Chapter 13: She Would Not Go Quietly
The rail dropped another inch.
Metal screamed against metal. My arms stretched until pain burned from my shoulders to my fingertips, and the storm yanked at my coat as if the sea had found a handle. Flynn’s hand clamped around my wrist.
“Let go,” he shouted.
I looked past him at Graham. “Tell Captain Reyes what you meant when you said, ‘Finish the job.’”
Graham’s face tightened. Rain streamed down it, making him look less like a grieving father and more like a man who had run out of excuses.
“She was already falling,” he said.
The words came out too quickly. He heard it, too. For half a breath, his eyes flicked toward Flynn.
That was all I needed.
“Captain!” I called. My voice broke against the wind, but I forced it louder. “Graham ordered him to finish it!”
A shape emerged from the aft door, then another. Captain Reyes came first, one hand gripping a support as the deck rolled beneath her. Two crewmen followed, crouched low against the wind. One carried a safety line; the other had a flashlight whose beam jittered across the deck and caught the torn rail.
“Graham, step away from her!” Reyes shouted.
Graham raised both hands, palms out, an expression of practiced injury settling over his face.
“I’m trying to help.”
“Then help by moving back.”
Flynn twisted my wrist. Pain flashed white behind my eyes. His other hand reached for my fingers, prying at them one by one.
“You don’t have to make this worse,” he said, close enough that I could smell the rain on him. “You’re exhausted. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The words might once have sounded gentle. Now they were only another way to tell me my own mind belonged to him.
“I know exactly what you’re doing.”
My right hand slipped on the slick metal. The rail jerked, and my body swung outward. The sea opened below me—black water, white foam, no visible bottom, no promise of anything but more water.
One crewman dropped flat and caught the back of my coat. The other grabbed his belt to anchor him.
“Hold on!” he yelled.
Flynn grabbed my forearm again. Not to pull me up. To loosen my grip.
I kicked hard. My heel struck the outside of his knee.
He grunted and buckled. His fingers sprang open.
“Now!” Reyes shouted.
The crewman on the line looped it around my waist while the other hauled back. For an instant, the pull caught between them and the rail, and I was pinned there, unable to climb or fall. My palms scraped against the metal. I felt skin tear, then rain sting the raw places.
“Don’t pull her sideways!” Reyes ordered. “Keep the line tight. On three!”
Flynn lunged again.
Reyes stepped between him and me, driving her shoulder into his chest. He shoved her back, but one of the crewmen seized his arm. The second caught him around the waist.
Graham moved toward the aft door.
“Stay where you are!” Reyes shouted.
“I’m not part of this,” he called, already retreating.
I couldn’t turn far enough to see whether he stopped. The crew hauled, and the line bit into my ribs. My hands came free of the rail. For one horrible second, I hung entirely from the rope while the wind swung me over the water.
Then my hip struck the deck.
Pain jolted through me. I rolled onto my side, coughing, and felt a crewman’s arm lock around my waist as he dragged me clear of the edge. The rail tore loose behind me and clanged across the deck, disappearing into the dark.
I pressed my face against the wet boards. They smelled of salt, oil, and rust. My whole body shook so hard I couldn’t tell whether I was cold or still falling.
“Claire.”
Reyes crouched beside me. Her face was pale beneath the rain, but her voice held steady.
“Look at me. Are you hurt?”
I tried to answer and managed a breath that scraped my throat.
“Stay with me,” she said. “You’re on deck. You’re safe from the rail.”
Safe. The word didn’t fit the night. But the deck was under me. My lungs still worked. I pushed myself onto one elbow.
Flynn was on his knees between the two crewmen. They forced his hands behind him and secured them with a restraint strap. He fought until one of them shoved his shoulder down. Then his gaze found mine.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
I swallowed. My mouth tasted of seawater and blood.
“No,” I said. “I made one when I trusted you.”
His expression changed—not shame, not regret. Anger, sharpened by the knowledge that I had survived him.
Reyes rose and faced Graham. He had stopped near the aft door, one hand braced against its frame.
“Captain,” he said, his voice almost wounded, “you can’t believe her over me.”
“I believe what I heard,” Reyes said. “And I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Graham’s gaze swept the deck. The crewmen holding Flynn. The broken rail. The flashlight beam on his face. His eyes settled on the dark camera housing overhead, and something in his jaw shifted.
Then he looked at me.
“You have no idea what your father has done to people,” he said.
It wasn’t a confession. It was a threat dressed up as an explanation.
“Maybe,” I said, struggling to my feet with Reyes’s hand beneath my elbow. “But I know what you tried to do to me.”
Graham opened his mouth, then shut it. For the first time that night, there was no quick answer ready.
A red flash swept across the rain beyond the stern. Then another, farther away. Through the storm, a pair of rescue lights moved across the dark water, small and wavering but coming closer.
The crewman who had secured the line wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. When I looked down, the palms were streaked red, and the wedding ring Flynn had placed on my finger gleamed under the flashlight.
I twisted it once. It wouldn’t come off over my swollen knuckle.
“Don’t try,” Reyes said softly. “Not now.”
I let my hand fall. There would be time to decide what the ring meant when I wasn’t standing in a storm beside the place Flynn had meant to kill me.
A radio crackled at Reyes’s shoulder. She listened, one hand cupped over the speaker to shield it from the wind. The color drained from her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
May you like
She lowered the radio.
“The fire dispatch hasn’t confirmed that anyone is out of the house.”
