Chapter Thirty
Present: Day Five at Sea
“Palmer!”
When I open my eyes, Beth is leaning over me, shaking my shoulders. I’m lying on the foredeck, staring straight up at the mast. The bosun’s chair is still strapped around my shoulders. A sharp pain stabs at the side of my head above my left ear, and my climb up the mast comes flooding back to me.
Beth rocks back on her knees and places a hand over her heart. “Thank God. For a second, I thought you were dead.”
“We need to go back up,” I say, staring at the satellite swaying above.
Emma kneels beside Beth and looks down at me grimly. “You hit your head on the mast really hard. It was so loud we could hear it from the deck. You were knocked unconscious the whole time we lowered you down. I’m not sending you up a second time for that to happen again.”
I sit up, feeling the blood drain from my head. Emma and Beth blur in my vision.
“Plus,” Emma says. “We lost all the tools, remember? Your bag fell off your shoulder into the water.”
“We don’t need them. If I can go up again, I can—” I wince at the sharp pain that stabs at my temple. I lift my hand to it, feeling a tender bump.
“You need to lie back down,” Beth says. “I think you have a concussion.”
“How long was I out for?” I ask, knowing Beth is probably right.
“At least a few minutes while we hoisted you down.” Emma eyes me warily. “We’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse.”
Is that disappointment I detect in Emma’s voice?
Water sprays the side of the boat.
“We should get you inside,” Beth says. “Do you think you can stand if we help you?”
“I think so.”
I try to ignore the painful throb on the side of my head as they help me get unsteadily to my feet.
“You okay, Palmer?” Russell calls from the helm as Beth and Emma guide me through the cockpit.
“Yeah,” I say, offering him a weak nod, although I wonder if, like Emma, he could be disappointed I didn’t die, making one less person for him to have to kill.
Or am I starting to lose it, imagining every person I look at might be a killer?
I lift a hand to the growing bump on my head, feeling lucky to still be alive.
Emma holds onto my arm as I descend the narrow companionway steps, then hands me off to Beth who waits at the bottom and helps lower me onto the couch.
I lay my head on the armrest and close my eyes.
“Wait,” Emma says, rushing toward me. “I thought people with concussions aren’t supposed to sleep. What if you go into a coma?”
I open my eyes to see Emma towering over me.
“That’s an old school of thought,” I say.
“Now, it’s been proven that it’s fine to rest after a concussion.
It helps the brain heal. The risk of sleeping is for when there’s a suspected brain hemorrhage—a brain bleed.
In those cases, you need to wake the person to make sure they aren’t worse. ”
Beth and Emma exchange glances. “How do we know you don’t have that?” Beth asks.
We don’t. “If my speech slurs, or my balance is off, or—”
Beth’s eyes widen. “Your balance is off.”
“I don’t have a brain bleed.”
Beth looks unconvinced. “And how else do we know if you’re worse?”
I yawn, then grimace at the sharp pain that rips through my temple.
“If my headache gets drastically worse or my cognition changes, like I’m unaware of where I am and what’s happening.
Or if my pupils become unreactive to light, but that can also be a sign of a concussion, which I’m sure is all this is. I just need to rest.”
Emma looks between me and Beth. “And what do we do if you do get worse?”
I sigh. “Take me to a hospital.”
Emma frowns.
“I’ll climb the mast,” Beth says.
“No,” Emma and I chime together.
Emma turns to Beth. “Remember what happened at the Space Needle? There’s no way you could go up that mast without panicking. I’ll go.” She peers out the window above my head. “I don’t want to speak too soon, but the seas seem like they might be calming.”
“I’ll help Beth winch you up.” A wave of nausea washes over me as I try to sit up. The room spins, and I grip the edge of the couch for support.
“You need to rest for a bit,” Beth says. “Another hour or so isn’t going to hurt anything. I’ll wake you in a while, and you can help me winch Emma up.”
Emma nods in agreement. Reluctantly, I sink against the leather couch. Emma puts her hands on her hips and twists toward Beth.
“I’m going back on deck to see if Russell needs help with anything. Can you see if you can get a weather report on the radio?”
“Okay.” Beth moves to the small desk in the corner and then flicks on the radio while Emma goes upstairs.
From the couch, I watch Beth spin a knob while static bleeds through the speaker. She turns up the volume and changes the frequency until a man’s voice crackles through the radio. Another voice comes through the radio, but it’s hard to make out what they’re saying.
Beth sits up straight and reaches aimlessly for the missing radio mic, then swears.
The sounds cut out, leaving us in silence aside from Beth’s continual flip of the switches.
I sit up, fighting the nausea that rises with me. “What happened?”
“Shit,” Beth mutters, throwing me a distressed look. “The radio stopped working.”
Emma comes down the companionway. “We lost power at the helm. Do you guys have it down here?”
Beth whips around. “No, it just went out.”
Emma comes down the steps, looking over Beth’s shoulder at the radio. “One of the fuel tanks was running low, so I switched to the second tank. But then I lost power.”
Russell appears at the top of the companionway. “Second tank?” His brows furrow in confusion. “I only filled one before we left.”
Emma turns toward him, placing a hand on her hip. “The controls said there were two.”
Beth twists in her seat, giving Russell a sidelong look filled with quiet skepticism.
Russell shakes his head. “Nojan didn’t tell me that.”
Emma frowns. “Why the hell would he not tell you that?”
Russell comes down a step. “I don’t know, but Nojan only told me to fuel the boat when we stopped at the fueling station on our way out of the marina. You were there, remember?”
I rack my brain, trying to recall if Nojan told him there were two tanks.
I remember Nojan telling him to fuel up, and I heard nothing about a second tank.
But I’d been distracted by the thought of leaving the girls and still having to tell them about Matt’s leaving me.
I study him, looking between Beth’s and Emma’s wary gazes.
Maybe Beth was right. We need to incapacitate him before it’s too late.
Pain stabs at my skull, and I sag against the couch, wishing we had formed a plan to subdue Russell before I went up the mast.
“Maybe Nojan didn’t realize it either. This boat’s brand new. He’d never sailed it before.”
Emma crosses her arms. “Where are the tanks?”
Russell motions behind him with his head. “Under the bed in my stateroom. I’ll check them.”
Beth trails his movement with a distrusting gaze.
Emma follows after him. “Not alone, you’re not. I’m coming with you.” She glances at Beth. “Beth, can you keep watch at the helm?”
Beth looks to me before going up. “You okay down here without me?”
I try to get up, hating my helplessness. But the galley spins. Begrudgingly, I collapse against the couch cushions. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Try to rest,” Beth adds.
I close my eyes as Beth pads up the steps, meaning to close them for only a moment.
Beneath me, the hull creaks. What if Courtney really was the one who penned that note?
Could it be possible that she’s somehow survived?
I try to imagine her hiding somewhere in the belly of the boat, waiting to kill the rest of us, one by one.
Or just me, I realize, now that Gigi is gone.
Gigi and I would be the two Courtney would be seeking revenge on most, except that we’d all left Courtney behind to search for Beth’s van.
I catch a whiff of a familiar scent, one that takes me back in time.
A flowery scent mixed with sandalwood fills my nose. Courtney.
I should get up. Tell the others. But my body doesn’t respond to my commands. I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought. Before I can dwell on it, I’m pulled into a dreamless, listless sleep.
When I open my eyes, it’s dusk. I look around the small space as my memory of climbing the mast comes back to me in a terrifying blur. Beth sits across from me at the table, reading her novel in the dim light. I sit up. A throbbing pain still stabs at my temple, but my dizziness is gone.
Beneath us, the waves feel calmer. I wonder how much closer we are now to the coast.
Beth lowers her paperback. “How are you feeling?”
Looking at Beth, I suddenly remember our plan to winch Emma up to fix the dish after I got some rest.
“What time is it?” I ask. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Beth glances at her watch. “It’s eight thirty.”
I get up unsteadily.
Beth comes toward me as I sway on my feet, easing me back onto the couch.
“I’m ready to help winch Emma up. We need to hurry,” I tell her. “We don’t have much daylight left.”
“We don’t have power, Palmer. Both fuel tanks are empty.”
I remember the power cutting out a second time before I fell asleep. “But isn’t there another way to charge the batteries? Like a generator?” Surely, a boat like this would have one.
Beth shakes her head. “It’s a brand-new boat.
We don’t even have solar. Gigi told me the yacht company in San Diego is going to install solar panels, and she was glad the boat didn’t have them yet because she thinks they’re ugly and that it would look better on social media without them.
It’s probably the same with the generator. ”
With a sickening feeling, my eyes dart toward Gigi’s cabin at the sound of her name, and I envision her lying dead on the floor of her stateroom. How did this even happen?
“Where’s Emma?” I ask Beth.
“She’s asleep in her cabin. We decided to take shifts keeping watch.
Russell’s taking the first shift, and she’s going to relieve him at ten.
Then, I’m going to take over at two in the morning.
” Beth crosses the room and retrieves a bottle of water from a kitchen cabinet.
“The weather has calmed down a lot,” she adds.
“We’ve changed our course and are heading southeast. Hopefully, we’ll be south of the storm.
If we run into worse weather, we’ll have to turn around again.
” Beth hands me the bottle. “Drink this.”
I sit up and twist open the cap. “Is the mainsail still jammed?”
“No, we got it fixed.”
I take a drink. At least one thing’s going right. I glance at the closed companionway door and lower my voice.
“It had to be Russell who killed the captain. He lied about who he was. He planned this. Plus, how did he get the power on so easily before? Like he knew exactly what the problem was.” I grab Beth’s arm as an idea enters my foggy head.
I should’ve thought of it before. “Wait. What if we can fix it? We took Russell’s word for it when he fixed the power.
Has anyone checked the engine room? What if he just unplugged something? ”
Beth frowns. “After Emma went with him to confirm the fuel tanks were empty, she went into the engine room to make sure nothing was tampered with. But like Russell said, both battery banks were dead.”
“But how can we trust them? What if they’re teaming up, and lying about the batteries, like you said before?” I take another drink of water, my gaze drifting in the direction of Russell’s empty cabin. “How do we even know he’s telling the truth about Courtney’s diary?”
“We don’t,” Beth agrees. “More likely, he’s been stewing over his sister’s death for the last twenty years and is here to get revenge.”
“How long was he in Iraq for?”
Beth shrugs. “I have no idea.”
I shift in my seat to face her. “What if he has severe PTSD or some other mental health issue from the war trauma? I saw a documentary recently about an ex–war veteran who came home and killed his neighbors, believing they were a hostile enemy he needed to protect his family from.”
Before Beth can respond, the companionway door flaps open, making me jump.
Russell meets my gaze as he tromps down the steps. “Hey, Palmer. Feeling better?”
My mouth feels suddenly dry. “Yeah,” I croak.
He nods, but from his expression I can’t tell whether he’s relieved or disappointed. He opens the bathroom door. “Just using the head.”
Beth and I stare at each other in silence until Russell emerges and retreats up the companionway. I wait until he closes the door before getting up.
“You stay here and keep watch,” I whisper.
Beth’s brows knit together in confusion. “Keep watch for what?”
“For Russell. I’m going to search his cabin. See what I can find. If he really did find Courtney’s diary after all these years, maybe he brought it with him. Let me know if he comes down,” I add before turning for his room.
“How am I supposed to let you know?” Beth asks from the couch.
“Just greet him really loud. Or you’ll think of something.”