Swept Away 2 (11 page)

The boat tosses me yet again, and this time, the water drags me under.

Which way is up? Where’s the surface? Completely panicked, I flail uselessly, pressed in on all sides by seawater that fills my mouth, cold and unforgiving.

My arm brushes over the rough texture of the sodden mattress, and I thrust myself off it, breaking through the top of the water so forcefully, my head slams against the roof of the cabin. Stars shoot across my vision.

Miraculously, I can hear again. I suck up great, gulping lungfuls of air. The snap of popping wires and crunch of breaking wood and fiberglass add to the roar of the water as it rushes around me, trying to suck me up into its deadly vortex.

The water’s rising fast—it’s at chin-level now. The flashlight is gone again. It’s so dark. I grope around, trying to find the hatch.

The singular focus of locating it consumes my mind. The water has risen to my nose, and I have to tilt my head up to continue to breathe, but that seems insignificant compared to my need to
find the hatch
.

And then…I feel the slight depression in the ceiling and smack my hand up into Plexiglas. I hear mewling, then realize those weak little whimpering sounds are coming from me. My fingers fumble for latches that keep the hatch shut and locked. I feel one of them at the edge of the glass, grip it, and try to turn it.

Another roll, and again water sucks me under. This time, my fingers remain wrapped around the lock, even as it cuts against my hand with the force of the water. I grip it like the lifeline it is, and when the wave passes, the water has risen to the ceiling. There’s a tiny area under the hatch, a little pocket of air, and I turn my head into it and gulp in a deep breath.

But then the water consumes me completely.

I still work. I don’t think about anything but the hatch.
The hatch.
Getting it unlocked. Getting it open. Beyond the hatch, there’s air. Blessed, beautiful, life-giving air. I’m going to open it. I can and
will
do it, because there’s no other option.

I twist the first lock open as surging water thrashes my body. I grope around for the second lock, my lungs bursting.

Air. I need
air
.

I find the second lock and wrench it open. I push at the hatch, but the angle is wrong. There seems to be pressure on the other side of it, and I’m not strong enough. I’ve wasted my strength. I don’t have enough for the final push to freedom.

It hurts. More than anything I’ve ever experienced, the feeling of drowning is like a bomb within your chest. The pressure growing and growing until it finally explodes and you’re nothing. No longer of this world.

I kick and thrash desperately, trying to get above the water, anything to get out of this horror. It’s the worst panic attack of my life, but it’s not just that.

It’s real.

I breathe in water. It burns as it goes down. It hurts, but I’m becoming a fish. I’ve grown gills, and I’m going to be a mermaid and swim out of this, and everything’s going to be okay. Tomorrow, I’ll be swimming with the dolphins.

I feel it—that last glimmer of terrified, excruciating consciousness, before I slip away.

A hand grabs my arm, and then I’m being hauled up, my body scraping against something.

I feel oddly dissociated. The scraping doesn’t hurt, but I know it’s happening—heavy metallic edges grinding against my torso as I’m being lifted by one arm. It’s a very strange sensation, like my body’s still there, but I’m not part of it. I’m floating around my body, maybe. Or above it.

I fall onto the deck. Or maybe it’s part of the deck. Nothing makes any sense.

On my hands and knees, I cough and gag, throwing up seawater. It hurts coming up almost as much as it hurt going down. When the last of it is gone, I collapse down onto my stomach.

And then, I see someone. The dim shape of Ethan’s face. The feel of him. The sound of his voice.

Ethan!

He’s talking to me, and while I can still hear, his words are a jumbled mess, and I can’t wrap my head around them, can’t understand what he’s telling me.

He curls an arm around my torso and hauls me up again, which hurts. I want to tell him to let me lie down, but I don’t have the energy.

It’s dark and wet and cold. Spray slams against my body, the drops hitting my bare arms like spitting darts, and my clothes are heavy with water. The deck pitches wildly beneath my feet.

We stumble forward, Ethan and I. We’re on the trampoline—no, that’s not right. We’re on what’s
left
of the trampoline. I can’t see the rest of the
Temptation
—it’s too dark. Ethan’s arm slips away as he kneels down and opens a storage hatch. My hands reach for him, but he doesn’t notice.

I sag to my knees behind him, my throat and lungs burning. The boat is wet and rocking, and the waves are so tall, I’m certain they’re going to crash down on us and drown me again.

Wait... Where’s Kyle?

I search around frantically, first crawling then stumbling back to my feet, gripping a handhold on the deck so I don’t slide off it. The darkness consumes my vision. It’s as if nothing and no one exists beyond the wind, the waves, the small piece of deck, and the outline of Ethan just beside me.

“Kyle!” My voice comes out as the stupidest, weakest whisper ever. “Kyle, where are you?”

There’s no answer. Nothing but the roar of water and rain and wind.

The
Temptation
is slanted, tilted, one hull up out of the water—though that’s only a guess; I can’t actually see it—and the side we’re on dips deeper into the water every time a wave passes beneath us.

It hits me. The truth I’ve been avoiding since the explosion.

The
Temptation
is sinking.

Something blew up. It was Mick—it had to have been Mick. He’d intended to kill us all.

Ethan yanks out a huge cylindrical container. It appears black in the night, but I know it’s bright orange. It’s the lifeboat. He heaves it onto the slanted deck, then plants his feet in front of it so it won’t roll off. He fumbles at his PFD, then shrugs out of it.

“Here!” He has to shout to be heard. The wind and waves pummel us so there’s hardly room for any other sound.

He pushes the PFD into my hands, and I stare at it dumbly until he yells, “Put it on.”

I struggle to do as he tells me, forcing my sluggish muscles to go through the motions of slipping my arms into the armholes.

Me using his PFD means he’s left without one. I resist the urge to take it off and make him wear it. But that would be a waste of time. He won’t take it back.

“I need to get this into the water. Hold on to my shirt, and hold on to this with your other hand,” he shouts, handing me the end of a rope. “Whatever happens, even if you’re separated from me, don’t let go of it. Do you understand?”

I nod.

With each wave, the sea swallows more of the
Temptation
. We slide down the deck until Ethan stops us by gripping one of the shrouds—a thick wiry metal line that leads from the top of the mast to the outside edge of the deck. The
Temptation
dips lower, and water drags at my thighs, doing its best to pull me under yet again.

One-handed, Ethan manages to throw the life raft into the water. It can’t be easy—the thing is damned heavy. The canister pops open, the metal edges breaking apart and sinking immediately, leaving a half-submerged mass of wrinkled rubber.

For a moment, waves batter it, and I’m sure it’s sinking. This is not going to work.

But then a loud hissing fills the air, and in a matter of seconds, the life raft self-inflates into a dome over a circular boat that looks like it belongs in an amusement park, not on the open ocean in a storm.

The rope is slack in my hand because it’s extremely long, but I can see the other end is attached to the raft. Ethan drags the rope in until each wave smacks the raft against the deck. It bobs and tips with the force of the waves. How can this fragile thing keep anyone safe?

“Get in,” he calls.

“What about Kyle? Where’s Kyle? Where’s Nalani?”

“Get in, Tara,” he snaps. It’s an order. “We need to take care of ourselves first, then we can try to find them.”

“What about you?”

His jaw works as he grinds his teeth. “You first.”

Dismay washes through me. He should get in the life raft first. I want to refuse to get in until he’s safe, but there’s no point in arguing. He won’t budge on this point either.

“I’ll come in right after you,” he promises, then takes my arm and nudges me toward the life raft. “Go.”

I search around desperately one last time for Kyle, but there’s no sign of him. Even if he was ten feet away, he’d be invisible in the darkness. It’s unclear how much of the
Temptation
is above water, but it seems like Ethan and I are already standing on the small bit of what’s left of it.

There’s nothing else to do. Gulping down a sob, I leap through the doorway of the life raft.

The thing bends and twists under my weight, and it seems ten gallons of seawater enter the raft with me. Ethan jumps in as soon as I’m out of the way. The raft jerks, making me fall against the inflated rubber side.

Crouching, I stare at him, fascinated. I want to tackle him and kiss him until we forget everything that just happened. At the same time, I want to leap out of this uncomfortable, enclosed space and find Kyle.

Kyle.

I gulp, then gasp it out loud: “Kyle!”

I rush to the doorway flap of the raft, pushing Ethan out of the way. “Kyle,” I yell hoarsely. “Kyle! Nalani!”

Nothing. Only the breaking waves and the crashing water. The
Temptation
is already several yards away—we’ve drifted in the wind and the current, while the catamaran is anchored down by the water filling its hulls.

I don’t see anything except the dark lump, barely above water now, that was once the
Temptation
.

“Kyle!” My voice is a ragged scream, and my throat hurts, and tears stream down my face as I take great, gulping sobs of air. “Kyle!”

Ethan appears beside me, and we both try to hand-paddle toward the
Temptation
as we shout Kyle’s name. I shout myself hoarse. Soon, the catamaran is out of sight, and I have no idea if it’s half a mile or a hundred feet away.

Ethan gives up first, sitting with his knees drawn up and his head pressed into his hands. A few minutes later, I collapse in a state of such grief and fear for Kyle, I feel that I’ll just lie here forever, crumpled on the floor of the life raft, pitching in the weather and water sloshing around me, because I’ll never be able to move again.

And then Ethan lifts me up and brings me into his lap. And as the storm rages around us, I cry and cry for hours, until sheer exhaustion finally takes my consciousness away.

Justine

August 17, 2007

On April 23rd, my father came into my office. I was coding frantically, as I have been for the last couple of days. I was trying to hack into Stanford’s administrative system to clear up the problem of a B I got in one of my upper division theoretical math classes senior year. That B is a stain on my record, and I’ve wanted nothing more over the past year than to have it eradicated.

God knows I’ve tried to hack into Stanford in the past, and I’ve failed. This time, I was close, though. So, so, so close.

So I was completely blindsided when Daddy told me the news.

My worst fears came to fruition. Ethan left me. He’s gone. He’s been gone for four months.

Let me back up.

Last year, after Ginny had her “accident,” a terrible skiing mishap on the slopes of Aspen, Colorado (could’ve happened to anyone!), Ethan started asking questions. I have to give it to him, the man’s not dumb. His intuition was telling him there was more to Ginny’s death than met the eye.

A couple of months after she met her untimely demise, Ethan found a little piece of incriminating evidence. He was messing around in the files in my office and discovered a payment I’d made to the man I’d hired to bug Ginny’s phone.

“What’s this?” he’d asked me.

I shrugged and said I thought it was the man who was planting the annuals in front of the Palo Alto house.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed even as I realized my mistake. He hadn’t dealt with the gardener, but I’d mentioned his name once. Robert. The man’s name on the check was Roland.

He knew I was lying.

I monitored his e-mails, and sure enough, he made an inquiry into the identity of the man I’d written the check to. A week later, when we were in bed, he rolled over and gave me a searching look.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had Ginny’s phone tapped?” His voice still broke when he said her name. He mourned her death like a normal person should mourn a good friend, so that never bothered me. His continued grief over it irritates me, though. (Get over it, people!)

Anyway, at that moment, panic surged through me. It was the panic that always comes when someone is close to discovering what I really am. But I pulled it together and shrugged. “I was…paranoid,” I admitted.

“Why?”

“Remember how upset I was about all the phone calls she’d made to you?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

“Well…I just wanted to make sure nothing was going on,” I said quietly “It was stupid, I know. Really, really stupid.”

He took me in his arms and kissed me soundly, and murmured against my lips, “I’m not the kind of man who’d lie to you, Justine. You know that, right?”

But he did lie to me. I know that now. He continued digging, asking questions, researching Ginny’s death. And then he started to suspect that I had a hand in it.

I denied the problem to myself—using the excuse that both of us were busy, that we had a lot going on, that Ethan was stressed about the Oracle deal. But deep inside, I knew it was happening. He was growing distant. He stopped talking to me about things that really mattered. He stopped looking at me the way he used to. And we stopped having sex.

When Daddy came into my office on April 23
rd
, he told me that Ethan had figured out that I was the one who killed Ginny. He was worried about me, my father said. He didn’t know who I was anymore. He’d presented Daddy with the “evidence”: