The Black Hour (42 page)

I swallowed hard and watched the horizon. “I’m going to guess pills.”

“That’s standard issue,” Win said. “Not very ambitious for a last stand.”

Phillip shook his head, smiling. “It’s not
my
last stand.”

Win’s bravado, his gallows humor, gave me a pinch of courage. “Pills seemed to work for everyone else,” I said. “Except the kid in the car. I always forget his name.”

“William,” Win said. “But I believe he had a little something in the bloodstream, after all.”

“True to form,” Phillip said. “His parents got that covered up.” He reached into his back pocket—I flinched—and took out a slim flask. “Present for you, Win.” He pitched it.

Win caught it. I saw scratches, lacy etchings that could only be a monogram. Win’s monogram. Win turned it this way and that, admiring it. “Do you have a crush on me, Phil?”

“Have a drink.” Phillip pulled the gun out of the front of his waistband. I’d been expecting it so long, the weapon, at last, almost seemed like a prop.

“This is supposed to be mine, and then they’ll find you afloat out here with two dead bodies. ‘I don’t know what happened, officers. Good thing I stuck to beer.’ Nice work, really,” Win said, thumbing the etching. “I have a much nicer one than this at home.” He leaned back and threw a Hail Mary. The flask splashed into the dark water, somewhere to our east. To our north, a bolt of lightning. “All my chips are on you not having the guts for the alternate route. It would put an end to all your hard work.”

“It would. Except I tried to stop you, Win.” Phillip put on a look of fear and shuddered. “You were a wild man, depressed, textbook case. Waving the gun all around until Nath tried to disarm you. To your credit, you were broken up over killing your friend, and before I could stop you—”

“No one would believe that,” Win said.

I saw Phillip’s opening. It was wide. “But your calls.”

“What do you mean?”

Phillip grinned. Rain started to patter against the deck.

“Your calls, to the hotline. Before you were—” I saw the problem, had seen it long ago. How did a hotline caller become a trusted volunteer, stable enough for the training and the black hour, week in and week out? He didn’t. “You faked those,” I said to Phillip. “He never called.”

“Oh, but he did. The long hours we talked over his problems. His dad’s infidelity, his mother’s indifference, the weight of being a Rothbert—”

The roar started low, and then Win leapt at him. He bumped the helm as he flew by. The wheel spun in my hands. We listed steep and fast in time to catch Phillip low and surprised, Win flaring and flying, both of them tumbling into the rail—

And over.

A gunshot split the wind.

They were gone.

I couldn’t move. The wind rose, howling, and the rain started in earnest. Below that, the silence was deafening. I fought the wheel back to stable, then left it to spin and stumbled against the choppy water to the rail.

My eyes raked the surface, every white-capped wave hiding a body. I ran, slipping, the length of the boat and back, checked the other side.

No one.

Again: up and down the length, the other side, port and starboard
whichwaswhich
, back to the rail. “Win!”

Out of the corner of my eye—no, a boat. The one I’d seen earlier, closer. The only other idiots to stay out on the rough water. I waved my arms frantically at them. Their sails up, they rose and fell with the waves like a child’s toy.

I heard something hit the side of our boat. Win, swimming and splashing—and then Phillip. They’d risen together, fighting.
Gungungun.
I flipped open the seats looking for something to use as a weapon but only found the elusive life jackets and the last of our beer. When I looked over the side, Phillip was above water, struggling to keep Win under the surface. Succeeding.

I threw a beer bottle at Phillip’s head, missing. Another. It splashed lazily, wide.
Gungungun.
Win was still under. I crouched, knuckles white on the rail. I couldn’t think, couldn’t see any other way.

I stood, found the horizon.

And jumped.

Another gunshot, and the world turned inside out.

“What’s wrong with that one?” Joss asked in low tones as she and Doyle helped me out of the rowboat. She meant Corrine, who’d refused all help, arriving on Doyle’s boat much as a royal personage might alight on the
QEII
.

I didn’t want help either. My legs had turned to lead, stiff and unbending, but I wanted to come aboard on my own power. I wouldn’t be carried on or helped, not in front of Corrine.

“I can’t begin to explain,” I said.

Corrine had seen me at my worst. She’d helped me through my worst, but I couldn’t touch that tender spot without a sharp intake of breath. I’d felt abandoned through all this, friendless except for Cor. I’d gotten it wrong: Doyle, Joss, even Woo, pale with seasickness, managed to flap a hand at me. I’d gotten a lot wrong.

I dropped into the first open spot, next to Doyle’s wife, who wore a life vest and sat forward on the bench with her hands on her knees. She glowered at me. “Sorry to—you know,” I said. I’d forgotten her name. “Sorry.”

“Nancy’s not got her sea legs yet,” Doyle said. He placed an orange vest at my feet. I’d been on the boat plenty of times and had never actually seen the vests.

Nancy. Right.

“It gets better,” I said. “The more time you spend—”

The look on her face, and Doyle’s, stopped me. I had a feeling we could be talking about more than sailing.

“Look,” I said. “I hate to skip the pleasantries, but I need to yacht-jack you guys. That vessel—” I pointed, Win’s boat impossibly far away—“has some potentially noir shit going down.”

Even Nancy turned to consider the request. “Out there?”

“There’s a stiff breeze—”

“That’s an understatement,” Doyle said.

“—good company—”

Corrine scoffed.

“—good . . . OK, look,” I said. “This might be life and death for one of our students.”

Joss pushed her glasses up her nose. “Unpack it for us, Melly.”

Even the short version was too long. When I got to Win’s participation, Corrine stood and flung herself at me. “He’s not like that!” Doyle pulled her away and sat her back down.

“I don’t know what he’s like,” I admitted to the rest of them. Woo’s face had become a mask of terror. He didn’t have the heart for real trouble of any kind. “But I truly believe Nathaniel Barber is in danger.”

“And you want to go get him?” Joss said. There were looks exchanged I was probably not supposed to read.

“I’m not the one in love with a student here,” I said. “But that kid—Nath deserves better than I’ve given him. I want to make sure he hasn’t got himself into something he can’t handle. That—I haven’t gotten him into something he can’t handle.”

“I would like to be let off at shore,” Woo said. “Before you become a taxi service.”

No one paid him any attention, except Joss, who shushed him like a child.

“I owe him this,” I said. I looked at Nancy. I knew I had to convince her. I wasn’t the person Doyle listened to anymore. “He’s just a kid.”

Her eyes were serious. She nodded slowly and squeezed my arm. She turned to Doyle. “Nick, we have to do something.”

“I’ve never heard such bullshit,” Corrine said. “But what else is new? Dr. Emmet needs this, Dr. Emmet needs—”

“Dr. Talbot,” Doyle said.

“If she’s up for tenure, we all throw our support behind her. If she’s sick, we all pitch in to cover her classes—”

“If she’s shot, we sit at her bedside to allay our own guilt,” I said.

Corrine’s look was steel. “When we reach the other boat,” she said. “I’ll be joining their party.”

“And when we reach shore, you’ll turn in your letter of resignation,” Doyle said.

“You can’t ask me—”

“I don’t think the Rothbert code of ethics covers relationships between matriculating undergraduates and faculty members, Dr. Talbot. Particularly those who have yet to prove themselves through the tenure process. I’ll have to ask Jim.”

We all had a moment to imagine the dean’s reaction to such a question. Joss gave me a supportive nod, but I looked away. What a narrow ledge I’d walked out on.

Doyle reached behind Nancy and let out a knot holding the mainsail. The sail loosened and filled with the billowing wind. “She’s a slow little washtub, you know,” he said. “Luckily it looks like they’ve pulled their sails.”

“If I’m following this correctly,” Woo said, “one of the students on that boat might be responsible for a fatality as well as Amelia’s—disability, and we’re going to
hurry
?”

“Wear your Rothbert medal over your heart, Ben,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”

He glanced around like a rabbit and dashed for the back of the boat. I took his spot, and Corrine took the one next to Nancy to get away from me.

Over her shoulder I could see that most of the other crafts had turned south for the marina. Any other year, the lake would have been choked with boats by now, sails down to bob in the cool evening air, a few fireworks set off on shore, the campus golden and regal in the background.

In good weather, some boats draped their rigging with battery-powered twinkle lights or hung lanterns from bow and stern. Enough boats, enough light, and the little section of the lake around Rothbert glowed as a beacon, brighter than any lighthouse.

I’d never seen the Night Sail from the shore, I realized. All that opulence, and somehow I’d become a part of it, forgetting that some—many—had to see this show from afar. This wealth, this privilege. I thought I’d known what it felt like to stand outside, but I didn’t. Not as well as Leo Lehane, who watched all of life from a distant shore. Not as well as Corrine, forced to witness me and Doyle and who knows how many other friends over her lifetime find the thing she wanted most. A bit of understanding might have wrenched open my heart, but I couldn’t let the cracks show now. Nath didn’t have anyone else. He needed me.

They hardly know what they need until they need it.

Who had said that? I sorted the words from the long day I’d had until I heard them from Phillip Carrington-Wells’s mouth. He could have been talking about anyone, about me.

Pompous, though, now that I realized he meant he could supply the need when it finally came. Save anybody who came his way, oh, except at least a handful of students whose names Nath had on a list somewhere.

To be in the business of saving lives, though, a bit of ego might be requisite. The same for teaching, really. To be in the business of imparting knowledge, you needed to feel pretty strongly that you had knowledge to give. When this was over, I wondered if I’d ever command a classroom again.

The boat we chased was far larger than Doyle’s. At this distance I could see only a few people, two or three, one in a dark shirt, standing on the deck. We were getting close. I turned to give Doyle a grateful smile—

An explosion cut through the wail of wind.

Corrine screamed.

We all stood. A gunshot.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit.” This from Joss.

Corrine fought past us to the front, her screams so loud that I couldn’t tell what syllables they contained.

“Did you see someone go overboard?” I yelled. Rain began to pelt us. I couldn’t see anyone on the boat, but then I did—just one person, the dark shirt gone. Doyle turned the wheel and let the wind out of the sails. “Wait,” I said.

“Are you crazy?” Woo yelled. He squatted in the back. “Turn us the hell around.”

“We can’t leave,” I said. “Cor,
shut up
. Doyle, man overboard.”

“Man
shot
,” Woo said. “I, for one, would like never to know what that feels like.”

Corrine wailed so that we all had to talk over her. Joss and Woo bickered. Nancy tried to ask me something I could barely hear and probably couldn’t answer. “What?” I said. “Cor, try to—”

“That’s enough,” Doyle said, an ax cutting through the chaos and silencing us all.

In the absence, I heard the last of Corrine’s sniffles and the rising wind under the patter of rain.

“I—” He looked at each of us, landing on Nancy. “I don’t know what to do.”

Joss, Corrine, Woo—they all turned to me. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I couldn’t lead them into this. Couldn’t ask everything of them. Nancy reached out and took Doyle’s hand.

I pushed past Corrine to the bow. On the other boat, one crew member raced forward and aft, again and again, calling into the water. “What is he saying?” Corrine said, finally quiet. I couldn’t quite hear. Where was the gun? As we watched, the lone sailor climbed to the gunwale—Nath, oh, God. He crouched there, stood, dove—

—another gunshot.

We all ducked, watching Nath hit the water. Graceless, flat.

“Nath!” I crawled onto the splashboard, kicking as hands tried to pull me back.

“Amelia, don’t,” Doyle bellowed.

I paused at the point of the bow, my fist wrapped around a cleat. Over at the other boat, nothing moved. I stood.

“Amelia, for the love of God,” Doyle said.

I jumped.

I understood my mistake right away. One leg wooden, the other maxed out after the day’s excursions—I felt the water rush past as I sank, kicking for the surface but sure that I’d already seen it for the last time.