Page 102 of No One Aboard

Lila was still standing in front of the twins’ cabin door. Tia slipped past her and peered into the crew’s cabin.

Every bed lay empty.

What the hell...

Tia backed away just as her mother murmured, almost to herself.

“Your brother is still asleep?”

“Don’t wake him,” Tia said. Something was very, very wrong.

“I would never.” Lila had one hand clasped over her heart. She seemed to stare at the door to her children’s room forever.

“Go back to bed,” Tia tried to urge her, but Lila didn’t seem to have heard.

Tia stepped closer. She still had Lila’s lipstick in her pocket, and she took it out and pressed it into her palm. “Here. I borrowed this. Sorry.”

Lila looked down at her for the first time. “My beautiful daughter,” she breathed.

Tia felt a strange, sudden urge to say goodbye to her, to this woman who existed a million miles away but had somehow brought Tia into the world. But Lila wasn’t in her right mind. Maybe she was overmedicated to hide her anxiety. Maybe she was drunk. Her eyes looked unfocused. She held the tube of lipstick to her heart.

It takes a certain commitment to ruin a thing, don’t you think, lovey? Takes nothing at all to leave it behind.

Lila was wrong about that. It did take something for Tia leave her family behind.

Tia turned and left her there.

All the men must be up on deck or in the chart house.

Red crept into Tia’s peripheral vision. Her hand levitatedover the handle to the chart house. She had no idea who she’d become when she burst through the door.

She turned the handle.

The space looked empty. Tia turned on the lights and jumped a little. Pirate was perched in the middle of the floor, viridian eyes watching her as his tail flicked back and forth. It wasn’t the cat that had startled her, however. It was what he sat on.

The black duffel bag had been placed in the center of the chart house, its zipper partially undone to reveal a hint of its contents.

“Pirate, get off that!” Tia scooped the cat from the bag, holding her breath as she half expected the room to spontaneously combust. It didn’t, of course. The bomb would need to be lit. But who had taken it out of the bilge? Alejandro?

Tia took Pirate to the salon couch where he’d be more comfortable, then headed back to the chart house and lifted the duffel bag, cringing at her proximity to what could so easily explode. She climbed the companionway with it awkwardly. It didn’t help that the storm kept sendingThe Old Eileentailspinning through towering waves.

How the hell was she going to get the life raft ready in these conditions? Maybe all she needed to do was throw the duffel into the sea. Then she could wait till the water was calm again to escape.Ifshe could afford to wait.

Tia tossed the duffel bag up onto the deck and heaved herself after. She got to her feet, only raising her head when she had steadied herself on the railing near the cockpit.

The storm had masked the sounds of the chaos that unfolded before her. Francis was at the helm, one hand locked around the metal, the other clenched around Nico’s shirt collar. The two were arguing, shouting into each other’s faces, but rain poured around them and dampened the sound.

What the hell?Tia forgot everything else.

“Dad! Nico!”

Nico glanced her way momentarily, and when he did, Francis seized his opportunity. He released the wheel of the ship and punched Nico full in the face. Tia felt the blow as if it had been her who was hit. Because it had been her before. A wave slammed intoThe Old Eileen’s portside, and Tia buckled. Her chest caught on the railing, and she looked down at the seething sea. She should have put on her life jacket.

In the cockpit, Nico’s fingers had found Francis’s throat. He drove him backward so Francis’s body hit the wheel. “Tell me, you son of a bitch!”

Tia barely made out his words through the wind.

“Where is my uncle?”