Page 108 of No One Aboard

He didn’t answer, just looked smug as he steered his ship. Tia wanted to rip his yacht right out from under his feet.

She moved closer again. Some things still weren’t adding up. “Why would you hire MJ if you knew she was working against you?”

“That’s exactlywhyI hired her.”

He had always planned on killing her. Tia’s hands trembled at her sides.

“And what about Mom and Alejandro?” Did Lila really kill him? Did she push him into the storm like Tia had Nico?

Francis showed his teeth in a garish grin. “Too much love, I guess.”

“Well, good.” She stopped within arm’s length of him and bared a smile right back, unsure if the noise in her eardrums was battering thunder or the blood that beat in her veins. “I don’t have that problem.”

She knocked back a fist and caught him right in his perfect teeth. Pain exploded up her hand, but God it felt good to hit him hard in the face like he had hit her. Francis howled and staggered away from the wheel, which she snatched control of. She searched in vain for a marker in the sky to find her heading, butThe Old Eileenmight as well have been a stray sock in a washing machine.

That’s why she couldn’t be sure if the thing that ripped her from the helm was the storm or her father. Either way, Tia toppled backward and smacked painfully into the cockpit bench. She strained to right herself, but Francis was there, and he swept her legs out from under her.

She hit the deck, and her right hand shot bolts of pain through her arm once more, mimicking the lightning that fragmented the night. Francis lunged to reach the wheel, but she caught his ankle and yanked him backward. It was her turn to take control. They weren’t going to his island.

“All this trouble to captain a ship you’re about to sink?” she screamed.

Francis faced her, eyes burned out like cigarettes in the dark.

“What?” he called, and she claimed the opportunity to army-crawl past him and heave herself up on the wheel.

She scanned the deck for the black duffel bag, praying it had been swept overboard. Instead she saw Rylan and Lila, arguing from the looks of their gesturing hands. There was something on the deck between them, but between the chart house and the downpour, she couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t the bag. It was bright orange with reflective strips of silver that shone under the mast lights.

The life raft.

“You think you can steer us through a storm, Tia?” Behind her, Francis was propped against the cockpit bench. “Aren’t you afraid? That sea will tear this ship in two if you let it.”

He was wrong. She tightened her grip onThe Old Eileen’s helm. She was made for this.

Francis didn’t let up. He had made it to his feet once more, balanced by one hand on the bench. The rain made it hard to hear anything, but he raised his voice above it. “Being a captain means everyone’s lives are in your hands. It’s already too late for some.”

MJ. Alejandro. Nico.

He was behind her now, but she couldn’t leave the helm. “Not for Rylan, though. Do you really trust yourself with his life?”

Rylan betrayed me, she thought.

But what if he went overboard like Nico? Tia’s breath caught when she imagined her brother in the water, struggling to get air, living his final moments riddled with the panic he’d felt most of his life.

She wanted him to be brave, not dead.

Tia remembered the crash jibe she had almost caused a few days ago. She had never seen Alejandro look scared. Maybe she didn’t have what it took to captain this ship.

“Just let me get us through another storm,” Francis urged.

Tia loosened her grasp on the helm. Francis reached for it. And for a moment, her father’s eyes were that of the storm, a breath of temporary calm.

ThenThe Old Eileenhit a wall of water, and Tia careered backward, sliding over the deck and the angled railing. She spiraled down, down, down.

Right into the ocean’s open mouth.

Chapter 53

Rylan Cameron