The Ocean Dark

37

A little after two o’clock, Angie finally made her way up the metal stairs to the wheelhouse. She’d been up these stairs dozens of times, and often thought about how much the tower of living spaces that sat on the back of the Antoinette reminded her of whitewashed Miami apartment buildings. The stairs only added to the illusion.

She climbed the last few steps carrying two cups of coffee, careful to keep her balance. On the metal landing she paused to take a deep breath and rebuild the smile she’d manufactured on her way up. No matter how many times she plastered it on, that smile kept cracking and falling away. Right now, she needed it more than ever.

Forcing herself not to falter — in expression or in balance — she reached out with the tip of her shoe and kicked at the base of the wheelhouse door. This ought to have been the most mundane of tasks, going to visit Dwyer in the wheelhouse, bringing her boyfriend — or whatever they were supposed to be to each other — a cup of coffee. But her skin prickled with the anxiety of deception.

Suck it up, Ange, she thought. This is how you stay out of jail.

The Caribbean sun had been beating down on the Antoinette all day and there’d been little wind, and almost no chop on the water. Now an oddly cool breeze gusted past her, chilling the beads of sweat on the back of her neck, and she shivered.

Through the windows, she watched Dwyer stride toward her. He turned to say something to Suarez, who stood by the wheel and the instruments, watching the radar like a hawk. Angie could only remember a couple of times when she had visited the bridge and not seen Suarez there, but today his normally laid-back demeanor had been replaced by a tightly coiled tension that unsettled her.

Watching for other boats, she thought. Waiting for the FBI.

Despite her deal with Josh, she couldn’t help silently urging Gabe and Tori and the others to hurry. How hard could it be to get the guns and get the hell back to the ship?

Dwyer pulled the door open, grinning, and stepped aside to let her in. “If those are iced coffees, you’ve just fulfilled my two greatest wishes at the same time.”

For a precious few seconds, Angie didn’t have to fake her smile. She handed him the iced coffee, loaded with sugar the way he liked it, and slid her hand behind his neck, pulling him down to kiss her. But as soon as the kiss broke off, she remembered his earlier condescension, and why she’d come, and her smile turned false again.

“What took you so long?” he asked, glancing at the clock.

“Fucking Anton didn’t show up to relieve me until about twenty minutes ago. He ‘overslept,’” she said. “I almost chucked his ass overboard. My eyes are burning and I’m dead on my feet, but he overslept? Fucker.”

Dwyer laughed, kissed her again, and took a sip of his coffee. Even Suarez glanced up from his vigil over the instruments to smile at her frustration.

“I’m funny to you guys now?” Angie said, nostrils flaring. “You’re goin’ over the railing right after Anton.”

That made Suarez break out in an actual grin. He must have been tired to let his guard down like that. Dwyer knew better than to push her buttons any further, though. He only took another sip of coffee, ice clinking in his cup.

“I’m glad you came up to see me, love,” Dwyer said, “but maybe you ought to try to get a little sleep while Anton’s on guard duty.”

Angie almost pouted. If she wanted to manipulate Dwyer, that would be the way to go. But he knew her well enough to know the pout wasn’t really part of her repertoire, and she didn’t want him to start wondering what she really wanted.

“In a little bit,” she said, raising her cup. “After our coffee. What about you? How long until someone spells you guys?”

Dwyer glanced at Suarez, but the white-haired old Cuban didn’t even glance up from the radar this time.

“Miguel’s taking three hours, then me, then Suarez,” Dwyer said.

Angie frowned. “You don’t think they’ll be back by then? What the hell is taking so long?”

“They found ’em,” Dwyer said. “Now it’s a matter of getting ’em back to—”

Suarez cut him off. “It takes as long as it takes, Angela. We stick until Captain Rio says otherwise.”

The old man had an edge in his voice and a hard glint in his eyes that Angie had never seen there before, and for a second she feared that Suarez had somehow sensed she was hiding something. But then he went back to staring at the radar screen, jaw set, leaning forward in his seat, and she understood. Suarez had stoic down to a science, but their current dilemma had him rattled.

“You won’t get an argument from me,” she said. “I just wish things could go a little faster. I want to get out of here before Josh’s friends show up.”

Suarez glanced up at her with a look that let her know he regretted snapping at her, just a little. “Don’t worry. We’ll be long gone.”

“Absolutely,” Dwyer agreed, a little too emphatically. He touched her face and kissed her forehead. Once upon a time she’d have been charmed by the gestures. Today she wanted to punch him.

“Good,” Angie said, walking toward Suarez, sipping her iced coffee.

Suarez sat in one of the two chairs in front of the wheel and the instrument array. Angie didn’t have the first clue how to pilot the ship, but she had a feeling she could figure it out if necessary. The wheel was literally nothing more than that — a metal steering wheel that stuck out of a black control box. Crazy to think that something so simple could guide the entire ship. It was more complicated than that, of course. But in truth, with the collision avoidance system built into the Antoinette’s computer guidance programming, plus radar, and people like Angie herself doing their jobs down in the engine room, a monkey could get the ship moving.

She leaned on the back of the empty chair and gazed out the windshield at the sea. It was barely mid-afternoon, but already the water had begun to darken. The sunlight hit it at a different angle as the day grew long.

Dwyer stood beside her, slipped an arm around her, and sipped his coffee.

“I’m with you, angel. I hope they hurry.”

But Angie had stopped listening. Stopped breathing. A low hiss of static came from the radio, a row of green and yellow lights flickering across its face. And right on top of it, out in the open, sat Josh’s lifeline, the personal locator beacon. It remained in its rubber holster, and she suspected that nobody had tried taking it out yet, just in case Josh had been telling the truth about it being rigged to go off automatically. The black and yellow plastic made it look like a nouveau walkie-talkie or a bulky cell phone.

Dwyer took her free hand, squeezed her fingers, trying to lend her comfort.

Angie looked up at him, stood on her toes and kissed his freckled nose, smiling as she began to breathe again.

Exhausted as she was, she had no intention of leaving the wheelhouse just yet. All she had to do was bide her time, and she’d get the chance to set off the beacon. And if the opportunity didn’t arise, she’d have to create one.

The door banged open, and all three of them turned to see Tupper standing in the doorway.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing up here? Last I checked, you’re the duty engineer at the moment,” Angie said.

Tupper didn’t spare her so much as a scowl. He looked genuinely spooked, even skittish, and large sweat stains had formed under his arms and at the neck of his T-shirt. For a second, Angie thought he’d seen the Feds closing in, but that was ridiculous. Suarez would have seen them coming on the radar.

“Mr. Dwyer,” Tupper said, “can you come down to the engine room?”

Dwyer and Suarez glanced at each other.

“You came all the way up here to ask that?” Suarez said. “You could’ve called from belowdecks, saved yourself a trip, and not left your post unattended.”

If Suarez expected some kind of explanation or apology, he didn’t get it.

“There’s something you need to hear,” Tupper said.

A flicker of alarm crossed Dwyer’s face. “Something wrong with the engines?”

“No. Nothing like that. Just … humor me, man.”

Again, the second and third mates exchanged a look. Then Suarez shrugged. “Go ahead. Miguel will be up in a little while.”

Dwyer drained the rest of his iced coffee and tossed the cup in a trash bin. He smiled at Angie as if to say, Damn, Tupper’s gone over the edge, and then he nodded toward the engineer.

“All right, Tup. Lead the way.”

They exited the wheelhouse, leaving Angie and Suarez alone. She knew she ought to go. Without Dwyer there, she had no reason to stay. But she might never get a better chance at the beacon. All she needed was for Suarez to be distracted for a few seconds. Immediately, she thought of several ways she could distract him, but most of them involved seduction, nudity, or sex to one degree or another, and she had too much self-respect to resort to something that would make her feel like a whore.

Think of something else, she told herself.

But nothing was coming to her.