Page 8

Chapter 8

Warning Shot

Dante

She’s down there—my favorite knife. I guess the captain too. Spices. Fuck, clean clothes, chocolate for Sassy. I’m drooling like a culinary student at their first Michelin star meal. Damn, the Rock Candy looks like shit. Even from here, I can see the mildew over her. It takes a full deck crew to keep a mega yacht looking like a mega yacht. And right now, she looks more like something that’s ready to sink and make an artificial reef. There are lines tied up to her, keeping her aft from swinging. One rogue wave, and I’m not betting on them.

Thyme. No, chili powder. No, pepper. If I only had like five minutes, what would I grab? I tilt my head to the left. “Sam.” I project with as much South Side attitude as I can. This boy who grew up with nothing knew how to yell. That’s for sure. Haley’s right. I can hear Penny barking. But she’s inside somewhere. And it’s just a faint yap. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be able to hear anything at all.

“Sam.” It doesn’t even feel like it’s coming out of my body. Haley’s jacket is waving in the breeze. “Treat,” I call out. I’m pretty sure the barking gets more intent. “Treat.” I wait. I twitch my leg. Zane’s sweaty grip is giving me an itch. It’s taking a Herculean effort to not kick the Brit in the head. I’m not jumping or slipping. I’ll give it one more try. “Cheese.”

Fucking hell, that did it. It’s like the dog has gone feral. I still can’t see her, but she’s making more noise than the five accountant passengers I had for my last cruise last season. Fucking accountants. It’s the quiet ones who cause the most problems.

“Cheese.”

The dog howls, long. But Sam doesn’t appear. And the dog quiets down.

I want to bang my head against the wall. This isn’t happening. Whatever Sam is working on has got him completely occupied.

I crawl back to Zane.

“Any luck?” he asks.

“I got the dog to bark. But nothing else.”

I blink as we come out into the sun. Haley’s eyes are wide. “Did you get his attention?”

“No, but if you say cheese, the dog goes nuts.”

“That tracks.” Calvin nods.

“Damn, your leg looks like shit, Green.” I nod at Calvin.

“Thanks.” He cocks his eyebrows at me.

I look around the group. “Now what’s the plan?”

“Back home. We’ll try again tomorrow.” Calvin picks up the pack.

It takes us longer than it should to get back. And I’m definitely not used to being the fast one in a hike. It is not that I’m not fit. I go to the gym. I run on a treadmill like God intended. Not outside. But the way we are now, I’m the least fucked up. And that’s only because they don’t know I’m still getting dizzy spells. Which is fine. There’s nothing they can do about them. So there’s no reason to talk about them. And that’s how I’m going to leave it.

The stove is cold when we get back, but Pepper is sitting waiting. She’s got a dead mouse that she trots over to Haley and leaves at her feet. “Thank you?” Haley pets the cat behind its ears, and Pepper purrs and climbs up the tree.

“Someone’s happy we’re home.” I give Haley a hug around her shoulder.

“I just think we should have stayed and tried to use the flashlight. He’s never going to see us during the day.” She blinks up at me.

“Easton and I could head back.”

“No, I should go. You don’t know morse code. How’s he going to know it’s us? He might think it’s pirates or who knows what. In the dark, we’re just going to be heads sticking out of the cliff side.”

“I know morse code. Cool down, Zane should chill. But we should leave now.” I turn to Easton.

Calvin looks at the rest of us like we’re babbling in another language. “I don’t like it. But fine. The flashlight’s in the dry bag. I’ll light the stove, then you can take the flint and the flashlight.”

Haley hurries around, making us some food.

“If you’re not back by midday, we’ll come up to you,” Calvin says as he hands me the pack of food that I made. I take it from him and try not to do a very Calvin-like growl.

We’re past the waterfall pool and heading up the mountain by the time Easton starts to get talkative. “Do we have a plan?”

“I flash SOS with the flashlight until he sees it or we run out of batteries.”

“Remind me how to do it.” Easton asks.

“Short, short, short, long, long, long, short, short, short.”

“Okay, got it.” He does it.

“Good, we can take turns.” I nod. I’ve been racking my brain what to signal if we manage to make contact. I’m figuring R-A-F-T might work the best.

Easton and I make quick work of getting back to the cave. On our way there, we gather as much firewood as we could. Maybe the smoke floating down over the cliff might get his attention?

I start the fire outside the cave’s mouth. When I open the pack, Haley has thrown in a towel. I have a feeling if she could, she would have given us a cushion too. I hold the towel up for Easton to see.

He laughs. “I was wondering why the thing was so damn big.”

I hand him a piece of jerky.

“Thanks.”

I nod and eat one myself. I’m getting pretty damn good at getting a fire going. The two of us sit around it. It is going good and strong by the time the sun has started to set. It’s dark but not completely. “You ready to do this?”

“Yeah. It’s about time. I’m good if you’re good,” Easton says.

“Let’s do it.” The tunnel is long and dark but somehow a little less intimidating with a flashlight in my back pocket. “I’m in position,” I say as much over my shoulder as is possible. “He’s not outside, and neither is the dog.”

I start off with a string of words, “Sam, hey, Penny, cheese, treat.” Then I just start singing, loud and crazy. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” is the first thing that pops into my mind, so I just go with it. Then I switch to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.” Nothing. When I stop singing, I wait a minute and listen. It’s silent. Maybe a bark, but I can’t tell. The wind is blowing right at the cliff. Which fucking sucks for two reasons. One, I’m fucking done with lying in a dark in a cave with a rock sticking in my junk. And two, I’m shining the flashlight as much on the wheelhouse as I can. I’ve been at it for a long time, and it’s getting darker and darker. There are no lights on inside the boat. If I didn’t know that Haley had seen them, and if I hadn’t heard the dog bark before, I’d really have thought it was a ghost ship.

I stop the rhythmic flashing of SOS and just wave the light around the glass in the cockpit.

Nothing.

I’ve scared some birds away, and that’s about it.

I turn the flashlight off. “I think Sam must be sleeping or working down below on something.” I say to Easton. I put my head down and rest my chin on my arm. This position is like holding a yoga pose for too long. I’m exhausted. Nature, hiking, it’s not my jam. A forty-five-minute SoulCycle class is way more my speed. Plus, looking at nice, toned asses doesn’t hurt.

“What do you see?”

“The ocean, a few seagulls, and a 200-million-dollar paper weight. No Sam, no Penny. It’s fucking frustrating.”

“Let me take a turn.” Easton pulls on my ankles.

“Yeah, whatever, sure.” I ease out of the little demon hole, scratched up. I’m sure I’ve got a layer of gravel pushed deep into my skin. I’ll be picking at it for weeks. I get to the first spot where we can shimmy around each other. “Keep going. I don’t need to feel your ass rub against mine.”

Easton backs up to where we can maneuver around each other on our hands and knees.

“Here’s the flashlight.” I hand it off to him like a relay racer. I eye the small sack in his hand. “What’s that?”

“The flare gun.”

“Don’t fucking point the flare gun at the ship. You could start a fire.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Don’t use it unless you really think it’s necessary.”

“Again, not stupid.”

I blink at him. I’ve seen him antagonize Calvin when he knew it was going to make him explode. Not that I’m against antagonizing Calvin. I just do it with more finesse. “Right. Don’t shoot yourself, either. Haley would be fucking pissed at me.”

“Anything else, Mom?”

“Yeah, wear sunscreen and use a condom.”

“We don’t have either.”

“Fair.”

Easton crawls forward, and I lie on my stomach, gripping his legs. It’s sweaty and gross. I’m looking up at his ass. It’s weird. I’ve been bi forever. Sometimes I act on it more, sometimes less. But I’ll always be bi. The guys here are all good looking, but I have zero interest in any of them. Haley’s the only one that makes my dick hard at all. Fucking hell. Even thinking her name has me getting hard now. And that’s not something I want. Seconds feel like minutes. Minutes feel like hours. I’m barely holding on to Easton’s sweaty legs.

He’s hollering something, but his words are lost to the wind. Then I hear it. Easton’s singing rumbles back down the cavern—a sound so discordant, I swear he’s going to scare away every fish and bird within a hundred-mile radius. But as long as he gets Penny’s delicate ears twitching, I don’t care. If only she would start barking again, like she did yesterday.

“Easton! Are you flashing the light?” I yell over the cacophony.

“I’m doing it!” he yells back. “I’m doing S-O-S, then R-A-F-T.”

“Well, stop it. Don’t waste the light if you don’t see them. Just keep making noise.”

His voice is relentless, a constant in the chaotic night. I catch only fragments of his words. “What’s that?” I strain to hear him over the sound of the waves.

“The scarf song by Taylor Swift. Fucking love her.”

“Of course you do. Everyone loves her.” Only assholes rag on Taylor Swift. “Teardrops on My Guitar,” my ass , my dad used to complain. But he was an asshole. “Keep going, keep singing,” I urge him, desperate to maintain our presence in the overwhelming darkness.

His voice falters, then rises again in a shout. “Sam!”

“How’re your lungs?” I ask, trying to gauge our chances.

“Good. I’ve got swimmer’s lungs. I can do this all night if we have to.”

“Oh lord,” I mutter to myself. “I can’t take it all night. But it is what it is? We have to get his attention.”

Calvin theorized there’s still an inflatable stashed in the back. The Toy Hauler room off of the swim platform was a mess. They never had enough time to organize everything, thanks to the negligent decision of Rocky not wanting to wait.

Sam has enough experience. He should have known better. We never should have left port. And I should have spoken up, should have walked away. But in the yachting world, reputation is everything. Become known as the chef who walks off a job, and you’re finished.

“Keep singing!” I shout at Easton, gripping his legs for support.

“I’m doing it!” he replies.

We’ve been at this for an hour, Easton belting out every song from Taylor Swift’s Reputation and half of Red , including the ten-minute scarf song, twice.

“How’s the flashlight holding up?” I call out.

“You told me to stop using it,” he responds. “Make up your mind.”

A shiver of frustration vibrates through me. “We’ve got to call it. This isn’t working. He must be down below. We’ll try again some other time.”

“He might come out,” Easton says, hope threading his voice.

“We’ll try again later. Tomorrow,” I say, resigned.

Then, another popping noise. I swear, if that’s what I think it is, Easton’s going to have another thing coming––not Calvin’s fist... but mine.