Page 40

Chapter 40

Set a Course

Zane

Dante, Easton, Haley, and myself are gathered around the dinner table. I’ve showered the grime of the dank engine room off in cold water, but it was still a shower. Even a quick one is better than scrubbing in the ocean. We stopped for the day because our flashlights have been drained and need to recharge. Now that we’re using the solar power for the VHF radio, it will be a few hours before we can head back down to work on the generator some more. But we’ve called it for today. Sam—under Calvin’s guidance—carried the VHF to the sideboard in the dining room so the two of them could work on the wiring around the corner from us in the main salon.

Like a murder mystery, in the middle of the table are:

Rocky’s agenda.

Waldo’s phone book.

The empty sticker sheet and the unused ones.

The note from Rocky’s tuxedo.

The real Pink Phoenix and the fake one too. Not that I can tell them apart .

The two creepy stalker photos and the adult magazines they were found in.

The broken motherboard.

The note from the trash, with the unreadable smeared-ink writing.

“It’s too bad we can’t fingerprint things. What else are we missing?” Haley’s got her notebook out and is chewing on the end of the pen. She pulls it out of her mouth and looks around the room. “Bad habit, sorry.”

“Not that bad.” Easton kisses the side of her neck.

We’ve finished an early dinner and are taking just a few minutes getting things together before we head back to the beach.

“What about Easton’s sticking door?” Dante points at Easton.

“Right. We should rip off the door and see why it’s sticking. No time like the present,” Easton says.

“You’ve got a toolbox in the toy hauler room?” Dante asks me.

“Yeah, want some help?” I push back.

“No, you keep working on Rocky’s notes. Golden Wonder and I have this.” Dante hangs his arm over Easton’s shoulders. They take off down the back stairs, leaving Haley and me laughing. Calvin and Sam are around the corner, muttering about the wires they’re fixing, and there’s a low static hum to the VHF radio on the side table behind me.

I pinch my forehead and copy some of the notes from Rocky’s book. There’s a lot of numbers. Easton left the stack of printouts on the table too. I’ve scanned them, but I can’t find anything that lines up.

Haley’s switching between looking at the pictures and at Waldo’s book. “Sam, you have copies of our passports, right?”

He ducks his head around the corner. “Yes.”

“Can I grab them? I just want to look at the pictures.”

“I mean, normally no. But at this point, sure. I’ll get them.” Sam puts down his wire snips.

“No, I can do it. Are they in the file cabinet in your cabin?” Haley’s up.

“Top drawer. It’s unlocked.” Sam nods and is back at work already, with Calvin directing him.

Haley returns with a pile of folders. She pulls everyone’s picture page—that is, everyone who’s not here—out. “I’m just wondering if I can match one of the girls to someone. What if it’s not some crazy stalker but a relative?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a sister. She’d be gutted if that was the photo I took with me to hang in my cabin. It’s not really a flattering photo. But it’s worth a look. The girl on the cot has a distinctive nose.”

“I guess you’re right.” Haley spreads her pictures across the table, then holds the photos up next to each passport photo. I watch her for a while, but then I’m back to Rocky’s numbers.

Dante and Easton thunder up the stairs, and Easton drops seven large washers into the pile. They roll and then wobble until they are flat, lying amongst the diamonds and stickers.

“What the hell are those?” Calvin’s leaning back in his seat, peering around the corner.

Dante steps closer to Calvin and Sam. “Those were built into the doorframe of not only Easton’s room but Emily’s too. Someone was trying to keep them locked in their rooms. The ones in Emily’s room had slid, causing the door to not stick. But the other room, the one Easton was sleeping in, those were jammed in there tightly. We pulled a couple other doorframes apart, but they’re all fine.”

“Someone was trying to kill my sister and me.” Easton’s eyes narrow when he sees the passport photos. He jabs at the table. “One of these people.”

“Hold up,” Calvin says, leaning back in his chair again to see around the corner. “Those were most definitely there the whole time. I or someone else would have noticed the finish work of the yacht being off.”

Sam ducks around the corner. “I did a full walkthrough with the shipyard. One of the many things on the checklist was checking all the doors. They all passed. But we didn’t take possession until the next day. They were still working on trying to get as much of the interior furniture placement done.”

“So it happened after the checklist and before you left the shipyard.” Easton runs his hand through his hair. “But this was intentional.”

“Yes, it does seem like you were targeted. I agree. But Shayla got stuck before you were on board. This is bigger than just an on-board sabotage. I think we can say that for sure.” Haley’s holding the photo of the girl on the coat next to Ryder’s passport photo. Not that anyone looks like their passport photo.

I don’t blame Easton. I’m raging about this, but he was the direct target. It’s got to hit even harder.

Haley takes the pictures. She holds them up to the waning light. “There are some bumps on here. Look.” She passes the photo to me.

“There is. It’s writing.” I angle the sheen of the photo left and right, but I can’t make anything out.

I ran the sequences and letters in my head as I lay on my back in the muck of the engine room, trying to sand away by hand the corrosion the saltwater left behind, while we figured out how to make the power tools run. There’s a pattern, I can feel it, just out of reach, but I haven’t been able to touch it. It’s proper annoying.

“There’s something seriously wrong with those photos,” Sam says. His hands are inside the wall. “They’re not photos you bring to work with you.”

“Not unless you’re seriously fucked up.” Calvin hands Sam a pair of pliers. When I hand back the photos to Haley, she’s smiling.

“Oh, he’s right. I’m just glad Calvin’s sitting.” Little Bird holds them up again. “I can’t make anything out. But you know, I think both this and the blurred mess on the card might match. And it’s not printing but cursive.”

“So then, who did it? Has to be someone older.” Easton’s got the diamonds in his hands and is moving them around the table like he’s going to play three-card monte.

My eyebrows shoot up. “Why?”

“Because they don’t teach cursive in schools anymore,” Haley says.

“In America.” I shake my head. “That’s why all of you have handwriting like doctors. In Britain, we get a proper education.” I’m poking the beast.

Dante throws his hands up in the air. “You’re not wrong.”

“True,” Easton says.

“So the saboteur is someone from Europe or older...” It feels wrong coming off my tongue. “Or the person in charge of the sabotage is older.” I turn to Haley, and she nods.

“Well, that doesn’t help us narrow down the list.” Haley’s staring at the photos again. “I just feel like I know this building. Look at this part here. I think it’s a university. It has a plaque to the right of the door. And this girl is not the one the camera’s focused on. But this one here, to the side, she’s wearing a midriff shirt. There can’t be many high schools that allow that. What do you think that plaque says? It’s too small to read.”

“Hold on.” Sam strides across the main salon, past us in the dining room, with Penny at his side. The dog flops down at the edge of the room, stares at the wall and barks. Sam stops and turns back to us in exasperation. “It’s gone, Penny. There was a spider there like a month ago, and she won’t stop barking at the wall.” In a minute, Sam’s back with the map magnifier. “This should help.” He hands it to Haley.

“Thanks!” She hovers it over the photo of the girl outside the school building. “Holy shoot! Does that say Clapp, Langley?” She pushes the photo and lens toward me. “Right there?” She points to the plaque.

A guy with short hair stands in front of a plaque, and I can make out the C L A and then the next word starts L A N G before it runs behind him. “It could?”

“This is the biology department building at the University of Pittsburgh. I spent way too many hours in it. Yes, this is definitely Pitt, my alma mater.” Haley taps the table next to the photo. “East coast university. I don’t know if that helps narrow things down? I mean, people come from around the world. But really, most of the kids are from the east coast.”

“It might.” Easton’s pacing now, the diamonds in his hand. If he starts juggling them... I guess he can do whatever he wants with them. They are his family’s, or at least the real one is.

“On the other raft were Emily, Rocky, Brick, and Shayla. I think we can rule out all of them knowing how to mess with the stabilizers, the fuel, and electrical.” Haley writes their names down in a column on her notepad. “Then we have the two engineers, Waldo and Mitch. Anders, the first officer.” She writes their names on the other side. She turns to me and bites her lips. “Cruz, Luke, Ollie... Help me out, Zane.”

“Daxton and Ryder. Luke’s from Australia and, if I remember right, an only child who’s never been to the states.” Haley puts an X next to his name. “Oliver’s from England, and Cruz is from Santa Barbara. I don’t remember them talking about family.” I squint and stare at Little Bird’s neat printing of Daxton and Ryder’s names. “Daxton’s from New York City. He had a lot of siblings. Luke and Cruz’s cabin was a pigsty. Wait, Cruz did say he had a sister, I think? And Ryder is from New Hampshire. But I also don’t remember anything from him. Let me stew on it. Something might bubble up.” Bubble up? That’s an expression my Nan used to use.

“What about Waldo and Mitch?” Haley leans back to look at Calvin.

“I didn’t talk to them about family. This is a job, not a social club,” Green says. Which isn’t shocking.

“They both have sisters. Waldo was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and Mitch is from Erie.” Sam ducks his head around the corner. I raise my eyebrows at him. He wasn’t the sort of captain who hung with us around the galley table. “Waldo was leaning on his radio, and a conversation came through.”

Little Bird has drawn a question mark next to Daxton, Ryder, Waldo, and Mitch. “It’s the same four the pictures could belong to.”

Dante’s flipping through Waldo’s address book. “The phone number in the front is Maine.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s where he lived before coming out. Honestly, he’s the only person around my age I know with a paper address book,” I say.

Dante doesn’t look up. “There’s been more than one time in yachting when my phone was dead or didn’t have service and I would have loved to have been able to look up a phone number. This one time in the Maldives when I wanted to call my aunt to see if she would... Never mind, that’s a story for another time. The point is, I didn’t know her number. So maybe it’s not that strange. But there’s no numbers from Ohio or Western Pennsylvania. Not that area codes mean much anymore with cellphones. But everything in here has area codes from New England and New York City.” Dante tosses the book in with the rest of the clues.

And the VHF radio on the side table crackles. It takes all of a minute to adjust to the sound. A garbled voice...