Life Guards in the Hamptons (38 page)

“Theen. Not thpeak.”

“They’re dead?” How could I tell poor Matt?

Oey shook her head, sending drops of water down my shirt. “All boobth, no brainth.”

“Oh, they couldn’t talk to you? Or thought you were too stupid to talk to them? They are ordinary people; it’s not their fault. Melissa is supposed to be very smart. Lolly tries.”

“Cwies.”

“Has he hurt them? Are they frightened? Hungry?”

“Bwought foodth. One thcweamed. One cwied.”

“That was kind of you for trying. What did you bring?”

“Eelth.”

“Uh, live eels?”

Those strong beaks clacked together again. What other kind was there?

Suddenly all that chocolate cake did not sit so well on my stomach.

Matt came over, with Moses, who greeted me as if I hadn’t seen him an hour ago. Little Red did not mind, except he raised his leg on Matt’s foot.

Matt was too tired to complain. He looked exhausted, worried, anxious. Matt? The rock whose sanity I depended on?

“What’s wrong?” Other than that a hurricane is coming with its killer coxswain, two girls are on a sinking ship, along with the village finances, and no one knew the whereabouts of a malicious mesmerist.

Matt folded me in his arms. “I’m scared.”

I held as tight as I could. “You? You’re not afraid of anything! You like my grandmother and offered to take Lou fishing. You tell my mother some dogs are not worth saving. How could you be afraid of a hurricane?”

“It’s not the storm.”

“What, then? Trying to stop the sea serpent? Having all of Paumanok Harbor think you’re insane because they can’t see it? Going on a ship that’s already proved unsteady?”

“No, those are your worries. I’m afraid of losing my niece, having to tell my sister I brought her baby here to Paumanok Harbor only to have her enslaved, corrupted, kidnapped by a madman.”

Melissa as a baby was a new concept, but I guess everyone was a cute little cherub, once. I rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tight muscles there. So Matt was human. I liked him better for it.

“We won’t lose her. We know where she is. We’ll get her. The plan is already working. Feel how cold the night is?” I felt chilled, but maybe more for his fears than the temperature.

“It’s September. The nights always get cool.”

“Not this cool. It’s our weather wizards, working overtime.”

“They can’t freeze the harbor in one day.”

“Of course not, but they can chill it. So can those
rocket launchers Lou called in.” DUE couldn’t get planes close enough to seed the storm—Desi was too big, too dangerous—but they could fire ionizers, or whatever it was the science guys did, to turn the hurricane’s rain into frozen sleet. Both Desi and N’Fwend’s strength had to be sapped in the cold. “Remember, the damned thing used to hang out in Bermuda, then at the molten center of the Earth. It’s bound to be weaker in the cold.”

“You can’t know for sure.”

I wasn’t used to Matt having doubts. I was the one who waffled, who second-guessed and self-doubted. “You have a better idea?”

“Yeah, let me keep holding you.”

Yup, a much better idea. I could forget about tomorrow in his arms, forget about everything except Matt and his needs, my need for him to stay strong and confident. We comforted each other, took strength from each other. Loved each other, with our clothes on, too, to prove this wasn’t merely a physical attraction.

“God, how I needed you. I couldn’t get out of the clinic fast enough to come to you.”

“And I couldn’t wait for you to get here. Can you stay the night? The dogs seem fine together, and everyone has your cell number.”

We settled on the couch, surrounded by the dogs, just holding each other, breathing each other’s scents. We were both so tired we’d fall into exhausted naps only to wake up minutes or hours later, remembering the horrors, and drawing closer again.

“I couldn’t get through this without you, Willow,” he said, pressing his lips to my forehead.

“Me neither. I couldn’t think about facing tomorrow if you weren’t at my side.”

“I think—no, I know—I want to be there, here, wherever you are, tomorrow and the day after, too. Maybe forever.”

“Forever?” I heard the mouse squeak in the cat’s paws. That is, in my voice. “It’s too soon to talk about forever. The ship only went down less than a week ago.”

“It feels like a lifetime ago. A lifetime wasted because you weren’t in it.”

How could anyone resist a guy like that? I could. I had to. His words felt too sincere, his arms felt too good. But Matt was tired and worried, and it was too soon, with too much else to think about.

Tomorrow comes before forever.

M
ATT DID NOT STAY THE NIGHT. Maybe he really had to check on the dogs in the kennel despite half his staff staying there ahead of the storm. Maybe he had to reassure his sister. Maybe he just didn’t like my answer, which wasn’t an answer.

If ever there was a time for one of those soul-scraping, heart-dredging, where-are-we-going relationship conversations, this was not it.

And we both needed a good night’s sleep, so I didn’t argue or complain or whine.

I didn’t get any sleep. My mother’s house had never felt so empty, my bed so cold. I turned up the heat, dragged Little Red under the covers with me, put on socks, and still felt the chill. The weather dudes were doing good. I wasn’t. I argued with myself, complained to Little Red, and whined.

Matt looked as bad as I did when we met at Rick’s marina in the morning, after leaving all the dogs at the vet clinic. Grandma Eve handed us apples and muffins from a sack she’d brought. No eye of newt, anyway. I couldn’t eat.

Matt took my hand. Then I got hungry.

Half the town had come to the shipyard to watch a fleet of tugboats nudge the
Nova Pride
close to shore the next morning. The tugs fled for safer waters—maybe up Three Mile Harbor’s long creek, or inland near Louse
Point. They had time, although the hurricane’s rain and winds were already picking up.

Heavy ferro-cement barges replaced the tugboats. They brought winches and weights and anchors and espers. Our people stood watch from every side of the cruise ship, to make sure Vanderman did not get past. The anchors were going to make sure the liner didn’t come crashing into the beach or onto the piers, where Rick was still hauling boats out of the water as fast as he and his crews could. I didn’t think those high cradles the yachts and fishing boats sat on looked any safer than the docks, but what did I know?

I knew I was freezing, exposed to the frigid wind and stinging rain, despite all the foul-weather gear I could layer on. The waves were high enough to wash over the lowest wharves, so Matt suggested we move back to the clam bar area, where a lot of the Harborites waited.

We watched the men on the barges work, and watched the water get choppier. And colder.

“That’s good, right?” Aunt Jasmine asked me.

Good for us, not so good for the guys working on the barges, or the dolphins I could see leaping around the
Nova Pride
. Big, beautiful creatures, with extra fins and pinkish skins, seemed to be watching the ship as carefully as we were.

“What do you see?” I whispered to Matt.

“No species I ever heard of. Too bad Vicki and Gina couldn’t see them.”

No one saw them as odd but us. Maybe the professor could have, but the police chief declared the weather too treacherous to chance losing our primary resource before the moment of truth. Close to sunset was the latest projection, almost eight hours away. Dr. Harmon had a warm, dry place in Rick’s second-story office over the ships’ store. I guess I was dispensable. Lou sent Grandma Eve and Doc Lassiter up the stairs, along with Lolly’s aunt and Melissa’s parents, who’d arrived in town earlier.

When the crew chief declared the
Nova Pride
secured, the carefully selected boarding parties approached from
three directions, in Zodiac inflatable rafts and rescue boats.

Someone on shore had the operation frequency on responder, so we could hear their loudspeakers calling Vanderman, urging him to surrender. “You have nowhere to go. Release the hostages. Get out of the storm.”

We did not hear any response. Soon men in wet suits—what about Kevlar vests? Could they float?—swarmed over the sides of the ship on rope ladders, then more ran up the ship’s gangway that got let down to one of the barges.

They couldn’t find Vanderman or the girls. The jungle lounge was empty except for some dead eels. Static jammed the radio as commands for a search operation went out. We couldn’t hear anything but the wind and the waves breaking nearby.

“I’m going.”

“NO!” I screamed at Matt. “Those men are trained and armed and have diagrams of the boat.”

“I have a niece.”

And a responsibility to be at my side at sunset, I wanted to yell, but I couldn’t. “If you are going, so am I.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, get used to it.”

He browbeat Elgin, the harbormaster and head of the weather crew, to take us out to the barge. Someone shoved a life jacket over my head and buckled it, then we ran between waves to the end of the wet dock, down a ladder, onto the madly rocking boat, then over to the barge, jumping across—over open water!—then up the gangway to the
Nova Pride
. None of those horrors mattered; I had my eyes closed the whole time. I think I lost the apple and muffin somewhere—I could hear Elgin cursing—but I never let go of Matt’s hand.

At the top of the gangway, Matt pulled his hand away—I could see the marks where my fingernails had sunk into his skin—and told me to stay. Moses might have obeyed the command. I went after Matt.

A diver handed me a flashlight. The ship had no power, but the girl in a wet suit and scuba gear said techs
were working on it. All available generators ran the pumps and the spotlights on deck for the workers, and for spotting Vanderman.

Uncle Henry held command in what would have been the front desk in a hotel. Maybe the reception area when passengers first boarded the ship. The chief had cut-away schematics of the ship spread out under portable lights, three different phones in front of him, with one Bluetooth in his ear and an unlit cigar clamped in his teeth.

“I swear, Willow Tate, I’m going to arrest you for hampering justice. Unless you find those women.”

We passed psychics everywhere, trying to locate the girls by casting mental nets. Joe the plumber stared into a bucket of rainwater. Margaret handed people woven finding bracelets. Other men and women had heat-seeking detectors. Big Eddie had his useless K-9 dog, Ranger, and his own nose, but there were too many bodies, too much water damage and mildew. Did Matt know what perfume Melissa wore?

He had no idea.

“No matter, the whole place still reeks of fear.”

That was me.

I stepped into the first empty space I could find, a small office behind the concierge’s desk, dragging Matt with me by flashlight. “We don’t know where to begin. We need help. You tweet.”

He knew I didn’t mean on his cell. He chirped, while I sent mental calls to the parrotfish.
Oey, help!
I pictured a willow tree, cold, wind-tossed, alone. Then a lollipop and a skunk, shivering, crying.
Lost, need, fear, hope, brave Oey, beautiful Oey. Find.

“Twee.”
Love, friend. Find, Oey, find. Help.

Big Eddie came back to our office, to rest Ranger, he said. To clear his sensors, more likely. He cursed about the neoprene wet suits, the spoiled food, the dead eels, my shampoo. Everything stank of stagnant water. “Even the parrot smells like a fish.”

“The parrot!”

“Yeah. It must be the one they lost in the big wave.
Somehow the stupid thing found its way back to the boat, instead of heading for land.”

“You should be so stupid!” I snapped at poor Big Eddie. Then I apologized and asked where he’d last seen the parrot.

He pointed and Matt shouted, “Follow the bird!”

We raced down dark corridors and stairwells with no windows, no lights, no sounds. I thought I felt the ship rocking. Maybe groaning. “What’s that?”

“Don’t think about it.” Matt had my hand again, and we paused every few yards to listen for Oey.

We called. She answered! “Twee!”

Then we heard Lou swearing as he ran to catch up to us, a miner’s light on his head, a weapon in his hand, three of his agents behind him. We waited for him, catching our breaths.

“Damn you, woman, you have no business here. Vanderman’s got to be desperate by now, and we aren’t a hundred percent convinced the two women are all that innocent. You could be walking into a trap or a shootout, not to mention how precarious this damaged ship is.”

I wished he hadn’t mentioned the boat’s condition. I thought I felt movement under my feet, which didn’t help settle my stomach or my nerves. Why had I thought I needed to be on board anyway? Melissa was Matt’s relative. Hell, I didn’t even like her.

Lou wasn’t done ranting. “I’d use the stun gun on you right now if I didn’t have to explain it to your grandmother.” He looked at Matt. “And I trusted you to look after her.”

That helped put some starch back in my spine. “Hey, I don’t need a babysitter.” Good thing the chief wasn’t around to hear the lie. Or maybe the truth. I needed a keeper, not a babysitter. Then I heard Oey call again, and I remembered why I had to be here, why Melissa and Lolly needed me. “Hush up and listen.”