Chapter 74
amy
‘We’re fucking sinking,’ Colt shouts. ‘Untie me!’
The water in the cabin is at least eight inches deep already. Given the speed with which the Chris-Craft is filling with water, Iris must have punched a hole in its expensive, made-to-order mahogany hull to scuttle it.
It’s almost poetic: she’s getting rid of us and executing a perfectly curated revenge on her husband at the same time. We’ll go down with his boat.
Shock and fear have sharpened my focus, cutting through the fog of my concussion. I work at the knots around my wrist again with my teeth and finally manage to get them loose enough to get my hands free. Another couple of minutes, and I’ve untied my ankles.
I scramble to my feet, wincing in pain as my muscles cramp in protest after being restricted for so long, and slosh through the water to the cabin door. I know even before I try the handle that it’s locked.
The portholes on either side of the cabin are far too small to climb through, even if we managed to break the glass. Maybe there’s a chance we could smash the door down, but at the rate the water’s rising, we’ll never manage it in time.
We’re going to drown together in the dark.
There’s a good chance no one will ever know what happened to us.
Planes have disappeared into Lake Champlain and never been found.
Neither Colt nor I will be missed. My mother would dance on my grave if she could – she’ll miss Colt far more than she’ll miss me – and for all his iron grip on the town, if Colt disappears, there’ll be few who mourn.
There’s a certain ironic justice to it I can’t help but admire.
‘Amy, for fuck’s sake,’ Colt shouts. ‘We haven’t got all fucking day!’
The water is now midway up my calves. Colt is flipping around like a stranded fish on the floor at my feet, desperately trying to keep his head above the icy water.
And I realise that, whether deliberately or not, Iris has put me in a position where, once again, I’m forced to make a life-or-death decision.
I can try to save Colt: the man whose negligence killed twenty-one children, destroyed this town, wrecked my career and my marriage; the man whose affair with my mother broke my father’s heart – or I can do what I’ve been yearning to do for fifteen months and watch the bastard die.
I want this man to hurt with a bloodlust I can taste. The pleasure of seeing him struggle for breath is almost erotic.
He can barely keep his nostrils above the surface of the water now.
I don’t have to do anything but wait.
Another minute or two, and it’ll all be over.
Colt contorts his body into shapes only a man fighting for his life could achieve, coughing and gasping for breath. It would be so easy to fold my arms and just watch him die.
Except I can’t.
As monstrous as Colt is, he doesn’t deserve to die like this.
I slosh back through the water, kneeling down and grabbing his shoulders from behind as I try to pull him into a sitting position against me. I manage to move him a few inches, and then he slides back into the water again.
He’s heavy, but that’s not what is preventing me from hauling him upright. I grope beneath the water with one hand, supporting his head against my shoulder, wondering if the ropes are catching on something.
And then I find it: the steel hawser looped around Colt’s waist.
I follow the cable to a metal ring in the floor. Iris has padlocked him to the bottom of the boat. There’s no way I can free him.
Iris must have known this would happen. She tied me so much more lightly than she bound him. She wanted me to free myself, to be forced to make the choice about whether to save him.
And then discover she was playing with me all along.
It doesn’t matter what I do.
Colt is doomed.
We both are.
With an effort, I haul Colt back into my arms, holding his chin above water, but I’m only postponing the inevitable. He has perhaps minutes left.
‘Do something!’ Colt shouts.
The water is already up to my waist. I yank and tug at the steel cable holding him down, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do.
And I don’t feel pleasure, or satisfaction.
I feel pity.
‘I forgive you,’ I say.
‘I don’t want your fucking forgiveness!’ Colt yells, thrashing in the water as it laps over his face. ‘I want you to get me out of here, you fucking bitch!’
He fights death to the very last second.
The water covers him. He sucks in his final breath and holds it for as long as he can, his eyes wide and filled with horror as he stares up at me from beneath the water and sees his own mortality reflected in my face.
And then he’s gone.