Chapter 12: The Deck Where He Planned to Take Me Out
The cabin door didn't latch. It slammed back against the wall and I was already through it.
The night air hit me like cold water. I hadn't felt real wind since we'd left the marina. Up on the upper deck the running lights were low and red along the rail, and the sea was black and moving fast underneath us. The yacht cut through it and the wind tore at my camisole and my hair. My feet were bare on the wet fiberglass and I could feel the engine vibrating through the soles.
The phone was in the pocket of my robe and it was still recording. I could feel its heat against my thigh. I didn't take it out. I kept my hand on it while I ran.
I heard Adrian behind me before I saw him. "Mara!"
He wasn't using his soft voice anymore. He came up the companionway two steps at a time, his black shirt snapping in the wind, his watch catching the red light. The other man was right behind him — the deckhand I'd seen coiling line that afternoon, the one Adrian had spoken to in a low voice near the stern. He didn't look at me. He looked at Adrian for the cue.
There was nowhere else to go. The deck ended in rail and dark. To my left the life raft canister was strapped down. To my right a small storage locker, open, with a glass bottle inside it — an empty tonic bottle left by the crew, rolling with the swell.
Adrian reached me first. He didn't grab me hard. He grabbed me like he was going to help me, one hand on my elbow, one on my shoulder, steering me toward the rail.
"You're going to fall," he said, loud over the wind. "You're not well. You shouldn't be up here."
The deckhand took my other arm. That was the plan. I realized it all at once — how it would have looked at 2:00 a.m. if I'd taken the pills. How light I'd have been. How easy to lift. The rail was low. Only a wire and a polished steel top rail between me and the black water. No witnesses for miles.
I dropped my weight.
I had learned that in a self-defense class at the community center years ago, and I did it without thinking now. I bent my knees and pulled down, and both of them had to adjust to hold me. The deckhand lost his grip on my arm when the boat rolled. I grabbed the top rail with both hands and held on.
"Let go of me," I said.
Adrian leaned in close. His hair was blown back and his face was calm, even now. "My love, you're scaring him," he said, as if I was the one frightening the deckhand. "You need to calm down."
He tried to peel my fingers off the rail. The deckhand put his hands on my waist to lift. I kicked back and my heel hit his shin. He grunted and let go. I swung my body around and kept one hand on the rail and with the other I reached into the locker and got the bottle.
It was heavy glass. I didn't swing to hurt him. I swung to make space. I brought it up and struck it sideways against the steel stanchion next to Adrian's hand, hard enough that it cracked with a sharp pop and the sound carried over the engine. He flinched back a foot. The deckhand flinched further.
I held the broken bottle out, not close, just out. My hand shook so hard I could see it in the red light.
"Stay back," I said. My voice was gone in the wind. So I screamed. I turned my face toward the dark water and screamed until my throat burned. "Help! Mayday! Mayday! Help us!"
Adrian looked around, fast, checking the water. There was nothing. Then there was something.
A light. Far off to port, low on the horizon, white and then green. Another yacht running at night. Too far to see us, but close enough that a horn would carry. And then I heard it — a low, long horn from that vessel, not for us, just its running signal. It sounded like an answer.
I screamed again toward it. "Here! Help!"
The phone in my pocket shifted when I moved. The screen lit through the thin fabric of my robe — a faint white glow against my leg. The recording light was on, a tiny red dot at the top.
The deckhand saw it. His eyes went to my pocket and stayed there.
Adrian saw where he was looking. "What is that."
The deckhand took a step back. "She's recording," he said. His voice was thin. "Boss. She's recording us."
Adrian's hand went out toward my pocket. I stepped back along the rail, the broken bottle still up, and pressed my back against the locked wheelhouse door. The wind was hard against me now. I pulled the phone half out, just enough that the red light showed clearly, just enough that the screen showed the running time — 08:42 and counting.
"I called my attorney," I said, and I was breathing so hard I had to say it in pieces. "He heard everything. He heard what you said. At two. He has it."
That was not exactly true, but the recording was true, and the light was true, and the deckhand believed it. I saw it in his face. He had thought this was a private accident. A story about a sad wife who fell overboard after taking seasickness pills. Now there was a file, a timestamp, a voice.
He put his hands up and stepped further back, away from the rail, away from me.
"I'm not touching her," he said to Adrian. "No. You didn't say anything about a recording."
Adrian didn't look at him. He stared at me, at the phone, at the bottle in my hand. For the first time that night his calm slipped. His jaw tightened. He was alone at the rail with me now, the wind between us, the other vessel's light still moving slow on the horizon.
He took one more step forward and I pressed the phone tighter to my chest and held the bottle higher.
May you like
"Stay where you are," I said.
He stopped. He had to. The deckhand was no longer behind him, the light was on the water, and the red dot kept blinking.
