Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (22 page)

One minute I had a grin on my face, thinking how foolish I would look if anyone came onto the upper deck and saw me like that, and the next minute the one foot that was on the ground was lifted up and somebody pitched my body over the side.

I didn’t have time to react. I remember thinking that it was going to hurt, like when I used to try to do forward flips into the pool, and I would hit my head or shoulders on the concrete coping around the edge. My head was too close to the ship’s metal deck that extended out beneath the bulwark, and it was going to crack on that metal, for sure. But it was when my body did that forward flip over the side, when the weight of it hit the end of that rope, that I must have dislocated my shoulder. That was what hurt. Somehow, some survival mechanism in my brain made my left hand hold onto that rope with a death grip. Had I fallen overboard straight down the hull into the sea, I probably would have been sucked into the ship’s props and been made into bite-sized fish food. I knew that whoever had tipped me over the side had had that in mind. Lucky for me, he didn’t stick around to make sure I splashed down.

And now the ship was rolling. The captain must have been making his turn to head back toward the port. I hung with my back against the ship, trying not to look down at the churning black water beneath me. The ship was beam on to the swells, and I found myself alternately dangling out over the sea, and then slamming my back into the ship as she rolled in the other direction. I tried to reach up with my right hand to get another hand on the rope, but the movement made something grind in my shoulder, and I cried out in pain.

My head was at deck level on the upper deck while my feet dangled in the opening over the lower bulwarks on the next deck down. I didn’t know if the men whose voices I’d heard were still down there, astonished at the sight of the dangling legs that had just appeared, or if they had gone before I’d been attacked. Maybe someone from inside the casino would see my legs and call for help. There were windows that I’d looked out from inside the casino down there, but I’d had to part the blinds that stretched across the glass. Besides, it was brightly lit in there and dark out here—and the slots zombies never looked out the windows.

The pain in my shoulder was so intense I was whimpering. Although the ship had turned so that I was no longer on the windward side, she had picked up speed, and I could feel the wind blow the tears back from my eyes across the tight skin of my cheeks.

I was going to fall. I couldn’t hold on much longer. Maybe, just maybe, if I timed it right and let go when the ship was rolling to starboard, maybe I would slide inside the bulwark and fall to the deck. I knew I couldn’t risk it. Most of my body was too high up, on the outside of the ship. If only I could get lower so that I could get my feet and legs inside the bulwark. And I wasn’t sure how long that silly rope was going to hold out supporting all my weight.

The next time the ship rolled, I used my free arm to shift my position, turning me around so that my body faced the ship. The sides of the upper deck had a big pipe welded along the outside, and the large round edge was impossible to grip. I reached out for something to grab onto aft. There was nothing. Not on the bulwark or the deck, nothing small enough for me to get a good grip on, nothing that I could use to pull myself up. Then I noticed about three feet aft a long rectangle of steel plate sticking out about eight inches from the underside of the top deck. The plate was a half inch thick, and in the end was a hole with a shackle attached. I remembered it was what they had used as a derrick back at the dock when they had attached a block and tackle to it to hoist the gangway off the ship. If I could get my right hand on that, it was lower than the rope, and I could probably ease myself down onto the next deck below. I reached my right arm out and the beam was at least a foot from the end of my fingers.

Damn.

I felt the rope slip a fraction of an inch through my fist. I tried to tighten my grip, but the pain from the shoulder was making me wonder if that arm and hand were even attached to my body. It felt as though I no longer had control of my left arm, and since it was the only thing that was keeping me out of the ship’s wake, the thought sent a wave of nausea through my gut.

Great, I thought. Never been seasick in my life, and now I’m feeling queasy.

The ship rolled again and my body banged against the side, my chest and face now swinging into the steel deck and bulwarks. The half round of the pipe welded onto the edge of the deck hit my sternum. Now that I was facing the ship, I could use my free arm to try to slow my body as it swung against the topsides. But I was quickly tiring that arm and using up what little strength I had left.

I looked back at the piece of steel plate protruding just below the deck, a little over three feet aft of where I was hanging. I might be able to reach it if I could swing, get up some momentum, then let go of the rope and hope that my good right arm could grab hold of that piece of steel. With each roll of the boat, I wasted more energy just trying not to get hurt. If I was going to go, it better be now.

I swung my legs to the left, then threw them back to the right, and my body started to swing. The rope slipped through my hand another inch, and I could feel the cold steel of the snatch hook against my palm. I thought,
I’m at the end of my rope
. Then: Right, Sullivan, great comedic timing.

I grunted with effort as, once more, I swung my legs up toward the bow and then back toward the stern. Momentum started to build, and the zipper on the front of my sweatshirt screeched as my chest scraped across the metal pipe. When the ship rolled and my torso swung free over the water the arc of my swing increased, free of the resistance of the ship.

The time to go for it was when the ship was starting to roll back to starboard, when my body was dangling free of the ship, but the momentum of the ship’s roll was carrying me back toward the ship, not throwing me free. I heard my own voice making an animal-like sound, and as the ship rolled again and I threw my legs into the aft swing, I let go of the rope.

My fingers hit the metal post, and I felt the cold round bar of the shackle, the hard curves of the welded corners, and the slick wet surface of the metal as my fingers slipped across the steel plate, unable to get a grip. I was falling.

XVII

My mother was slapping my face. Not hard, mind you, she was just trying to bring me around, out of the near-unconscious state I was in after my belly flop into the New River. I was seven years old, and my mother had taken Molly and me upriver from our Shady Banks neighborhood to a spot she remembered from her own childhood. My mother went first, jumping out of the tree and swinging out from the bank of the river, clutching the knotted brown rope, screeching with joyous laughter, and I wanted to show her that I, too, could be that brave and beautiful. My fear made me hold onto the rope too long. My legs swung out until my body was parallel to the water, and I fell flat. The wind whooshed out of me and I inhaled water and sank like the skinny seven-year-old I was. The next thing I knew I was in the dinghy coughing up water and my mother was gently slapping my cheeks on either side, saying, “Honey, you’re okay. Just breathe.”

I shook my head to try to get her to stop slapping at my cheeks like that.

“Seychelle, wake up, darlin’,” said a voice that definitely wasn’t my mother’s.

With effort, I pulled my eyelids apart and saw Mike’s face leaning over me. My head exploded with bright white pain, and I closed my eyes again. At least he’d stopped patting my cheeks.

“Shit.” I felt my forehead and my fingers came away sticky with blood. “What happened?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. I was on a hell of a winning streak in there when I heard a thud, looked out through the blinds, and saw you crumpled in a heap on the deck out here.”

One of my legs was bent under me, and I tried to straighten it out so I could sit up. The movement fired up a wave of pain down the right side of my body. I slid my T-shirt up and saw the makings of a whopper bruise on my side, just below my ribs. That explained where I hit the bulwark.

I remembered my hand on that iron post, how I had tried with all my strength to get a grip, to hold on, and how it had stopped my fall long enough for my legs to swing inboard. But as my fingers slid free, I fell and must have caught the upper rail right at my waist. The cut on my head was a mystery to me. I didn’t remember anything past the moment where I knew my legs were inboard and I wasn’t going over. I must have cracked my head a good one on the bulwarks or a stanchion. Under the cut, a nice lump was rising.

“You don’t remember anything, Sey?”

“No. I mean, yeah, I do, but I don’t know much.”
 

“Well, spit it out, girl.”

“There’s not much to tell.” I readjusted my legs, feeling the length of them with my hands and wiggling my toes, making sure nothing was broken. It was when I tried to lift my left arm that the pain in my shoulder tripled, causing me to cry out.

Mike seemed to care more about the story than my health. “Let me decide that. Talk.”

“I was on the deck up there,” I said, pointing with my good arm overhead, “and I heard someone running down here on this deck. Then I heard an argument. I think it was that guy in the blue shirt, the security guy with the walkie-talkie. I remember leaning over the rail, trying to hear what was going on, and the next thing I knew I was being pushed ass over teakettle.”

“Why the hell would somebody try to push you overboard? What the hell you been doing while I was at the tables?”

“Nothing. Just talking to people.”

“Whatever it was you said appears to be something somebody thinks is worth killing for.”

I shrugged and then whimpered a little.

“You’re damn lucky you didn’t end up in the drink. How’d that happen, anyways?”

I tried to laugh but it came out more like a cough. “Just lucky.”

Mike stood up, walked around behind me, and felt my shoulder. “Looks like this might need a bit of help.” He placed one hand on the back of my shoulder and grabbed the top of my shoulder with the other. “This might hurt a bit,” he said, and then he did something that caused another explosion in my head.

“Shit!” I cried out.

“Try moving it now,” he said. To my amazement, it hardly hurt. Mike reached down for my good arm and helped me stand. “Let’s get you inside, in plain view of a crowd of people until this friggin’ ship gets back to port. You’ve probably got a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and maybe a couple of broken ribs. You hungry?” Only Mike, a guy who is missing one leg from the knee down, could make my injuries seem so slight. In fact, food sounded good to me, not only because I really hadn’t eaten much all day, but because I had this hollow, shaky feeling in my gut, and I hoped food would settle me down.

We retraced Mike’s steps to the empty top deck and then down the interior staircase into the casino, so that no one would see us passing through doors we didn’t have permission to use. I stopped in the ladies’ room, cleaned the blood off my face, and had a good look at my bruises. My waist, hip, and upper thigh were going to show some serious black and blue. My body was so sore down the right side that I walked with a faint limp as I joined Mike, and we went back inside. The face of the security chief as he turned to look at us registered neither shock nor surprise. He either didn’t know anything about what had happened to me or he was very good at not showing it.

When the
TropiCruz IV
returned to the dock in Dania, Mike’s dinghy was just as we had left it. We didn’t talk much as we untied it and climbed in for the ride back to my place. It was only when we made the turn at the mouth of the New River that Mike asked me, “So, other than nearly getting yourself killed, what else happened on the boat tonight?”

I sighed and shoved my hands deeper in the pockets of my sweatshirt. Sitting on the pontoon side of the boat, the cold bow wave licking dangerously close to my backside, I felt a bone-deep chill inside me. “I screwed up tonight,” I said.

“Well, you could say that. Then again,
almost
getting yourself killed is way better than
getting
yourself killed. It’s one of those cup half full or half empty things.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I’m any closer to knowing who killed Nick.”

“Tell me about this Thompson person.”

I told him about discovering that Thompson was the gorgeous blackjack dealer, about meeting her in the women’s head and then getting interrupted.

“Mike, what am I gonna do? I’m not a cop. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It seems all I do is make things worse. Molly is sitting over there in that stinking jail, and the cops have stopped trying to find out who really killed Nick. I’m all she’s got right now, and I’m out here screwing up.”

“Hey, you and Molly aren’t alone. And you’re not the only one in the screw-up department, either. I was supposed to be helping you, and instead, once I started winning, I forgot all about you. I’ve got my own apologies to make.”

I tried to laugh and it came out more like a snort. “Listen to us.”

“We sound like a couple of whiners.”

“Yup,” I said.

“So what should I do about what happened out there tonight? Should I tell these detectives?”

“You can tell ’em, but don’t expect them to do anything about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sey, you’ve got no evidence. Why the hell do you think I didn’t call the cops back there when the boat got to the dock? It’s a pretty wild story, you’ve got to admit. Somebody tried to push you overboard? And you don’t even know why?”

After that, I didn’t tell him about my appointment to meet Thompson the next day. At that point in the conversation we had just pulled up to the dock in front of
Gorda
and my cottage. I kissed Mike on the cheek and thanked him for going with me, told him I didn’t need any doctors to check me over. In some ways it felt like he was being too easy on me—making excuses for me. And I wasn’t even sure he believed my story. I really needed to do something right to show him that I wasn’t a total bumbling idiot.