Chapter 53
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Lila repeated over and over in a frantic loop as she and Rylan fought their way to midships. If Rylan
had the power to speak, he would have sounded similar, but as it was, his shock replayed images inside his mind instead of
words.
Tia pushed Nico.
Tia killed Nico.
Tia left the message to run.
The inflatable life raft was packaged and stored by the hatch to the salon. Rylan stared at it, unable to move, even though
he knew he had to get out. Tia was still in the cockpit, yelling, it seemed, at Francis as they wrestled for control of the
wheel. What did Tia know that he didn’t?
To Rylan’s surprise, Lila dropped down on deck and started to unlash the life raft and lower it into the water. She yanked
on a line with surprising strength, and an orange octagonal boat unfolded beneath them. Rylan lost his nerve immediately.
Already the mammoth waves around them were sending The Old Eileen soaring. He couldn’t imagine facing this storm in a tiny tent-like raft that looked more like an inner tube than a safety
vessel.
“We have to hurry,” Lila urged Rylan, heaving the raft toward the side of the ship.
“What’s going on?” he said, but not loudly enough to be heard over the tempest. He shouted again, “Mom! What’s going on?”
Lila clenched her fingers around his wrist and looked at his watch. “Six minutes to midnight, Rylan.”
Six minutes to his birthday. But what did that matter now?
“We can’t go out in this storm!” he cried. Water sprayed into his face, and he wiped his eyes madly to regain his vision.
“We’ll die!”
“We can’t stay here!” she yelled back, dragging the raft to the railing. “The ship is going to sink!”
How did Lila know about the bomb? His seasickness waxed, and Rylan grabbed the railing and vomited over the side of the ship.
Here at the edge, he could feel just how much she was dipping and bucking. His whole body quaked.
Lila yelled for him to get ready. But he wasn’t ready. How could he be? Everything was happening so fast.
“No,” he muttered, then raised his voice. “No! We can’t leave Tia and Dad!”
Lila’s hair dripped in pale tendrils around her face. She shook her head. “After everything he’s done to you?”
Rylan winced at a deafening crack of thunder. “I won’t leave Tia!”
Lila reached out to Rylan and cupped his face in her clammy hands, her fingers like tentacles.
“Oh, my love,” Lila pressed her forehead against his. “Didn’t you see? They’re the same.”
She was holding the tether that connected the raft to the ship. She pulled it taut, as close as she could get it.
“Jump, Rylan!” she told him, but he couldn’t. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.
Didn’t you see? They’re the same . . .
Tia had pushed Nico over the side of the ship. She knew he couldn’t survive in this storm. And a year ago she had pushed Francis
as well. But it had been to protect Rylan. And that’s all she was doing now. Protecting him. She must have had a good reason for Nico . . .
Tears and rain flowed down Rylan’s cheeks, and he hiccupped back a sob.
Why are you trying to force this with me, this killer instinct? Why not Tia?
Because . . . she already has it.
“Rylan!” Lila tugged at his arm. “Three minutes!”
Was Alejandro going to light the bomb at midnight? Maybe there was some kind of timer that would set it off? Rylan didn’t
know how it worked. He didn’t know anything apparently, couldn’t make sense of his sister or his mother or his father or this
storm.
He looked to the cockpit, wishing his weak voice could carry to Tia and warn her what he was about to do.
She’d been the one to tell him to do it, though, hadn’t she? Save yOur Self.
Though maybe she’d meant it more like Save yourself, Rylan. For once.
In the cockpit, Tia and Francis were facing off at the wheel. Francis reached for it, Tia stepped back from it, and it seemed
momentarily that they had reached some kind of accord. But then a sudden gigantic swell pointed The Old Eileen’s bowsprit straight up at the sky, upending Rylan and knocking Lila overboard. She landed in the life raft, while Rylan was
flattened against the railing he clung to, the wind slammed out of him. When he looked back at the cockpit, the helm spun
free of its captain. He searched wildly for his father, for Tia.
They must have been swept overboard too.
Below, Lila waved at Rylan and mouthed pleas that he couldn’t hear. He wanted to whimper and curl into the fetal position and wait for the nightmare to end, but his family was down in that water.
So Rylan held his breath and jumped.
He landed in the trough of a wave. His life jacket rocketed him to the surface. From the raft, Lila strained to grab onto
the straps. She pulled him aboard, bellowing a very unladylike cry at the effort. They fell back together, and Rylan popped
back up, scanning the surface for his twin.
“Tia! Tia!” Even if her head were above water, there was no way she’d hear him. All of Rylan’s rescue-diver training came
back to him in fragments. Unresponsive diver at the surface . . . rescue breaths . . . CPR . . .
But none of it mattered if he couldn’t find them.
“Rylan! We have one minute. We need to move!” Lila unhooked the tether to the raft and picked up a paddle. She plunged it
in the water, trying to get them away from The Old Eileen.
“Wait!” Rylan’s heart dropped into his toes. His breathing came quick and ragged. He turned to his mother, pure panic in his
voice. “Pirate’s still onboard!”
He stood to dive back into the water. The poor cat was belowdecks, probably terrified of the noise and feel of the storm.
He had to go back for him.
“It’s too late.” Lila yanked him down and dropped the paddle. She held Rylan to her chest and covered her ears as best she
could. “Hold on!”
Through his desperate sobs, Rylan managed to glance at his watch.
11.59.58
11.59.59
12.00.00
Rylan braced himself for the explosion.
It didn’t come.
Lila’s hands dropped to her lap, and she gaped at the ship, openmouthed. Rylan sobbed in relief. His cat was still okay.
It didn’t go off . . . Lila must have said—at least that’s what he read on her lips.
Suddenly Rylan felt very cold.
“Mom,” he said, a numb sensation crawling across his skin even beneath the life jacket. “Mom, how did you know the ship was
going to sink at midnight? Why weren’t you worried about Alejandro getting killed in the blast?”
Lila rocked, her silk robe soaked. The rain between them made her pale face look cracked. “He’s dead,” she said. The storm
made her sound shrill. “And he didn’t love me.”
“Wh-what?”
The tent-like apparatus of the life raft was keeping some of the rain off them, but it also blocked their view of the water.
Not that they needed a view. Rylan could feel the ocean roiling under them.
Lila’s lower lip quivered. “I told him to set the explosives. I knew we had the supplies we needed. I gave him the midnight
deadline. So you don’t have to spend your birthday on that boat, see? It’s okay! We’re going to be rescued, lovey. We’re going
to be rescued, and this will be all over the news.”
Rylan’s jaw hung loose. He should never have gotten into the raft with her.
Suddenly, Lila shrieked and pointed over his shoulder. He whipped around.
Someone was in the water.
“Tia?” Rylan leaned over the side to get a better look.
But it was his father’s face, beaded with water and fear, that looked back at him.
“Rylan!” Francis paddled through the water viciously, but his efforts did no good. The storm held a strength that Francis could only begin to imagine. “Rylan!” he called again, hand waving over his head.
Francis strained toward them. He was in arm’s reach. “Help me,” Francis cried. An order.
Rylan’s breath stuttered. Time tripped and limped.
Congrats, son. Nemo’s dead.
Come on, Rylan. People could be dying.
The tests reanimated themselves around him. The tests that Francis had started giving Rylan when Tia was no longer there to
protect him.
Francis had refused to bring Tia home when Rylan found out he was salutatorian because that was second place. That wasn’t
good enough.
Once, Francis had towed him to the bathroom on a lazy day after school, flooded and plugged the sink, then pushed his son’s
head underwater to see if Rylan could conquer his panic attacks. He shut the door so Lila didn’t hear as she practiced her
lines downstairs.
The next month, Francis made Rylan run to school as he drove his Rolls Royce to supervise behind him.
He locked rooms and left hairpins on the floor or emptied the fridge in an attempt to get Rylan to eat the leather from his
shoes. Tests, Francis called them. Tests that would end when he passed.
But he never passed.
In the corner of the life raft, Lila didn’t budge from her seat. Her ashen eyes slid over her husband as if he were another
figment of the water. An appendage, already belonging to the sea. Francis didn’t turn to her or reach for her. Did he guess
she wouldn’t save him even if he did?
No, this was Rylan’s moment. A test he could finally pass.
Rylan’s hand wavered as he held it out. The raft dipped and swayed, keeping the father and son inches out of reach.
Francis howled in frustration. Wind sunk its teeth into the sound, tearing and distorting it.
Francis was laughing as Tia sent Nico over the side of the ship.
He was yelling as his palm connected with Tia’s cheek.
Snapping at Rylan every time he failed.
“Power and potential,” Francis Cameron had told his son. “That’s what I see when I look at the ocean, and it’s what I see
when I look at you.”
Rylan’s vision smeared into something grotesque and fragmented—pieces of porcelain, pale purple tentacles, a boy falling overboard
in a storm. He’d been trained for this, hadn’t he? He’d been trained by Francis to save anyone if he had to. Now was the time
to prove himself, right? He counted to ten.
One, two, three, four . . .
“Rylan!” Francis bellowed his name and shook his hand in the air as if Rylan had forgotten about what he must do.
Five, six, seven, eight . . .
“Help me!” Francis commanded in a voice that paled in comparison to the bulleting rain.
Nine . . .
Rylan brought his hand back to the safety of his chest. A calm bubbled up inside him—Rylan’s own eye in the storm.
Ten.
“Power and potential, Dad,” he said. “You were right.”
He sat back in the life raft, hair slicked back against the nape of his neck, and looked away as the storm finished its work.
Beside him, Lila reached out and locked a hand around his wrist. Was this her way of saying she agreed with his decision?
After everything he’s done to you, she’d said. Like she knew.
Rylan looked at his mother, really looked at her with her silk-soft skin and her pale, wet hair. She’d always been ghostlike.
Had she known about the tests this whole time, hovering at the edges but not revealing herself because she agreed with them?
And now she’d let it slip in order to get him to leave Francis behind?
If so, it had worked.
Rylan broke her grip on his wrist with a strength that surprised even him. He pulled away and focused back on the water.
There would be time later to interrogate his mom.
But he only had minutes to save his twin.
If Francis had ended up close to the life raft, so should Tia have, right? Rylan unbuckled his life jacket and hurled it into
the sea in the opposite direction of his father. Maybe Tia could find it and hold on. She had to be out there. She had to
be alive.
“Tia!”
The Old Eileen had drifted far from them, driven away by the storm. Pirate was alone on that ship, mewling in the dark at being abandoned.
Rylan couldn’t take any more heartache. He stood, ignoring Lila’s yelp as their raft rocked from his movement. He cupped his
hands over his mouth and screamed until his voice couldn’t scream anymore. The waves might as well have been mountains, their
troughs valleys. Soon he couldn’t even see his life jacket floating in the water.
Rylan didn’t know how long he yelled before his knees gave out. In the corner, Lila curled like a white tulip under the weight
of too much dew.
Rylan sat in the puddle of water that had collected in the bottom of the raft. He zipped up the tent with trembling fingers to keep them from flooding. His heart had left his body, making him almost miss the tempo of its beating. The emptiness was somehow worse.
He sat like that until the storm collapsed in on itself and dissipated. He sat until dawn made its appearance, faint and lovely.
And only when the sun scattered itself over the placid waves did Rylan accept that who he’d sacrificed to the night would
never make up for those that he’d lost.