Page 105 of No One Aboard

He did.

“Tia,” Francis called her name, and she didn’t need to look over to know what he was trying to say.

She watched a drop of Nico’s blood hit the white deck and run away with the rain where just days ago the sailfish’s blood had spilled. The mallet had weighed heavily in her hands but seemed to soar when she’d let it fall. The hook through the sailfish’s lip gleamed like the shine of the black eye forming on Nico’s skin.

The ship rolled again, sending them both off-balance. Nico grabbed at the railing, but his bloody hands were slippery against the smooth wood. He teetered at the edge, arms spread in wild wheel spokes to stop his fall.

“Tia!” he screamed, whether in a plea or an accusation, she would never know.

Was it a mercy? Was the sailfishreally damnedeither way...?

Tia tightened her grip on the shroud and extended an arm toward Nico, her mind made up.

Yes.

Her hand found his chest. She hardly needed to push. And the handsome siren tumbled over the side, swallowed by hungry waves.

Chapter 51

Rylan Cameron

Call sign: Minnow

Day 10 at Sea

Rylan’s fingers quaked as he buckled himself into a life jacket, unable to believe he was really going up in that storm.

But the scream... It sounded like Nico.

He didn’t bother to shut the watertight doors behind him as he flew through the hallway and up the companionway. He heard someone, his mother, climbing up after him. The rain drenched his hair within seconds and plastered it to his forehead as he tried to make sense of the chaos before him.

And why it looked so incredibly familiar.

For Rylan and Tia’s seventeenth birthday, Tia had asked to go Jet-Skiing. They’d spent an adrenaline-racing morning on the water, riding at unnatural speeds that had left Rylan’s heart hanging by a thread and his hair standing on end. The whole family had been breathless and wiped out by the time they returned to the boat, changed into dry clothes, and prepared for what Rylan had asked for.

A tea party.

Tia’s hair had been shorter then, in dark waves just at her collarbones. She hadn’t dyed it yet, and the oaky brown made the lemons on her sundress pop. Lila’s outfit was periwinkleand lace with a cream hat and ribbon to match. Even Francis had traded out his golf polo for a baby-blue button-up to humor his son’s request.

Rylan loved them fiercely in that moment, all three of them, and he knew this birthday would be one to remember.

He’d set the table himself, unfolding it on the deck ofThe Old Eileenso they could overlook the sunny sea. The teacups were Lila’s, ceramic and white with carnation-rimmed plates to hold them.

“No, I insist, my boy. Sit at the head of the table,” Francis had said with a smile.

So Rylan had, Tia at his right side. Alejandro poured the tea, the porcelain teapot out of place in his calloused hands. Rylan could have been fooled into thinking the whole family was gathered there just for him, that it was his day alone, if everyone hadn’t smelled like sunscreen and salt from their hour coasting over waves. Not that he would want a birthday alone. He couldn’t imagine his life without Tia, different though they were.

You wouldn’t understand, he thought toward no one in particular as Tia lumped sugar cubes into her cup.It’s a twin thing.

Rylan and Lila drank honeysuckle tea. Tia and Francis drank oolong. Alejandro went below deck to take a call. That’s when Francis set down his cup and spread his hands.

“You’re seventeen years old today, Rylan.”

Rylan beamed and stirred cream into his drink.

“So what now? What’s next?”

“Uhh...” He took a sip, warm and soothing. A rundown of Rylan’s future wasn’t an uncommon topic. “I mean, senior year of high school. Then after that, college, studying marine bio, maybe environmentalism and—”