Page 39

Chapter 39

Down and Dirty

Haley

It’s almost lunchtime when I head to the engine room. Sam and Zane are working on the engine. It’s hot and muggy and super hard to breathe. I’ve only been in here a few minutes and I want out. Everywhere below deck is warm, but here... In here, it’s become unbearable. Sam and Zane both have their shirts off. Their backs are smeared with grease. “How are you guys doing?”

“Little Bird! Better now that you are here.” Zane steps toward me. “Wait, don’t touch me. I’m absolutely filthy.” I give him a kiss anyway. “I don’t want to get you dirty. Well, at least not this way.”

Sam groans. I turn and kiss him on the cheek too.

I’m not sure how he’s going to react. But he smiles at me in the dim light. “We’re making progress. Not as fast as if Green was here, but he saved the tender from a bigger tear, thanks to his sacrifice.” Sam clears his throat. “And we still have a fucking starboard outer wall too.” He shoots a look at Zane.

“Yeah, I did the math. The arc of the WaveRunner wasn’t going to hit the boat. There was a small possibility that it might have hit the reef instead of the deep pool of water that it fell into. But I get you. I get the point. Things might not have gone how I thought they would. I mean, they did. Because my math was right.” Zane flashes me a smile. “But they might not have. Pass me the wrench, Sam.” Zane ducks back down under the... generator? Maybe. I wish I had a better understanding of yacht mechanicals. Then I might be more helpful.

“Dante said lunch will be ready in ten. It can hold, so whenever you get hungry, come on up.”

“Thanks, Haley,” Sam says. “I’m not hungry. You can go eat if you need to, Zane.”

Zane pulls out from under the equipment. “I’m good for another hour at least.”

“I almost forgot,” I say. “We found some things. But I would like to go through the galley trash from the night we left. Did you take it out?”

“Yeah, it’s in the bow pit. I started to go through some of the trash, taking out the food waste and dumping it into the ocean. The rest, I put back. But that grew old really fast. I double-bagged most everything to keep the smell from coming up.”

“Okay, great.” It comes out of my mouth out of habit. Because am I actually excited about going through garbage that is months old? No, no, I am not. But I want to know why this happened to us as much as any of the guys do. And since they haven’t come up with anything for me to do yet, I’m going to do it. I pivot and head out of the engine room.

I’m down the corridor when Zane calls out to me. “Little Bird, there are hazmat suits in the toy hauler room.”

“Great, thanks.” I wave.

“If you wait, I can help you later,” he calls to my back.

“You’ve got more important things to do. I can pick through garbage.”

He stares and then nods and heads back to the engine room.

The toy hauler room is full of everything. But after opening a bunch of cabinets, I find a box of white suits. I take out a couple and head up to the galley because I have a feeling I’m not going to want to eat afterwards. “Hey.”

Dante puts his knife down and lifts his arm, calling me to him. “Hey back at you, Sassy.”

I put the suits on the side counter, give him a hug, and slide into my chair. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Nope. I’m almost done. What do you have there?” Dante asks.

“Hazmat. Sam said most of the trash is double-bagged in the bow pit.”

“Sounds like a party for after our food digests.”

“Agreed.”

“Do you mind telling Easton and Calvin chow is on? They’re in the wheelhouse.”

“No problem.” I head down the hallway past Sam’s room, where Penny lifts her head at me. I can’t help it; I have to stop and pet her. I scratch her ears until she thumps her legs on the bed. “That’s the spot, huh?”

Is it weird I feel like she’s smiling at me? That’s when I hear Easton and Calvin. They’re arguing about something. “I’ve got to go, Penny. I’ll be back.” She’s got to miss running around. She’s been on board for such a long time, with only the little strip of sand to stretch her legs on.

I knock and walk into the wheelhouse at the same time. “What’s going on?”

“He won’t sit the fuck down.” Easton points at Calvin. “You don’t have to stand for what you’re doing. You’re just being obstinate because you fucking like it.”

Calvin furrows his forehead and steps toward me. But I see the grimace on his face when he does. “My foot is fine. It’s my fucking ears that are bleeding from listening to his griping all day.” His foot isn’t fine.

“Am I going to have to separate the two of you?” I flick my eyes from Calvin to Easton and back.

“Please,” Calvin says, throwing his hands up in the air. On the table in front of them lie several circuit boards in parts.

“Yes. I’ll leave. Can you do me a favor?” Easton grunts.

“Sure.” I rest my hand on Easton’s arm.

“Keep him from making his foot fall off if you can.” Easton yanks on the port door, but then he stops. “Thank you, Firefly.” He leans down and kisses me.

I grab his hand. “Dante said lunch is ready when you want it.”

He gives me another kiss and shoots Calvin the middle finger. “Thank you.” The door bounces behind him.

I cock my head and jump on the back bench that runs the length of the wheelhouse. “He’s trying to get you healthy.”

“I know. And I’m fucking grateful. Just don’t tell him that. But I’ve got to get at least one thing working. Being down in the engine room right now isn’t going to work. Because honestly...?”

“Always.” I hold his gaze.

“It hurts like a motherfucker,” he says through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s my own damn fault for drinking. If I wasn’t drunk, I would have been smart enough to either grab flippers or at least not stand up on coral. Damage is done. But what’s almost undone?” His smile lifts in a half smirk.

“What?”

“Connect that wire to the solar battery pack over there.” Calvin puts down the tool he’s using and points. “Just pull that wire off, then that red wire...” I do what he asks and hold up the red wire. “Connect that where you took the other one off. I combined two radios. This one, the antenna wasn’t working, and this one, the circuit board was broken. They’re not the same. This one was the primary, and this one was the secondary. But the fucker who did this to us knew enough to damage both just a little to make neither of them work.”

I plug it in, and static comes over the radio. “You did it. You fixed the radio.”

“I did, but don’t get too excited, Haley. I didn’t fix the high-frequency radio, the one that can communicate over thousands of miles. This radio is going to give us about twenty miles. But still, it’s a good thing. It’s like the radios we use on board, but with a little more power and more channels.”

“But this is fantastic. Right? If we see a ship, we can contact them.”

“Or not.” Calvin’s jaw twitches.

“Pirates?” I know they don’t want to talk about pirates in front of me. It’s something my mom was always scared about. But then, when she was alive, I was only doing charters out of Florida in the US coastal waters. There’s a pressure in my chest. I’ve heard stories about pirates. Everyone who’s worked in yachting has. You know someone who knows someone who had their yacht attacked. But I’ve never met anyone who actually has been in an attack.

“Yeah, there is a chance we might hear a cargo ship.” Calvin moves things around on the table. The radio isn’t inside the case.

“We’ll need to set up a watch.”

He laughs. “I feel a list coming on. Yes, and we’ll need to be careful when changing channels. I’ve fixed this, but too much jostling and it could be broken again. It’s beyond fragile from combining the two of them together.”

“Let me help you to lunch, and then I’ll come back and listen.” There’s a stick by the door—looks like part of one of the little sailboats. I try to hand it to him.

Calvin shakes his head and smiles. “Or... you could get me some food and I’ll take the first shift. I’d like to come up with a process. If that’s okay? I can go get food myself, Chiefie.”

“No, I’m happy to help. I’ll be right back.” I dash to the galley, where Easton and Dante are eating. “Calvin got the VHF radio working!” I’m ignoring that it feels like Calvin is acting like the VHFs are more pirate protection than a means of finding help.

“Seriously?” Dante drops his fork and glances toward the wheelhouse. “That’s fucking fantastic, Sassy.”

* * *

I avoided it as long as I could. But I really wanted to know if there’s something in the garbage. Did I really want to dig through the trash? No, but now I’m dripping sweat in a paper suit.

Dante’s down in the hole with a shit ton of bags. He’s opening a bag and doing a quick scan. If he’s confident that it’s from his kitchen, he’s tossing it to the side. And if he thinks it might be the galley trash from the last night, he hands it up to me.

In theory, if Sam hadn’t tried to get rid of some of the trash, we’d have a stratigraphy to work with, but it was smart. Sam did a lot of things when he was drifting on his own that the average person would never think to do. But now the newest garbage isn’t on top. Well, that’s partially true. The bags from Sam being on board by himself were easy to toss to the side.

We’re halfway through our third bag. Penny would like to help, and I’ve had to push her out of the way more than once. But she’s stopped putting her nose into my bag and is sitting patiently beside me.

There’s nothing like garbage that has baked in a pit for months. I turn my head and cough.

Dante’s pushing things around that look like pasta noodles. “Eureka! Leftover Carbonara. I have the right bag.” He holds it open for me to see.

“That’s it.” I try not to gag, which only makes me cough more.

Dante hands the bag up and hops out of the pit. We spread the tarp out flat again from the last bag. “Let’s dump it.”

This is my least favorite part, but Penny’s tail is going strong. Dante rakes the pile out, moving the wet parts out of the way.

I crouch down. Part of the mound is fairly clean. I push stuff around. A broken hanger, a good ten chocolate wrappers that I remember being mine and Shayla’s—we were stress eating chocolate. And there, under an empty granola box, are three little sheets of clear plastic. Two with stickers still in place and one with the stickers missing. Next to it is a wet notecard. There was something written on it in pen, but the ink has run.

“Holy crap.” I hold it up to Dante.

“Holy crap is right.” He tosses the last bag back into the pit. “Holy crap. You found it.”

“We found it.”