Chapter 29
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
Tia felt as though she’d been shackled to the helm of the ship. She couldn’t leave it because they’d get off course, and she
wasn’t close enough to the companionway of the chart house to hear what was going on inside. But they had to call out before
it was too late, before they got too far from land and other ships were still within radio range, and it delayed her running
away even longer.
Tia studied the stars to follow Nico’s steering method. A triangle of them sat just to the right of the main mast, and she
focused on keeping them there. The black velvet sea could have been any sea in the world. She was sailing solo around Cape
Horn or passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. If she dove over the side, she’d swim between plate tectonics or over the
Great Blue Hole. She’d dissolve in the water, hair turning to foam, skin to salt, and she’d ride ribbons of current until
the ocean covered the earth and it was as intimate to the world as it already was to her.
Why hadn’t she learned about MJ’s travels while she’d had the chance?
Tia’s heart pinched, and tears welled in her eyes.
Why hadn’t she gotten every detailed story?
Every scrap of wisdom? There was no one left to talk to now, no one who understood the raw energy she had as she steered the schooner into the stars.
Maybe she would meet someone like that when she ran away.
“Tia!” Rylan’s form darted from the chart house companionway. His teeth were clenched as he hissed her name once more. “Tia!”
“Did you get a response?” Tia asked.
Rylan covered his own mouth as if that could shut up his sister. “Shhh . . .” He lowered his hand slowly. “Alejandro’s asleep
down there.”
“What?”
“Can’t you whisper?” Rylan held out his other hand, wrapped around the radio with its coiled cord dangling. The end had been
sliced through.
Tia reeled. Who the hell would sever their communication method, their only communication method?
“Where’s Nico?” she whispered.
“Still down there, I don’t know.” Rylan wrung his hands. “Do you think Alejandro cut the cord so we wouldn’t be able to communicate
with the outside world?”
Why would he do that? So they would have to go to that island? Had Alejandro guessed they would go for the radio, so he’d
slept down there to guard it from them? But if the cord was cut, he didn’t need to guard it.
Maybe he slept there so he’d know if they tried.
Tia felt helpless once more, stationed at the helm. She couldn’t leave Rylan to steer while she confronted Alejandro, she
couldn’t undo the damage to the cord, and she couldn’t magically produce another way to contact anyone.
Tia looked at her hands, curled around the silver wheel.
The wheel . . .
She stared for a moment, giving the idea a couple seconds to take shape before she put it into action and turned the wheel hard to the right.
At first nothing happened. But then The Old Eileen responded to the command and swung starboard, slowly at first, then picking up speed. Tia kept the wheel turning, even when
Rylan yelped and grabbed onto the cockpit bench for support, even when the sails flapped like sea gulls and the triangle of
stars were far to the left.
“Tia! What are you doing?”
“Getting us to land.” Tia tried to steady the wheel now that they were pointing toward what she hoped was Georgia, even though
they were too far from shore to see it. But the sails only got louder, rattling like bones, which never happened when MJ or
Nico or Francis turned the ship.
A trench opened up in Tia’s stomach, but she held the wheel still until suddenly the boom, twenty feet of horizontal aluminum,
swung across the deck.
“Oh my God,” Tia said in shock, just as Nico and Alejandro burst on deck with identical expressions of panic.
“Give me the wheel,” Alejandro ordered, and Tia backed away as he seized it and barked to his nephew. “Trim the spinnaker,
damn it!”
Nico flew across the deck, head low to avoid the boom. Rylan huddled below the cockpit bench, and Alejandro turned the wheel,
hand over hand, back to the left.
It was agonizingly slow, but the sails quieted as the wind caught them in just the right place. The Old Eileen settled back in her heading. One hundred and ten degrees.
Nico returned to the cockpit, having secured the boom and shortened one of the sails. Alejandro handed the helm off to him
wordlessly and faced Tia.
“That was a crash jibe. They are incredibly, incredibly dangerous. You could have hurt someone. Or everyone.”
Tia’s face burned. She had been so confident a moment before. “I’m sorry, I—”
“And you.” Alejandro cuffed Nico on the back of the head. Rylan flinched as if he’d been the one hit. “Giving the helm to
a landlubber? The helm of your employer’s yacht, no less? You know better than that, sobrino.”
“Lo siento,” Nico muttered. Tia had never heard him sound so serious. Or so small.
At her side, Tia’s fingers curled into fists. But she couldn’t reveal to Alejandro that they knew about the island, or he
would make it harder for them to end the trip. Maybe she could guilt him instead. “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d let
us radio into land the moment you found MJ’s body. We were trying to do the right thing.”
Alejandro put a hand on his hip, the other massaging his temple. “And when you couldn’t radio, you thought you’d turn the
whole boat round and chart your own damn course, hmm? Was that the plan?”
Tia squared her shoulders. “I saw the radio cord. That didn’t happen innocently, did it? Couldn’t have been an accident. So
yeah, I decided to try and get help another way.”
“MJ is dead,” Alejandro replied. “There isn’t anyone on earth who can help her now.” He looked at Rylan, who was now huddled
on the bench with the radio in his lap, kneading the severed cord between his thumb and forefinger.
“Why did you cut the cord, then?” One of them must have come to the chart house and cut it after MJ died, afraid her death
would derail the trip they were so hell-bent on completing.
“I know how it looks,” Alejandro said, and he sat down on the bench, fight drained out of him. Or maybe it was for show. “It
looks like we cut the cord in order to hurt someone.”
We . . .
“Did you?” Tia asked in a whisper.
Alejandro shook his head, elbows on his knees. “We cut that cord to protect someone.”
Rylan reached for Tia’s hand. He was shaking. Tia lowered herself beside him and let him cling to her.
“Protect who?” Tia asked.
Alejandro’s tongue flickered across his lips, and he drew in a great breath through his nose. “Ourselves. It wasn’t cut to
prevent reporting MJ’s death. Because . . . well . . . it’s been cut since the beginning.”