Page 107 of No One Aboard

He had never forgotten Francis’s reply, not when he stood by as his sister was shipped off to boarding school, not when he’d seen her raise the metal mallet above her head, and least of all now as the storm swallowed Nico de la Vega in one gulp.

Because, Rylan, Francis had said.

She already has it.

Chapter 52

Tia Cameron

Call sign: Thimble

Day 10 at Sea

Tia saw Rylan too late, his mouth ajar, pupils dilated. He’d seen her. She looked at the spot Nico had occupied seconds before. She looked at her mother who had come up beside Rylan, even though she had said she wouldn’t wake him. She looked down at the sea which heaved, unmarred by the man it had consumed.

Tia stood still amid the storm, drenched and anchored only by the steel shroud clenched in her fists and her brother across the deck, screaming her name in silence. The ocean seemed to have no laws in the way it moved, bucking and writhing and sending them in every direction. The black duffel bag was nowhere to be seen. If Tia had been any less pumped with adrenaline, she would have sobbed with terror.

At the helm, her father smiled.

The storm seemed to mute. Rylan had looked at Tia once before in the way he did now, like she was a monster. It was after she’d pushed their father overboard. No one in the family had ever viewed her the same since. Tia hadn’t given a second thought to what happens to people when you push them into the ocean, even in calm waters in broad daylight, to the factthat she might have killed her father. She’d just wanted to hurt him. Her face had been aching from where he’d hit her, and she needed her father to know that she would always strike back.

“I—I think I know what your call sign is, Tia,” Rylan had said as they knelt on the floor of their room after Francis had been pulled from the sea coughing up water. “Shield. You’re my shield.”

Tia had shaken her head. “I’m not big enough.”

She thought of her father’s look of terror as he crashed into the water. The image filled her with adrenaline. And pride.

“Maybe I’m more of a sword.”

Rylan frowned. “No. No.” He said it like he wanted to convince himself. “You were on defense. Not offense.”

Tia wondered if that was true. She wondered if Rylan believed that. She looked around atThe Old Eileen, the flash of Atlantic through the portholes, and then at her brother and his bandaged hands.

“How about something else unbreakable?” Rylan had said. He thought for a minute, touching a bubble of blood that seeped from underneath the gauze around one thumb. “Thimble.”

Tia looped her pinkie with his, careful not to brush up against any of his wounded fingers.

“Thimble,” she echoed.

Francis was laughing now, openmouthed against the rain as he gripped the helm.

Tia found herself in front of him, the wheel between them. Rylan and Lila had retreated to midships, maybe to take shelter. Alejandro was gone, and now so was Nico.

Francis turned them portside, but the waves didn’t let up.The ship was ready to splinter into shards, ceramic pieces to be ground into sand.

“You know, Tia, you really should be wearing a life jacket up here. It isn’t safe.”

Tia seized the wheel, her fists against his. Rain slashed his face into fractions, a series of broken glass.

Francis wrenched it back, and she stumbled away. “You’re not a captain yet, kiddo. Your day will come. Although, it was a night like this thirty years ago when I started my own path. A storm like this.”

Water broke over the bowsprit and rushed across the deck. It surged around Tia’s ankles. Overhead, stars swung like crystals in a falling chandelier. This ocean would eat them all alive.

“What did you do to make the feds come after you?”

Francis turned the helm. “Look at the life you’ve had, Tia. I didn’t have that, but why should that mean I didn’t deserve it? I wanted the kind of life most people never get, so I had to be willing to do things most people wouldn’t do. Building an empire isn’t pretty.”

“Bypretty, you meanlegal?”