“What about the motorboat you and C-Carl arrived on?” Ashley asks.
“It’s tied up behindEmpress,” Trey replies. “But that boat isn’t rated for weather like this either!”
“We have to try,” Viv hisses.
“What if the tender is gone?” Rachel asks, her voice cracking.
“We cross that bridge if we come to it,” Viv announces, skirting around me, running down the hallway without another word. Her footfalls smack on the stairs as she heads to the main level.
“Dammit,” Trey mutters, and tears after Viv.
“Come on,” Ashley says, turning to Rachel and pulling her twin’s hand toward her heart. Ashley’s eyes are puffy and red, but there’s a determination in them. “Viv is right. Piper’s family. We have to try.”
The twins follow Trey.
Fiona is clinging to the wall, crying again, but she spares me a glance. “You should get dry, Charlie. You don’t look so good.”
The rainwater is being frozen to my skin by the air-conditioning, lowering my body temperature, but that’s not why I’m shivering so hard. I’m picturing Piper, flailing under the water, trying desperately to swim to safety, trying to escape certain death. I’m picturing her mouth opening underwater like mine did the other day, like Carl must have done after the party. I can almost feel the ocean thrusting itself down Piper’s throat, choking her, breathing her in I squeeze my eyes shut, and she blooms in my mind; only she’s not Piper.
She’s Sage.
Bloated face, blue lips, wrinkled fingers—limp body sagging in the undulating waves on Lake Michigan.
It’s not hard to imagine. Not after seeing Elena.
“No! Not another one. We can’t let her drown,” I shriek, the world swaying as I hold a hand against the wall to steady myself. “She can’t! It’s my fault; she can’t drown; it’s all my fault!”
“They’re going,” Fiona soothes, sniffling, stifling her own tears and approaching me gently. “You couldn’t have done anything else.”
I should be more appreciative of her attempts to console me through her own unbelievable pain and loss, but I’m too agitated. I can’t stop thinking about Piper. About Sage. About Elena. “We have to go! We have to help her right now!”
“Charlie…” Fiona’s voice is as scraped and punishing as a cliff face.
“No, no, we can’t give up.” I turn away and stumble down the hallway.
“Charlie!” Fiona calls after me, but I’m already on the main level, already avoiding Carl’s body (When will it start to smell? Shouldn’t we do something with him?), already racing toward the main deck doors.
I step outside, back into the brunt of the storm. The wind is almost worse down here than it was on the rooftop deck, and I plunge against it, working my way to the small staircase on the starboard side of the yacht where Viv, Trey, and the twins are standing, huddled together against the rain.
“Is the tender there?” I shout over the wind as I approach. “Can you see Piper?”
“No sign of her,” Trey tosses over his shoulder, back hunched against the wind. “But the boat is still here.” He points down the staircase.
The tender is being tossed and lifted by the waves, and it’s clearlybeen banging against the side ofEmpresstoo because there are black scrapes along the yacht’s hull.
“What are you waiting for?” I ask, raising my voice over the whistling wind. “We have to go!”
As if trying to punctuate my words, a clap of thunder rings overhead, making the twins jump.
“Charlie,” Trey says, and I flinch at his tone.
“No.”
“It’s too dangerous. There’s no way.”
“Please!”
“I think he’s right,” Ashley says, her words dropping like stones in my stomach. Her voice is loud over the rain but missing the edge she’s used before. She’s staring at me, mouth drooping and eyes wet.
