Chapter Nineteen
Susa
I quickly recognize rescue isn’t coming soon, maybe not even tomorrow. It’s too stormy, and we are literally half a globe outside the range of the Coasties. I’m sure whatever regional search and rescue personnel they have in this part of the world are probably highly trained and good at their jobs, but this is a damn big ocean, and we’reliterallya tiny speck in the middle of it.
As light wanes and darkness falls, the storm rages around us and we hold on for our lives and huddle together for warmth under the emergency blankets from the kits. We’re all silent, reality dawning on us. We can’t afford the luxury of grief right now, or expend energy on something as trivial as idle chatter.
Or tears.
Not when we’re still not out of the woods. We’re alive—for now. Make no mistake, we’re all well aware how quickly that status can change to our detriment.
What’s not helping is I now remember why I hate boats. I’m seasick, and quickly puke up my stomach’s contents. This is not good for a number of reasons, the most important one being dehydration.
If I can’t keep water down, I’m dead in a couple of days.
If this fucking storm doesn’t kill me first.
At least I’m not the only one who’s sick. Two of the men also puke, although not as much as I do.
No one seems to be related to anyone else, or even know anyone else very well beyond having met them on the trip, besides me and Connie. I find that…disconcerting. Okay, Tennessee guy, I get that maybe his wife died with Mike.
But what happened to everyone else? I got Connie out of the aircraft with me. Did no one stick together?
It’s something I silently note and store away without even realizing it until later. I am a political creature and used to noting odds, trends, weaknesses and strengths. It’s what I was born and raised and trained to do, and it’s what makes me a damn good attorney and even better politician.
Meanwhile, we endure.
Fear is still there, in my gut, but exhaustion and stress have temporarily shoved that to the side in the wake of the adrenaline crash that hits me. Before now? I thought I knew fear. The day I received the call from Momma that Daddy had collapsed, I felt afraid.
That knowledge of fear was pushed to the side the day I received the call about Carter and Owen being at the school during the active shooter incident. That was pure terror pulsing through me then, even after I’d talked to them on the phone, terror that wouldn’t abate until I’d raced through our front door that night and found my two bozos drunk and well-fucked and splashing around in our tub full of my bubble bath.
To be fair, after what they’d survived, they’d earned the right to fuck, and to drain the bottle of Jack Daniel’s I nearly broke my neck on when I ran into the bathroom and tripped over where they’d left their clothes strewn all over the floor.
I wish they hadn’t used a full bottle of my damn bubble bath, though, although I’ll never gripe about that.
Then there were all the times I willingly, even happily, let the sadist make me afraid during our games, games we haven’t been able to play except on the rarest of occasions when at home in Brandon for fear of accidentally triggering a SWAT response if the wrong person overhears a scream.
That fear now feels stale and bland in comparison, where before I used to savor it like the finest wine rolling over my tongue.
This new, numb dread trying to take over my soul is a thousand times worse than the day of the school shooting. Now that we’re in the water and not in danger of falling out of the sky, it gently slips into my mind and wants to tell me I should have left our oxygen masks off. It warmly smiles with foul, rotting teeth as it reminds me about dehydration and drowning and hypothermia. It chuckles as it helpfully replays Quint’s speech to me fromJaws, where he explains why he’ll never again put on a life vest.
In counterpoint to that, I can hear Carter’s voice sharp and clear in my mind.
Stay safe.
My thumbs rub the bands I wear on my left and right ring fingers, one from Carter, one from Owen. I force myself not to cry, because I know damn well shedding tears is a luxury my puking body cannot afford right now.
* * * *
The rain abates in the early morning hours. My watch is set to Florida time, and my phone is most likely wet, even in my purse. If it’s not, I don’t dare pull it out and risk ruining it, just in case I can figure out how to maybe use it later. Regardless, I have no clue what the hell time it really is. Once the sky begins to lighten a little, although it’s still thickly cloudy and windy, I know it’s probably at least six in the morning.
I glance at my watch, which says it’s 7:01 p.m. in Florida, so I leave it set there and mentally swap the p.m. to a.m. for us. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but it’s something. Close enough, I guess.
None of us have slept, but now two of the men are debating the use of the flare gun again—flare gun guy, and someone not the man from Tennessee. Flare Shooter Wannabe’s opinion is he wants to use it before it gets too light. The other, more rational man argues to wait.
“Shut up!” They both look at me and I realize I said it out loud.
More correctly, I snapped it.
