Banana Split (44 page)

They were floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and though she could see a line of lights, shore perhaps, it was very far away. The sun was down and the night was gray. A breeze ruffled Sadie’s hair and muumuu, but it wasn’t cold. Yet. She didn’t have time to look for any other nearby boats as she focused on the man standing across from her, staring her down with his arms folded over his chest.

“Why are you here?” he asked for the third time, his patience clearly at an end.

“Someone thought Charlie’s mom had been on this boat,” Sadie said. “I was—”

Nat dropped his arms, reacting much more than Sadie had expected. “She’s never been on this boat,” he said, defensive. “Who said that?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Sadie lied. “But I must have misunderstood, right? Totally got on the wrong boat.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why were you hiding?”

“Um, I was, well, checking out the boat, and then I heard you get on and I got scared so I stayed down there.”

He watched her for a few seconds, and then opened his mouth, pausing for a minute before he spoke. “You heard me get on,” he said as even more fear crept into his expression. “What else did you hear?”

He was talking about the phone call, but she shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.

He stared at her. “No good,” he muttered, his voice low as he ran his hands nervously through his hair. He took a deep breath.

Sadie watched him closely, jumping when his head whipped back in her direction.

“Why are you looking for a boat? Who thought Charlie’s mom had been on one?”

Sadie shook her head.

Nat lowered his chin and raised his shoulders. Moments before he moved, she realized he was coming after her. She screamed and dove to the side, crawling toward the steering wheel while waiting for him to tackle her at any moment. There wasn’t anywhere for her to go except the cabin, but then she’d be leading him to Charlie. She scrambled to the other side of the boat and got to her feet, holding on to the side as she turned to face Nat, only realizing then why he hadn’t come after her.

He hadn’t been coming toward her at all. Instead, the bag he’d brought on board earlier was at his feet, the zipper undone. In his hand, Nat held a pistol.

Sadie looked from the gun to Nat’s face and tightened her fingers on the side of the boat. Her heart jumped to her throat.

“Tell me what you’re doing here!” Nat yelled.

“You don’t want to do this, Nat,” Sadie said.

“Tell me what you know! How did you find my boat?”

“Someone saw you,” Sadie explained, hoping her cooperation would diffuse his rising panic that could quickly lead to a jittery trigger finger. “Well, they saw the boat.” She spoke slowly, formulating a plan.

“Who?” he yelled. If they were anywhere but in a boat on the ocean, Sadie would have expected someone to come running from the yelling. Then his expression grew more concerned. “The person who wrote that note to Charlie,” he said, almost breathless with the discovery. “Who was it?”

“The police are coming,” Sadie said quickly. “They know where I was going.” Assuming Pete or Gayle had gotten the messages she’d sent. Her bag was still over her shoulder and her phone was still inside, but she’d turned off the sound and didn’t know if they’d tried to call her back.

“It was an accident,” Nat blurted out, regret lacing the panic. The gun, however, was still pointed at her.

“What was an accident?” Sadie asked because she couldn’t help herself. Maybe it
was
an accident.

“Charlie’s mom. She just . . . just freaked out.” He wanted her to believe him, and Sadie realized that she wanted to believe him too.

“Did you know she’d overheard you? Did you expect Noelani to meet you at the beach?”

“No! Why would you think that?”

“Because CeeCee wanted to adopt Charlie.”

“You think I’d . . .” He took a breath and shook his head slightly in disbelief. “Why does everyone think this has anything to do with Charlie?”

“Noelani was his mother,” Sadie said, remembering that Charlie wasn’t far away. She lowered her voice, not wanting him to overhear any of this. “Of course she would be concerned if she knew you were involved with something dangerous.”

Nat’s phone rang. He put his hand in his pocket but spoke into the Bluetooth earpiece still connected to his right ear. “Yeah,” he said nervously. “I’m running late. . . . I know. . . . Right.” He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket, obviously concerned by the content of the call.

“You’re meeting someone?” Sadie asked, thinking back to what Bets had seen and heard the night Noelani had died. This boat had come to Ho’oka Beach, where Noelani had confronted two men. The boat then left and came back carrying bags of something. So Nat was ferrying something, drugs probably.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

“I’ll go back into the cabin,” Sadie said, pointing toward the door. “And I’ll stay down there until you finish. At the dock, I’ll go and forget about any of this.”

“You’ll go to the cops. You’ll ruin everything.”

“Ruin what, exactly?” Sadie asked carefully.

“A job,” Nat said, running his hand through his hair again and clenching a fist anxiously. “That’s all this is, a job, and a temporary one at that. Tonight’s my last run. I just needed to get through a rough spot. No one was supposed to get hurt. No one was supposed to die.”

“Drugs, right?”

His eyes narrowed and his shoulders straightened defensively. “It’s just weed. It’s practically legal.”

“So you’re transporting it across the ocean in the middle of the night because it’s legal?”

“Shut up!” he yelled, the veins in his neck standing out. “We panicked, okay. I didn’t even know it was her until she came straight at me, talking about Charlie not being safe and how she was going to the cops. I just . . . I just panicked and then she hit her head and . . . she wasn’t moving. I had no choice but to take her out in the boat; she was supposed to disappear forever. She should have minded her own business.”

“She did what any mother would do—try to protect her child.”

“She was a druggie,” Nat said with disgust. “He’s better off without her.”

“She was doing everything she could to fix her mistakes and—”

“You think those kind of things can be fixed?” he cut in, waving his arm around, the veins in his neck bulging again. “My mother was a crackhead. I was six years old when they took me away. She said she’d fix it too—never did.” He shook his head, his jaw flexing. “Why should Charlie’s mom be any different?”

“Should?” Sadie repeated, latching onto the word. So much was being said, more than she wanted Charlie to hear, but this confession was the truth Charlie had been hunting for, even though it was horrible. “So because your mom couldn’t do better, Charlie’s mother shouldn’t have had that chance either? Charlie shouldn’t? Noelani was doing everything she could to get him back. You took his mother away.”

He straightened his arm, pointing the gun at her head, and she felt her heart rate increase as she held his eyes—full of sincere regret, but with enough desperation to override his conscience. If he killed Sadie on this boat, Charlie would live with that the rest of his life, too. She’d already said too much.

“It was an accident,” Sadie said, putting her hands up in surrender. “I’ll help you explain it to the police.”

He shook his head. “You won’t be able to talk anyone out of anything. I’ll go to prison.”

“Noelani’s death was an accident,” Sadie repeated. “But my death won’t be. Just let me go to the cabin. I’ll help explain what happened. I can help you.”

“No, you can’t,” he said, looking even more desperate. “Like I said, some things can’t be fixed.”

Suddenly, something clattered along the bottom of the boat. Sadie looked in the direction the object had come from—the cabin—and felt her breath catch when she recognized the purple phone.

Charlie,
she thought, but didn’t say it out loud.
Don’t come up here.

Nat kicked at the phone with his shoe. He recognized it an instant before turning to look into the open door of the cabin. “Someone’s with you,” he said. He took a step toward the cabin, and Sadie hurried to block his way.

“No one,” Sadie said, though it was ridiculous to say out loud. “No one else is here, just me. I dropped my phone.”

He didn’t even look at her as he pushed forward, intent on the cabin door.

Sadie grabbed his arm, pulling him back. He pushed her off, and she kicked the back of his knee, causing him to lose his balance and fall toward her, catching himself on the driver’s seat, which swiveled beneath him.

It was the opportunity Sadie needed. Driven by instinct and the need for survival more than conscious thought, she grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the gun and jabbed her thumb into the same pressure point she’d used on Bets, forcing Nat to drop the gun.

He grunted in pain, then looked into her face. She saw the change in his eyes. Until that moment, he’d been unsure how to deal with her but hadn’t seen her as a threat. Suddenly, that had changed and his whole face tightened as he grabbed her chin and threw her to the side.

She hooked a foot around his, causing him to stumble again as she tried to brace her fall. Sadie moved toward the gun which had fallen on the far side of the boat, but Nat grabbed her arm, wrenching it behind her. She screamed, trying to hit at him, but he had her in a hold and marched her toward the edge of boat. Her whole body froze as he bent her over the side.

Not the water. Anything but that.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “I’m sorry you did. This should never have happened.”

“N . . . n . . . no,” Sadie said, pulling against him, unable to breathe as she stared at the water lazily rolling beneath her. Something else clattered across the deck behind them. Sadie was still pulling back as hard as she could and tried to turn her head to see what it was.

She didn’t get the chance to see what Charlie had tried to use to distract Nat this time. In a final lunge of strength, Nat grabbed Sadie around the waist and threw her over the side of the boat.

Chapter 47

Sadie screamed for a split second before the glassy blackness swallowed her whole. Instantly, she began fighting for the surface, but it felt as though a vacuum was sucking her toward the bottom of the ocean. She clawed at the water, grabbing for a stability that didn’t exist.

Her lungs felt ready to burst when she finally broke through the surface, gasping and thrashing and gulping for air. She could still feel the pull toward the bottom. She opened her eyes, looking for Nat but he wasn’t at the edge of the boat, waiting for her to surface. Which meant Charlie’s attempts at distraction had worked.

“Nat!” Sadie screamed, taking swift strokes to the boat and smacking the hull with her open hand. “Nat, you coward! Come finish what you started.”

“You should have let it be,” he said, appearing instantly above her. “You’re
pau!
”

The moonlight glinted off the metal of a pistol, and Sadie yelped before diving back into the water—suddenly the better option. She hit the side of the boat with her head and came back up for air, trying to find something to hold onto, but the slick hull offered no options. Still, he wouldn’t shoot her if she stayed by the boat, would he? He wouldn’t risk missing and sinking the craft. She kicked furiously in order to keep herself up, wondering how long she could tread water. Maybe she really was pau—finished. But then what? What about Charlie? What about her children and Pete and Gayle?

“Who else is here?” he yelled, half to her and half into the boat.

That meant Charlie hadn’t revealed himself. Sadie moved toward the front of the boat, hoping that would make it harder for Nat to grab her or shoot at her. She tried not think about the miles of water and countless creatures below her. She still could barely catch a breath.

Something hit the side of the boat, and she looked up to see Nat leaning over the side, a paddle in his hand. He whacked it against the hull only a few feet away from her. She should probably have some kind of comeback, or at the very least encourage him to give up the rest of his secrets, but the only thing she could think about was keeping the panic out of her brain. Survival, that was her only thought.