Page 42 of Dead of Summer

FAITH

Faith pulls herself up onto the sleek edge of the yacht. Geoffrey’s skiff had arrived ages ago now, but she sees no sign of life on the bottom deck of the boat. She secures the rowboat off to the side with a rope, hoping that in the shadows no one will notice it there.

She creeps barefoot up the steps to the second-floor deck, passing through a row of empty lounge chairs.

She can hear music now, a thin bass line coming from one of the floors above her.

Faith tiptoes to the central stairway encased in glass and cautiously follows it up to the third floor.

She finds another smaller open deck here.

Behind it is a set of closed French doors.

The music is louder now. It’s electronic and clubby, something that Faith might have heard at a bad tourist-filled nightclub in her early twenties.

The low grumble of a man’s voice rises up over the beats on the other side of the wall.

Geoffrey. She moves toward the door. If she bursts into the room and finds him with Gemma, it will do nothing.

He will surely deny it all. She has to catch him in the act.

She retreats, moving out around the side of the yacht.

The window to the room is beyond the walkway, the base of it sitting upon on a ledge that narrows aerodynamically toward the front of the ship.

A dim light from a window shines out into the dark, and Faith steps toward it.

Inching out farther and farther until her fingertips grip at the smooth white wall of the boat.

The boat sways and she looks down. A mistake.

The waves have gotten rougher since she rowed out here.

They pound against the hull, their crests glowing in the light from the yacht.

The vibrato of Geoffrey’s voice carries out into the night, sending her stomach into her throat.

Faith turns her head and inches forward until she is just beside the window.

From this angle she can see the edge of a plush white sofa and across the room a built-in bar.

A man stands in front of it, dropping cubes of ice into a glass with a set of silver tongs.

Faith recognizes the back of his boxy head.

He turns and she sees the phone pressed up to his ear.

He sits heavily on a leather banquette, tossing the phone onto the table in front of him.

Faith presses her face to the window looking for Gemma or the men. The boat begins to hum and sway as the motor starts up, and Faith realizes with a jolt of horror that she’s miscalculated. There is no missing girl here. There is no one else at all. Geoffrey Clarke is alone.