Chapter Forty-Nine
Present: Day Six at Sea
Emma falls backward onto the deck from the shot to her upper chest.
“Emma!” I rush toward her.
Beth swings the gun toward me as I trip over a shroud. The binoculars clamor against the deck just before my face smacks it. A second shot rings out.
I look up, expecting to see blood on my clothes, but I don’t feel any pain aside from the ache in my cheek from hitting the deck.
Russell charges at Beth. Beth swings the gun away from me and aims it at Russell’s head.
He stops a few feet from her and raises his hands in the air.
Behind me, air escapes the side of the dinghy with a hiss from being struck by Beth’s stray bullet.
The fall saved my life.
“Don’t shoot,” Russell says.
I get to my feet slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements.
Beth keeps the gun trained on Russell and her back to me.
My gaze falls to Emma who swears, then groans, lying on her back on the deck floor near Beth’s feet.
Blood seeps through the fabric of Emma’s light-gray sweatshirt. But she’s alive. For now.
The flare gun has rolled out of Emma’s hand into the cockpit, stopped by the mounted outdoor table.
“You killed Courtney,” Russell says.
I inch forward on my hands and knees. Beth angles her head to the side enough for me to see her lips curl into a smug smile as I crawl toward Emma along the edge of the cockpit.
A bloodstained dish towel is tied around Beth’s forearm.
She must’ve cut herself with her pocketknife, then smeared her blood on the deck during the night when she was supposed to be on watch.
“Yes, I did.”
But I was with her. How could she have killed Courtney? I recall Beth being carried downstream, getting pulled under the Sol Duc’s currents when I found her.
Beth’s steely gaze remains fixed on Russell. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I refrain from verbalizing my thoughts.
“How?” Russell asks.
I slide onto the cockpit bench.
“Don’t move, Palmer,” Beth says, not taking her eyes off Russell.
I freeze.
Beth sighs. “I never planned to hurt your sister.”
Behind Beth, Emma grits her teeth and reaches for the flare gun, but it’s several inches out of reach. I keep my gaze on Beth.
“I was looking for Courtney along the riverbank,” Beth continues.
“And I found her, jogging along the tree line on the other side of the Sol Duc. I called for her, but she acted like she couldn’t hear me.
Downstream, there was a fallen tree that went nearly the whole way across the river.
I used it to get across. I was out of breath by the time I caught up to her.
I told Courtney she had to come back. But she refused.
She marched away from me, barely keeping her balance after tripping over a large rock.
She told me there was a cougar on the other side of the river.
That it followed her until she finally raised a stick over her head and threw a rock at it.
Then she pointed across the river and said, ‘I saw Palmer.’”
Keeping her gun trained on Russell, Beth shifts her gaze, her eyes boring into mine.
“She said you had to have seen the cougar coming after her. But instead of coming back to help her, you left her for dead. Courtney’s eyes flamed with fury when she whipped around.
She was planning to press charges against you, saying she’d send you to jail for manslaughter.
” Beth smirks. “I told her she meant prison—not jail—and that you can’t press charges for manslaughter if you’re still alive.
” Beth shakes her head. “Courtney could be so stupid sometimes.” Her gaze skirts back to Russell, whose jaw is clenched. “No offense.”
He glares at Beth, his eyes burning with an unyielding fury.
“Anyway—” Beth swipes her free hand through the air.
“I told Courtney I thought she was making the whole thing up. If Courtney had seen a cougar, it wouldn’t have left her alone.
She was easy prey.” A faint smile reaches Beth’s lips.
“Then Courtney narrowed her green eyes at me, saying ‘Well, then I hope that cougar eats Palmer alive.’ At that point, I was exasperated,” Beth continues, returning her gaze to mine.
“I told her to stop lying, and Courtney looked as though I’d slapped her.
” Beth’s voice morphs to a high, mocking tone. “‘I almost died, Beth.’”
Beth’s imitation of Courtney makes my blood run cold.
“Then, she sneered,” Beth adds. “She said, ‘You think I’m making that up, but you believed my brother could actually be in love with you?’ I asked her why she always had to be such a bitch.
But Courtney wasn’t listening. She’d caught her sweatshirt on a low-hanging branch, going on about how she always stuck up for me and was so kind to let me hang out with her even though I was”—Beth makes air quotes with her hand not holding the gun—“such a nerd.” Beth’s face contorts in loathing, her gaze unflinching from mine.
Her eyes are hard, staring with a fierce, silent intensity. Even though she’s looking at me, I get the sense she’s not seeing me but Courtney.
“I pulled out the pocketknife Courtney gave me and told her to hold still. She was flailing her arm, making it worse. I lifted the blade toward the branch and asked why it was so hard for her to believe her brother could’ve been in love with me.
” Beth turns to Russell. “Courtney threw her head back and said, ‘Do you seriously think my brother would ever like a girl like you?’ So judgy. Then she laughed.”
There’s a distant look in Beth’s eyes, like she’s physically here, but her mind is back in the Olympic National Park, reliving the moment.
She scrunches up her nose as her expression turns painful.
“A deep, throaty cackle. Just like she’d laughed when we got to her upstairs bedroom that night when I threw my arms around you. When she told me it was all a prank.”
Emma grunts on the deck floor, but Beth doesn’t turn around.
My gaze flicks to Emma and the blood pooling on the deck beneath her chest. Her eyes flutter closed. She needs pressure on her bullet wound or she’s not going to make it. In the distant waters beyond the stern, the cruise ship is now directly behind us.
“Courtney’s eyes bulged with disbelief when I stabbed her the first time,” Beth adds, as if relieving her conscience.
A slight smile forms on one side of her mouth as she stares at Russell.
“Like she didn’t think I had it in me. She tried to push me away—and to run—but her sweatshirt was still caught on that tree.
” Beth shakes her head. “And her screaming only angered me more. Then, the branch snapped, and Courtney stumbled toward the river. I stabbed her in the neck to shut her up. Then I kept stabbing. The next thing I knew, we’d both fallen in the water.
Courtney had stopped moving when the current pulled us downstream. ”
Russell bows his head without saying a word. I assess the woman standing before me that I’ve known as my best friend since I was five. All this time, she knew what happened to Courtney. Because she was the one who killed her.
I inch along the bench seat, closer to the flare gun on the deck floor as Beth directs her gaze toward me.
“Courtney was face down in the water, and the current moved her body along faster than mine. Then I heard you, Palmer. Calling my name on the other side of the river.” She shakes her head as if recalling a normal, nonmurderous memory.
“I was afraid you might see her. So, I stuck the knife back into my pocket and called out to you, acting like I was getting pulled under so all of your attention would be on me.”
I swallow, thinking how close I must’ve been to Courtney when I went into the river to save Beth. She was right there. She might’ve even still been alive. If I had seen her, I might’ve been able to save her. Instead, I’d saved Beth.
Behind Beth, Emma goes still. The flare gun rests against the foot of the table, well out of my reach. If I lunge for it, Beth would have plenty of time to shoot me before I can set it off.
“I had no intention of getting stuck underwater beneath that log, though,” Beth adds. “For a second, I thought it might be my karma after what I’d done to Courtney.” She smiles, locking eyes with me. “But then you saved me.”
Vomit rises to the back of my throat.
“I’m sorry you’ve blamed yourself for Courtney’s death all these years. But I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
Until now. She’s planning to kill us all. In the distance, the ship cruises past us.
“Beth,” I coax. “Please don’t do this. You’ll never get away with it. Think of all your accomplishments. All you’ll be losing. Your appointment to university president. And how you want to run for Senate. It’s what you wanted your whole life.”
“That’s exactly why I can’t let you live.
With all of you gone, there will be no one to refute my story.
How Russell came aboard under a fake name, on a killing spree to avenge his sister’s death.
Especially when I produce Courtney’s diary, minus those specific pages about me.
It will show his motive to kill all of us. ”
“You planned this?” I ask her, readying myself to dive for the flare.
“Of course not!” She cocks her head to the side. “I’m not a psychopath, Palmer.”
“Then why’d you kill Nojan? And Gigi?”
“I recognized Russell immediately when we came aboard and knew, given his fake name, that he was here to uncover what happened to Courtney. I saw him talking to Gigi alone on our first night at sea. He knew I had the most motive of all of us to kill Courtney. I didn’t know what he’d told her, but I couldn’t risk it.
It was dark that night when I came on deck.
I thought Nojan was Russell. He was kneeling near the side, his head down, tying a knot, so I pushed him and cut his tether with my pocketknife.
” Beth lifts the gun toward Russell’s head.
“Then, I found his logbook near the helm. When I checked the entries, I realized Nojan had been the one on watch, not Russell. So, I turned the battery banks off to buy myself some time to correct my mistake.”
I strain to recall Beth getting up that night but remember the Dramamine she’d given me. I’d been out cold.
“What about Gigi?”
“I saw her arguing with Russell. Right before the wave hit, Gigi pulled a man’s wallet from her sweatshirt and waved it in front of Russell’s face.
I knew she’d figured out who he was. Then, he grabbed her arm and leaned in, probably warning her not to say anything to the rest of us.
But I couldn’t risk him telling her what Courtney had done to me.
After Gigi helped untangle my ankle and you went below, I told her to grab the flashlight that had fallen to the floor behind the steering wheel.
Only the flashlight was already below. After I went down, Emma asked if that was everyone, and I said yes.
She was too panicked to get the door closed before the wave hit to double-check.
” Beth shrugs. “By the time you all did, it was too late.”
“You drugged Emma,” Russell says.
“I saw her come out of your room and saw Courtney’s diary in her hand before she had a chance to tuck it behind her. She didn’t know that I noticed. So, when she went on deck to tell you she was going to take a nap, I crushed Gigi’s pills into her Gatorade.”
“But then why did you come and get me so that I could save her?”
I slide an inch sideways on the bench. The cruise ship is getting farther away by the minute. We don’t have much time to send off the flare gun to make sure they’ll spot it.
“That was an honest mistake. Just like Nojan. I’m not a doctor. I couldn’t wake Emma up, so I thought she was beyond saving.”
I lower my gaze to Emma long enough to see from the light of the full moon that she’s still moving. Beth follows my gaze as the stern lifts over a swell. The flare gun rolls toward me. Beth loses her footing, and I dive for it.
Beth recovers her balance as I hit the deck and grab the gun, turning on my back to aim it toward the sky.
Beth lowers her gun toward me. I change my aim and pull the trigger, shooting the flare into her chest. Russell rushes Beth as soon as the flare explodes with a blinding light.
The front of her sweater erupts in flames.
Beth screams in pain, clutching the gun with both hands. She doubles over when Russell grips her forearm. He thrusts Beth’s arm over her head, forcing her upright as she fires a shot into the darkening sky.
I reload the flare gun with trembling hands and fire another round into the air. Beth and Russell stumble back until Beth slams into one of the steering wheels.
I drop to my knees and press two fingers against Emma’s neck. Miraculously, her pulse is strong.
“Ahh!”
I turn to the sound of Beth’s cry as Russell forcibly extends her arm holding the gun across her chest, aiming it at the water. A shot rings out as Russell pulls Beth’s arm toward the lifeline. Russell slams Beth’s arm against the deck, sending the gun flying over the edge.
I hurriedly unzip my sweatshirt and ball it up, pressing it against the bullet wound on Emma’s chest. She groans, and her eyelids flutter open as Russell wraps his arms around Beth, lifting her feet off the ground in an effort to subdue her as she claws his face.
“Emma.” I lower my face toward hers and pull her hand over my sweatshirt, pushing it against her chest. “Hold—”
The boat dips. I slide sideways on my knees toward Beth and Russell as salt water sprays over the side. Russell stumbles toward the boat’s edge as the port side tilts toward the sea. I reach for Russell, but it’s too late.
His feet have already lifted off the deck as he and Beth plunge headfirst over the side.