Chapter 44
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
Tia leafed through the maps in the chart house. Nico would be getting off watch at midnight, which was in two hours, and she
could finally get him alone, get him to talk about why he’d been distant the past day.
Tia pilfered a ruler and a small compass from the counter drawer. Plan SOS would be enacted in less than twenty-four hours.
They had to be ready.
It felt surreal that she would be eighteen tomorrow. In the midst of all of this, her birthday seemed like a fake thing from
another life. Her gift for Rylan—a cone snail shell from their first-ever scuba dive that she’d strung on a leather necklace—was
packed securely in her suitcase. As for herself, she had snuck into her parents’ bathroom and slipped her mother’s favorite
lipstick into her pocket. She’d return it after she used it for her birthday tomorrow. Not for the first time, she pictured
the look on Nico’s face when he saw her wearing it.
The hatch from the cockpit to the companionway creaked, and Tia froze, fantasies evaporating.
She couldn’t be caught by Francis or Alejandro in here.
She pocketed the ruler and compass and slapped the light switch to douse the chart house in darkness.
There was really only one place to hide—under the counter—so that’s where she crouched and held her breath.
White sneakers descended the companionway.
Alejandro.
The maps in Tia’s arms crinkled softly as she shrank back farther under the counter. When Alejandro caught Rylan and Nico
poking around to get the radio, he’d been none too pleased. And she didn’t have backup.
The white sneakers walked by her, and she began to relax, but then they stopped in the middle of the room. Alejandro bent
down, and Tia fought the instinct to attack him before he could attack her. But neither of them attacked. He hadn’t seen her.
He was fiddling with the bilge panel on the floor, wedging his fingers into the small hole to pry it open. His other hand
supported a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
What the hell is he doing?
Tia held still. It was so dark that even if Alejandro faced her, there was a chance he wouldn’t make out her shape under the
counter, but the darkness made Tia more afraid instead of less. What reason could he have for not turning on the light?
He detached the panel from its place and set it aside, making an effort to do so quietly.
He doesn’t want anyone to see this, Tia thought. What was in that bag?
Alejandro lay flat on his belly and dangled the duffel into the pitch-black hole. He waited for a moment, then let it go,
and Tia heard a thump and a splash. Was there water down there? Maybe he was hiding stolen treasure, although gold or gems
would have made a bigger noise. Stacks of cash, then? But then he’d be risking it getting wet down there.
Alejandro replaced the bilge panel and climbed the companionway back to the cockpit where Nico was on watch. Quick as a cat, Alejandro vanished, leaving Tia to breathe in relief and crawl out from under the counter.
She flicked on the lights and knelt on the floor. The panel was much harder to get loose than Alejandro had made it look.
It was heavy and firmly in place. The only way to pick it up was by crushing your smallest fingers into the little circle
and lifting it by pure pinkie strength.
Tia almost gave up when the panel finally lifted. She leaned it against the wall and found a flashlight in one of the counter
drawers to shine into the dark opening. She flicked it on, and it bathed the bilge in red light, which was the only kind of
light allowed on a boat at night. It was supposed to help you see better in the dark.
A few inches of murky water flooded the bottom of the pit, which was at least a six-foot drop. The duffel bag sat in the muck,
water seeping into it slowly. There was no way Tia could reach the bag, and even if she jumped down there, there was no ladder
to get back up.
“Damn,” she muttered and put the panel back.
Tia headed toward her room. Before she’d even reached the hallway, she bumped right into Rylan in the salon.
“Hey,” she said awkwardly. Should she apologize for being distant? She searched his face, which looked blanched and sunken.
“Ry? What . . . what’s going on?”
He seized her shoulders. “She’s not there, Tia. I don’t know if she ever was.”
“What? Who’s not where?”
He raised a trembling finger, pointing at the freezer, and Tia’s throat went dry. She crossed the salon in two strides to
reach the galley and opened the freezer before she could think about what she was doing.
Empty.
Pirate, who had hopped onto the counter as if to get a better vantage point of the freezer, whined loudly. Tia scooped him up with one arm and grabbed Rylan’s hand.
“Come here.” She towed them to the chart house, making sure no one else was in there with them. She turned to her brother,
petting Pirate to calm them both down. “I just saw Alejandro drop a black duffel bag in that bilge.”
Rylan wobbled. “You think he put her in there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it was big enough.” At least, she was pretty sure. “But why would he be putting anything in there at all? There was water
at the bottom, you’re not supposed to store stuff in water. What if he’s hiding something?”
Rylan looked doubtful. Tia knelt by the bilge again.
“Help me with this,” she ordered, and they struggled to reopen the weighty panel.
Tia stared down at the duffel bag. It definitely wasn’t big enough for a body. Or heavy enough. Alejandro would have had a
tougher time if a full-grown woman was zipped up in there. But then where was MJ? It’s not like she got up of her own accord
to wander around the ship.
Although . . .
The water in the hallways leading like a trail to their bedroom.
“What if . . . ?” Rylan whispered.
What if she’s somehow still alive?
“No.” Tia said with force. It was impossible. It was wishful thinking. “Keep your eyes on me, okay? I’m gonna go down there.
Do you think you can pull me back out?”
Rylan pressed his hands to either side of his head, as if trying to keep his skull intact. “I don’t know, I don’t know . . .”
“Rylan.” Tia willed herself to be patient, but now wasn’t the time for his anxiety. They needed to know what was in that bag.
“I’m going down there,” Tia told him. “And you’re going to pull me back out. Okay?”
“Oh God . . .” Rylan moaned, shutting his eyes. “I’m gonna be sick.”
Tia swallowed down frustration. They didn’t have time for this.
She steeled herself and dropped into the deep, dark belly of the ship. She landed in several inches of water, caught herself
on the slimy wall before she slipped more.
“I need light, Ry,” she hissed up at her brother.
No answer. He was still tailspinning.
Tia inhaled and summoned her best radio announcer voice, even putting her hand over her mouth to mimic muffled static. “Ksshh,
this is Thimble to Minnow. I repeat, Thimble to Minnow, come in, over.”
She waited. The flashlight popped on overhead, and Rylan’s face appeared above her.
“I’m here. Over,” he managed to say.
Even with the distant light, the bilge remained mostly shrouded, but it was just enough to make out the dark shape in the
water. The black duffel bag.
Tia bent down and found the zipper. “Move the light to the left a little,” she called up. The light cast a gentle reflection
on the shiny zipper teeth. The bag was brand-new.
“Ready?” she said, more to herself than to Rylan. She set her jaw. No matter what was in the bag, she was not going to scream.
Unless it was tarantulas or something. Then maybe she’d let out a modest shriek.
“Ready,” she repeated and slid the zipper open.
She blinked and tried to make sense of what she saw. The bag was full to the brim of cooking oil. Bottle after bottle of cooking
oil, some of it uncapped and oozing amber fluid over plastic.
“It’s just oil,” Tia called up to her brother. Did cooking oil expire? Had Alejandro just been doing his duties as head chef, squirreling away their trash until they could properly dispose of it on land? She felt stupid but mostly relieved.
“Cooking oil?”
Tia rummaged through the bottles. They were almost all full, which was odd, but nothing else was in the bag except for an
oily pack of matches buried at the bottom. She wiped her hand on her shorts. “Yeah. Hang on . . . Shine the light around for
me?”
Rylan reached his arm down to light up the rest of the bilge, and Tia looked around in renewed horror as the red light illuminated
the small room. This wasn’t the bilge where the dive equipment was kept, yet here she was surrounded by oxygen tanks. Stacks
and stacks of metal cylinders filled the space around the duffel bag.
Oxidizer. Fuel. Fire.
Tia was standing inside a bomb.
She zipped the duffel closed, surprised that her finger muscles still functioned. “Rylan, get me out of here,” she said with
as much calm as she could muster.
“What is it?”
“Just get me out.”
Rylan’s voice ramped up an octave. “Just tell me. Is it MJ? Is she down there? Why would they move her? She’s already been
through enough—”
“Rylan, get me the hell out!”
She didn’t mean to let fear get to her, but it had. It tore through her carefully gritted teeth and slammed into her brother,
whose outstretched hand began to shake. Tia fought against her rising heart rate. She was standing in a bomb. What if Alejandro
was about to set it off somehow? What if she accidentally set it off herself?
Tia jumped to grab Rylan’s hand, but it was too sweaty and her grip slipped.
“Rylan!” she cried, knowing full well she wasn’t helping him keep calm, but she couldn’t keep calm herself. She needed him
to pull her out for once, goddamn it.
“I’m trying!” he snapped back, but he was shaking too badly to be of any help.
Tia battled the anger that spread in her, seeded by terror. “It’s not a body, Ry,” she assured him. “Okay? MJ isn’t in here.
Just please, please get me out.”
Rylan withdrew his hand, wiped it on his shirt and stuck it back in. Tia jumped for it, and this time her grip held.
“I . . . can’t . . . pull you . . . up,” Rylan grunted between clenched teeth as he heaved.
I knew he’d gotten too thin.
“Just . . . hold on.” Tia pulled herself into a half chin-up and managed to grab the lip of the opening. The ship lurched,
and her knees crashed into the wall.
She let go of Rylan’s hand, and he helped her up by her waist once her upper body gained purchase. The two of them fell back
in a heap on the chart house floor, which moved beneath them.
Sea must be rough tonight.
Rylan switched off the red flashlight. His frightened face searched hers. For a single split second, Tia wanted to shake him
and scream.
Why are you so helpless?
Instead she drank in deep breaths and pulled the bilge panel over the dark opening in the ground.
“The oxygen tanks are in there. Maybe he moved them, or maybe there have been extra all along.” Her skin felt poisoned where she’d touched the bag.
She dragged her greasy hands over her shorts.
“With the cooking oil, all you have to do is drop a lit match, and it’ll blow right through the hull. ”
“Holy shit.” Rylan snatched Pirate into his arms like a stuffed animal.
“Holy shit,” Tia agreed, pieces falling into place. She knew who Alejandro Matamoros took orders from. “We have to get out
of here.”
Rylan looked at her, clutching the cat.
Tia’s lower lip trembled. “Someone’s going to sink the ship.”