Chapter Forty-Four
Present: Day Six at Sea
I follow Emma up to the cockpit. Russell is at the helm, wearing the same color of navy polo shirt he’s worn this whole trip, plus sunglasses and a baseball hat.
Russell doesn’t greet us, even though he had to have seen us come on deck. I can’t blame him, considering what I did to his sister. I take a seat on one of the cockpit benches, noting the swells aren’t as high as they were yesterday.
Emma moves to the back of the cockpit and lifts her gaze to assess the sails. Before we came up, Emma had tucked the diary into her sweatshirt. I take a drink from my coffee, which spills onto my pants as the boat tilts, and wait for Emma to ask Russell about the ripped-out pages.
She turns to him. “We need to let out the sails now that the wind has decreased. Here.” She hands me her coffee, which I hold away from my legs while Russell uncoils the line around a winch near the helm and lets out the jib.
As Russell rewraps the line around the winch, Emma goes to the front of the cockpit and lets out the mainsail halyard until the mainsail bubbles out into a taut curve. After securing the line, Emma reclaims her mug from me and takes a drink.
The three of us sit in awkward silence. I throw Russell a sideways glance. He’s looking in my direction, but with his sunglasses on I can’t tell if he’s staring at me.
Either he or Beth drugged Emma. Or Courtney, a voice in my head says before I force the thought from my mind.
Russell’s been lying this whole time: first about who he was, then about the note he left in the bathroom.
He had to have written it and probably studied Courtney’s handwriting after finding her diary.
I watch Emma step around a shroud on the foredeck.
Had she drugged herself so no one would suspect her?
If Courtney’s diary was all about us, then why would Russell rip pages out of it?
It makes more sense that Emma or Beth ripped them out, not wanting the rest of us—or the police—to see what was in there.
I take a sip from my mug and wonder if Russell’s discovered his missing gun yet. I choke on my coffee, remembering leaving his gun under my pillow.
I cough. Russell watches me, his mouth set in a hard line. I should’ve kept his gun on me. Now it’s with Beth. What if she tries to use it? Or what if he knows that I took it? I warily assess his muscular upper body. I would be no match for his strength if he tries to throw me overboard.
With Emma here, I decide to ask him the question that’s been burning in my mind since last night. But first, I hastily clip a tether onto my life vest. Just in case.
I turn toward the helm. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I left Courtney with the cougar? It’s the truth.”
Russell squares his jaw and looks out at the ocean. “I actually thought it was Beth who killed Courtney after reading what Courtney did to Beth your senior year.”
I rack my brain, trying to recall what Russell is talking about. Emma and I exchange a look. She appears as confused as I am.
Russell looks at me and then Emma, who stares at me blankly. “Beth never told you, did she?”
“Told me what?” Beth’s accusing me of murder in front of the others after I’d discovered her online affair with Matt replays in my mind as I wait for Russell to answer. Had I even known her at all? My body tenses, having no idea what he’s about to say.
“It was in the diary,” he says. “In the pages that someone ripped out.”
Of all the things Courtney did, Beth had the least reason of all of us to want her dead. My throat is so tight with anxiety that it takes effort to swallow.
“Courtney could’ve exaggerated it,” I tell him. “She did that, you know.”
He shakes his head. “Not this. I was there.”