My pulse hammered beneath my skin, and beads of cold sweat covered my face as I forced the hatch open and fought my way outside.

The sky looked awash with fireworks of electrical discharge stealing my breath for a moment, long enough that I only caught the boom that swung with force to my left out of the corner of my eye, sending my heart to my throat.

I ducked, avoiding a direct blow to my head.

The wind screamed like a band of coyotes, rain battered my face, and waves crashed against the boat with terrifying power. Holding the helm, Bambi battled the rogue waters.

“Put this on!” I thrust the lifejacket at her and grabbed the handles as if I knew what to do.

Struggling with her balance, Bambi threw the lifejacket over her shoulders and threaded her arms through the openings.

A sudden gust heeled Bloody Mary low, knocking Bambi and me off our feet.

My left hand lost its grip on the helm, and my body jolted with a sickening twist. The lightning struck, and my gaze locked with Bambi, her eyes wild with fear and—

She hurtled overboard.

My God!

I swallowed a surge of nausea, both from panic and the endless tossing. The boat pitched, and I stumbled to the rail where the life ring hung. I released the red lifesaver from its cradle and readied to toss it, but I wasn’t sure where to throw it.

“Bambi!” My eyes frantically scoured the waters, searching for my captain. Hoping the life ring would find her, I tossed it over and grabbed the helm. With all the energy left in me, I pointed the stern into the waves. Wasn’t that what she once said to do?

As the sea violently thrashed Bloody Mary, sobbing and praying for Bambi’s and my survival, I rode out the storm for what felt like long, terrifying hours.

I should have listened to my first gut feeling weeks ago that pursuing someone else’s dream unprepared was foolish and definitely not honorable.

My drenched body trembled, and my fingers lost any feeling in them as I gripped the helm tight.

There was no end to the unutterable abyss …

until a bolt of lightning split the darkness, outlining an island on the horizon.

I blinked then turned the wheel, desperate for land, safety, survival.

A sudden screeching sound came from deep within the boat, and I was propelled forward, hitting the steering wheel.

Another jerk pushed me back, then tossed me sideways.

My fingers slipped from their grasp, my hands clutching thin air, searching for a hold on anything and finding nothing.

The next moment, I was thrown into the raging murkiness of the water.