I lifted my fist a second time. “You—”
“Palmer! What are you doing?”
Courtney sank to her knees in the dirt, her hands still covering her mouth and nose. I spun to find Gigi, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, her gaze moving from me to Courtney on the ground.
“Courtney!” Gigi rushed toward her. “Are you okay?”
Courtney lifted her palm in front of her face. “I’ll be fine.”
Gigi spun toward me before pulling Courtney to her feet. “What the hell’s going on?”
“It was just a misunderstanding. Right, Palmer?” Courtney added, “No hard feelings.”
Gigi gasped. “You’re bleeding.”
Courtney swiped away the blood on her lip with the back of her hand, leaving a red streak across her cheek. “It’s nothing.”
Gigi glared at me. “Palmer, whathappened?”
Shaking with rage, I lowered my flashlight. At a loss for words, I stared at Courtney, shocked by what I’d just done. I’d never felt so enraged in my entire life. In that moment, I’d wanted to hurt her, make her suffer the way she made others suffer. I’d wanted to—
“Like I said, it was just a misunderstanding.” Courtney rubbed her palms against her sweatpants, wiping away the dirt and pine needles. “No hard feelings.”
Courtney patronizingly patted me on the shoulder as she brushed past, shaking out of Gigi’s attempt to help her walk.
“You sure you’re okay?” Gigi asked.
Courtney waved dismissively as she moved past the dwindling fire’s burning coals. “Yeah, fine. It’s been a long day, and I’m gonna get some sleep.” She spun around when she got to her tent. “Hey, Palmer. I forgive you. And Gigi? We don’t need to talk about this again.”
“That was not a misunderstanding,” Gigi said in a lowered tone after Courtney disappeared inside her tent. She turned to me. “I’ve never seen you even come close to attacking anyone. It looked like you were about to beat the crap out of her.” She moved in front of me to assess me head-on. “What did she do to you?”
I heard Courtney’s tent zip closed. “Courtney’s right. It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, right.” Gigi glanced over her shoulder at Courtney and Beth’s tent. “You don’t want to talk about it, fine. I’m here for you, though, whenever you’re ready to tell me the truth. And your secret’s safe with me. I’ve been wanting to hit her for several months now.”
Gigi turned, and I followed her back to our tiny tent in silence. Apparently, Gigi hadn’t been as quick to accept Courtney’s innocence over those topless photos as she’d led on. Before climbing inside, I cocked my head toward the sound of the Sol Duc’s swift torrent.Gigi was wrong,I thought as I lay down beside her. I hadn’t wanted to beat the crap out of Courtney.
I’d wanted to kill her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Present: Day Five at Sea
“Thank God,” Beth breathes.
Emma rushes to the navigation panel mounted beside the wheel. After seeing Beth is unhurt, I hurry across the slippery deck and then lean over Emma’s shoulder to peer at the lit-up screens.
Emma points at the largest screen on the bottom of the panel. “The storm blew us way off course. We’re more than three hundred miles off the coast of Northern California. But if we can sail six knots an hour going back, then we could get there in just over two days.”
I scan the map display for a sign of other vessels. “Are there any other ships in our area?”
“Doesn’t look like it.” Emma zooms out.
“They’re probably avoiding this area due to the storm.” Russell places his hands on his hips, his demeanor visibly cooler now as he stands beside Beth on the other side of the wheel. I remember that Russell spent a lot of time in the military, and I can see it now, in the way he reacts to a crisis. He barely shows a hint of the emotion I saw below when we accused him of murder.
I point to a black dot on the corner of the screen. “What’s that?”
“That’s a ship. Probably cargo. But it’s over two hundred miles northeast. We’d have to sail into the storm to try and reach it. Even if we made it, we wouldn’t catch up to it.”
