Read The Art of My Life Online
Authors: Ann Lee Miller
Tags: #romance, #art, #sailing, #jail, #marijuana abuse
The Art of My Life (25 page)
January 26
www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Fish fired up his engine, jogged
forward to cast off the bow lines, then aft to loose the stern
lines.
“
What’s going on?” Missy
shouted from the dock over the rumble of the engine.
“
Coast Guard broadcast the
location of a vessel in distress,” he yelled back. He tossed the
last coil of line at her feet and headed for the pilot’s station.
Who knew how long it would take the Coast Guard to get around to
Cal. When he’d called to say something was up with Cal because Van
Gogh had been left behind, the dispatcher treated him like a nut
job.
He roared
Zeke’s Ambition
out
of the slip and into the Intercoastal.
He didn’t have a plan, but he had
thirty minutes to come up with one. Cal’s boat would probably top
out at seven knots in this wind, but
Zeke’s Ambition
had the
horsepower to easily double Cal’s speed.
The only scenario he could imagine Cal
leaving Van Gogh on the dock was someone—likely the guy with the
body bag—taking Cal and his boat by force. Maybe Cal had gone into
business with his grandparents selling weed. He made somebody mad,
shorted them…. Who knew?
As he raced under the North Bridge, he
caught movement in his peripheral vision.
Missy plopped into the co-pilot’s
seat.
At this speed, he couldn’t give her
more than a glance. His eyes swerved back to the water. “What the
hell are you doing here?”
“
You might need
help.”
He was beyond pissed. “You might get
killed.”
She jutted her chin. “So, take me
back.”
“
You know damn well I
don’t have time to take you back.”
Missy crossed her arms, jaw set, and
stared at the night ocean.
Land slipped away behind
them.
He didn’t have time to worry about
Missy. He needed a plan.
Van Gogh butted his head against
Fish’s leg. “Make yourself useful. Put the dog inside.”
When Missy returned, he flipped on the
GPS. “When we get closer to the coordinates, you can keep an eye
out for the
Escape
. And for the record, I’m still
pissed.”
“
I couldn’t tell.” Missy
did sarcasm well. The girl had no clue how much danger she could be
in. She stood next to his captain’s chair, eyes fixed on the
GPS.
He grabbed her chin in his fist and
turned her face toward him. His eyes flitted between the sea,
controls, and Missy. “If anything goes wrong, you get the hell out
of here.” He pointed. “Pump the primer three times. Key. Throttle.”
He pierced her eyes with his, then looked at the whitecaps ahead.
“Use your cell if you’ve got coverage or the marine radio to call
the Coast Guard. Don’t even think about me. I can take care of
myself. I can’t afford to be distracted worrying about you.
Understand?”
Missy nodded, dislodging his hand.
“Got it.” She turned back to stare through the windshield, lips
pinched together like she did when she was stressed.
He killed the running lights and they
sped along in silence. Minutes marched by as the tension coiled
tighter in his stomach. There was no question that he would risk
his life for Cal. At times like this, you just did what your gut
told you to do.
He glanced at Missy. Her face had
relaxed. She was praying, he’d put money on it. Not a bad idea for
him to do the same. But it seemed pretty self-serving to call in
the big guns just because you needed something. Better to chat up
God when you weren’t asking for a handout.
“
There!” Missy
pointed.
He squinted at the horizon. “Too big.
That’s got to be a cruise ship.” He adjusted their course to cross
the ship’s wake.
As they passed behind the ship, he
eyed the light raining from the giant boat onto the ocean and a bud
of an idea formed. “Grab the bull horn off the hook beside the
door.”
Missy planted the bullhorn in his
hand, and he set it on the dash.
It was a crazy idea. It would take a
miracle for it to work.
They sped along in silence.
“
How close are we to the
Devil’s Triangle?” Missy shouted over the sound of the wind
whipping past their ears.
The exact boundaries of the location
of numerous fabled boat and plane disappearances were hardly
scientifically precise. He was about to discount Missy’s concern
when the engine sputtered and died.
Eerie silence engulfed them. Missy’s
last words hung in the sudden quiet.
His shoulder blades thumped back
against the captain’s chair, and he sat stunned, his mind
spinning.
The fuel gauge read three-quarters
full. He cranked the key, and the engine coughed and
died.
He jumped to his feet and glanced at
Missy whose fingers clenched the edges of her chair. He gripped her
shoulder on his way past, a wordless
don’t worry
. If he
couldn’t get the boat started, they’d call the Coast Guard, but he
didn’t have a good feeling in his gut about Cal’s
safety.
He shined the flashlight into the fuel
tank while Missy hovered behind him. Empty. Relief flushed into him
as he flipped the lever to the auxiliary tank.
A broken gauge was a minor
inconvenience, barely disrupting the tension from chasing the
Escape
that raced through his body as though they still flew
at full throttle. He turned and bumped into Missy, annoyed all over
again that she’d risked her safety.
“
Did you fix
it?”
His fingers clamped around her arms
and he shoved her up against the bulkhead. “The boat’s fine. Don’t.
Ever. Endanger. Yourself. Like this. Again.” He could barely see
her in the dark as they bounced on the waves, If he could just
squeeze sense into her.
“
You need me—”
He cut off her words with his mouth
and kissed her rougher than he should have. “I don’t want anything
to happen to you.” He moved in closer, pinning her against the wood
with his body. “Don’t do this to me again.” He kissed her deeper
this time and felt her response match his.
She shoved her palms against his chest
breaking them apart. “I am so done with your kisses.”
He turned away from the stab of her
rejection, and primed the engine. “Yeah, you felt done in my
arms.”
“
I was over you. Now,
you’ve set me back six months. I will get over you, Sean. I swear I
will.”
“
Why get over me?” He
didn’t want to have this conversation when he was wired with
tension, but it needed to happen. “We’re good together. We’ve
always been good together. Go with it.”
“
You know I want marriage
and you don’t. Kissing was all you had on your mind.”
“
Not
all
.” He
wrenched the key in the ignition and the motor chugged and rumbled
to life.
“
I want a guy who thinks
he’s the luckiest man in the world to win me.”
He did want to win her. He
would
feel like the luckiest man in the world. But things
weren’t that simple.
“
I want…. Somebody who’s
not you.”
Way to slap a guy down. This was what
he was talking about. Loving someone always involved rejection or
betrayal. He didn’t have to get knocked around too many times—his
folks and Cal were plenty—before he got it.
They closed in on the location the
distress signal had come from.
Cal could have headed for Bermuda or
the Bahamas from here.
Fish tracked the
Escape
’s
trajectory from New Smyrna Beach and decided Cal headed too far
south for Bermuda. He set course for Grand Bahama, the closest land
mass.
Twenty minutes later Missy spotted
something on the murky horizon that could be Cal.
He throttled down to a crawl.
Adrenaline skittered through his veins.
Okay, God. I’m
asking.
He grabbed the three shrimp lights out
of the port locker, clamped them to the edge of the pilot house,
and hooked them up to juice. “When we get close, angle the lights
to hit the
Escape
’s cockpit, but don’t turn them on until I
start talking through the bullhorn. And for God’s sake, stay
down.”
Cal had engaged the EPIRB what felt
like an hour ago. If it alerted the Coast Guard, Aly would be
rescued, and he’d be arrested—a tradeoff that would be worth Aly’s
safety. But he was losing hope that the device had functioned
correctly. He had to come up with a back-up plan.
His left arm had fallen asleep. His
teeth chattered. He scooted tighter against the cabin, blocked from
the cold wind and Franco’s sight. His gaze fell on the dinghy
trailing behind the
Escape
. He could go below for Aly, and
they could make their escape in the row boat. The odds of his
getting into the cabin undetected—much less, the two of them
climbing back out without attracting Franco’s attention—were slim.
And even if they could make it into the dinghy, he wouldn’t risk
exposing Aly to the elements without food or water for God knew how
long while they waited for rescue.
Cal went up on one elbow and edged
just high enough above the cabin to see Franco.
Directly in Franco’s line of vision,
Cal spotted Aly peering from under the propped-open fore
hatch.
Aly stood on the fore bunk, unlatched
the overhead hatch, and raised it so slowly Vic wouldn’t notice
even if he were looking at the hatch.
Her free hand ran over the carpet
indentations on her forehead where she’d begged God to keep Cal
safe and rescue them both. She nudged the hatch another eighth of
an inch open.
Rifling through Franco’s backpack had
produced their phones, but the
Escape
had traveled out of
service range. She’d texted Fish anyway, just in case. No luck. It
didn’t send.
Finally, the hatch was open enough for
her to see out.
Vic sat facing her behind the wheel,
the shotgun resting on the cockpit bench beside him. Cal had to be
prone in the shadows on the aft deck.
She felt the smooth skin of the
grapefruit in her sweatshirt pouch for reassurance. It was a crazy
idea that banked heavily on her belief that Franco was not a
killer—at least not the kind who would shoot a person point blank.
If this worked, her JV career as catcher would count for more than
an ill-conceived attempt to convince her freshman boyfriend she was
athletic.
She cracked the hatch open another
inch.
Cal had to get to Franco before the
guy saw Aly.
“
Hold it right there.”
Franco’s voice rasped as he grabbed the shotgun off the bench and
aimed it at Aly.
Cal scrambled off the aft deck and
made for Franco.
Franco pivoted and trained the gun on
him before he could make contact.
Cal froze. In the background he could
see Aly boosting herself out of the cabin. He couldn’t think what
she was doing other than trying to get herself shot.
With Franco distracted from the helm,
the
Escape
veered into the wind, stopping the forward motion
of the boat. The mainsail luffed frantically in the
breeze.
He had to keep Franco’s attention off
Aly. “Look, you can’t get to Grand Bahama without my help. Let’s
act like civilized people and—”
Suddenly, shouting and bright light
doused the cockpit.
Cal reacted rather than thought and
dove for Vic, knocking him into the companionway hatch.
“
Coast Guard. Put your
hands in the air or we’ll shoot.”
The gruff voice barking through the
megaphone sounded oddly familiar.
Fish.
Cal jerked the gun out of Franco’s
hand and flung it toward the wheel. He drove a punch into his
gut.
Franco slammed him against the
steering column.
Pain shot through Cal’s ribs and the
back of his skull.
Franco lunged for the gun.
“
Move and I’ll shoot.”
Fish’s voice boomed from the aft deck.
Fish had never fired anything more
powerful than a BB gun and ten to one didn’t have a gun in his
hands now.
Cal heard a thump, and Franco’s head
jerked to the side, his eyes wide with surprise.
Cal made a split second decision to go
for Franco instead of the gun and slammed him against the aft
cabin.
Franco’s head knocked against the
mainsail winch, and he crumpled over the gun.
A cracked grapefruit rolled off the
seat and plopped onto the cockpit floor.
Fish scuttled into the cockpit and
rolled Franco off the gun.
Cal cinched the sheet line around the
inert Franco’s wrists.
Aly stepped into the cockpit,
grinning.
Fish raised his voice. “Missy, radio
the Coast Guard. Read them our location off the GPS. Tell them
everything you know.”
Cal jumped to his feet. “No! There’s a
warrant out for my arrest.” His eyes shot to Aly. “Skipping
probation meetings. I would have tested dirty. I’m sorry. I was
going to tell you, but it never seemed like the right
moment.”
Fish grabbed his arm. “Take
Zeke’s
Ambition
. Aly and I will handle things on the
Escape
and
meet you back at the dock. The Coast Guard announced your
coordinates on the emergency channel over an hour ago. Another call
must have taken precedence. Get out of here. Fast.”
Cal stood rooted to the spot. Fish
jeopardized his career again for him, voluntarily this time. “Why
are you doing this?”
Fish shot him a half-smile. “Bubba
Franks. Now, go!”
Fish’s words propelled him to the
deck, then a leap aboard Fish’s boat that Missy held in close by a
painter.
Fifth grade Bubba had stuffed scrawny
fourth grade Fish into a Read-Pattillo Elementary dumpster every
day for a week until Cal and Fish fought him together.
Missy cast off, and jumped into the
captain’s seat.
The engine roared to life, and Cal
watched Aly grow smaller and smaller as they hurtled into the
night.
Relief had barely eddied in his chest
when Missy shouted. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” She
glanced over at him. “I love you. No matter what.”
“
I love you, too,
Sissy-Missy. Thanks for helping Fish with the rescue.”
“
Hey, take over. I’ve
never driven one of these things before.”
He couldn’t help laughing in spite of
everything. He nudged her out of the seat with his hip. Neither had
he, but he was about to figure it out.
