Chapter 32 #2
Trying to get my own vest would likely end with a fiery hot bullet in my back, so I try a different tack. “How are you going to get Piper in the boat if you find her?”
Viv moves around the tender, doing her checks. She keys the ignition—of course she has the key. “What do you mean?”
She’s paying attention to me and the boat at the same time, and she keeps the gun pointed at me as the engine putters to life behind us. Our seats aren’t close enough together that I feel confident in lunging at her without getting shot.
“I mean, if you find her, alive or dead, you won’t be able to pull her into the boat on your own,” I say.
Viv pauses, giving me her full attention. “Piper is alive.”
The way she says it, like a woman reciting a Bible passage, makes me realize how far gone she really is. She’s not going to listen to logic or reason; she needs Piper to be alive even though it’s impossible.
“I’m sure she is. But you can’t rescue her alone.”
“So, what, you want to help? Why?”
I shrug and face the front of the cabin so she can only see part of my face in the halogen glow of the boat’s safety lights.
There’s no way Piper is alive in the water, but I need to pander to Viv’s delusions.
“I’m hoping you’ll change your mind about killing me. Plus, I like Piper. I…I want to help.”
I don’t know if she buys it, but Viv—I’ve come to realize—is far from stupid. She knows I’m right. She can’t haul Piper into the tender by herself.
“Yeah, fine, you can help. But I won’t change my mind. And if you make one movement I don’t like, it’s over.” She shakes the gun at me as she turns her attention to the steering wheel. “I am perfectly capable of driving with one hand and shooting with the other.”
I don’t know if she’s bluffing or not, but it’s unwise to test her. I grunt my assent and settle back, watching as we slowly pull away from Empress, easing forward into the shroud of the night.
“Should we dock on Ligia and check there first?” I try as the tender crests a wave, churning up black water behind us.
“I’ll check there last,” Viv replies, glancing at me to make sure I haven’t moved. She looks like a bright orange puffer fish with the life jacket and her lip injections. “If she’s still in the water, time is of the essence.”
“Viv—” I can’t help it. A worm of pity has crawled in my heart. I soften my voice. “You can’t honestly think she’s out there, right?”
“Of course she is. You don’t know her. She’s like a fish. Always swimming, always surfing. She’s used to rough waters.” Her voice is ragged, and her energy is off.
I remember how easily Piper dove to the bottom of the reef the other day, how impressive it was to see her hold her breath for that long. But then I think about how I watched her disappear underneath the waves and not come back up. And how long it’s been since that happened.
Viv must be in denial. On some level, Viv knows what she did to Elena was wrong.
But her guilt is presenting in different ways than Piper’s did.
Piper drank herself into oblivion and destroyed the bridge.
Viv is refusing to see logic in the face of one of her other “family” members dying. She’s unraveling, losing it.
The boat chugs through the dark water. The rain rat-a-tats against the cabin’s windows.
Even though we’re half-exposed and the chill seeps into our bones, we’re at least protected from the worst of the rain at the front of the boat.
The wind is cutting but not nearly as strong as it was when Piper jumped overboard—back then it felt like I could be tipped over by its hands, but now it’s more of a nudge. Small favors.
I need to keep working on Viv. She’s hard to read, but I get the sense that she’d rather not kill me. She thinks she has to; that’s probably why she’s prolonging this and eagerly accepted my help “rescuing” Piper.
A gust of wind slams into the boat, and I hunch forward in the plastic seat, wrapping my arms around my knees. My sweater is getting waterlogged and my teeth are starting to chatter. “Can I ask you a question, Viv?”
She glances at me again, notes my un-threatening behavior, and nods.
“Why do you have to kill me if you destroyed the evidence? The video is gone.”
“Because you’ll talk,” Viv says, exasperated. “Even without the video, you’d stir up enough trouble that people might look at us harder, and I can’t have that.”
It’s time. I have to reveal the truth about the text I sent earlier.
The memory waiting in the wings of my mind’s stage churns with anticipation, and my stomach convulses.
I open my mouth. “So, the video, if that got out, that would be pretty damning, yeah?”
“Duh.” Viv rolls her eyes, then remembers herself and returns her focus to guiding the motorboat through the bumpy waves.
“And if someone found that video after my death, you’d be in a pretty bad situation, right?”
Viv looks at me sharply. “What the hell are you talking about? I deleted the video. I destroyed your phone. In fact,” she says, throttling the engine down to neutral and pulling my smashed-up phone from her cargo pocket.
She gets up from her seat, edges toward the side of the boat, lifts a hand, and lobs the phone out into the storm.
The water is so choppy and dark I don’t even see it disappear.
“There. Now it’s destroyed. No video to find. ”
My grin isn’t joyful. It’s dark and filled with teeth I tend to keep hidden. “See, the thing is… You were right. I did text that video. Problem is, I didn’t text it to myself.”
Viv’s skin turns a greenish color under the winking lights of the motorboat. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Look at my eyes. You said I was a bad liar. Am I lying now?”
She hurls herself back over to the captain’s seat, one knee perched on her chair, one hand gripping the back of it. She levels the gun at my face. “Who the fuck did you send it to?”
I swallow a hard lump in my throat, a burr of poison. This will destroy me as much as it will destroy her.
Clenching my jaw, I say, “I sent it to Sage.”