Chapter 26 #2
The captain gave one huge tug to loosen the young man, and…
Momentum sent the three of them teetering on the edge of the transom.
Fuck.
Lace knew the odds of her going over were high, so she did the only thing she could think of. She lashed her arms around the captain’s midsection, and hung onto him with everything she had.
If she was hitting the water, so was he.
The captain whipped out with his free hand and managed to smack Zach in the face.
The blow sent the young man skidding backward on the slick deck just as an unexpected wave hit the hull, sending the captain off balance and…
Lace felt them falling.
Shit.
They landed in the cold blue, hard.
But Lace had trained for this.
The minute she was submerged, she let go of the evil man and propelled herself to the surface.
Gasping for air, she heard Zach’s voice from the deck of the boat that was…powering away?
What the hell?
“Grab this,” he called out, tossing a life ring expertly in her direction.
Within a couple of swift strokes, Lace was able to grab onto it.
But now what? And where was the captain?
Lace looked around.
The man’s head suddenly appeared above the water, but he was clearly floundering, splashing at the air with windmilling arms.
“Help me,” he howled. “I can’t swim.”
Well, fuck.
Just what she needed right now. A moral dilemma.
Should she let the man reap what he’d sown, and drown? Or should she save his nasty ass?
Lace turned her eyes heavenward and sighed. She couldn’t just let the man die, no matter that he’d wished that fate on her.
Goddamn her principles.
Lace scissor-kicked toward the captain and called him by his real name for the first time to try and settle him down.
“Captain Macleen. I’m coming. Hang on. I have a life ring.”
She knew it was only rated for one person—which would, by necessity, now be for the one of them who couldn’t swim—but Lace still had a few tricks up her sleeve.
She just hoped she not only remembered what she’d been taught in her water safety courses, but that she had the energy reserves to pull it off.
There were two things going for her. One, she hadn’t been sapped by an infusion in over a week, and two, the water in August was still warm, even this far offshore.
“I’m—”
The captain’s face disappeared beneath the waves before appearing once again, choking on water and panic. He was certainly no longer full of the hubris Lace was used to seeing him exhibit.
“Almost there,” she attempted to give reassurance.
Just a few more strokes…
Lace thrust the life ring at the man while keeping her distance because, yeah, she didn’t trust him. Once he was safe, who’s to say he wouldn’t try to finish the job of drowning her?
“Grab it,” she ordered, and somehow he managed to hook his arms up and around the flotation device.
Lace swam a few safe feet away.
“You… You saved me,” he spluttered, coughing out water.
“Yeah. You’re a prick,” she responded, “but I couldn’t let you die.”
“But…why? And what about you? You can’t keep swimming forever. Shouldn’t we share?”
Lace couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or not, but screw that. His word was worth shit.
“I can take care of myself,” Lace said.
She was tiring fast, but she still had some strength left, and a lot of adrenaline on her side.
Which meant it was now or never to attempt her survival move.
Lace toed off her boots, then ducked underwater and swiftly shed her fishing bib down her legs and off, then made quick work of removing the jeans she’d worn underneath.
That was the easy part.
Lace surfaced with her jeans in hand, and treading water with great difficulty now, she managed to tie the bottoms of the pantlegs together in a knot.
Holding them tightly, she lay back, floating for a moment to regain her strength.
Lace had previously only done this trick in a pool during one of her “safety at sea” courses. Carrying out the procedure in choppy water was proving to be a bit more challenging.
Understatement.
Taking another deep breath, Lace positioned herself vertically in the water again.
Kicking her feet with all she could muster, Lace held onto the waistband of her pants and whipped them over her head, scooping up and trapping air in the legs. She did that several times over until the material looked adequately inflated.
Yes! Success!
Having the maneuver actually work in an emergency situation gave Lace the impetus to place her self-made flotation device around her neck, holding the waistband opening closed in front of her with both hands to keep the precious air from escaping.
She was well aware that she would need to repeat the process every half hour or so until the boat turned around and picked them up, but she could do that.
Where things went from there—once they were back onboard—was another question. Would the captain still try to kill her even though she’d saved his life?
“What did you just do?” The captain, clearly out of his element, looked shocked at the jeans around her neck.
Lace recalled the word that Vince had taught her and Inez, and it tickled her to say it, now.
“Legerdemain,” she called across the six or so feet that now separated them.
“What?” he coughed, clearly having inhaled some water during his initial struggles.
“Legerdemain,” Lace repeated. “It means sleight of hand.” She actually grinned. “I did some magic with my jeans, and voila, my very own PFD.”
“That’s crazy,” he spit, but without the ire he’d previously exhibited. “How long will it last?”
“Long enough. All we have to do is wait for the boat to turn around and pick us up.”
The captain remained quiet, looking everywhere but at her.
Lace could tell something wasn’t right.
“The boat,” she posited. “It’s coming back for us, right?” She knew that Zach, at least, would try to make that happen for her. And wouldn’t the rest of the crew want to rescue their own captain?
“I locked the helm,” he told her gruffly.
“You did what?” Lace asked, not certain anybody could be that stupid.
“I engaged the electronic helm-lock so I had an excuse not to go back for you if anyone tried to make me. I planned on telling them there was a system glitch,” he admitted gloomily. “Nobody has the override code but me.”
Lace only had to kick that around in her brain for half a second.
“So you’re saying that they can’t turn around.”
She’d watched the boat power away, wondering why they hadn’t headed back.
The captain nodded. “That’s right. They can’t. All they can do, once they determine they have no helm control, is to cut the power. But by that time…”
Uh, huh. The boat would be long gone. It was already out of Lace’s sight.
She and the captain were on their own.
There was no rescue happening from that quarter.
“So, we wait for the Coast Guard,” Lace said, trying to keep her attitude positive.
“We can hope they find us,” the captain responded, losing all his combativeness. “But you know…needle in a haystack.” He blew out a gust of frustrated air. “Listen. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Lace snorted. “Sorry for dealing on the black-market, or sorry for trying to kill me.”
“For trying to get rid of you,” he told her honestly, not repeating the “k” word. “I’ve been making a lot of money with my Friday catches, and when you wouldn’t keep to that day off…”
“I’m undergoing chemotherapy treatments,” Lace informed him baldly. “My infusions were switched to Tuesdays.” She was not going to get into the Inez thing, and that it was her choice.
“Well, shit,” the captain swore. “Now I feel even worse. My brother died of cancer. It sucks.”
“It does,” Lace acknowledged, trying not to feel any sympathy for the man.
“If it helps,” Otis went on, “I wasn’t planning on…getting rid of you permanently, until you found out what I’ve been doing.”
“I know,” Lace admitted. “I heard you had some kind of late-lunch surprise ready to give me before you started pulling the lay-lines with your black-market fish.”
He dipped his chin. “It would have knocked you out for a few hours. Just long enough to haul in a good catch and hand it off to my buyers. But you had to go and get nosy.”
“Oh, so you’re blaming me for this?” Lace’s voice rose.
She was so over his bullshit.
Captain Macleen was quiet for a moment.
“No. No. I blame myself.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve been around a long time. I’ve worked hard.” His orbs blinked open. “I hate bureaucracy of any kind. And that’s what you represent to me; all the ways the government can screw me out of my money.”
“You know,” Lace informed him, “what we do is actually protect your future and the future of all the fishermen who follow you. Without monitoring for overfishing the way we do, eventually there’ll be nothing left to catch.”
“Yeah. That makes sense on paper,” he grumbled. “But it doesn’t pay the bills. And I’m old, so I’m depending on things working for me, now.”
Movement in the water a few yards away, caught their attention at the same time.
“What the fuck is that?” Otis yelped, clearly panicked.
Well, it wasn’t a shark.
It took Lace a moment, but…
She gave a huge sigh of relief and smiled.
“Sea turtles. Three of them,” she informed him happily. “Leatherbacks.”
“What do they want?” Otis was trying to kick away from the small group of docile reptiles like they’d bite his face off.
“I don’t know,” Lace shrugged as best she could. “Maybe to help?”