Chapter 19
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
Tia’s pulse thundered in her head.
She couldn’t wrap her head around it. MJ dragged into a cave. Rylan going for help. And then the body . . . Tia placed the heels of her hands on her temples, applying pressure as if she could physically keep her thoughts intact.
And then the body . . . then the body somehow moved from inside the cave to near The Old Eileen, near enough for Alejandro and Nico to find it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Tia stated. If MJ had drowned, shouldn’t she still be in that cave? How did she drown while wearing
gear that allowed her to breathe underwater? Maybe she’d had to ditch the heavy tank and BCD to outswim the cave’s current
and had run out of air on the way up? That was the only explanation.
But MJ wouldn’t have left behind her equipment unless it was the last resort. She must have seen Rylan swim away, must have
known he was going for help. She would have had enough oxygen in her tank to wait down there longer. So why . . . ?
“It doesn’t make sense,” Tia repeated, her momentum slipping.
“I’m so sorry, lovey.” Lila reached for her, teary-eyed.
“Scuba diving is dangerous,” Francis said. “We take risks every time we dive.”
Tia pushed her mother away. “She’d been diving for decades! She’s a—was a—a-a dive instructor. A master. She wouldn’t have
just . . . died.”
“She must have unstrapped her gear in order to outswim the current,” Francis told her. “And drowned before getting to the
surface.”
“Why didn’t she wait for Rylan to return?” Tia cried, shaking like a leaf. MJ couldn’t be dead. She wasn’t a normal, fragile
person, she was MJ Tuckett. Sherlockian and strong and larger-than-life.
Francis inhaled deeply. “She must have panicked.”
“No!” Tia hadn’t meant to yell, but her body was no longer under her control. She raised a hand without knowing what she meant
to do with it.
Francis winced but kept nodding. “She panicked, Tia. She was in an unfamiliar dive site, she was being sucked deeper underwater,
and her buddy . . . left her.”
Tia stopped, head still pounding. She looked at her brother, folded on the deck. He left her. He left his buddy. It was one
of the unbreakable commandments of scuba diving, a dogma that had been drilled into the twins over and over since they’d started
diving as kids.
Don’t leave your buddy. Never leave your buddy.
Rylan tried to speak, but his breathing didn’t seem to be his own. He gulped for several moments, then managed to sob, “I’m
sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh,” Lila whispered, both hands flying to cover her mouth. “Oh no.”
Everyone turned toward her. Even Rylan lifted his head.
“What?” Tia asked. “What is it?”
Lila plunged her hand deep into her sundress pocket and fished out an orange canister. A prescription bottle. “Verapamil. This was on MJ’s bedside table. It’s heart medication.”
Heart medication. Tia frowned. She placed a hand over her chest to ground herself and reassess. The movement triggered a memory
of MJ doing the same, putting a hand to her heart and rubbing the area like she was in pain. Had she been having heart palpitations?
And why did Lila have it in her pocket?
Francis’s eyes widened. “If she was getting treatment for her heart, she shouldn’t have been in the water in the first place.”
“So that’s what happened,” Alejandro said. It was the first time he’d spoken. He made his way over to midships where the rest
of them stood, leaving MJ behind in the cockpit. He folded his arms tightly over his chest, almost in a self-embrace. “She
didn’t panic, exactly. She had a heart attack. The combination of the stressful circumstance and the underwater pressure was
too much.”
Francis nodded slowly. “Then she must have abandoned her gear and tried to swim for it. It was the only chance she had.”
“But she never made it,” Tia finished, her energy drained away.
No one spoke after that. Lila went back to worrying over Rylan. Francis began to pace. Tia remained motionless.
“It’s . . . my fault,” Rylan hiccupped, then broke down into desperate, heaving sobs.
Tia watched him cry, watched her mother smooth his hair and attempt to quiet him. She should have felt sympathy or pain as
her twin brother wailed, but she didn’t.
It was his fault.
Tia turned her face away from her brother whimpering in Lila’s arms. She didn’t want him to see her disgust.
Nico cleared his throat. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with his uncle, who still had his arms folded across his chest. Nico stepped forward.
“I . . . I was going to radio for help when I first saw Rylan and Tia on the surface, but there was no one in range to hear it. We need to sail to the nearest port, probably a day away.”
What a Cameron way to end a trip, Tia thought. With an emergency port and a body bag.
“No.” Francis slid a hand over his wet hair and shook his head. “We aren’t stopping.”
“What?” Lila said.
Tia gaped at her father. Didn’t they have to tell someone what happened? Didn’t they have to admit this vacation was dead
in the water?
“You heard me,” Francis said patiently. “We will finish this trip. We only have five or so days go, and MJ has family in Florida.
We have an obligation to transport her body to them.”
“We have an obligation to report a death as soon as possible. We can worry about transportation later,” Nico responded.
“We will continue to sail,” Francis said, steel in his voice, and not even Tia could find the words to speak against him.
They stood there, the six of them, in an ugly silence, as the wind whispered against the sails.
At last, Alejandro unfolded his arms. “All right, then. I’ll clear out the freezer.”