My mind flashes to Piper, her rippled muscles, the ease with which she brought me to the surface when I had the wind knocked out of me underwater.
Piper, who handed me the bracelet and directed me to Elena’s Instagram page.
“Come on,” Viv says, not noticing my slack arm as she presses her empty wineglass into my free hand. “Hold this for me while I pull on some clothes, ’kay? If the internet is truly out, we need totalk to the others. Might be time to get some Coast Guard reinforcements in here. No point in staying if we can’t post.”
I’m barely listening. I can’t stop thinking about Piper. Had she known the bracelet was in the water? And if shewasresponsible for whatever happened to Elena, why did she want me to know about it?
In the thrillers and mysteries I’ve read for my social media, it’s never the obvious suspects who are the killers. Piper’s behavior has been sketchy as hell, but so has Viv’s. By bookstagram standards, that would rule them out. Maybe I should be looking at someone like Rachel or Fiona instead, someone I’m not very suspicious of. Except it’s never really the innocents who are the bad guys either, is it? It’s usually someone floating around in the middle, hidden by a red herring. Ashley? Trey? Carl?
I shake myself, irritated by the spiraling. This isn’t an ARC I’m trying to review—it’s my life, and a real woman might be dead.
Maybe all the novels I’ve read are working against me. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation, something that makes sense and explains away the creepy shit I’ve seen and the bizarre behavior of the people on board this boat.
There could be nothing wrong at all, and I’m reading into everything because of trauma from Sage’s death and my own overactive imagination.
Except deep down, I’m not sure I believe that.
Chapter 19
By the time Viv and I get to the main level, everyone else is already there, even Piper, though she pretends she’s downstairs to refill her drink.
“Everyone else lost service too, then?” Viv guesses, looking around at the forlorn faces shining under the cool kitchen lighting.
“I thought it would last longer,” Trey admits, running a hand through his hair, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. “The storm must be picking up.”
“No shit,” Carl says, nodding to the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround us. He looks tired; he has bags under his eyes and the corners of his mouth are drooping. His head bobs as he waves a hand at the windows with great effort. “Hear that?”
We all pause for a minute, listening to the violent pinging of water on the glass, the howling of the wind, the slap of waves against the hull.
“It’s getting worse,” Rachel confirms, her voice trembling. She’s hunched next to her twin, as if she’s hoping to fold into herself and disappear. Ashley has her arms wrapped around Rachel’s shoulders, her chin resting on her sister’s head.
Watching the two of them together, I can’t help but think of Ashley as a bird, wings outstretched to offer shelter to her chick.
Viv’s brow creases. “Trey,” she says, a questioning note in her voice. Whether it’s pleading or a warning, I can’t tell. Viv and Trey have openly butted heads in front of us, both of them intent on proving their dominance. Maybe that’s to be expected in a high-pressure situation like this. I didn’t get a chance to see them interact under normal circumstances.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll call for help,” the billionaire says, acquiescing to Viv. “They’ll probably need extra guidance in this mess anyway.”
He’s got a point—it’s only a little after five o’clock, but the sky is so dark it might as well be midnight, and when I glance out the windows looking for the island, there’s nothing but a blotch of gray.
“How are we supposed to call for help if none of our cell phones work?” I ask.
“Radio, remember?” Trey replies, tapping the side of his head and giving me a wan smile. I remember him mentioning something about the bridge earlier, but he must see my skepticism because he beckons to me. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
“Yes, let’s all go,” Viv offers quickly, waving to the others. “We should stick together.”
“Why?” Piper grumbles. “It’s not like we’re in a forest being tracked by wolves. IfEmpressblows away, who cares where in the boat we are?”
“Fuck, Piper, don’t talk like that,” Ashley says, her eyes darting toward her sister’s increasingly drawn face. Ashley draws herself taller, wrapping her arm tighter around Rachel. Once again, she appears to brace herself, as if she’s actively flooding her words with an acidic tone. “We’re going to be fine. This is a precaution. Right, Trey?”
“That’s right,” he responds immediately. There’s a confidence in his voice I don’t like. It sounds hollow. “Don’t worry, girls. It’ll all get taken care of.”
I catch Fiona’s eye; she curls her perfectly made-up lip, and I nod at her. She hears it too: the condescension in Trey’s voice. Something about the way he calls us “girls.” But the group of us line up to follow him anyway. He is, after all, our boss, even if he’s not that much older than us and doesn’t really act like a manager. He’s got that effortless, privileged, rich white dude affect—he’s not concerned about anything, and he expects us to follow suit.
Trey leads us downstairs to the lower level, past the hallway of bedrooms and into the billiards room. I catch a surreptitious glance between Ashley and Carl over Rachel’s head; they are remembering their illicit hookup in here. As if she can feel my eyes boring into her, Ashley turns, catching me watching them. Again. I look away quickly, flushing.
“Come here, Charlie, I’ll show you the bridge,” Trey calls out to me. “It’s hidden, like the crew quarters.”
Eager to escape Ashley’s scrutiny, I slip past Fiona and Viv and stand beside our boss, who is gesturing to a door I hadn’t noticed in the corner of the billiards room. Like the door to the crew quarters on the main level, this one is camouflaged into the molding on the wall, the handle a little cleft in the surface that pops up and pulls back.
