Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Vivian didn’t hear Blake anymore—only the sirens and the sea.
The lifeboat pitched hard off the hull, the motor whining like something wounded. Spray slapped her cheek, salt stinging the cut at her temple. Mara’s fingers clenched white around the gunwale, eyes too big for her face.
“Stay low,” Vivian said, voice steady because it had to be.
They bobbed in the dark trough between floodlights, the ship’s flank a black wall to starboard, the docks a broken skyline of cranes and stacked containers to port.
Wind shredded sound into ribbons. Somewhere above, boots hammered steel; somewhere behind, a door took a beating from men who wanted it more than sanity would allow.
Vivian throttled back, let the boat drift on idle, listening past the engine.
Nothing of him. Just alarms. Just water.
Go, he’d mouthed. She’d wanted to say No. She’d wanted to drag him in with force and faith and the sheer gravity of not losing another person to the dark.
Instead, here they were.
A narrow service pier jutted out ahead—low, half-rotted planks riding the black water. A ladder hung off its end, iron slick and barnacled. A storage shed hunched behind a fence with a lock that was more rust than metal. Shelter of a sort. Hide long enough to come back.
“Hold on,” she told Mara. She feathered the throttle, spun the bow. The lifeboat slid into the lee of the pier, the wind less a blade and more a breath.
Vivian cut the engine. The silence that slammed down was worse. Her heartbeat sounded like someone else’s boots. She took the emergency whistle and tucked it into her pocket and grabbed the bag Thirteen had given them.
“Okay,” she said, forcing air in, out. “We’re going up.”
“I—I can’t,” Mara whispered, voice breaking on the cold. “I fall.”
“You won’t.” Vivian was already moving, tying a fast bowline around a cleat, testing twice. She crouched and set her hands on Mara’s shoulders, meeting fear with something steadier. “I promised to get you safe. I don’t break promises.”
Mara swallowed and nodded. Trust—terrifying, undeserved, offered anyway. Vivian guided her small hands to the lowest rung, climbed right behind, one arm under the girl’s jacket, pushing when she slowed. The ladder bit ice into her palms. By the time they reached the planks, her hands had gone numb.
She hustled Mara toward a shed tucked away in shadows.
A low rumble rolled through the night. For a heartbeat, everything held still, then a burst of light tore through the port side of the vessel in the distance.
The sound hit an instant later, a sharp, gut-punching whump that cracked through the storm. A bloom of orange fire flared against the steel hull before vanishing into darkness.
Vivian ducked, shielding Mara. When she looked up again, the ship’s floodlights flickered wildly, casting strobing shadows across the water. Smoke poured from a jagged hole midship, and she could make out the faint metallic screech of a bulkhead door being torn loose, clattering into the sea.
Her pulse kicked harder. That blast hadn’t come from outside—it was internal.
“Blake,” she hissed.
She needed to move, to help, to save Blake, but she needed to protect Mara.
She squeezed Viv’s hand. “I cold.”
Vivian moved. The padlock gave with a twist from a screwdriver from Thirteen’s bag; the hasp had died long before winter. Inside: coils of rope, a tarp, old vents, the sour smell of trapped salt. Perfect.
Vivian dragged the tarp down and bundled it around Mara like a cocoon. She crouched, wrapped her scarf off her own neck, and tucked it under the girl’s chin.
Plan. She needed a smart play which would be to get as far from here as possible and call in their position, but for once, she didn’t want to follow the playbook.
Not when Mara wouldn’t make it five feet, let alone miles to safety.
And not when Blake wouldn’t live long enough for her to follow protocol.
She bundled Mara tightly with another tarp and found an old, dirty woven bag and wrapped it around her thin legs.
There was only one idea left; she didn’t like it, but it was their one shot at all of them making it out alive. She needed to pull a Blake and defy the odds, change the rules to her advantage.
“I need you to stay very quiet and very small,” Vivian whispered. “If anyone opens this door, you don’t move. You don’t breathe loud. You’re so brave. And I need you to be brave just a little longer. And the bravest thing you can do now is to just be still. Do you understand?”
Mara’s lips trembled. “Are you coming back?”
Vivian’s throat closed for a second. The thought of leaving this child alone again shredded her heart.
But if there was another way, she couldn’t see it.
So, she did the only thing she could—she smoothed a braid behind Mara’s ear with a hand she made stop shaking.
“Yes,” she said, and if the word landed in her own chest like a vow, then maybe that was what it needed to be.
“I’m coming back. I have to do something that helps everybody, including him. ”
“Blake,” Mara said, like she’d always known the name.
Vivian’s mouth tried a smile, failed, tried again. “Blake.”
Before Vivian could change her mind, she marched out of the shack, determined to get help of some kind. An extraction for Mara at the least.
The storm surged, grinding against the pylons. Waves slammed the supports below, sending shudders through the planks. Somewhere in the distance, the ship’s mooring cables groaned against their locks—strained, warning.
She pulled her jacket tighter and scanned the horizon. Beyond the pier, the world blurred into gray: ocean and sky bleeding into each other, no clear line between safety and nothingness.
Her hand hovered over the pistol at her hip, as if the decision might already be written there. She scoured her mind for a way to save them all.
She took in a large breath. Pain shot from her ribs, but she pushed it aside, realizing adrenaline was her medication against the searing heat.
The tracker.
But the tracker remained miles away. At the lighthouse.
The vehicle hadn’t moved. No signal, no movement, no check-in. If Maddox was still the man she had thought he was, he’d come looking for them.
He’d have to.
For the first time in hours, something that felt like hope flickered in her chest. Maybe he’d already realized the mission had gone dark. Maybe he had people watching the hospital and knew they were on the run for their lives, He could be en route now, tracing their silence, bringing help.
But they were miles from the tracker, from the hospital, from the Windward Lady.
She turned toward the main dock, the rain needling her face as determination settled back into her bones. There was still time—barely. If she could get Blake out, if they could reach the lighthouse, they’d have a chance.
It wasn’t much. But it was more than running blind through the dark.
Vivian moved, boots striking slick wood, eyes on the storm-torn horizon.
The rain came harder, driving needles of water into her skin, but she didn’t slow. Every step hammered one thought through her head—he’s still alive, he’s still alive, he’s still alive.
“Hold on, Blake,” she whispered, willing him to know she was going to save him.
The wind roared louder as she reached the main wharf, slamming into her so hard she had to crouch to keep balance. Water rushed between the slats, icy foam swirling around her boots. Somewhere across the bay, the deep thud of thunder rolled over the water, closer each time.
The cargo ship loomed in the distance—half listing, its deck lights still flickering in defiance of the blackout. A dark smear of smoke trailed from midship.
Vivian’s heart clenched. He was still in there.
She jogged low along the dock, using stacked shipping containers as cover. Rusted chains rattled in the wind. A crane groaned above, its arm swinging lazily with each gust like a beast too tired to die.
Several feet below, she spotted the gangway—tilted, half submerged, waves slapping its metal spine. The main boarding platform was gone. Her only way aboard was the narrow maintenance ladder that clung to the hull like a last lifeline.
She hesitated only long enough to check the magazine in her pistol, then slung her bag tight and climbed over the railing.
The water below heaved black and furious, a living thing trying to swallow the world whole. The ladder swayed with the pier’s shudder, each rung slick like oil beneath her boots. Her breath came fast, white in the cold, fogging against the storm.
Halfway down, a wave reared up out of the dark, a wall of salt and roar, and slammed into her legs.
Metal screamed. The impact tore one hand free and ripped both feet from the rungs.
For one blinding heartbeat, she hung suspended, nothing between her and the freezing void but her grip on one rusted rail.
Her shoulder wrenched. Pain shot through her arm like fire, her ribs screamed in protest, her boot scraping uselessly against slick metal. The ladder swung out over empty air. Below, the sea boiled, whitecaps breaking like teeth.
She forced her fingers to hold, nails cutting her palms, muscles trembling with effort. The weight of her soaked jacket dragged her sideways. The storm wanted her—pulling, promising the easy end of letting go.
She kicked, found the next rung by instinct more than sight, and hauled herself back inch by inch.
Every movement was agony—cold, heavy, desperate.
A second wave crashed higher, drenching her to the waist, but this time she was ready.
She clung tighter, forehead pressed to metal, heart hammering so hard it felt like a countdown.
She hooked a boot over the next rung and exhaled shakily, half a sob, half defiance. The ladder groaned under her, but held.
One more step. Then another.