He disappears into his cabin, and I hurry up the steps. The bow dips before I get to the top, and my head smacks the ceiling.
“Not there,” I tell Emma when I reach the cockpit, ignoring the throb in my skull. I point to the opposite side of the bench where she’s searching. “There should be an orange flare gun inside the bench behind that wheel.”
As Emma rushes toward the other end of the wood-slatted bench, I step out from beneath the cockpit toward the lifeline. The sky has grown visibly darker in the few moments I was below, making the lights of the distant ship more visible. At the stern, Emma lifts the bench seat and starts searching through the compartment’s contents.
I duck beneath the mainsail and step onto the foredeck to get an unobstructed view of the distant ship. I step over the blood smear on the deck as I lift the binoculars. My throat tightens at the thought of Beth not being among us getting rescued.
I stagger sideways as we roll over a swell. The side of my leg bumps into the dinghy, which has come loose from the middle of the ship and now leans against the lifelines beside me. I turn, scanning the deck for how it could’ve come untied.
Something small and metal slides across the deck, hitting the side of my shoe. I look down. A pocketknife. The blade is extended and stained with blood nearly the same shade of red as the handle. My stomach twists. It has to be the weapon used to kill Beth.
A flash of movement near the stern catches my eye. I whirl toward it, hoping Emma has found the flare gun. Instead, I spot a female figure creeping toward Emma on the other side of the boat. My heart lurches into my throat.Courtney?Was it possible?
Emma still has her head down, frantically searching the compartment as the figure moves closer to her. It’s then that I recognize the figure’s silhouette. Her dark waves blowing in the wind. The dinghy hadn’t come loose on the foredeck. Beth had been hiding under it this whole time.
Beth raises her arm toward Emma’s back. I freeze when I spot Russell’s gun in her grip. I’m too far away to stop her. Russell comes up from below, but even he’s too far away to stop Beth in time.
Beth says something to Emma that makes her stand up and turn around, and I see the orange flare gun in Emma’s hand.
“Emma! Watch out!” I yell, but the blast from the gunshot muffles my warning.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Present: Day Six at Sea
Emma falls backward onto the deck from the shot to her upper chest.
“Emma!” I rush toward her.
Beth swings the gun toward me as I trip over a shroud. The binoculars clamor against the deck just before my face smacks it. A second shot rings out.
I look up, expecting to see blood on my clothes, but I don’t feel any pain aside from the ache in my cheek from hitting the deck. Russell charges at Beth. Beth swings the gun away from me and aims it at Russell’s head. He stops a few feet from her and raises his hands in the air. Behind me, air escapes the side of the dinghy with a hiss from being struck by Beth’s stray bullet.
The fall saved my life.
“Don’t shoot,” Russell says.
I get to my feet slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. Beth keeps the gun trained on Russell and her back to me. My gaze falls to Emma who swears, then groans, lying on her back on the deck floor near Beth’s feet. Blood seeps through the fabric of Emma’s light-gray sweatshirt. But she’s alive. For now.
The flare gun has rolled out of Emma’s hand into the cockpit, stopped by the mounted outdoor table.
“You killed Courtney,” Russell says.
I inch forward on my hands and knees. Beth angles her head to the side enough for me to see her lips curl into a smug smile as I crawl toward Emma along the edge of the cockpit. A bloodstained dish towel is tied around Beth’s forearm. She must’ve cut herself with her pocketknife, then smeared her blood on the deck during the night when she was supposed to be on watch.
“Yes, I did.”
But I was with her. How could she have killed Courtney?I recall Beth being carried downstream, getting pulled under the Sol Duc’s currents when I found her.
Beth’s steely gaze remains fixed on Russell. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I refrain from verbalizing my thoughts.
“How?” Russell asks.
I slide onto the cockpit bench.
“Don’t move, Palmer,” Beth says, not taking her eyes off Russell.
I freeze.
