Chapter Thirty-Two
Present: Day Five at Sea
I toss a cursory glance over my shoulder at Beth as I open the door to the stateroom Russell shared with Nojan. Beth nods, her signal that she’ll warn me if Russell comes below. I step inside the small space, leaving the door slightly ajar. The room is similar to Gigi’s but with twin beds.
I blink back the tears that well in my eyes at the thought of Gigi’s beautiful corpse decomposing in the adjacent room. I take a breath and steady myself, focusing on what I’ve come here to find. I don’t have time for grief right now.
The twin beds are neatly made, probably an old habit from Russell’s time in the Marines. Before I met Matt, I’d dated a guy who’d served two years in the army. He couldn’t leave his room in the morning without making his bed.
There’s no luggage in sight, so I open the storage compartment beneath the foot of the beds.
Inside I find two duffel bags. I put the larger one on the bed and unzip the top.
I sift through the stack of blue polo shirts and khaki shorts.
When I pull a stack of clothing onto the bed, something rattles inside the bag.
I reach in, feeling the sides until my hand closes around an orange prescription bottle.
I hold it up to the window and see that it’s a cholesterol medication prescribed for Nojan Ahmed.
I stuff the clothes back inside and retrieve the other bag from the storage compartment. Hearing Russell’s footsteps on the deck above, I pause. I wait for a moment, making sure he doesn’t start down the steps, before unzipping his bag.
I search Russell’s bag in the waning daylight coming through the small side window.
It’s more organized than Nojan’s. The same blue polo shirts are neatly folded beside a few pairs of cargo shorts and boxer briefs.
I place a stack of clothes on the bed, careful to keep them folded, and feel around the bottom.
I have an idea of what Courtney’s diary would’ve said about the others, but what would it have said about me?
While Courtney’s phone was never found, her backpack was recovered by divers in the Sol Duc during the search for her body.
But Courtney wouldn’t have brought her diary on the rafting trip, would she?
No, I think. Even if she had, the river would’ve made her diary entries illegible.
The police never brought up Courtney’s diary when they interrogated me.
There’s no way Russell can know about my fight with Courtney the night before she disappeared. Her threat to end Mom’s career and my punching her in the nose. Can he?
Russell can’t know what happened on the trip. Without knowing that, he would have trained his suspicion on Gigi and Emma, as they would’ve seemed to have the strongest motives to want Courtney dead.
I shift the remaining stack of clothes to the side of the bag, finding deodorant and a small toiletry bag, but no diary. I exhale a puff of disappointment. I slide the clothes back to their original spot. With a bag this organized, Russell might notice if something is out of place.
My fingers graze something hard on the bottom of the bag. I close my grip around it. My lungs freeze as I realize what it is. I lift the pistol from the bag by its barrel. My jaw drops as I stare at the weapon in the dimly lit stateroom. Is he planning to shoot the rest of us?
“Hey, Russell,” Beth calls in a raised voice from the galley.
I whip around and see Russell with his back to me, standing at the base of the steps. I curse myself for being too distracted by finding the pistol to hear him come below deck.
“Where’s Palmer?” he asks.
“Oh. She’s in our room, lying down.”
He turns toward his stateroom. I take a step back, but my calves butt against the end of the bed. I scan the small space, but there’s nowhere to hide. My heart beats in my throat as I tuck the pistol into the waistband of my sweatpants like I’ve seen in the movies.
The cabin door flings all the way open before I have time to return Russell’s clothes to his unzipped bag.
He gapes at me in the doorway. “What the hell are you doing?”
There’s just enough light for me to see his eyes narrow when his gaze falls to his bag on the bed.
“I—” The gun is cold against the skin of my lower back as I rack my brain for an excuse. “I was looking for Courtney’s diary. I wanted to see if you were telling the truth.”
He steps toward me, blocking my path to the door.
My eyes are level with his muscular chest. My pulse pounds in my ears, knowing how easily he could overpower me and take back his gun.
I ready my hand to reach for the pistol if he tries to grab me.
If I’m lucky, I can get to it before he can stop me.
Instead, he pivots and points to the galley. “You won’t find Courtney’s diary in here, because one of you already took it. I found it missing from my room this morning.”
Already took it? I think of Emma, supposedly asleep in her room. And Beth, right outside his room. Had she taken it while I was asleep?
“So, maybe you should ask your so-called friends to let you see it. Now get out of my room.”
I swallow, keeping my hand at my side, then scurry past him. Keeping my back toward the opposite wall, where the pistol protrudes from my pants, I brace myself for him to grab me before I reach the door. But he doesn’t.
He follows me into the galley where Beth is now standing in front of the couch.
Feeling Russell behind me, I turn, wondering how long it will take for him to realize his gun is missing.
The pistol slides lower down my back, and I’m afraid it will slip down my pant leg and clatter to the floor.
I fight the urge to reach behind and grab it and instead take a seat at the dinette before the gun can fall any lower.
“I’m not the one here with something to hide.
” There’s malice in his tone as his hard-set gaze darts between Beth and me.
“I’ve been to the Sol Duc where the search and rescue divers went down looking for Courtney.
My sister didn’t drown. She was always a strong swimmer, stronger even than me.
And if she was attacked by the cougar Palmer supposedly saw—” He turns to face me.
“Then why didn’t the first-responding search and rescue team find her body?
“No, I don’t buy it,” he continues before I can respond. “The reason my sister’s body was never found is because one of you didn’t want it to be.”
There’s only a trace of daylight left outside, making it too dark for me to read his expression.
“The dogs tracked Courtney’s scent to the river as if she never made it out, but I think you all lied to the authorities.”
“Russell, we didn’t—”
Russell raises his palm at Beth’s interjection.
“I’m sure of it—don’t lie to me. The only thing I’m not certain of is whether one of you acted alone and got the others to cover it up, or whether you were all in on it from the beginning.
Maybe all of you left her on purpose after pushing her off the raft, then waited a day to go back to your car and call for help, knowing the longer Courtney was out in the woods without provisions, the lower her chances were of survival.
” Russell turns toward me. “But after reading Courtney’s diary, I think it’s more likely that one of you killed her. ”
I study Beth in the darkness, wanting to tell Russell that it isn’t true. But I know my words alone will do nothing to convince him. They might even anger him more.
The pistol presses against my lumbar spine. I shift my gaze to Russell’s muscular form. What was his plan? To off us all, one by one, hoping one of us would eventually crack and confess?
“The last time we saw your sister, she was alive,” Beth says.
“That’s what you told the police.” Though answering Beth, Russell’s silhouette is still looking straight at me.
“It’s the truth,” Beth adds.
“I’m going back up to keep watch.” Russell frowns, his accusatory gaze lingering on each of us before he turns and starts up the steps.
“Emma is supposed to relieve me at ten. Can you wake her if she doesn’t come out?
I’m getting a little punchy up here, and I don’t want to fall asleep without anyone on the lookout for other ships. ”
“Sure,” I say as Beth moves into the galley. She rummages through a couple of drawers and finds another flashlight.
After Russell closes the companionway door and the adrenaline that’s been keeping me going drains away, I feel suddenly exhausted.
Beth doesn’t look any better. It couldn’t have been much after midnight when we were all jarred awake to find Nojan missing.
My gaze flicks to Gigi’s stateroom door.
That feels like an eternity ago with everything that’s happened since then.
Maybe Russell stayed awake while the rest of us went to bed so he could kill Nojan as soon as we were all asleep.
“I heard Russell tell you that Courtney’s diary is missing. Do you think Emma took it?” Beth asks in a low tone.
“She must have. Unless Gigi took it before she . . . died.” I glance at the closed door to Gigi’s room. “Once Emma goes up to keep watch, we should search Emma’s room for the diary.”
“Okay, but first I need a drink,” Beth says. “For a minute, I thought he was going to throw us both overboard.” As Beth opens a cabinet and plucks out a bottle of wine by the neck, I notice the broken dishes have been cleaned from the floor. “You want one?”
I glance at the door to the top deck, hyperaware of Russell’s pistol in my waistband, which feels like its searing into the skin on my lower back.
“Oh, wait.” Beth sets the bottle on the counter beside a Solo cup and searches a drawer for a bottle opener. “You shouldn’t drink with a head injury, right?”
“Beth,” I whisper.
Her fingers go still inside the drawer, and she shines her flashlight on my chest. “What?”
I get up and move to the other side of the narrow counter from where Beth stands. “I found something else in his room.” I reach behind me and grip the gun by the handle.
The companionway door opens with a flap. “Hey.”
I jump at Russell’s voice coming from the top of the companionway.
“Can you guys wake Emma for me? I can’t keep my eyes open.”
An image of Russell making Nojan stand on the rear platform before shooting him in the chest fills my mind. But that couldn’t have happened; we would’ve heard the gunshot. But there was lightning that night. If he’d timed it right, the thunder would have covered the sound.
“Yeah, okay.” I’m glad Russell can’t see the look on my face as I shove the barrel back into the waist of my sweatpants, alarmed at how close I came to confessing I had his gun while he was within earshot. I wait until he disappears from the doorway and then lean my elbows onto the countertop.
“Beth,” I keep my voice low as she continues to rifle through the drawer. “I found a gun in Russell’s bag. A pistol.”
Her hand goes still inside the drawer. “Where is it?”
“In the back of my sweatpants. But I need to find a better hiding spot for it in our room before it slides out.” I keep one hand on the handle, afraid if I let go it will fall to the floor and go off, shooting a stray bullet God knows where.
Beth looks over her shoulder, lowering her voice to a whisper. “If he’s the killer, and he’s had a gun this whole time, then why hasn’t he shot us already?”
I shrug, my gaze darting to the open doorway to the deck. “Maybe he’s waiting for one of us to confess to killing Courtney. Hoping we’ll crack.”
“He’s going to notice it’s gone. Maybe you should put it back.”
I gape at Beth in the darkness. Is she crazy?
“So he can shoot us in our sleep?” I shake my head.
“No. We need to incapacitate him. Gigi had prescription opiates that she was disguising as seasickness pills. I recognized what they were when they dropped on the floor. We can use them to drug Russell. Crush some up and put them in that wine.”
“Are you saying we kill him?”
“No!” I exhale and lower my voice a few decibels. “Just knock him out for a while.”
“But don’t we need him to help sail? What if we run into bad weather again?”
“We have Emma.” I motion toward her stateroom.
“She’s a better sailor anyway.” Unless she’s the one we should be afraid of.
But so far, I trust her over Russell, and we can’t incapacitate the only two people who know how to sail at the same time.
Not if we want to make it home. I bite my lip, deliberating. What if I’m wrong?
If Emma and Russell are working together, it will be two against one instead of two against two. That should at least help our chances.
Beth goes quiet, seeming to mull it over too.
“Beth, he’s an ex-Marine. He’s been trained to kill. And I think he’s planning to kill us all.”
“Okay, fine.” Beth resumes searching the drawer. “But I can’t find a bottle opener.” She looks up. “What if he doesn’t want wine?”
“Then we’ll put it in his coffee when he wakes up.
” Hopefully, he doesn’t notice his gun is missing in the meantime.
“Here, I’ll look for the corkscrew. You get Gigi’s pills.
” I’m surprised at the waft of emotion that engulfs me at saying her name, even though we’d hardly spoken in the last twenty years.
“They’re oxycodone, but she might have been hiding them in a different bottle.
I didn’t see what was on the label. Just bring out all the pill bottles you find, and I’ll show you which ones to use. ”
Beth lifts her flashlight toward me. “You want me to go into her room, alone with her dead body?”
She’s right. I’m the nurse. “Fine, I’ll do it. We need to hurry before Emma wakes up and Russell goes to bed.”
I step forward, but Beth raises her palm.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll find them. You hide the gun. And get the corkscrew. I plugged in your phone while we still had power,” Beth says. “You should be able to use it as a flashlight.”
Beth goes toward Gigi’s stateroom, and I don’t stop her. But only because I’m dying to get Russell’s gun out of my pants. I’ve never so much as held a gun before, and I’m terrified Russell will come down and catch me with it. Then what would I do?
I go into my own room to hide the gun before searching for the corkscrew. I can’t risk having the outline of Russell’s pistol bulging from the back of my pants if he comes back downstairs.
My eyes strain to adjust to the darkness as I scan the small room I share with Beth, trying to think of a place Russell won’t look. It won’t be long until Russell realizes his gun is missing. And I need to make sure he doesn’t get it back.