Across from him, his friend and the other half of my morning’s charter saluted with another sandwich. “Sure beats sitting in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway.”
“No argument here,” I said, then sipped from my coffee mug.
The sea was a flat, turquoise calm, the mid-morning sun a warm, benevolent weight on my shoulders. It was one of those easy days on the water that tourists dreamed of and paid good money for. An easy trip, requiring little more from me than finding a decent patch of water and baiting a few hooks. We were on a break, the boat rocking gently in the calm swell. The only sound was the low murmur of my clients’ conversation while we took a break and ate the breakfast I’d picked up from Driftwood Grill that morning.
Half an hour later, I was in the cabin rinsing out mycoffee mug in the tiny galley sink when my phone buzzed against the wooden desktop. I glanced at the screen, expecting it to be one of my siblings or maybe Iris.
But the name on the screen made me frown.
Gus Davis.
It wasn’t a text. It was a call. There was absolutely no reason on God’s green earth for Iris’s contractor to be calling me on a Friday morning while I was out on the water.
Unless something was wrong.
I snatched up the phone, my heart thudding painfully against my ribs, and swiped to answer.
“Austin? Thank God. I wasn’t sure if you’d have a signal out there.” Gus’s voice was tight with stress. “Listen, I’m at the hospital in Marathon. There’s been an accident at the house. It’s Iris.”
The gentle rocking of the boat, the sunlight streaming through the cabin porthole, the distant laughter of my clients—it all stopped. My vision narrowed to a single, tight point, the universe collapsing into the sound of Gus’s voice. My blood didn’t just run cold.
It turned to solid ice in my veins.
“What kind of accident?” My voice was strangled. “Is she okay? Gus, talk to me, damn it!”
“She fell down the stairs. She’s got a bad break in her leg. And a concussion. She was unconscious when we found her.”
Unconscious.
The word knocked the air from my lungs. I gripped the edge of the desk, the image of her lying broken a horrifying slash of red against the canvas of my mind.
“They’re taking her into surgery now,” Gus continued. “For the leg.”
My training, the part of my brain forged by years ofdealing with emergencies on the water, kicked in, overriding the raw, screaming panic. “Okay. I’m on my way. I’m turning the boat around now. Tell them… tell them her family is on the way.” The wordfamilysounded both like a lie and the most honest thing I had ever said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll tell them,” Gus promised. “Drive safe, son.”
I hung up, my hand shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone. For a terrifying second, I just stood there with the cabin swaying around me and the specter of a thirteen-year-old memory rising up to choke me.
Then I shoved it down, hard. There was no time for the past. Only Iris mattered.
When I burst out of the cabin, the sun was blinding after the dim interior. My clients looked up from their coffees, their easygoing smiles faltering as they took in my face.
“What’s wrong?” Dave asked, his brow furrowing.
“Family emergency.” My voice was clipped, leaving no room for questions. “We have to head back. Now. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, of course,” the other guy said immediately, already cleaning up. “Don’t worry about us. Is everything okay?”
I didn’t answer. I was already at the helm, my hands moving with almost violent efficiency. I fired up the engines, the powerful diesels roaring to life, and spun the wheel hard. The boat leaned into a sharp, aggressive turn that sent a spray of white water over the bow. I pushed the throttles all the way forward.
Line Dancerleaped ahead, the bow rising from the water like a startled animal. The usual satisfying roar of her engines was a soundtrack to my terror, each pulse a frantic beat matching the hammering of my heart. The run backto the resort was an exercise in white-knuckled agony. My mind was a churning, chaotic sea of its own.
It’s my fault.
The thought was a relentless, punishing rhythm.
I shouldn’t have left this morning. I should have known better than to leave her alone in that death trap of a house. That damn huge staircase. Just like the ladder. I’d seen her on that other rickety piece of crap, so determined, so reckless. The staircase was no different. Dangerous.
