Chapter 25
Dawn is my favorite time of day. When training, I wake up hours prior so that my runs end near the break of day.
The colors take one’s breath away—a drop of yellow spilling out into orange ripples, which slowly flood the purples and blues of a vanishing night.
The air is cleaner and fresher. Clarity arrives unimpeded.
But not today, because today at daybreak Captain Finley—who prefers to be addressed without her rank, as she told me three times—is already talking her head off in the back of a cramped fishing boat.
She has a rapt audience in Cassie, but the rest of us are simply trapped with her as she spins a wild tale of infidelity, malfunctioning rifles, and a lot of nudity.
Mason has, enviably, taken up the driver’s seat, and Delilah sits next to him with big, circular sunglasses on and her head tilted back.
I’m squished between Roxana and Lucy, and I don’t know if there’s a more awkward seat in the world than the one between the mother you met for the first time twenty years after your birth and the lover you thought was dead until two days ago.
A few miles out from the coastline, the waters sway gently as we cut through them in our vehicle.
Our vehicle, but of course, Mason and I stole it this morning with the “help” of Captain Finley distracting a coast guard.
Guards do not sweep this far out, and copters are few and far between.
We should be clear until we get to the Delaware Bay, along the southern coast of New Jersey, where it will be trickier to navigate.
Which means, unfortunately, Captain Finley is clear to talk for the better part of a day.
She might, as Mason made the unfortunate decision to load our boat with alcohol as well as provisions and Captain Finley is at least three beers deep into this journey.
“Okay, that’s my sad tale of the one that got away. I know these two”—she gestures with her beer can between Lucy and me—“have a grand romantic story, but it’s too early for that kind of schmaltz.”
“Not too early for three beers, apparently.” Lucy raises an eyebrow at Captain Finley, who pouts at her in return.
“What about you, boss? You meet your husband in your misspent youth?”
Roxana fiddles with her hands, and while yesterday her long fingers were bare, today a wedding ring sits on her finger. A worn circle of plain gold that she spins with her thumb. “I’m sure no one wants to hear about that.”
“I do,” I reply, only loud enough to be heard over the boat’s engine and the noisy wake behind us. “I would like to hear it.”
She smiles at me and nods. “Very well. We met when I was seventeen, Paul sixteen. We lived in a forgotten fishing town on the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island, populated with drunks and smugglers, fishermen and crabbers. Paul was a smuggler—an excellent one. Average height and lanky, nimble like gymnast, he could sneak in and out of anywhere. He had an ebullience about him, a boyish enthusiasm that got him out of any trouble. I’d seen him around the market, but not at school, so I knew he was a smuggler.
We’d steal glances at each other, but I knew my father would never let me near a smuggler. ”
Captain Finley cracks open another beer and Roxana shoots her a disapproving look. She puts down the beer and huffs. “Ugh, fine.”
“My father ran a fishing boat, not unlike this one. Modest, but it kept our family fed, which was more than a lot of people could say. I worked on it with him, while my brothers fell in with a rough gang near the city.”
“Brothers?” My family tree has gone from a lonely stump to a sapling rather quickly. “How many brothers?”
“Two, both older than me. Cyrus and Nahro. My father’s name was Ashar.
He was a stern, unforgiving man who was bound more tightly to his honor than his family.
When my brothers took up with the gang, he disowned them.
No great fan of the law, but Ashar did not tolerate dishonesty and stealing.
So, when Paul stole a crate of his fish, my father wanted to string him up from the boat.
Paul, bless him, is trying to charm my giant, six-foot-seven father out of bringing him to the local cops when he sees me on the boat.
We lock eyes and it was instant. I knew he was my soulmate, as easily as I knew the sun gives heat and light. ”
Lucy chuckles. “So much for Shea’s aversion to schmaltz.”
“I think it’s sweet,” Cassie says softly. “Sometimes you just…know.”
“Precisely. Granted, I was a lovestruck teenager, so love felt more enormous then. Paul immediately asks if he can work off the debt of having stolen the fish by helping out on the boat for free. This pleased my father, who clearly thought if he could rehabilitate Paul, maybe he could be forgiven for failing with his sons. For Paul and I, it was incredible, because we got to spend every waking moment together, both on the boat and off. Being with him made me feel whole. I was both at ease and endlessly titillated. And it was that way every day until he died.”
Finley raises the beer from the floor. “To Paul, Mr. Boss. You seemed like a cool dude who put up with a tight-ass for many years. Sláinte.”
Nobody else is drinking in the early morning, so Finley pretends to tap someone’s glass and drinks the rest of her beer alone. It is a romantic tale, and there is one bit of information I need to know. “Did he steal the fish on purpose?”
“What?” Roxana tilts her head. “What do you mean?”
“To spend time with you. Did he intentionally steal the fish to get caught?” I shrug. “You said he was an excellent smuggler, yet he got caught stealing from an unguarded civilian boat.”
“You know…I never asked. I always assumed he legitimately got caught, but now that you mention it…he’d never been caught before.” Roxana smiles at me. “It does seem rather convenient, doesn’t it?”
“That’s where you get that from,” Lucy murmurs into my ear. “You’re the descendant of another reckless romantic.”
Minutes before dusk, as our boat sails past Virginia, the chopping of copter blades pulses in the distance. Roxana took over driving from Mason, who slumbers loudly on the deck and does not stir at the noise. With Lucy and Cassie asleep on our shoulders, respectively, Finley and I perk up.
She signs to me—a bastardized version of American Sign Language and military call—something I thought only Order members knew.
Roxana must have taught her. With rapid gestures she asks if I hear that and in what direction is it coming.
I respond yes, obviously, and that I believe it is southwest of our position.
Shrugging my shoulders rouses Lucy, and she is alert in seconds.
“Hmm, what? Are you okay?”
“There is a copter. Don’t know if it’s friendly. Can you tell Roxana and Delilah? It’s on our eight o’clock.” Lucy peers into the sky, unfortunately thick with gray clouds, and then tiptoes over Mason to relay the message. I kick Mason in the side and wake him. “Get up. We got tagged.”
Immediately, Mason grabs his gun and readies himself on one knee. Cassie has arisen as well and begins loading her rifle. It’s like war again, but this time with the stakes astronomically higher: aside from Hunter, every person I care about is on this boat. Plus Finley.
The copter starts lighting up the boat with gunfire. Finley ducks and drags Cassie somewhat behind her, blindly returning the fire into the clouds. “Where the fuck is this thing?”
Finally, it drops from the clouds and fires again, pinging the boat’s broad side as Roxana increases our speed and swerves to avoid more direct hits.
In the waning sunlight it is impossible to make out who this copter belongs to, but it doesn’t matter.
We are in danger and it is my job to get us out of it.
“Switch with Roxana.” Mason nods at my order and climbs into the captain’s seat as Roxana grabs a pistol from Finley and takes her place by my side. “Any idea who this is?”
“Nope.” Roxana fires a pistol and then looks at it with a frown. “Finley, how am I supposed to hit a copter using a handgun?”
“With good aim?” Finley smirks and tosses Roxana a rifle, which she immediately uses to shoot at the copter.
As expected, her aim is amazing and it isn’t long before we see smoke coming from their propellers.
Another rain of fire comes down on us and Cassie yelps over the noise of bullets pelting the boat.
Finley yells to us. “Shit, the kid is hit. We need to take this copter down yesterday.”
I spin the scope onto my sniper rifle and squint into the clouds. A near impossible shot from here. Roxana gestures toward the front of the boat. “The bow. Cleanest shot you’ll get. I’ll cover you.”
Finley has covered herself and Cassie with a thick blanket for diversion, while Lucy crouches behind a few bags. Roxana stands, totally unafraid, and fires at the copter. Quickly, I make my way to the bow and Roxana follows me, walking backward, taking the heat off me.
“Mason, get me a good shot.”
Mason outdrives the copter by taking advantage of a few rogue waves, and eventually gives everyone a three-second warning before dead-cutting the engine.
Everyone tumbles except for Roxana and me, and she holds fire as the copter reorients and spins around to come back toward us.
I get my bearings and aim down the sight.
Calculate for speed, distance, trajectory.
The type of rifle in my hands, the kind of copter in the air.
The variables coalesce and I take my shot.
Bull’s-eye.
“Atta girl.” When I turn back toward the boat, Roxana smiles proudly at me as the fiery copter pitches nose-first into the waters behind her. Without taking her eyes off me, she calls back to Mason. “Circle back so we can get a look at the wreckage.”