Page 43 of No One Aboard

Rylan...

There was no thing or person in the world who mattered to Tia more than Rylan. But he’d left MJ in that cave. He had left her to die. Not even Rylan himself denied that the accident was his fault.

She leaned her head back against the rumbling wall. The movement of the ocean rattled through her body, between her ribs and through her veins until it felt akin to blood flow.

Tia understood what it was like to be scared. She had fumbled with her regulator and inhaled a lungful of salt water when she’d taken her open water test. She had run a red light in a friend’s Bugatti convertible when neither of them was licensed. Or wearing seat belts. And she had stood at the black iron gates of St. Bernadette’s School for Girls, ripped from hertwin and fearing that, when she returned home, her family would have moved on without her.

So she knew it, that sick feeling when it all slips out of your control and you’re left to make a momentary decision or be destroyed.

What Tia didn’t understand was how Rylan could make the wrong choice over and over, if doing nothing and panicking was even much of a choice at all. How could he have faltered the one time it counted, the one time a person’s life was on the line?

MJ’s life.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Rylan had failed MJ, and it wasn’t fair that Tia would never talk to her again because of him. MJ Tuckett was the closest thing to a mentor that Tia had ever had. She had only begun to show Tia the things she now knew she wanted to learn. Knots and wind patterns and travel stories and stars. MJ always said she was one of the last salt-blooded sailors, the last of a generation of seafarers reared on tall ships instead of engines.

She had been irreplaceable.

Now she was gone.

She drank in a couple of deep breaths, then stood, running her hand along the flaked anchor chain which sat like a human spine, each chain link a vertebra stacked on the next.

If MJ were here and Tia were the one in the freezer, MJ would have done anything in her power to radio land and end this trip. It was the right thing to do. Vacations didn’t continue when people died.

Tia opened the hatch of the anchor locker and poked her head out. Her hair was crisp with dried salt, and it flapped rather than flowed in the wind.

Nico stood a few feet away, the clipboard they used for routine boat checks in his hands. He blinked in surprise at Tia.

“Miss Cameron. Hiding from something?”

My brother.

“Course not. Is the ship passing all your inspections,Mr. de la Vega?” She pasted on a smile.

He spun the clipboard between his fingers like a card trick. “Well, I haven’t checked the anchor locker yet.”

Tia was relatively certain boat checks never included the anchor locker, but he was playing with her, and she liked to play along. “Don’t let me get in your way.” She smiled up at him again, very much in his way.

Nico crouched down, narrowing the gap between them.

“I’ve gotta get down there, miss. Are you going to step aside? Or should I... move you myself?” He reached out a hand and rested it for just a second on her waist.

Tia wanted to feel flirtatious and coy, but her stomach was stone, and all she could think about was MJ. How could Nico stay so light when MJ lay dead belowdecks?

Tia envisioned MJ struggling deep underwater. She pictured her clutching her chest, making the split-second decision to shed her gear and swim for it. Clawing to the surface, desperate for air, only to never breathe again.

She retreated back into the locker, giving Nico the space to follow.

He did.

“Well?” Tia spread her arms, taking up half of the small, dark space. “Does this pass, Inspector?”

“Hmmm.” Nico did a slow rotation, one eyebrow articulated in an arch. He knocked on the walls and glanced at Tia to see if he had made her laugh.

He hadn’t, but then she felt bad that she hadn’t. A handsome, playful guy distracting her sounded like the perfect thing in her head. But she almost wished he would hold still. She wished he would ask if she was okay.

“It doesn’t feel right to just... keep going,” Tia said, hugging herself.

Nico touched her elbow. “Nothing feels right after a death.”