I wait until both men retreat into the grass and take off, kicking up sand as I streak across the shore. The wooden planks of the dock give under my feet with creaking sounds that make me wince. I have a minute, tops, before the men will return with new stacks of boxes.
As I edge along the boat, the clouds shift. Moonlight illuminates the white paint, making it glow against the pitch-black waves slapping the hull. And there, faintly, are traces of an old logo someone has taken pains to sand off. If I didn’t know the image so well, my mind might nothave made sense of the faint Fs wrapped around three sharp spears of a trident.
But I do know it: the sign of the Fortenot Fishing Company. Which means Laney was right. The Company is doing something outside official channels, literally in the dark. What was Fred up to? And did it get him killed?
I need to know what’s inside those boxes.
Silently cursing myself for the spectacularly bad idea, I place two hands on the railing of the boat and use all my strength to heft myself up and over the side, tumbling onto the dark floor with a grunt I immediately regret.
I need to make my search lightning fast. I stagger to my feet and feel my way around with one hand flat against the wall. I can’t see anything and halfway hope I’ll walk into a wall of boxes, but there’s nothing.
They must be hiding them inside the boat. Of course—if they don’t want people to see, that would be smartest.
The boat lifts and falls, buoyed by waves, and I try to keep my balance as I search for an entrance to the inside: a door, hallway, hatch.
My hand collides with a metal handle and I clutch my fingers, silently screaming at the pain. The door has announced itself.
As I reach for it, two glimmers of light catch my attention. I turn. On the shore, twin orbs bob in the dark.
Flashlights.
The dock groans under the men’s feet. I was too focused and didn’t notice them emerge out of the grass. Now they’re practically at the boat, at my back.
How will I escape?
“You hear something?” asks a rough voice with a thick northern accent. I almost jump at how close it is, then inch back slowly, shoulders sliding against the boat, heart thundering so violently I worry they’ll hear it.
“Just the waves,” says a second voice, colder. “Sea’s getting a little rough.” He sniggers. “Can’t take a country boy out on the water, I see.”
“It was a footstep,” the first insists, and I hear the horrifying sound of his feet landing on the floor of the boat.Thump.
My back hits a cold metal railing. I press one hand to my mouth and the other to my chest, as if to hold my heart still.
“Paranoid,” says the cold man. Another thump sounds as he lands in the boat.
“Fuck you. I’m looking.”
The clouds have passed back over the moon, snuffing out the light. Behind me, it’s so dark I can’t see where the sky meets the water—can only hear the waves, a half second of pregnant silence as they lift, then the clap as they crash against boat.
Shoes scuff around the corner as the man who can sense me begins inspecting. There’s no more time for paralyzing panic. I can’t let them find me. There’s only one way out.
I take a big gulp of air, hitch a leg over the railing, and let go.
I fall for longer than expected through the pitch-black air, and in my disorientation I think somehow I’m soaring up instead of hurtling down. It makes the gut punch of the waves an even greater shock, and I’m so surprised by the sudden salty cold that I nearly gasp, releasing the air in my lungs. The inky sky is replaced by the inky water and now I truly cannot tell which way is up or down, if I’m sinking to the ocean floor or floating to the moon, on my way to Heaven or Hell, if there is even any difference between them after all.
14
NOW
In the past few days, I’ve been a woman who has lied to authorities, who has hardened her resolve into a diamond in her chest, who has thrown herself into the sea, who has crawled, gasping, across the wet sand of the inlet’s farthest shore, and now, one day later, I’m a woman getting served breadsticks and Barefoot wine in Bottom Springs’s best attempt at an Italian restaurant. Which is also the only restaurant in town.
“She’ll have a glass of the bubbles,” Barry tells the waitress, an older woman named Jo who used to babysit me.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, catching Jo’s eye. “I don’t really drink.”
“Actually, why don’t you leave the whole bottle?” Barry beams at Jo, exuding that easy confidence that’s always fascinated me. “It’s going to be a night to celebrate.”
Unsurprisingly, Jo sides with Barry. She leaves the bottle on my side of the table. It sweats like a person facing the barrel of a gun.
