“Is the sat phone fixable?” Rachel asks Trey. “Did you get any further with it?”
“It’s destroyed,” he admits. “I can’t… Carl was the one who was handy with stuff like that. I don’t know how to get it working again in the state it’s in. We have to ride this out.”
“Together,” Viv adds, and she turns to stare at Fiona, who still has her head in her hands. “We’re a family, remember? We get through bad times together.”
Fiona doesn’t respond, but she slowly lifts her head, eyes filling with fresh tears. She darts a look at Ashley, but the accusing anger from earlier is gone. Fiona’s makeup, always so perfect, is bleeding and smudged. She manages a small nod, deflated.
“We’ll get through this too,” Ashley whispers, and she returns Fiona’s mournful gaze.
My mouth fills with sour saliva, and cramps seize my stomach. It’s clear now. All the girls onEmpressknow what really happened to Elena. That explains their caginess, their deference to Viv, their boss and leader. Something bad happened on this boat, and they have been stuffing it down, trying to forget about it. Piper cracked first, and now Fiona is following.
That’s what Piper was trying to tell me:We don’t deserve to berescued.That’s what Fiona meant when she said technically three people have died on this yacht.
Everyone on this boat, perhaps with the exception of Carl, knew what happened to Elena. But which one of them hurt her? Who made her disappear?
That’s the thing about storms. They bring what was hidden under the sand up to the surface, tossing the truth to the waves.
I almost come right out and ask. I almost ask which one of them killed Elena. But then I think about Piper’s last words to me on the deck:Top drawer of the end table next to my bed.
And some numbers.
Directions. She was giving me directions.
Chapter 29
I tiptoe up the staircase for what feels like the eight-hundredth time in the last few days.
I waited until night fell; it was a long day. Trey had decided that with no idea when help might arrive or when the storm would abate enough to get back to the mainland, we should move Carl’s body so we could use the kitchen.
“We have to be able to cook. We can’t leave him out here to…you know… They’ll understand,” he said, and whether he was referring to his private security team or the actual police, I didn’t know.
Trey took the linen and bound it tighter around his friend’s body, hiding him from view completely. I had gritted my teeth, grabbed one end of a wrapped foot, and helped Viv, Trey, and Rachel carry Carl down to the creepy crew mess. We gently laid him in the first starboard room and closed the door. We had excluded Ashley andFiona from the task for obvious reasons, but I suspect I’ll be having awful dreams about carrying a literal deadweight for years to come.
I didn’t bother fighting Trey. I was too tired, too weighed down with grief for all the people we’ve lost already.
When night finally fell and everyone retired to their rooms, drawn and drained from the day, I slipped out of bed and back into the hall.
Now I quietly approach Piper’s room, knowing it’ll be empty.
The thunderstorm picked up in the last hour or two. Frequent flashes of light illuminate the dark interior ofEmpressand thunder growls overhead. My bare legs prickle with goose bumps. I’ve slipped back into already-worn clothes that passed the Sniff Test—shorts and my sweater layered over a tank top. My top half is cozy enough, but my lower body is freezing and shaky.
My bare feet move lightly as I creep into Piper’s room, holding my breath as if I’m expecting her to jump out from the bathroom, but no one appears, not even the ghost—which is telling. There haven’t been any strange occurrences since Piper went into the water. She never answered my question about her involvement in the haunting, but she could have been facilitating everything. Making me think Elena was roaming the boat so I’d poke around and get help.
Had Piper filled my vents with rotting fish? Projected an image of a waterlogged, briny body on to the walls? Left the message on my mirror?
Not important, I tell myself.Not now.
I make my way to Piper’s bedside table. It’s gray ash, and a silver-accented lamp sits on top of it, but I don’t dare click it on. Instead, I reach out and slowly pull open the top drawer. It slides out on its track smoothly and silently. The room is dark, but I brought my fully charged phone with me—I tap the button that will awaken the home screen and use the light to examine the inside of the drawer.
There’s a hip flask of vodka. An assortment of hair scrunchies. A very expensive-looking gold chain bracelet that’s discarded at the bottom like an unwanted shoestring. And there, in the middle of all the random detritus, is Piper’s phone. I let out a sigh of surprise and reverently pick it up.
Holding someone else’s phone is like holding a piece of their soul. Even Sage wasn’t comfortable with me touching hers. Looking back, maybe that’s because she was being shady, taking notes on my book or drafting on a Google Doc when I thought she was texting, but it had felt normal to me. What’s on your phone is yours alone. So to be holding Piper’s, in its soft green case, feels wrong. But at least there’s not a bloody fingerprint on Piper’s phone.
This is clearly what she was directing me to. She told me six digits: a password code. I rack my brain, wishing I listened harder, wrote them down sooner. There was a two, a three, a five. That much I remember. And multiple repeating digits. But in what order?
2-0-0-3-5-5?
I try it, tapping the lock screen. The phone vibrates, shaking its head no at me.
