Swept Away 2 (9 page)

“The storm is supposed to pass through tonight, and it’s supposed to be clear tomorrow night, so you can confirm our position then.” Ethan’s voice is firm as he makes eye contact with each one of us. “We’re going to sail this boat to Hawaii. Without an engine and without electronics. It’s only a couple more days. We
will
do this.”

Justine

October 5, 2006

Sometimes a person has to take extraordinary measures if she wants to keep her extraordinary life on track.

Ginny was turning Ethan against me. I checked Ethan’s cell phone history, and her number popped up seven times over the past month. When I questioned Ethan, he said she was calling for relationship advice. She had a new boyfriend—Zach something-or-other, another psychology grad student—but he was clearly just a decoy.

Ginny wanted to steal Ethan away from me. I was on to her plot. First, she was going to turn him against me by revealing my past psychological history, which Daddy and I have taken great,
great
pains to bury from him and the world.

She found my records somewhere and intended to expose them to Ethan. I could tell when we met for drinks over the summer that she knew. She had a wary look in her eyes, as if she was afraid I might try to drown her like I tried to drown Susanna. She
knew
, Diary. She was going to ruin my life with the knowledge, then she was going to steal Ethan and take him for her own.

I hacked her e-mails, and then I tapped her phone. Her e-mails are little-miss-perfect clean, as I suspected they would be. There were a couple to Ethan, but she was never blatant. She was sweet, compassionate, helpful, friendly. Luring him in. He’s a man, so he couldn’t see it. But I did. Loud and clear.

There was a single incriminating phone call. She didn’t name names, of course, but I knew she was talking about me. She’d phoned Dr. Emmett Strong, her mentor and advisor. The conversation went something like this:

Strong: What can I help you with, Ginny?

Ginny: I have a…(long hesitation)…patient from one of the case studies I wanted to ask you about. (She was clearly lying about the patient being from a case study—I could tell by her tone.)

Strong: Okay, tell me about him.

Ginny: It’s actually a “her.” (pause) She was diagnosed as bipolar after a violent incident that occurred during her teenage years. (Here, of course, the red flags are rising sky-high in my head—although I was twelve, not really in my teenage years yet, but leave it to Ginny to completely fuck up an important detail.)

Strong: Go on.

Ginny: She continues to seek psychiatric treatment now that she’s in her twenties, and per the literature is doing very well. She has a boyfriend, a steady job, and by all outward appearances is functioning in the world. Her psychiatrist keeps her on Lamictal and Seroquel, and she claims to be taking it. (Here Ginny stops talking, sounding like she’s lost in her thoughts.)

Strong: But…?

Ginny: Well, I think there might be two things going on here. The first is that I’m seeing a slight alteration of responses in her recent transcripts. I think she might have gone off her meds and has kept it from her team. (There’s the stupid word again—“team”—God, it’s annoying.)

Strong: Okay, what else?

Ginny: Well…I feel like maybe she’s been misdiagnosed. Or, maybe a better way to phrase it would be
under
diagnosed.

Strong: What do you think the diagnosis should be?

Ginny: I think she’s schizophrenic. Specifically, paranoid-type schizophrenia.

Strong: Hmmm… Any hallucinations? (Yes, my thought exactly—I do not have psychotic hallucinations, voices in my head, etc., etc. This is more irrefutable evidence of Ginny’s stupidity.)

Ginny: No, at least none that she’s admitted to. It seems to me she’s an expert liar, though. (Ha-ha, that describes me to a T. And it’s so like Ginny to diagnose me with some ridiculous disorder. She’s been trying to diagnose me for the past four years. Nonstop. Anyway, she continued...) I know it’s rare in the literature, but not completely absent, for a schizophrenic to deny hallucinatory symptoms—

Blah, blah, blah. She went on to imply that she was worried about me, and she questioned Strong about the course of action she’d take if she were the doctor. Obviously she intended to attempt that ridiculous course of action on me. What a bitch.

Strong (a smart man) didn’t agree with Ginny’s assessment. The more details Ginny gave him, the more hesitant he became to listen to her. He said she was getting too emotionally involved in the case (no shit!) and that she should step back from it for a while until the emotions had cooled down and she could approach it with more objectivity.

She had to be stopped. You understand, don’t you, Diary? I know you do. Sometimes it boils down to her or me. And when it does, it’s always me who comes out on top. Always.

Chapter Seventeen

Through the morning, we operate as if in a haze. I don’t dare turn on my iPad or my laptop, because both the batteries are half-charged, and I need to save them for something important. It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re all busy with the
Temptation
. Steering, checking the lines, keeping watch, preparing for the upcoming storm.

In the early afternoon, Ethan decides to risk running the battery a little lower on his laptop to see if there are any new e-mails from last night before Mick took away our ability to access the Internet.

He opens up the computer, clicks on his e-mail icon. “There’s a message from the PI.” He opens it and reads, his face growing darker by the second.

“What?” I say. “What is it?”

“That motherfucker,” Ethan says quietly.

My heart feels like it’s pushing against my throat. “Tell me.”

“He’s not the Mick Tannenbaum we all thought he was.”

“Who is he?” I whisper.

“Garcia found the real Mick hiding out in a retirement complex with his father, who has Alzheimer’s, in Florida.”

“Holy shit,” I whisper, Kyle’s earlier words seeming like the most appropriate response to this. “Is Garcia sure?”

Ethan nods. “Yes. Garcia talked to him. The man had no idea someone had stolen his identity.”

“So why was he hiding out in a retirement complex, then?” I ask.

“He was hiding from his ex-wife and the courts, who were after him for alimony.”

I’m very still for a moment, taking this all in. Then I ask, “Did Garcia find out our Mick’s real identity?”

“Still a mystery.” Ethan’s voice is tight and angry, his focus still on his computer screen. One hand grips the edge of the desk table, and his knuckles are white. He’s pissed off but controlling it. “That bastard knew. He
knew
I was this close to learning the truth, and he took off. Fucking coward.”

“Do you think he was targeting me?” I ask quietly.

He doesn’t answer right away. “Yes.”

“Why?”
Why, why, why?
When have I ever given anyone a reason to hate me like that?

“I—” He breaks off suddenly, then says, “I don’t know.”

But I have a feeling that wasn’t what he was originally going to say. He turns to face me fully, and his jaw muscles are so tense, he speaks through his teeth. “I’m going to get to the bottom of it, Tara. I promise.”

* * * * *

As if sensing our moods, dark clouds begin to roll overhead and the seas pick up. Nalani assures us the weather reported this storm is just a little bigger than the one two nights ago. A moderate gale at most, she tells us, winds at thirty knots, gusts no higher than forty. Not a huge deal, and nothing the
Temptation
can’t handle.

Her confident tone is reassuring, and Ethan doesn’t seem concerned either. His calm keeps me calm in turn. Ethan suggests we keep the same watches, but they might have to be longer than usual to cover Mick’s absence. And we’re going to have to be more alert than usual, since there’s no GPS, no radar, no autopilot. We’ll need to steer manually, using only the compass to guide us. I am so glad at this moment that Nalani fixed it when it was broken a few days ago, but then I wonder if Mick had tried to sabotage that too.

I share my suspicion with Nalani, and, frowning, she goes to get one of the handheld compasses to compare headings.

“Oh God,” she murmurs for the umpteenth time as she checks the readings. “We’re thirty degrees off course. I thought the wind change was due to the storm, but no.” Her face contorts, her arms flail out, and she exclaims, “We’re thirty fucking degrees off course!”

Kyle, in an awkward attempt to comfort her, puts his arm around her, but she yanks herself from his touch and veers away.

“We need to change course, then,” Ethan says calmly. I imagine him handling all sorts of crises at work with this kind of self-possessed competence. No wonder he’s successful. No wonder he inspires people to build profitable businesses. “You can use the sextant to get an accurate reading on our location tomorrow. In the meantime, we can estimate our position with chart navigation. Do we have any more handheld compasses?”

I’m not the only one that is hanging on to Ethan’s every word. He’s become the voice of reason in this confusion and fear. Nalani is the most affected by what has happened. I’m guessing she’s taking it personally since she’s the one who invited Mick onto the
Temptation
after only having known him a short time. Kyle’s features are frozen in an expressionless mask. And I’m in such a state of confusion and disbelief that I’m barely able to function.

“There are two more compasses,” Nalani says. “The one in the drawer at the chart table and one down with the first-aid kit. If he didn’t steal them, or throw them overboard, or break them—”

“Okay, we can compare readings on those to make sure they’re all in agreement.”

Mick either took or dumped the compass in the chart table, but the one in the first-aid kit is still there. It appears Mick hasn’t tampered with that one. We set a new course and continue working for the majority of the afternoon in silence, each of us lost in our own dark thoughts, murmuring to one another only when we need help with something.

By the time night falls, it has begun to rain. The waves crest at about fifteen feet—big, steep mountains of water that peak high up over the
Temptation
’s
stern as if they’re about to crash over it, but the catamaran handles them with ease. I go down and make everyone a simple dinner of sandwiches, chips, and dried fruit—all our salad stuff and fresh fruit is gone by now.

I’ve especially missed the fruit. I’ve been craving a juicy peach for a few days. And strawberries. God, how I miss strawberries.

I take the food up to the bridge, and everyone sits in the leaden remains of dusk and eats while watching the rain, which is steadily picking up, as are the wind and waves.

Ethan is the first to notice I’m not eating, and he snares my eyes and holds my gaze as he says, “What’s wrong?”

I shrug and press my lips together, not wanting to let Kyle and Nalani on to my worry about peanuts contaminating everything—and my worry is stronger now that I’m sure the poisoning was deliberate. Mick might have put crushed peanuts into the coffee, then resealed the bag, or he might have somehow added them to the cream or the sugar. But who knows where peanut dust could be lurking in the rest of the
Temptation’s
food stores? It could be on anything.

I’d rather starve than go through the panic of this morning all over again.

Nalani abruptly stands and walks away. She disappears into the cockpit and down into the cabin. A moment later, she returns with a Hershey bar in hand.

Plain chocolate Hershey bars are on the safe list. They don’t contain any traces of peanuts.

She holds it out to me. “I can vouch for this. It’s from my personal stash. I’m sure you can survive the rest of this trip fasting, but we all need your strength. You can eat canned goods, because no one could have touched those, and you can eat all my candy bars, but you’re going to eat.”

I blink at her, surprised by this rare moment of kindness from Nalani. So she caught on to my fear about the peanuts and my fear that the coffee tampering was something Mick had deliberately done. Or maybe she caught on to Ethan’s suspicions. Either way, she knows.

And even though I’ve wondered before if she could be so hateful as to want to hurt me, now I know that it wasn’t her. It was Mick. Nalani is what my gut told me she was—bitter and resentful, but fair.
Sane
. Unlike Mick.

My gut didn’t tell me a damn thing about him.

I take the candy bar. “Thanks.”

After I polish off the chocolate, Kyle and Nalani go down to try to get some sleep before they need to go on watch. The cabin is dark, and we have nothing but flashlights to guide us. Nalani has a good store of batteries on board, but the supply isn’t endless, so we need to be prudent about using them.

The darkness bleeds like black ink around us, thick clouds blotting out any light that might come from the stars or the moon. The wind and rain and water crash so loud as to be almost deafening.

Ethan stands up as he steers, and I sit on the nearby leather bench. Except when we check the compass with the flashlight, there’s very little light—only a hint of illumination from an indefinable source that keeps complete blackness from pressing in on us and offers us the slightest hint of shapes.

Ethan and I are both subdued tonight. I’m still trying to process what’s happened. He’s been quiet all day, pulling against a taut leash of control that never snapped. Now, though, he slams his hands down on the wheel so hard I jump.

“I should have predicted it,” he growls. I can hardly hear him, so I stand and move next to him, using a wide stance to balance myself on the pitching deck. He doesn’t touch me, but the vibrations of anger in his voice do. “I’m so fucking pissed at myself for letting him come on this boat.” He gazes straight ahead, and I can only see the shadow of his profile in the dimness, and it is rigid with fury.

“How could you have? Nobody could have predicted this. Mick seemed so…” Well, actually he seemed…
nothing
. But that doesn’t sound right, so I finish lamely, “Nice. At the beginning.”