Chapter Twenty-One
Present: Day Five at Sea
I hold my breath, sure Adam can hear my heart pounding against my chest wall.
“We need some help up here,” he says.
A wave crashes against the starboard side, sending a spray of water into the cockpit that spills down the steps. Emma screams from somewhere near the stern.
I exhale as he moves away from the door and disappears from view. Dishes rattle inside the kitchen cabinets as the floor sways over another swell.
I turn to Gigi. “Why do you think it was him? What did you find?”
Adam reappears in the open doorway. “Like now,” he shouts.
“Okay, we’re coming,” Beth says.
Gigi makes for the steps, tucking the note into her pocket. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Gigi.” After seeing Adam retreat to the helm, I grab her arm before she gets to the top. “If he did kill the captain, he could be planning to kill us next. Don’t say anything to him now. If we do confront him, we need to do it together.”
The bow pitches down over the side of a swell, lifting the stern enough to knock Gigi off balance. She hits the top of the steps with her knees before crawling forward onto the deck.
I swear under my breath. Beth casts me a look that I can’t quite make out in the dark before we ascend the steps.
What if Gigi’s wrong and Adam didn’t write the note? I try to wrap my head around the possibility that Courtney is still alive. My mind flashes to that day, twenty years ago, when I last saw her in the Olympic Mountains. It’s unfathomable that she could’ve survived.
For Courtney to have written that note, it would have to be her ghost. I don’t believe in ghosts, but the thought still sends a shiver through my body.
I think of Beth’s accusation that Gigi killed Nojan to save her social media presence and how much Gigi stood to lose if this trip was cut short.
And how Gigi supposedly found Courtney’s note taped to her bathroom mirror.
Gigi probably has old notes from Courtney.
Or, at least, old yearbooks that Courtney had signed.
With practice, Gigi could’ve mimicked Courtney’s handwriting.
When Beth and I reach the deck, we’re alone in the cockpit. My hair whips violently into my eyes from the screaming wind. Before I look around for the others, I rehook my tether and clasp another to Beth’s life vest.
The light from Beth’s phone sweeps the cockpit, then lands on Emma at the helm.
“Where’s Gigi and Adam?” I ask her.
“What?” she shouts.
I take a few steps toward her and cup my hands over my mouth. “Where’s Adam and Gigi?”
Emma points above me. “Trying to unjam the mainsail,” she calls. “It got bunched up inside the furler, and now it’s stuck.”
I turn around and see Gigi in the light from Adam’s flashlight as they stand on either side of the mast, tugging on the mainsail’s fabric that’s been let out.
“Beth,” Adam yells. “Hold the top button down on the mainsail controls at the front of the cockpit. It’s the small black button on the top left.”
“Okay.” Beth moves toward the controls.
“Palmer.”
I turn to Emma’s voice.
“I need you to look through these rear compartments and see if there’s a sea anchor.” Emma points to the floor around her.
I step unsteadily toward Emma, reaching for the mounted table in the darkness while wishing I’d brought my phone. I’m lashed by rain as soon as I step out from beneath the cockpit cover.
“I don’t have a light,” I tell Emma when I reach the helm.
“Here, use mine.” She hands me her phone with the flashlight on.
I take it from her, wanting to tell her about the note and Gigi’s suspicions about Adam. But there’s no time for that now.
I open the stowage compartment on Emma’s left, my mind still whirling over Beth accusing Gigi, and Gigi’s suspicions of Adam. “What’s a sea anchor?”
“It’s basically a parachute that we’ll throw into the water from the bow. My grandparents had one that was inside a bright-yellow canvas bag. Do you see it?”
I reach into the deep compartment, rifling through the contents. “All I see are those black-and-blue bumpers that kept the boat from hitting the dock.”
“Those are fenders,” Emma says. “Try the compartment behind the other wheel.”
I hear arguing from the middle of the boat when I stand. I see Gigi’s arms moving animatedly as she yells something to Adam that I can’t make out. I can’t see Adam’s face, but from whatever he shouts back at Gigi, he doesn’t sound happy.
I envision him unhooking her tether and shoving her off the boat. Damn it, Gigi. Why couldn’t you just heed my warning?
“Did you find it?” Emma asks.
“Oh. Sorry. I’m looking.” I grip the rear stanchions and then carefully move across the stern and open the other compartment. Lightning strikes overhead as I shine Emma’s phone light inside and push aside the two spare life vests and mooring pole to find a yellow canvas bag labeled Sea Anchor.
“I found it!” I exclaim. Thunder roars, drowning out my voice.
“I got it,” I repeat, lifting the bright bag in the air.
But Emma’s gaze is fixed on the horizon beyond me. She looks stricken.
“Palmer.” Her voice trembles. “Did you see that?”
I turn around, shining the phone at the whirling waves beside us. “See what?”
“In the distance, when the lightning struck, I saw a huge wave—much taller than these others—coming toward us.”
“How tall?” I ask, gripping the rear pulpit’s metal stanchion.
“Adam!” Emma calls. “Shine your light over the starboard side. There’s a huge swell coming at us.”
My gaze follows the beam of his flashlight, which illuminates the rough seas only within about ten feet of our boat.
Over the howl of the wind, I hear a deep, rumbling roar like a freight train speeding toward us.
Another bolt of lightning flashes across the sky, and my knees nearly buckle.
The biggest wave I’ve ever seen is rolling toward us, dwarfing the other sizable swells.
I freeze and grip the railing tighter as it disappears in the darkness.
Terror grips my throat, making it hard to swallow. It has to be nearly fifty feet high.