Chapter 55
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
Unknown
Every breath was precious. She filled her lungs frantically, never knowing which gasp of air would be her last as another
wave folded her in black. She spun like a windmill underwater. At one point she struggled for the surface only to find she
was actually swimming down. There was no room for panic, no room to call for help. There was only Tia and the sea and the
cold eventuality that only one of them would win.
She glimpsed orange soaring wildly in the black. The life raft. Tia tried to swim forward. She surged closer one moment, then pinwheeled back the next. It was no use. If she fought this
hard for much longer, she would sap her strength and drown.
But she could see them: two little dots on the raft of orange. She could see her mother’s silk robe, her brother’s dark hair.
And there, in a stretch of black water between her and the raft, was Francis, or at least a form that must be Francis, paddling
madly toward them.
A swell brought Tia to a mountainous height, and she saw Rylan’s arm stretch out to reach their father.
The swell crested, and Tia went under. She held her breath, and the air in her lungs sent her to the surface again where another wave of water held her up.
Francis was reaching for Rylan’s hand.
Again, the ocean sent her down into a bowl rimmed by waves. Tia waited, heart flapping like a luffing sail, until she shot
up again, expecting to see three figures huddled on the life raft. Her family intact without her.
But there were only two. Rylan had withdrawn his arm.
The ocean sent Francis spiraling away.
He didn’t save him, Tia realized, in awe of her brother.
The last time they’d spoken had been a fight. Tia was still angry, but every part of her was waning, and she didn’t want the
anger to be the last thing left.
She should have let Rylan say sorry.
She wished he knew she forgave him now.
Tia didn’t know how long she battled the storm. Every muscle burned, and her throat seared. Her nose was filled with fire,
and she could never rid the salt from her eyes. She wished for a brief moment that she could just die, that it could be over
and done with.
Then her hand hit something solid.
She grabbed onto it, not caring if it was a life preserver or a sea monster. She needed something that wasn’t liquid. Anything.
It was a life jacket surfing atop a swell. Its buoyancy gave Tia instant relief, and she fumbled to clasp it across her chest.
The reprieve allowed her to look around for The Old Eileen.
The jagged surface revealed nothing. It could have tossed her miles away and she’d have no idea. Too exhausted to cry, Tia
focused on keeping her head above water and wished on the stars for the storm to end.
Salt glittered in her eyelashes. Her skin grew stiff from dehydration. Light had rendered the angry dark ocean into a calm, silvery mirror that reflected the sunrise. Tia couldn’t feel her fingers and toes. A horn blared, and Tia regained her senses.
A boat!
“Help,” she tried to say, but her voice crackled. She summoned what little remained of her strength and waved her leaden arms
above her head. “Help!” she called again and again until her voice gained power and pierced the quiet air.
If the ship had been a few minutes earlier, it wouldn’t have been light enough for them to see her. If the surface had been
any rougher, her waving arms wouldn’t have made a difference. But the ocean had put her through enough, and the ship changed
its course to come get her.
It was a corporate fishing vessel, and the man who helped her aboard still had shaving cream slathered on his lower face and
didn’t speak English.
“Where’s the nearest land?” Tia asked to no avail. She scoured her brain for high-school Spanish. “Um . . . dónde . . . tierra,”
she said as her hands flailed in the air, “aqui?”
The man gave her a dry towel and some beef jerky. “Tierra?” he asked.
Tia ripped off a piece of the meat with her teeth. “Sí, senor.”
“Yo te llevaré allí,” the man said with a pat on her back. She could only hope he’d said something along the lines of Yes, I’ll take you somewhere safe.
The man inputted a destination on his screen, and the little boat motored to life, heading northwest. Northwest . . . That
meant Florida!
But what about Rylan in the life raft? She needed to find him, and going to Florida posed a new set of problems. She wasn’t some kid taken against her will by her father anymore. She had killed someone.
Tia bit off a large bite of jerky to cover up the nasty taste in her mouth. Not just someone. She had killed Nico. Nico who had helped drown MJ. Nico who had kissed her and touched her while he knew in his soul he was the reason her friend
was dead.
And now he was dead.
The man left the screen to go back down below and finish shaving.
When he came back, she gestured to his clean-shaven chin and then to her hair. “Can I use that?” she asked. “Mi pelo . . .
uh, apagado.”
The man nodded and showed her to the head. She looked through the bathroom drawer and retrieved the razor and a pair of scissors.
She twisted her hair up into a ponytail and began to cut.
The man let her off in Hallandale, wrapping the remaining jerky in tinfoil and sticking it in her life jacket pocket in farewell.
When he was gone, she finished it off and left the life jacket in the nearest dumpster. She kept the raincoat’s hood up to
protect her bald head from peeling in the sun as she walked for an hour to the nearest homeless shelter. They handed her a
toothbrush and fleece blanket at the door. She slept there for three nights.
On the fourth morning, she ate cold scrambled eggs in the mess hall and watched the television. Waiting. Hoping.
There was nothing.
So she left the shelter, Rylan’s raincoat knotted around her waist. She shoplifted a turkey sandwich and a pack of cigarettes
from the nearest gas station. She walked to the marina and looked out at sea, hands deep in her pockets.
Her fingers closed around a tightly folded piece of paper. Without even pulling it out, she knew what it was: the piece of paper torn from the ship’s log. The one with the coordinates to Francis’s secret island hideout written in blue ink on the back.
If Rylan and Lila had survived, but they hadn’t been rescued, they might have managed to get there. She’d told Rylan the heading
they were at.
She turned to walk—to where she wasn’t sure—when the sight of a familiar white and teak wood boat caught her eye.
The Old Eileen was tucked between the other sailboats in the marina. Tia’s heart clambered into her throat, and she walked toward it, afraid
the boat would vanish at any moment and prove to be nothing more than a sailor’s mirage.
She wasn’t, though. She was real, majestic and tall without so much as a scratch from the night in the storm.
But something was different. Tia paused, noticing the dirty footprints all over the deck, the salt that crusted the railings.
No one had taken care of her since docking. She must have been searched by the coast guard when they found her. And yet wasn’t
it a miracle she was here at all?
“Damn,” Tia murmured. Somehow they were both here. Unbroken. Uncaptained.
“Don’t have to tell me twice.”
Tia jumped. Her first instinct was to turn around and push the person who’d spoken into the harbor. She restrained herself,
though, hoping he couldn’t hear the blood rush to her head. She glanced over her shoulder at the man. He was old and beer-bellied
with strands of fish in his teeth and a Bass Pro Shops cap on his head.
“I found her last night,” the man continued. Just her. So the ship must have been empty when he found it. “Jus’ drifting. Can’t understand it. Do you work here in the shipyard?”
He’d given her an easy backstory. “Yeah,” she said with a nod. No need to be specific. Tia offered a cigarette to him and put it between her own lips when he refused.
She would need time, she knew. She would need the man’s trust. She would need the coordinates on the paper in her pocket.
But most of all, to find Rylan and escape what she’d done, Tia needed the ship.
So she smiled through cigarette smoke, thinking about her family and the sea and how she was now more than ever like Lila’s
sister, Elaina.
The thing that should have died.
“I’m Lainey.”