The Ocean Dark

48

“Oh, my God,” Angie said, barely aware she’d spoken.

She stared out the wheelhouse window, watching the people from the lifeboat climb onto a half-sunken fishing trawler. A few feet away, Josh and Miguel shuffled into new positions so both of them could glance out at the island, even as they kept their guns aimed at each other. Suarez and Dwyer stood by the instrument panel. Dwyer had positioned himself near the wheel and the radio, as though he thought that gave him some kind of control, but now he tried to get a look as well.

“Can you see who made it out of the water?” Miguel asked.

It took Angie a second to realize he’d meant the question for her. Josh didn’t even glance at her, so she looked out the window again, counting heads.

“The captain, for sure,” she said.

Miguel exhaled, bright eyes going dull, closing off whatever emotion he might have felt.

“Tori and what’s his name, Pang, too,” Angie went on. She glanced at Josh, but if Tori’s survival meant anything to him, he didn’t show it. “Someone else is there, hanging on a net, but I can’t …” She let the words drift, but then the man on the net climbed higher and she saw he was black. “Kevonne. The other one’s Kevonne.”

“So the one in the water, that was Bone?” Josh asked.

“Had to be,” Angie said.

“That sucks. He was a good kid.”

Miguel spat on the ground, raised the barrel of his pistol. “Fuck you. Good kid? You’d have put him in prison.”

“It’s not up to me who goes to jail, Miguel. But you can bet you and Gabe will end up there. Maybe you could be cellmates?”

Miguel’s hand trembled and his lips pressed into a tight line. “If I’m going to prison anyway, tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you.”

“Hang on,” Suarez started, but Miguel silenced him with a glance.

Angie tensed. She didn’t know how much Josh knew about the Rio brothers, but he must at least realize that pushing Miguel would be unwise. Angie looked at Dwyer, trying to plead with him with her eyes. But his gaze had turned bitter, and she knew there would be no help from him.

Josh’s shoulders rose and fell as he took a long breath. He cocked his head, cracking the bones in his neck. His aim never wavered and he had stopped glancing out at the survivors stranded on those ruined ships.

“You don’t want to go to prison,” Josh said. “I get it. But I’m guessing your brother’s life might be worth it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Miguel sneered.

Josh tilted his head, gesturing toward the personal locator beacon, where it still sat on the instrument panel, right by the wheel.

“Give that to me. I set it off. FBI and Coast Guard come and get us. We get your brother and the others out of there, kill whatever’s in the water—”

“And Gabe and me go to prison,” Miguel finished.

Josh shrugged, gun barrel bobbing. “You can pick what happens next in this story, Mr. Rio, but you can’t choose how it ends. That’s going to be up to a judge and jury.”

Miguel fixed him with a glare of such hatred that Angie flinched and turned away. But when she looked back, a strange calm had come over him, as though he might actually be listening to reason.

The radio crackled. Captain Rio’s voice filled the wheelhouse. “Miguel? Listen up, brother.”

Nobody moved. Frozen, they stared at one another, locked in the paralysis wrought by the presence of guns.

“Josh, let him answer,” Angie said. “You can’t leave them out there.”

Miguel, Suarez, and Dwyer all stared at the FBI agent.

“I don’t intend to,” Josh said, after a moment. He gestured toward the radio with his gun. “Go ahead. Tell him you’re trying to decide between going to prison and keeping him alive.”

Miguel actually laughed. “You don’t know shit. Gabe would rather be dead.”

“You want to give him his wish?” Josh replied.

“Idiots,” Suarez muttered. He picked up the radio and thumbed the button. “Glad to hear your voice, Captain. You had us worried.”

The radio crackled again. “Had myself worried, mi amigo. Miguel there?”

Suarez held out the radio and Miguel took it from him, using his left hand, keeping the gun in his right as steady as he could. He kept it pointed at Josh. Angie glanced at the PLB, sitting there on the panel, no one paying it any attention at all, though it might be the one thing that could save them all. She could try for it, but Dwyer and Suarez were both in the way.

“I’m here, Gabriel,” Miguel said, ignoring Josh. “Just trying to figure out what we can do to help you. It doesn’t look like more lifeboats would do the job.”

The button clicked as he let it go. The radio hissed.

“You’re right. They might get here, but probably not back,” Gabe replied.

Miguel glared at Josh as he growled into the radio. “Our options are limited, hermano. We’ve got a situation in the wheelhouse.”

Click. Hiss. “Got a little situation out here, too, Mikey. What’s going on?”

“The cook’s up here, and he’s got a gun pointed at me right now. Fucker stabbed us in the back, and right now he’s standing in the way of me doing anything to help—”

Josh interrupted with a snort of laughter. “Right, so I’m the villain now? Who’s the bad guy, Captain?” he called. “The FBI agent doing his job, or the asshole who’s fucking his brother’s wife?”

Angie’s mouth dropped open. Dwyer and Suarez swiveled around to stare at Miguel. He’d been annoyed, waiting to finish what he’d been saying to Gabe, his thumb still on the button. Now it slipped off.

Click. Hiss. Nothing.

Then, Gabe’s voice. “What did he just say?”

Miguel’s face contorted into a mask of rage and shame. “You bastard! Why the fuck …?” But he couldn’t even finish. Instead he started to shake his head and he opened his mouth in an awful scream.

And pulled the trigger.

Angie yelped and threw herself against the window, cracking the glass. The bullet punched through Josh’s shoulder and exited his back in a spray of blood.

The gun flew out of Josh’s hand and clattered on the floor. Angie pushed off from the wall and ran for it, but Dwyer got there first, stamped his foot down on it, and backhanded her across the face. She staggered back, and all her fear evaporated in a burst of fury. Lunging, she punched him in the throat. As he tried to grapple with her, she slipped inside his reach and took a fistful of his red hair, then drove her knee up into his groin.

Angie had been hurt before, and she had learned how to hurt back.

Dwyer twisted just enough to block most of the strength of her knee-shot, but still let out a grunt of pain and staggered back, stepping off the gun. She reached for it, but a second gunshot rang out against the metal and glass inside the wheelhouse and she jerked back, looking up to see Miguel now leveling his gun at her.

“That’s enough,” he said.

Slightly bent, Dwyer walked gingerly toward her, lips upturned in a sneer. He reached for the gun.

“Not you, either,” Miguel said. He gestured for Dwyer to back up with a wave of the gun. “Suarez, pick it up.”

The old Cuban walked over, casual as ever, and picked up the gun. He clicked on the safety and tucked it into the front of his pants. On the ground, Josh lay bleeding, but conscious. He slid back to the wall, leaving a streak of blood on the floor, then sat up, staring expectantly at the officers of the Antoinette.

“What now?” he asked Miguel.

Miguel looked out at the island, and the graveyard of ships. Then he glanced out the front windows at the cargo and the ocean beyond, maybe trying to decide whether to leave his brother there after all.

He clicked the button on the radio. “Gabe, listen. If you can make it to the schooner, the way she’s laying, you can get across to that old freighter out there.”

He hesitated, then let go of the button. The hiss went on a few seconds.

“Miguel?” the captain asked, his voice full of pain and threat and uncertainty.

“I have a plan, bro,” Miguel said, ignoring the questions inherent in his brother’s tone. “It might take a while, but I have an idea.”

This time he did not hesitate before taking his thumb off the button, but the wait for the captain’s reply went on three times as long. Angie held her breath during the long, wordless hiss, and she felt certain Miguel did as well. Perhaps they all did.

“Make it fast,” Captain Rio said at last. “Whatever it is, it’s gotta happen before the sun goes down. Otherwise, you’ll be too late.”

The hiss returned to the radio.

Miguel looked around the wheelhouse. “Dwyer, come with me. Suarez, you watch the cook.”

Angie stepped forward. “What about me?”

Dwyer had one hand over his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was a rasp. “Feel free to shoot her.”

Suarez sniffed. “I don’t take orders from you, boy.”

Miguel laughed. “Just watch them, Hector.”

Then he and Dwyer were out the door. Josh sat against the wall, bleeding. Angie and Suarez stared at each other for a moment, and then the old Cuban rolled his eyes dismissively and went back to watching the radar screen.