Chapter 47
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
“Tia, I’m sorry . . .” Rylan whispered into the empty air between them the moment Lila had shut them in their cabin.
Tia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t,” she said, not because he shouldn’t be apologizing but because if she heard his
whimpering voice one more time in the next minute she feared she’d snap.
So Rylan had told them. He’d told Lila, maybe Francis too, about Tia’s plan to run away. He knew Tia was gutted over the idea
she might no longer be able to leave. He knew she wouldn’t stop trying, even if Francis took them to the end of the world.
And still, he’d betrayed her.
“Why?” Tia asked him.
She heard Rylan shift from foot to foot. He sniffed. Started to answer.
She cut him short. “I guess I don’t really need to ask, do I? It’s probably the same reason you do everything. Or don’t do
anything, more like.”
“T-Tia . . .”
Tia opened her eyes. Her brother stood before her, withered in on himself in that way of his that always looked delicate and doll-like.
But now he just looked pathetic.
“You got too scared. Just like you got too scared to pull me out of a goddamn bomb.”
He started to cry, and she hated him. She couldn’t help it; it wasn’t fair. She couldn’t even express her feelings without
Rylan buckling.
“Stop crying!” Tia told him, trying not to cry herself. She wasn’t the bad guy here. He had betrayed her. He had failed MJ.
To Tia’s bewilderment, Rylan did stop crying. He sat back on his bed as if the weight of his own shortcomings were too much
for him to bear. He had his palms open to the ceiling, waving helplessly.
I’m sick of apologizing, he mouthed.
Tia wasn’t sure she’d understood him. “What?”
His palms curled to fists, and he raised his head. “I’m. Sick. Of. Apologizing.”
Tia laughed and shoved her hair out of her eyes. “What a time to grow a spine, Ry.” Her stomach felt like one of MJ’s sailing
knots, but she didn’t care. She was done letting him get away with everything.
“I can’t be who any of you want me to be,” Rylan replied.
“You can be fucking loyal. It’s not that hard to keep your mouth shut,” Tia barked.
Rylan sprang to his feet.
He was taller and just as angry as she was—two things Tia hadn’t given any thought to.
“I’m trying so hard to keep our family together. I try to be soft for Mom and successful for Dad and adventurous and exciting
for you, but I end up not able to do any of it for any of you. And all of you are so . . . so selfish! You don’t even try to fix things.”
“Not when Dad makes a point to break everything!” Tia shot back.
He was going to crack at some point. He’d fall back into his bed and spool up like a cinnamon roll.
“So do you! God, Tia, you’re just like him. Mom knows. That’s why she treads so lightly around you. She’s scared of you.”
“That’s not true—she’s jealous of me. She resents me for being young and speaking my mind. She hates that I get to be exactly
who I am while she just smiles and pretends all the time like she’s still on camera!”
Tia snatched a pillow from her bed and balled it up in her hands so she wouldn’t be tempted to throttle him. “Rylan, they
sent me away. I was trapped at a boarding school. With nuns. And blizzards. There were spikes on the fence, and everybody
ate the same cereal. They might as well have locked me in a 1920s asylum! So why should I try to keep the family together?
They’re the ones who preferred us apart.”
“Because I needed you,” Rylan retorted. “I tried so hard to get you home. Tia, please. I . . . I’m so—”
She didn’t let him finish. “Tell me why it was so bad, then, Ry. Tell me why it was so horrible but not horrible enough to
run away with me. What did they do to make you hand over my secrets like a goddamn spy?”
That clammed him up. He backed away and bent his head. Tia waited one second. Then another. Then she blew all the air in her
lungs out her nose and faced away from him.
“What a great way to find out we don’t trust each other anymore,” she said, and she went and locked herself in the bathroom.
She had brought the pillow with her, and she pressed it to her face and screamed.
It didn’t really matter where they were going now, did it? Francis and Lila wouldn’t take their eyes off Tia. She wouldn’t get the chance to run away. They might even punish her for planning it. Her last birthday had been one of the worst days of her life. Why shouldn’t this next one top it?
Thunder, soft and foreboding, rumbled in the distance like a monster underwater. Tia lowered the pillow and combed the part
back into her hair with her fingers.
Why would Francis and Alejandro sink the ship? The coordinates in the Bahamas were close, sure, but were they really planning
on getting there via life raft? Or even if they planned to wait until they arrived to blow it up, they’d be trapped on the
island for good with no way out.
Or maybe that was the point.
To get rid of the thing everyone would be looking for when the world realized the Camerons were missing.
The Old Eileen.
And now Francis knew Tia had been planning to run. He knew if even one of them didn’t end up on that island, they risked telling
everyone where it was. The bomb in the bilges was already set. He could pack them all on a life raft and blow the ship at
any time, trapping Tia with him for good.
She wouldn’t let that happen.
She had to leave tonight.
Tia listened to the waves outside. Was she imagining that they sounded bigger? It seemed to be raining lightly too. Tia wished
she understood exactly what was going on. She wished she knew what her father was running from and why MJ’s body was no longer
in the freezer and if she could ever trust her twin again. But she didn’t know any of that, and if she didn’t act tonight,
she might be too late.
Tia rested her hands on the bathroom counter, needing it to take her weight.
The bathroom was tidy and quiet. Rylan’s toiletries were packed away in a drawer, and Tia’s toothbrush sat alone by the sink.
There was a jewelry box by the coiled hand towel.
Tia opened it to look at the South Sea pearl earrings and necklace inside.
They were the gifts her parents had given her for graduation, which now seemed like it had happened to a different girl on a different ship.
Tia had still never worn them.
She shut the box and set it back in place, then listened at the door. Rylan’s sniffling had smoothed into deep breathing.
He was asleep.
How could he sleep after seeing what lay stacked inside the chart house bilge? Did he trust their family so readily he believed
without a doubt he was safe?
Tia stepped back.
They had promised to leave the ship together, but that was before Rylan showed his loyalty to their parents instead of to
her. She had wanted to see the world with him, but Rylan was never one who could handle an adventure anyway. Why should she
save him again like she had a thousand times before?
If he loved the Cameron legacy so much, he could inherit it alone.
Tia plunged her hand into her pocket and fished out her mother’s lipstick. Only an hour ago she had planned on wearing it
for her birthday tomorrow, planned on leaving the shape of her lips on Nico’s cheek. Now, it would serve as a warning. A goodbye.
Let Rylan save himself this time.
Tia slipped on her brother’s raincoat, which was hanging on a shower hook, and uncapped the stick.
Her face in the mirror was, as always, half hidden by her long, dark hair. Her cheeks were sun-kissed, her nose freckled from
hours on deck.
Tia leaned over the cold counter and touched the lipstick to the glass.