Chapter 25
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
Tia and Rylan shut themselves in their cabin. Tia leaned back against the closed door and slid to the ground until her knees
propped up her elbows and her head was in her hands.
“I don’t understand. Where could he be taking us?”
The carpet blurred in front of Tia. She couldn’t blink or cry, only stare straight ahead as her best laid plans turned to
dust.
He wasn’t taking them home to Florida.
But Florida was where all of Tia’s things were. She had a mason jar of cash on her dresser, rain boots in the closet, a travel
pack that could easily fit half a dozen outfits and a sleeping bag. She had everything she needed to run.
Tia’s fingers dug into her scalp as a horrible thought took shape.
What if Dad knew about my plan?
Why else would he change their destination? He was trying to mess with her head, show her who was in control. She had to get
out of here, contact the outside world, and cut off this random surprise vacation.
Tia forced herself to calm. No, he couldn’t have known. He hadn’t even seen her since last August when she got on the jet for St. Bernadette’s.
“I don’t understand,” Tia repeated.
From the end of his bed, Rylan was making swirls in the carpet with his toe, chin dropped to his chest.
Tia dropped her hands and zeroed in on her brother. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Rylan didn’t look up. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Did you . . . know about this?” Tia couldn’t help the note of accusation that crept in her tone.
Rylan looked at her, shoulders scrunched to make himself small. “No.”
“You’re not reacting like normal.”
“What’s normal?”
A panic attack. Tia bit her tongue. “You just . . . You’re not even upset. You hate surprises.”
Rylan shifted around the bed, not meeting her eyes. “It’s just more vacation. Dad seems so excited.”
Tia pushed against the wall and stood. She didn’t want to be angry at him, but her frustration filled every inch of her, and
Rylan was in her line of sight, not even reacting to the massive wrench in her plan. He wasn’t even mentioning it.
“Rylan,” Tia said in an effort to keep her voice even, “you realize I can’t run away until he takes us home. I can’t survive
any extra time with them.”
They hadn’t talked about running away since MJ’s death, but Tia was more certain about running than ever. Rylan had to understand.
Instead, he stood, hands in his pockets and chin to his chest. “I’m going to go . . .”
Tia folded her arms. “Are you at least going to come up with an excuse?”
Rylan kept his head down and left the room without another word.
What. The. Hell.
Was he hiding something? Either he knew about Francis’s surprise or . . . Or what? He wanted Tia to stay so badly that he
was celebrating the change in their destination? No, that couldn’t be it. He wouldn’t have acted so guilty.
So why would he be guilty?
MJ.
Tia paced the cabin between the two twin beds.
He’s relieved we aren’t going home because MJ’s death won’t be reported right away. Because if MJ’s death is Rylan’s fault . . .
Tia sank down onto Rylan’s bed. Her leg hit something tucked underneath the sheets, and she dug around to pull it out.
Rylan’s notebook. The thing might as well have been her brother’s diary.
Tia opened it without hesitation.
The first half of the book was everything she remembered from last summer. A prickly lobster from their dive at Alligator
Reef practically bristled off the page. A rendering of the bronze Christ statue from their snorkel at a state park gazed up
with sad, blank eyes. The sketches got less artistic and more clinical as she looked on. Anatomy of a pearl fish. A close-up
of a lionfish’s spines with notes of its venomous and invasive nature. Atlantic tarpon, giant squid, some weird-looking shark . . .
The drawings took on a different shape after a while. Straight lines grew wispy. Orderly strokes wobbled into scribbles. Tia
turned another page and stopped dead.
The sketch was magnificent and out of control, jets of bubbles penciled around the perimeter as if the scene was being viewed
from behind a diver’s mask.
And what a scene it was.
A diver clad in svelte black, face to the side, profile sharply outlined. The diver’s flippers looked less like a piece of
equipment and more like an appendage that grew seamlessly from their dark legs. And they had one hand straining for the surface.
Tentacles, not thick and sucky like the ones of the giant squid, but needlelike and fine as silk, gathered around the diver’s
waist. They wouldn’t have been so threatening if not for the sheer number of them. Thread-thin tendrils curled around the
diver’s legs, and a single narrow tentacle was poised to claim the diver’s outstretched arm.
It was a jellyfish, Tia guessed. A fantastical, monstrous jellyfish that lived in her brother’s mind.
Tia couldn’t stand to look any longer. She turned the page and was met with more straggly drawings with flyaway lines and
reaching people. Drowning people.
Tia placed the sketchbook back where she found it and left the room.
In the cabin next door, Nico lay draped across his bottom bunk. He must have just gotten off watch. Tia paused in the doorway.
“You okay?”
Nico sat up at the sound of her voice. He drew a threadbare smile over his face. “Sure am. How you doing?”
Tia took the liberty of entering the room and sitting beside him on the bunk, glad for company that was not her family. “You’re
beat,” she said. She’d never seen Nico look so worn-out. The bags under his eyes and the sag to his shoulders reminded her
of Rylan. Like he’d been rung out on a washboard.
“The double shift may be catching up to me. Slightly.” He held up his thumb and finger to demonstrate how slight this catchup
had in fact been. “Even when I have the chance to sleep, I can’t.”
“Why not?” Tia studied the coordinates tattooed on Nico’s arm and quizzed herself on their meaning.
Latitude 30, longitude 81. That was above the equator, way east of them.
Mediterranean, maybe? Aegean? Latitude 34, longitude 18.
Was Antarctica 18? How much of the world had Nico seen?
Would she get to see all those places someday?
Nico stretched, hiking up his sleeves. “Just, I dunno . . . can’t sleep.”
Tia touched one of his tattoos, a trio of swallows just behind his elbow. Each swallow stood for five thousand nautical miles,
she knew. She couldn’t wait to have a flock of her own.
“What could possibly keep someone like you up at night?”
“Someone like me?” Nico nestled back into the pillow and let her examine him. “You think I don’t have regrets?”
Nico seemed to be the definition of a man without regrets. He had committed his life to a primal piece of him, a piece that
Tia believed was inside everyone. It was the thing she thought made adrenaline junkies, thrill-seekers, the thing that made
people leave a dead-end job or drop out of school. Or run away from home.
“Tell me the worse thing you’ve ever done,” she said. She removed her hand from his arm and sat back against the wall, which
was papered with postcards and photographs. A couple thumbtacks poked her in the back.
Nico had gone perfectly still. He reached up and touched his temple, maybe checking the little vein that throbbed just next
to the ear. Was he . . . upset? Tia had no idea what to do with that possibility. Nico had never looked so much as perturbed.
But then his smile rose, quick and electric. “Only if you tell me yours.”
“Huh.” Checkmate. The worst thing Tia had ever done. It wasn’t hard to come up with. It had been a year ago on her birthday. And she hadn’t told anyone or brought it up to the people who had seen, even in those ugly, secret moments when the memory made her proud.
“Counteroffer,” she said. “How about the second-worst thing you’ve ever done? And I’ll say mine.”
Nico’s eyes were clear and bright. “You first.”
Tia sifted through her history of misdemeanors and classroom crimes and settled on the most impressive. “Back when I lived
in Florida, an old friend of mine and I stole her dad’s Bugatti and drove out to the Keys. We went skinny-dipping and got
sand all over the seats. On our way back, we ran a red. And to top it off, we left the convertible roof open, so of course
it poured that night. Went from sports car to swimming pool.”
Tia hadn’t thought about her Florida friends in months. She had ghosted them all eventually, or maybe it had been a mutual
disinterest as their lives diverged. Tia didn’t have the patience to keep around people who weren’t right in front of her.
Except for Rylan.
Nico threw back his head. “Man, fuck you, Cameron.”
Tia crossed her arms over her chest in mock offense. “What?”
“You’ve driven a Bugatti.”
“I’ve stolen a Bugatti.”
He put a pillow over his face as if the conversation physically pained him. “I don’t want to hear it, princess.”
Tia smirked. “What’s the second-worst thing you’ve ever done?”
She couldn’t see his face but could practically hear the air whir as he thought.
“Board this boat,” he said at last.
Tia looked at him. “You mean because of what happened to MJ?”
“My uncle told me we aren’t going to Florida,” Nico murmured.
So Alejandro had known too. That made sense. Francis and Alejandro were partners in everything. Tia had learned that the hard
way the time she asked Alejandro to keep it secret that she was in trouble at school when he had picked her and Rylan up.
Francis had known less than a day later and grounded her.
“My dad just told us too. Do you know anything else?”
Nico shook his head.
Tia hesitated, then lay down beside him, letting her head rest on his tattooed upper arm. Had Francis hired Nico without telling
him the real plan? It wasn’t right. Nico had a life to live that didn’t involve the Camerons’ forever vacation.
Tia frowned to herself. If Francis had decided on this surprise from the beginning, he must have prepared the route for their
alternate destination, right?
Those coordinates.
Tia sat straight up.
“What is it?” Nico stretched out his arm, inviting her to lie back again.
“I . . . I might know where we’re going.”
Nico propped himself up on his elbows. “Shit, really? Where?”
“Well, I know how to find out, I mean.” Tia could picture the messy chart house desk. It had caught her attention days ago
with all the maps, the protractor, the ruler. And the ship’s log lying open with a seemingly random string of coordinates
written in her father’s penmanship.
“He wrote it in the log book. It has to be where we’re going. And if I can find out where we’re going . . .”
Then she could figure out how she could run from there instead.
“Then we’ll find those coordinates.” Nico reached out and rearranged a red strand of Tia’s hair.
She faced him fully, blood hot beneath her skin. She was close to his face now, close enough to smell the kind of toothpaste
he used. She wanted to tell him right then about her own plan, but the more rational side of her won out. She liked him, but
that didn’t mean she really knew him yet. What if he told Alejandro?
“Are you sure you can handle carrying out such a dangerous mission, de la Vega?”
Nico tilted his head one degree to the side. Tia could have sworn his eyes flickered to her lips.
“General, I’m at your command.”
Tia let her nose brush against his, tantalizingly near his lips. “Still think boarding this ship is your second-biggest regret?”
Nico reached up to cup her chin with his large, calloused hand. “I revise my previous statement . . . I have no regrets.”
Tia smirked. “Then let’s get going, shall we?” And she pulled away from him.
If Nico had been affected, he didn’t show it. He stretched and slipped out of bed, clicking his tongue. “Whatever would my
captain think if he knew I was taking orders from his teenage daughter?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Tia said, opening the door for him. “When we’re through, I’ll be your captain.”
Nico paused in the doorway. He smoothed a hand through her hair and gave her a little push so she was flat against the door.
“Aye aye,” he breathed, then stepped away and down the hall.
A bloom of heat swept through Tia as she hurried to close the door and follow behind him.
No one else was in the salon or the galley, so they reached the chart house in peace. Tia wondered where Rylan had gone—the
anchor locker, maybe?
The chart house was neater than she had seen it a few days ago. The maps were folded and tucked away, the ship’s log shut with a pen tucked in its spiral binding. Tia flipped it open and went through it page by page.
“It was here somewhere,” she said. She could picture the coordinates written at an angle on the top of a blank page. While
she searched, Nico unfolded some maps and retrieved a ruler.
Tia was getting near the back of the log. She hadn’t imagined the page with the red notes. But what if someone had torn it
out? If only she’d known then how important it would be.
There. She stopped on a page. Two lines of letters and numbers in Francis’s handwriting.
“This is it.” She showed Nico, who immediately picked out a map. Tia peeked around his arm as he traced to find where the
coordinates intersected. It was a map of southern Florida, the Bahamas, and below. So they must be continuing south of West
Palm. Maybe just a resort in the Bahamas?
Then Nico stepped back. He had penciled in two neat lines that lay over each other, crossing in the middle of a swath of pure
ocean.
“What?” Tia leaned closer. Had Nico traced these wrong? No . . . there was something. A tiny speck, no larger than a single
grain of sand. That’s where Francis was taking them. Some random, minuscule, unlabeled island.
Tia grabbed a pen and copied down the coordinates on a fresh scrap of paper. She tore it from the ship log and shoved it in
her shorts pocket.
They were headed somewhere isolated, uninhabited, and far from any other piece of land.
Why was Francis taking them there? What lay on that island?
And why had it been so important for him to keep it secret?