Page 60 of No One Aboard

Nothing. No static. No connection. Rylan pressed it again then looked at Nico in confusion. Only Nico wasn’t looking at him. Rylan followed his gaze to the radio cord, which was uncoiling from the cradle.

But instead of stretching the distance between the radio and the wall, the cord unraveled and fell.

Cut clean through the middle.

Chapter 29

Tia Cameron

Call sign: Thimble

Day 6 at Sea

Tia felt as though she’d been shackled to the helm of the ship. She couldn’t leave it because they’d get off course, and she wasn’t close enough to the companionway of the chart house to hear what was going on inside. But they had to call out before it was too late, before they got too far from land and other ships were still within radio range, and it delayed her running away even longer.

Tia studied the stars to follow Nico’s steering method. A triangle of them sat just to the right of the main mast, and she focused on keeping them there. The black velvet sea could have been any sea in the world. She was sailing solo around Cape Horn or passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. If she dove over the side, she’d swim between plate tectonics or over the Great Blue Hole. She’d dissolve in the water, hair turning to foam, skin to salt, and she’d ride ribbons of current until the ocean covered the earth and it was as intimate to the world as it already was to her.

Why hadn’t she learned about MJ’s travels while she’d had the chance? Tia’s heart pinched, and tears welled in her eyes. Why hadn’t she gotten every detailed story? Every scrap ofwisdom? There was no one left to talk to now, no one who understood the raw energy she had as she steered the schooner into the stars. Maybe she would meet someone like that when she ran away.

“Tia!” Rylan’s form darted from the chart house companionway. His teeth were clenched as he hissed her name once more. “Tia!”

“Did you get a response?” Tia asked.

Rylan covered his own mouth as if that could shut up his sister. “Shhh...” He lowered his hand slowly. “Alejandro’s asleep down there.”

“What?”

“Can’t you whisper?” Rylan held out his other hand, wrapped around the radio with its coiled cord dangling. The end had been sliced through.

Tia reeled. Who the hell would sever their communication method, their only communication method?

“Where’s Nico?” she whispered.

“Still down there, I don’t know.” Rylan wrung his hands. “Do you think Alejandro cut the cord so we wouldn’t be able to communicate with the outside world?”

Why would he do that? So they would have to go to that island? Had Alejandro guessed they would go for the radio, so he’d slept down there to guard it from them? But if the cord was cut, he didn’t need to guard it.

Maybe he slept there so he’d know if they tried.

Tia felt helpless once more, stationed at the helm. She couldn’t leave Rylan to steer while she confronted Alejandro, she couldn’t undo the damage to the cord, and she couldn’t magically produce another way to contact anyone.

Tia looked at her hands, curled around the silver wheel.

The wheel...

She stared for a moment, giving the idea a couple secondsto take shape before she put it into action and turned the wheel hard to the right.

At first nothing happened. But thenThe Old Eileenresponded to the command and swung starboard, slowly at first, then picking up speed. Tia kept the wheel turning, even when Rylan yelped and grabbed onto the cockpit bench for support, even when the sails flapped like sea gulls and the triangle of stars were far to the left.

“Tia! What are you doing?”

“Getting us to land.” Tia tried to steady the wheel now that they were pointing toward what she hoped was Georgia, even though they were too far from shore to see it. But the sails only got louder, rattling like bones, which never happened when MJ or Nico or Francis turned the ship.

A trench opened up in Tia’s stomach, but she held the wheel still until suddenly the boom, twenty feet of horizontal aluminum, swung across the deck.

“Oh my God,” Tia said in shock, just as Nico and Alejandro burst on deck with identical expressions of panic.

“Give me the wheel,” Alejandro ordered, and Tia backed away as he seized it and barked to his nephew. “Trim the spinnaker, damn it!”