Sail (10 page)
SO YES, I’m a bastard
, he was thinking.
Worse even than some people think.
Spotting an empty bench at a playground up the block, Peter sat down and sifted through the newspapers while enjoying his Red Bull, but also the daring petty theft he’d pulled off so beautifully.
The papers were full of him. Sure enough, the start of jury selection in the Kincade trial was getting a lot of ink. That meant so was Peter.
Shark.
Pit bull.
Eight-hundred-pound gorilla.
Only the
New York Times
managed to steer clear of the proverbial zoo and the rather biased comments on his courtroom reputation. In a brief story in the Metro section, it opted for “Peter Carlyle, a prosecutor’s worst nightmare.”
That had a nice ring to it, didn’t it? God bless the
Times
and Mr. Sulzberger.
Peter read the printed phrase over and over, the words dancing in his head. The rumba. The tango. The cha-cha!
That’s when a soft, cultivated male voice cut in. “Fancy meeting you here, Counselor.”
Peter lowered the paper to see his surprise visitor sitting on the bench right next to him. It was as if he had appeared out of thin air.
How’d he do that?
“Shouldn’t you be in court?” asked Devoux.
“Shouldn’t you be anywhere but here?” Peter spoke angrily.
There was a fine line between mutual respect and contempt, and the two men were sitting right on top of it. In Peter’s mind, what happened next would be crucial.
“There’s no reason that you and I can’t be seen together,” said Devoux. “It’s not like we’ve done anything wrong.”
“You’re right,” agreed Peter. “In fact,
we
haven’t done anything at all, have we?”
Devoux smiled behind black Armani sunglasses that matched his black Armani three-button suit. “Spoken like a true lawyer.”
“The same one who once saved your ass, if I’m not mistaken. Am I mistaken?”
“Am I not returning the favor?”
“For a damn good price you are.”
“I gave you a terrific discount off my usual fee. How quickly they forget.”
“I’m touched,” said Peter.
“Of course, if you had only known Mother Nature might be willing to do the job for free.”
“So you heard . . .”
“Yes,” said Devoux. “I assume you’ve already heard from the Coast Guard?”
“Just minutes ago, in fact. The officer I spoke to said they lost radio contact with the boat. But he also said they were receiving some kind of signal.”
“An EPIRB.”
“Yeah, that was it,” said Peter. “The officer told me it’s manually activated.”
“Indeed it is.”
“That means Katherine and the brats are still alive?”
“Not necessarily. I would expect a little more logic out of you.”
“The Coast Guard at least knows where to look for them, though, right?”
Devoux smiled again, this time as wide as the Atlantic. “So they think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means . . . they received the wrong coordinates. It means I’m very good at this.”
“How?” asked Peter.
“Presto, that’s how.”
Fair enough. Peter didn’t need to know Devoux’s dark secrets. Better if he didn’t. Besides, he could give a shit how he had rigged the EPIRB. Just so long as he had done it.
“Good,” said Peter. “So the Coast Guard
won’t
be able to find them. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No, I didn’t say that. Eventually they would, if not for one thing.”
Peter knew exactly what that thing was. It went without saying, but Devoux said it anyway—clearly just to amuse himself.
“Trust me, if the storm didn’t kill your loved ones—
ka-blam, ka-blooey
—my bomb sure as hell will. It’s a done deal. The family Dunne is history.”
Devoux was a sick fuck all right.
Precisely why Peter Carlyle had hired him to murder his family.
Ka-Blam, Ka-Blooey
THE FIRST THING I’m aware of is the intense heat, red-hot. It scalds my hair and skin as I tumble through the air. Everything about this is unreal. I’m on fire!
And it only gets worse when I hit the water.
Because I don’t hit the water.
Instead I come crashing down on a jagged piece of the hull that, like everything else, has been sent hurtling from the boat, or what used to be known as the boat.
Snap!
goes my right shinbone. I know exactly what’s happened. I can literally feel it burst through my skin.
As I roll off the piece of the hull and into the water, my body immediately goes into shock. My arms, my hands, my one good leg—they’re useless. I can’t move a muscle. If not for my life jacket, I’d be drowning.
This is unbelievable! What the hell just happened? I can’t begin to imagine an answer.
I look back at the boat—except it’s not there. It’s not anywhere. It’s gone!
As if in a magic trick,
The Family Dunne
has disappeared from sight.
That’s when the terrifying, gut-wrenching thought travels down from my brain and tears through my heart at warp speed.
My family!
All I can see is thick black smoke rising from the water’s surface. Bits and pieces of the boat are in raging flames. Each second that passes without my seeing Carrie, Mark, or Ernie makes the fear and panic grow. Oh, God, where are the kids? Where’s Jake?
I’m bobbing helplessly in the water as I call out their names between painful, racking coughs. The billowing smoke fills my lungs, and I feel myself getting weaker by the second. I’m losing too much blood from my leg. I’m on the verge of passing out.
Still, all I can think about is the kids.
“Carrie! Mark! Ernie!”
I keep screaming their names, but I don’t hear them call back. I don’t hear
anything
around me. No one calls out to me. The only sound is a muffled, hollow ringing in my head. It’s aftershock from the blast, I know. Blunt trauma to the ears.
The black smoke surrounds me like a wall now, and I can barely breathe. Every attempt to scream for the kids turns into another cough as blood begins to spray from my lips. I cover my mouth, only to watch my hand turn bright red. Where is the blood coming from? I wonder. Did I fracture a rib? Is it poking a lung? Or did I just bite my tongue when I crashed into the water?
And what about Jake?
He was on the boat when it exploded. Now he’s nowhere.
Are they all gone?
Am I the only one who survived?
No! No! No! PLEASE, NO! I can’t even fathom the thought—insidious, horrible.
My entire family is dead.
I CONTINUE TO CALL their names.
Then I hear a voice cut through the wall of smoke, filling me with hope, thanks to one small word, the most beautiful word in the English language right now.
“Mom!”
It’s Ernie, and he’s alive.
My hearing snaps back and I twist my body around to see him swimming toward me. His face is seared black from the blast and he looks absolutely petrified, but he’s alive. Oh, but he’s so scared, poor guy.
I forget about my leg at the sight of him and try to meet him halfway. That’s when a violent rush of pain reminds me that I’m in no condition to swim. Tears are all I can manage as I wait for him to reach me.
I immediately throw my arms around his life jacket and hug him as hard as I dare.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I think so,” he says. “Are you, Mom?”
I’m about to lie—I don’t want to scare him any worse—when he sees the blood around my mouth.
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
He doesn’t quite believe me. “What is it? What can I do?” he pleads.
“Nothing,” I assure him as my field of vision begins to narrow. I can feel my eyes rolling back now. Not good—really not good. I might pass out, and then Ernie will be all alone out here. Next I start to shiver, and my teeth are chattering. Not good.
“Mom!” he yells.
“Mom!”
I blink hard, forcing myself to stay conscious. I need to think in straight lines, like a doctor, like myself. I need to stop the bleeding in my leg.
What I need is a tourniquet.
The M.D. in me takes over and I quickly remove one of the straps from my life jacket. Reaching down in the water, I fasten it as tight as I can above my knee. Within seconds I can feel it helping, if only a little.
“There, that’s better,” I tell Ernie. “Are you in any pain? Tell me if you are.”
“No, I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He nods, and I ask him about his brother and sister, whether he’s seen them or not. I almost don’t want to hear the answer.
“No. Not so far,” he says, shaking his head. “What about Uncle Jake?”
“I don’t know, honey. I haven’t seen anybody but you yet.”
Again I’m about to lie. I want to tell Ernie that everything and everyone is going to be okay. I want him to believe me, and I want to believe it myself. But I can’t do it. It’s not the way I was trained, and it’s not who I am.
He reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder. He looks so small draped in that big orange life jacket. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he assures me. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you.”
I want to cry.
It’s the sweetest lie I’ve ever been told.
HOLY SHIT—what was that?
Carrie’s eyes fluttered open, only to be met by the cold, salty sting of the ocean. Her head snapped back, and immediately she began to cough her lungs clean of the smoke that was everywhere.
She didn’t feel particularly lucky, but that’s what she was.
Unbelievably
lucky. She’d been lying with her face on the side of her life jacket, unconscious. Another minute or two and she could have been dead. For sure, if her face had been in the water.
At first she didn’t know where she was. Even when she saw Mark ten feet away, she still didn’t know. The only thing clear was that her brother needed help.
Like her, he’d been knocked unconscious by the blast on board
The Family Dunne.
Unlike her, he’d yet to come out of it.
As fast as she could, Carrie swam toward him. With each labored stroke she began to remember. Jake chasing them all around the boat . . . their getting thrown in one by one . . . her mother being the last to go overboard.
But wait—did Mom get off?
Then everything had gone black on her. She still didn’t know what had happened. Like, where was the boat? Where was the rest of the family?
“Mark!” she said, reaching her brother. “Wake up!
Wake up!
”
He wouldn’t, though. She grabbed him by his life jacket and slapped his cheeks.
C’mon, Mark
. . . “I said c’mon, Mark. This is important—
wake the hell up.
”
Finally his lids peeled back and his pupils shrank into focus. “What happened?” he asked woozily. “What’s going on?”
Carrie still wasn’t sure herself. “There might have been an explosion,” she said.
Mark glanced around at what little remained of the boat, bits and pieces still in flames. His hair was singed, and a nasty gash on his forehead was bleeding freely, but his sarcasm remained unscathed. “Gee, you think so?” he quipped.
“I should’ve left you unconscious,” Carrie was about to say when they both turned their heads.
“Do you hear that?” asked Mark.
Carrie nodded. “It’s Mom!”
There was another voice too. Thank God, it was Ernie! She had never been so happy to hear her loquacious little brother.
Mark and Carrie called out to them and began making their way through the wafting smoke and wreckage.
“Here!” their mother shouted. “We’re over here!”
A hurried minute later, all the Dunnes were united in the water.
All of them except Jake.
“LOOK!” said Ernie, pointing. “Over there! Will you all look!”
The smoke still hovered everywhere like a dense fog. It was impossible to see anything clearly. But as the wind shifted slightly, they all caught a glimpse of what Ernie saw.
Jake.
He was forty, maybe fifty yards away.
“Uncle Jake!” called out Carrie.
It quickly became obvious—painfully obvious—that he wasn’t about to respond. Jake was facedown in the water with his arms out, motionless. Otherwise known as the dead man’s float. Katherine gasped. “Oh, God, no!”
Mark immediately commandeered Carrie and Ernie. “You two stay here with Mom,” he said. “I’ll go get Uncle Jake.”
He pushed away from the tight square their family had formed in the water.
“No, wait, I’ll come too,” said Carrie. All she could think about was how Jake had come to her rescue on the first day of the trip.
“Fine,” said Mark. “Let’s move it, though.”
They both took off. Mark was fast, but Carrie was even faster. Of the two swimming records she still held at her prep school, one was the fifty-meter freestyle. It was no surprise she reached Jake first.
Right away she almost wished she hadn’t. His arms and legs—what she could see of them, at least—were severely burned. Blood was seeping out of the burns. His skin, raw and blistering red, had bubbled like paint under a heat gun. Carrie suddenly felt sick to her stomach.
Fighting back her urge to throw up, she tried to flip Jake over. He was too heavy. Fortunately, that’s when Mark caught up and gave her a hand. Together, they turned him on his back. It had to be done.
“He’s not breathing, is he?” asked Carrie, her voice trembling. “He’s dead, Mark.”
Mark unhooked Jake’s life jacket, then dropped his head onto his uncle’s chest. “I can’t hear a heartbeat,” he said. “Maybe there’s a faint one?”
Carrie froze. She felt paralyzed, and scared to death. Then she heard a voice from her past: her CPR instructor. Everyone on the Choate swim team had to be certified.
It was a long time ago, but it came back to her.
“Hold his head up!” she told her brother. “I know mouth-to-mouth, Mark. We have to try.”
Mark propped Jake up by the neck as Carrie tilted his head back to open his airway. She pinched his nostrils together and covered his mouth with hers. Then she started breathing into Jake’s mouth.
“C’mon, Uncle Jake!” she pleaded between breaths.
“C’mon!”
Thirty seconds passed—at least that long. Carrie was exhausted, her lungs pushed past their limit. Still, she wasn’t going to give up.
“Damn it, Uncle Jake!
Breathe!
” she yelled.
That’s when he did.
A small breath gave way to a bigger one.
And an even bigger one.
Until he was breathing on his own.
His eyes were closed and he was still out of it. But he was back from the dead.
Mark listened again to his heart, just to make sure. When he heard it beating harder and more regularly, he pumped his fist in the air. “Jesus, you did it, Carrie! You really did it!”
The two looped their arms around Jake and slowly dragged him back to their mother and Ernie.
The crew of
The Family Dunne
was together again. Just the way it ought to be.
“So what do we do now?” asked Ernie. “Who has an idea?”
“We wait,” answered Mark. “As Jake said, the Coast Guard should be here soon.”
He looked up at the huge cloud of smoke hovering over their heads. “We shouldn’t be too hard to find.”