Chapter Eight
Captain Keith floats in the water beneath me, and I kick furiously, trying to reach him, but he sinks faster than I can swim, slowly fading from view until I can’t see him anymore.
The desperation to swim faster, to reach farther, to grab and pull him from the tides is all-consuming. He was right there. I almost had him.
My lungs turn to molten fire in my chest. The surface shines above me, lit by the sun.
I turn back for air. I’ve almost reached the surface when bubbles rush up around my face.
Something wraps around my ankle and yanks.
I sink deeper into the waves. I whip around to see what grabbed me, but I can’t see anything.
My feet have been swallowed by the darkness below me.
Something is tied to my foot. I can feel it, but I can’t get it off.
I thrash in the water, sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness until it closes around me like a mouth clamping shut.
My lungs are an inferno, aching for oxygen that’s just out of reach.
The vise around my ankle tightens, and this time, when I look down, there’s a hand wrapped around my foot.
Captain Keith’s smiling face appears from below, grinning from ear to ear—
“HEY!”
I jerk awake, almost head-butting Emmy on the other half of the dining bench.
The seat creaks beneath me. Emmy groans, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
The room spins and I clutch my head, trying to gather my bearings.
I blink at the ceiling, and the last twenty-four hours intermingle with flashes of Captain Keith’s face as he grabbed me in my dream.
It was only a nightmare.
Though our reality isn’t much better.
The storm tossed us around all night long. Jackson did his best to keep the hatch door closed as waves spit water into the cabin, but the wind busted the latch. The waves were brutal. We all took turns hurling up our lunch in the bathroom—Emmy more than the rest of us.
She eventually fell asleep on my shoulder…but I don’t remember falling asleep. I wanted to keep an eye on—
A loud crack echoes through the cabin, and I spin toward the sound.
Jackson and Ben are behind me in the kitchen, and Jackson’s hands are fisted in the front of Ben’s wrinkled white shirt.
He slams Ben’s back against the useless radio controls a second time.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he screams.
I jump to my feet and splash into nearly two feet of water.
The entire cabin is flooded. The water’s littered with stuff: Styrofoam cups, empty water bottles, loose oranges, trash, plastic bags, and microfiber towels.
I blink, my tired brain trying to catch up to what I’m seeing—did this much water really come in through the hatch, or do we have a leak? —but I don’t have time.
“I didn’t do anything!” Ben insists, and I’m instantly on alert.
Jackson snarls and slams Ben into the wall again.
“Hey, hey. Stop!” I wade through the water as fast as I can, stepping on things I can’t see with my bare feet as I go. “What’s going on?”
“Get the fuck off!” Ben yells, trying to shove him away, but Jackson’s right in his face, not giving an inch.
I try and wedge myself between them, but Jackson takes a step to the side and blocks the gap in the counter with his back. For a true crime nerd, Jackson’s not as slight as he looks.
“What is going on?” I ask again, gripping Jackson’s shoulder.
“He cut the radio wires,” Jackson says through his teeth.
Emmy gasps and splashes through the water behind me. “Jack, let him go! He wouldn’t do that!”
“He fucking did,” Jackson says, glaring at Emmy. “I saw him.”
“You’re a liar. I didn’t do shit,” Ben says. “You were all asleep, and I was going above deck to check on the storm when he attacked me for no reason!”
Jackson’s eyes narrow. “I’m not about to fall asleep with you roaming the boat—I stayed up to keep an eye on the girls.
I stepped into the bathroom for one minute and came out to find you cutting the wires with the knife that’s still in your pocket.
Go ahead,” he says, looking at me over his shoulder. “Check his shorts.”
He moves to let me past him.
“Fuck you!” Ben yells.
Weak early-morning sunlight pours through the hatch opening and illuminates his panicked face. In that moment, I know I’m going to find a knife in his pocket before I so much as take a step in his direction.
Ben jerks his hips away and slaps at my hand, but Jackson grabs him by the forearms and pins him against the wall. I dive between them and slide my hand into the pocket closest to me before he can wiggle loose.
Sure enough, my fingers close around something. I yank it out and hold up a black folding knife with initials engraved into the handle.
B.T.A.M.
Of course he has two freaking middle names.
Emmy steps back, sloshing water in the process. “Ben. What…?”
My eyes trail over the controls behind him.
Wires are sticking out of all the electronics—wires that were certainly attached when we fell asleep.
They’re all sliced clean through. Like he wasn’t sure which did what, so he cut through them all just to be sure.
Including the curly wire connecting the hand mic to the radio.
Ben’s severed our only way to call for help.
“How could you do this?” I ask, my voice quieter than I intend as I stare at Ben’s knife in my hand. Except that’s not the right question. “Why would you do this?”
Ben fights against Jackson’s grip, and I take a step back, forcing Emmy to as well. I hold Ben’s glare until his shoulders go rigid.
“I’m not about to sail myself straight back to a murder charge,” he spits. “I couldn’t risk that battery blinking on long enough for you to call for help. Not before I’m positive you’ll keep your fucking mouths shut.”
Oh. My. God.
Emmy looks horrified. She reaches back for the bench seat behind her and slowly sinks onto it. I have the sudden urge to punch someone. He can’t possibly be this stupid. Cutting those wires strands him out here too. Something’s not right about this.
I rub at the stress headache forming in the middle of my forehead. “So let me get this straight. Your genius plan was to hold us hostage until we agreed to lie for you?”
“No. Until you agreed that what happened was an accident,” he clarifies. “I’m the only person left on this boat with sailing experience, and now you have no other way to call for help, which means I’m in charge. Nobody’s going home until we’re all on the same page about what happened.”
I wait for him to see the gaping holes in his plan, but he only holds my stare.
“What’s stopping us from agreeing to cover for you, and then turning you into the police the moment we get to shore?” I ask.
Ben’s eyes narrow.
“Or, what if we refused to lie for you?” I press when he doesn’t respond.
Again, he says nothing. His mouth sets in a hard line.
Dread curls in the pit of my stomach.
“Answer the question, Ben. What if we refused to lie for you? What was the plan then? Were you going to let us float around until we all starved to death? Are you willing to die out here to cover up what you did?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he spits.
The terrible feeling in my gut grows. I hold up the knife. “Maybe you had no intention of helping the rest of us get to shore at all.”
“Hannah, be serious,” Emmy says.
“Oh, I’m dead serious,” I say, still not taking my eyes off Ben. “What would have happened if Jackson took a bit longer to come out of the bathroom?”
The cold glint is back in Ben’s eyes as he glances at the knife, then back at me.
I can see it so clearly—Ben creeping through the cabin, knife in hand. Killing us one by one, before we even knew we were in danger. Waiting outside the bathroom, ready to spring the second Jackson opened the door.
“I wasn’t going to kill anyone,” he says too late. And with far too little emotion to be convincing. “Don’t be so dramatic. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut the radio wires, but I panicked. You’d panic if everyone was accusing you of something you didn’t do.”
I wish I could believe him. I’d love to go back to thinking he’s a dumbass who didn’t think his plan all the way through, but goosebumps run down my arms because I’m right. I know that I’m right.
Bennett Mulholland is a psychopathic piece of shit, and if Jackson had fallen asleep last night, we wouldn’t be alive to have this conversation.
“I don’t believe you,” I seethe.
“I don’t care what you fucking believe!” Ben shouts. “I refuse to let you assholes make me into the bad guy.”
Jackson slams him against the controls again. “You are the fucking bad guy!”
Emmy stands and sloshes through the water toward them. “Jack, stop. This isn’t helping. Ben’s not a danger to anyone.”
“The hell he isn’t!”
Emmy starts shouting at him, then Jackson starts shouting at her, and Ben starts yelling over the both of them, until the interior of the boat is a tornado of voices.
I set the knife on the table and sit with my head in my hands.
What are we going to do?
I don’t even know where to begin. The closest thing we have to a sailing expert is a murderous, grade-A asshole, who more than likely wants us dead.
The captain is gone. We can’t call for help.
We only know where we are as long as our phones hold a charge, and the chances of us teaching ourselves how to sail in the immediate future are slim at best.
Ben’s knife glints on the table in front of me.
We need to secure Ben before he gets his hands on another weapon.
It’s a damn miracle he decided to take out the radio before he came for one of us.
Shame seeps into my bones. I’m the one who saw him let go of the wheel—I knew what he was capable of.
I let myself get distracted by the storm when the greater danger was sitting across from us in designer swim trunks.