21. West
CHAPTER 21
WEST
After searching through the file, I’ve got a pretty good clue on where to go, which is great since we’re already heading in the right direction. Sydney fell asleep on the bunk, and I went back up on deck to get everything set so I could catch a couple hours of sleep. When I’m sailing, I can’t sleep the whole night through. It’s more like short bursts in between checking to make sure we’re not going to run into another vessel.
Since Sydney was asleep on the bunk, I tried to get what sleep I could on the bench. It was horrible, and I regretted all my life choices that led me to this moment.
Sydney walks up onto the deck at first light in the morning. She’s holding a bag of trail mix and what looks like a notebook in her other hand. Her eyes land on me, and she marches toward me. I never quite know what I’m going to get with her. Maybe she has something to tell me that she’s been keeping from me. I’m beginning to suspect there’s a lot of that.
“Are you busy?” she asks me.
“It depends.”
She scrunches her brows together and studies me. “Are you trying to avoid me?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“Then you should probably get a bigger boat.” She grins at me, and her dimples pop out. “Do you have boaty things to do right now?”
I clench my jaw to keep from groaning—or laughing. “If I talk to you, will you refrain from ever saying the word ‘boaty’ again?” I sit down on the bench and kick off my shoes. It’s a nice enough day to be out here barefoot with my jeans rolled up. I’m getting downright hot the closer Sydney comes to me.
“Cross my heart.” She moves her hand back and forth across her chest, the same hand holding the paper. “Let’s play tic-tac-toe.”
“Tic-tac-toe?” I raise my eyebrows, about to turn her down, but she looks so hopeful. I shake my head, resigned to my fate. “Sure.”
“OK, perfect. Whoever wins gets to ask the other one a question, and then the loser has to answer it.”
Aha. So she’s out here to be nosy. Or make friends. Just because I saved her once—okay, maybe twice—she thinks we should spill all our secrets. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her last night that I’d keep her safe. It was the heat of the moment. She was so sad I couldn’t just let her be upset like that.
“What happens in a tie?” I ask as she sits down on the bench right next to me.
“Then we both get to ask a question,” she explains.
I stare down at her as she wrestles the notebook and paper flat. “I think if we tie, neither of us should get a question.”
She scowls up at me. “Well, now that’s boring. You’re no fun.”
I grab the pen out of her hand and reach for the paper. “I never promised this was a pleasure cruise.”
“Darn, and I kept waiting for you to produce an A-list entertainer.”
“You’ll have to take that on yourself.” She looks positively gleeful at the suggestion, so I hurry and say, “Forget I said that. This is not an entertainment cruise.” I take the pen from her and lean closer to draw the lines for tic-tac-toe and then go first. I plan on asking the questions this round. She grabs the pen from my hand with a quick jerk. She puts an X in the corner.
I watch as she adds an extra flair to it. “You’re not trying to cheat, are you?”
She looks up at me with a grin and nudges me with her elbow. “Your turn.” I quickly win the game, and she fake pouts. She’s horrible at it because her eyes are still sparkling.
“Okay, what’s your question?” she asks.
I look out over the horizon for a couple of seconds as I decide what to ask. “How did you get away from those guys when they were waiting for you at the police station?”
I turn back and look at her, watching her shoulders tense, but then she shrugs. “I drove like I had somewhere to be,” she says.
Reaching out to turn the wheel just a bit so we don’t get pounded by the next swell, I turn back to her and say, “That’s not much of an answer.”
I tap the piece of paper with my index finger and give her an ultimatum. “If you want me to answer your questions truthfully, then you’re going to have to answer mine.” Of course, I don’t plan on losing to her. I’ll make sure it’s a tie every time I don’t win.
She glances up at the sky like it’s the most exciting thing she’s ever seen. “I’m actually a fairly good driver,” she says slowly, like she doesn’t expect me to believe her. “I know a lot of people say, ‘I’m a good driver,’ but what I mean is I’m a really good fast driver.”
“And how did you become a really good, fast driver?” I ask. She grabs the pen out of my hand and makes another set for tic-tac-toe.
“If you want the answers, you’ll have to beat me again.” Sydney grins, then puts her X in the center. It ends up being a cat’s game.
“Now we get to ask each other questions,” she says.
I shake my head. “I think with a cat’s game, it means no one earns a question.”
She practices her scowl on me again, and I see that it’s still terrible. This time, when it’s my turn again, I win.
“How did you learn to drive so fast? And a real answer. Not something like you watched Herbie .”
Sydney bites her lip and looks sheepish as she answers. “My brothers and I may have done a little bit of street racing back in the day.”
“You what?”
Of all the things I thought she was going to say, I did not see that one coming.
Her head bobs up and down. “Yes, we might have organized some street races when we were in high school and college.”
“Might? You’re not sure if you did or not? I feel like that’s a pretty definite you did or you did not.”
She presses her lips together, and she gives me a pointed look. “Don’t go bad cop on me.”
I almost laugh at that. “What other things were you into? Usually, there are other things that go along with the street racing.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute and looks adorably confused until her eyes narrow at me. “You mean like drug running?” She holds up the pen angrily like she’s thinking about stabbing me with it. “I’m not into that. I can’t believe you would think that.”
I hold up both hands in surrender. “Sorry. It’s just…usually the two went hand in hand in my work.”
“Don’t you just have a cheery outlook on humanity?” She scratches out another game of tic-tac-toe. “Glad you can have such an optimistic outlook on the world.”
She loses the next game because she’s still mad.
“Who is the better driver out of you and your brothers?” I’d meant to ask her something about her entanglement with the mafia. Instead, that question slipped out, as if my subconscious wants to know her better. She taps her fingers on the notebook while she thinks about the answer.
“My oldest brother, Archer, was the best. Then me, then Brooks, and then Maverick.” The wind catches the sail, and it cracks loudly as we push forward on the gust. I forget about the tic-tac-toe game and simply picture Sydney doing street racing. “What kind of car did you drive?”
“I had a Ford Mustang Dark Horse.”
I let out a low whistle. She hadn’t been street racing in the family car, that’s for dang sure.
“How long did you do this?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We got away with it for about two years. I was a senior in high school when we started. Mom and Dad were not impressed when they found out.” She smirks a little at that.
“So you all just quit doing it because they asked you to?”
She chuckles. “When my parents ask you to do something, you do it. It’s that simple.”
I want to know what she means by that statement, but I don’t want her to lock me out just yet. I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees. “Did you ever have a run-in with the police with your street racing?”
“They never could catch me.” She gives me a little cheeky grin, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve grossly misjudged this small package sitting next to me.
“Were your brothers a bad influence and got you into street racing and running from the law?” I study her sheepish face. “Or was it your idea?”
“Something like that,” she says with a laugh. “Although, I really am a rule follower. That’s been my only illegal activity so far.”
“Could have fooled me,” I mutter as I stand up. I need some space. It’s getting hot sitting next to her. I tug at the collar on my shirt and walk aft.
“How did your parents find out?” I ask.
“You didn’t win another round of tic-tac-toe to earn that question.”
I turn to stare her down. I rest a fist against my hip and lean my shoulder against the cabin.
She folds her arms over her chest and juts out her chin.
I stare and wait.
Her whole body twitches, and I deepen my frown.
She squirms and frowns back at me.
“Fine. It’s because my brothers were worried about me. They’ve always been a little overprotective. And they tattled.”
“Did your parents make all of you quit?”
“Just me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Like I said, my family can be a little overprotective of me.”
“Why is that? You seem to be doing okay for yourself so far.”
Sydney beams at me. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me.”
What I don’t tell her is that it’s going to take more than her strong sense of self-preservation to stay out of the mafia’s clutches. What I want to know is why she was so sheltered and felt the need to act out by street racing and, now as an adult, has this urge to have an adventure.
Sydney tucks one of her legs underneath herself. “I was premature as a baby. I’ve always been small for my age, and then I spent a lot of high school sick with mono. It made my family view me as more fragile…especially since everyone else is twice my size—Mom included. The mono simply cemented that stereotype in their minds.”
“Hmm, you caught the kissing sickness?” I smirk at that.
“Yes, I kissed so many people I got mono. No, of course not.” She taps my knee with the notebook. “I probably drank out of my brother’s water bottle, and it got passed from there. Now, that guy definitely kissed a lot of people.” She shudders as though thinking about her brother’s love life might make her physically sick.
I brace myself as the boat dips over a little bit bigger swell.
“What would your parents say if they knew you witnessed a murder and were on a boat with a strange man?”
“First, they’d tell me to keep my guard up, and then they would tell me to get my butt home.”
I nod once. I like her parents already. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”