Chapter Twelve #2
We don’t have much time.
I find Jackson standing guard over Ben, who looks to have made himself comfortable against the mast, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
Emmy’s dug up one of the blue and white resort towels, and she drapes it around his shoulders. “Here, this should help keep you from burning.”
Ben smiles at her. “Thank you, Em. I appreciate it. Especially after…everything.”
“We all do stupid stuff when we’re scared, right?” She pats him on the shoulder with an almost unnatural smile. “I’ll look for some sunscreen too.”
Oh sure, why don’t you make the murderer a cheese plate while you’re at it?
I all but slam the knife into Jackson’s palm while I glare at Maritime Romeo and Juliet over there. He cuts the section of rope free and gets to work securing Ben’s hands behind his back.
Ben turns his attention to me. The wind blows a strand of wet blond hair across his forehead.
“You have every right to hate me, Hannah,” he says, misunderstanding the reason for my anger.
“I crossed a line, and I’m really sorry.
I totally freaked out. I get so claustrophobic in small spaces, and it felt like the walls were closing in on me. ”
I don’t know where to start. If I say I don’t believe he’s sorry, it’ll provoke him.
And I’m certainly not going to pretend it’s okay.
I also don’t fully buy the claustrophobia excuse.
If that small bathroom really scared him, he would have yelled that through the door instead of screaming hateful shit and cursing our very existence.
Maybe it’s unfair of me to pick apart his response. Panic makes people react differently, but that’s the ultimate problem with Bennett. He’s so good at the upstanding-guy act, but when he lets the mask slip, he is seriously dangerous. He’s proven that over and over again.
“We know you’re sorry,” Emmy says, speaking for me when I don’t respond. “I would have freaked out if someone locked me in a small room too.”
I roll my eyes so hard it hurts. Emmy hasn’t been claustrophobic a day in her life.
Jackson loops the remaining length of rope around Ben’s chest a couple times for good measure. When he’s finished, he studies his knots, tugging on them a few times to make sure they’re secure before he stands. “First things first: It’s time to cough up whatever you used to set the boat on fire.”
Ben nods toward his left leg. “The lighter’s in my pocket.”
I’m closest, so I kneel down and wiggle my fingers into his pocket for the second time. I pull out a gold square of metal, and my stomach sinks. I knew he had this. I watched him play with it on the dock until the clicking threatened my sanity. Why didn’t I check both of his pockets?
I roll the little lighter around in my palm, and water leaks from the cracks in the lid. I flip it open and try the flint, but it doesn’t work.
Jackson takes it from my palm and taps the edge against his shorts to shake out the water.
“We should hold on to it. My dad used to have one like this, and he dropped it in a lake once. He took it all apart, left it in the sun, and when he put it back together, it lit right back up. These metal lighters are no joke. Might be useful later.” He holds it out to me.
“I’ll put it in the waterproof sleeve with my phone.”
A cooler breeze cuts across the back of the boat and throws my hair across my face. We all turn at the same time. The dark clouds on the horizon have crept closer. We probably only have a couple hours before the water gets rough again.
If we’re going to survive this next storm, we need a plan.
“We can’t leave him tied to the mast when that storm hits,” Emmy says.
Jackson pushes hair out of his face with a sigh. “We need to get the water out of the cabin if any of us are going to have shelter from the storm. Do you know how to do that, Sailing Camp?”
“There should be a system to pump out the water, but the pumps usually kick on automatically when water is detected. So either it’s broken, or the boat doesn’t have enough power to run it.
” Ben pauses, still staring at those dark clouds.
Emmy leans forward like she’s hanging on his every word, and my hands ball into fists at my sides.
“He might have a manual one? It would probably be under one of the bench seats or in one of the easy-to-reach compartments inside.”
“I can look for it,” I say, turning away and heading for the hatch.
“While you’re at it, a food and water inventory might be a good idea,” he adds.
Emmy nods enthusiastically, like it’s the most profound idea she’s ever heard. Which is particularly annoying considering I already suggested the same thing earlier.
“It won’t matter if we’re dry and warm if we starve to death,” Ben says, watching her carefully. “I hate to say it, but if we haven’t been rescued yet, it’s probably safe to assume that nobody’s coming.”
Emmy wrings her hands together.
“Or that they don’t know where to look yet,” he adds quickly. “We might be on our own here for a little while.”
Emmy lays her head on his fucking shoulder and takes a deep breath. “You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I know things are bad. But we’re all in this together, right?”
Ben leans the side of his head on the top of hers. “Absolutely.”
I see red.
“I’ll go see what I can find,” I say, desperate for some distance before I punch the trauma bond right out of her. I point at Ben as I pass. “Jackson, keep an eye on them…and the storm.”
Jackson nods and plops down heavily beside Ben. They promptly begin a glare-off that might outlast us all.
I can’t keep my eyes off the darkening sky as I hurry toward the hatch. The shift from wait for rescue to survive as long as possible is almost palpable.
A small part of my brain wonders if there’s any point to drying the cabin, gathering food, rationing drinking water.
Any of it. Ben called the last storm “a little wind and waves,” but it snapped our mast and tossed us around like marbles in a tin can.
I’ve watched way too many of those “Yooo, ho” sea shanty videos of cargo ships navigating monster forty-foot waves to underestimate the ocean.
If this second storm is any worse than the last one, we might not live to see tomorrow.