My heart stops. Mariana.
I shove past Armin and run through the yacht the way I came in until I reach an outside deck and see what caused all the noise.
On the eastern horizon, a big orange fireball illuminates the sky.
It’s not the sun.
“Get us over there!” I scream at Armin when he appears on deck. He pulls a cell phone from his pocket, touches a number, lifts the phone to his ear.
“Let’s go check out that explosion, Captain. Somebody’s gonna need help. Full steam ahead.” He listens for a moment. “All right, as close as you can.” He clicks off, then stands looking at the fire in the distance with his arms folded across his chest. “She can do thirty knots when she’s up to speed. We’ll be there in under ten minutes.”
Ten minutes is too long. I pull my own phone out and call Connor. He answers on the first ring. “What’s your status, brother?”
My voice comes out hoarse with stress. “I’m on the wrong fuckin’ yacht! The one Mariana’s on just blew up! You got satellite feed?”
“Blew up?” Connor mutters a curse. “We’re not live streaming. I won’t have an updated shot for about ten minutes.”
Ten minutes, again. I throw my head back and roar my frustration. Beside me, Armin doesn’t even blink. The man is unflappable.
“It’s gonna be okay, Ryan,” Connor says firmly. “Listen to me—”
“I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her,” I say, struggling to breathe, adrenaline lashing through me, my stomach in ropes. “If she’s hurt, or worse—”
“Stop!” Connor shouts. “Focus!”
I close my eyes, drag air into my lungs, drawing on all my training for high-stress situations. But no mission has ever been this personal before.
No mission I’ve ever been on has included the possibility that the woman I love dies in a fiery explosion.
“Can you get closer to the other yacht?” Connor asks in my ear.
“We’re on the way.”
“We?”
“Long story. Call the FBI. Call Interpol. Call everyone. Get that fuckin’ boat surrounded and get a medical emergency response team out there as fast as you can.” I hang up before he can answer and spew a blistering string of curses, panic pulsing through me like another heartbeat.
Watching black smoke rise in the distant horizon, Armin says, “I take it someone you care about is on that ship?”
My heart pounds so hard, I’m surprised he can’t hear it. “Yes,” I say through gritted teeth.
He nods, his expression thoughtful. “We can get over there faster if we take the speed boat. She’ll do up to eighty knots on calm waters.”
When he looks at me, I say, “Let’s go.”
* * *
As we slice through the water toward the burning yacht in Armin’s yellow cigarette speed boat with the busty pin-up girls painted on the sides, I try not to think of worst-case scenarios or all the horrible possibilities. I try not to think of anything at all. But the closer we get to the ship, the more obvious it is that the only possibilities I’m dealing with are bad.
Worse than bad.
Not only is the yacht on fire, it’s sinking.
Listing on her starboard side, flames roaring through all the decks and spitting high up into the sky, the craft is almost completely demolished. The satellites on the helm have been blown off. All the glass on every deck is shattered. Smoke and chemical fumes billow from the length of the hull in acrid clouds that sting my eyes.
There’s an enormous debris field around the remains of the yacht, chunks of fiberglass and furniture and metal, partially submerged, bobbing in the waves, blackened and twisted into ugly shapes. There’s diesel fuel, too, a slick film floating on the water, reflecting oily rainbows in the light.
I don’t see any bodies, but it’s obvious by the level of destruction and the blistering heat of the fire that if anyone was on board, they couldn’t have survived.
Armin cruises in slow circles around the hulking carcass of the ship, keeping a safe distance from the roaring flames as he steers carefully through the field of debris. I lean over the side and hunt desperately for any sign of life, for anyone waving from the water, for the smallest hint that would give me hope.
There’s nothing.
The yacht is a burning, blackened husk of death, the ocean all around eerily silent.
It isn’t until I hear the helicopters and look up into the sky that I realize I’ve fallen to my knees.
And that awful animal scream that seems to be coming from everywhere is coming from me.
* * *
The next few hours are a blur. People. Activity. Noise. Questions.
So many fucking questions.
The Croatian coast guard arrives on scene first, followed by their navy, search and rescue teams, Interpol, and finally, the FBI. There are also plenty of lookie-loos in boats cruising around, along with news and paparazzi choppers whizzing overhead.
Field officers from the FBI and Interpol team up to debrief me while the search and rescue teams get to work. I remember nothing of what was asked or answered. I do remember having to be physically restrained as I was removed by police from the scene, and Armin telling them to chill out because I was cool.
But I wasn’t cool. I’d never been less cool. I was a rage and self-blame machine, desperate for any other reality than the one I was living.
In the port at Vis, I’m released by the FBI and told I’m free to go on my way, that they’ll contact me if necessary. I think they were just sick of dealing with me by then. I heard more than a few mutterings of “lunatic,” “head case,” and, “meltdown.” I meet up with the rest of the team from Metrix, who, as a unit, take one look at me and call Connor for support.
I can’t talk to him, though. All my words have dried up. I stand in a parking lot in the waning hours of the day, holding a phone to my ear, listening to my best friend speak, anguish roiling inside my belly like a nest of snakes.
For a moment, when he tells me there are satellite pictures of a tender leaving the yacht just before the explosion, hope floods back in a sweet, heady rush that leaves me trembling. But then he says video footage from security cameras at the port captured good quality images of everyone who got off that vessel, and Mariana wasn’t among them.
Neither was Moreno.
The implications of that…of what she might have gone through, of why he’d send the entire crew away to be alone with her…
I go numb then. Blank. Everything is put on pause, except the nasty little voice inside my head telling me if I’d only landed on the right yacht, everything would be different.
If I hadn’t failed, Mariana would still be alive.
Afternoon fades into evening, and still I stand on the docks, gazing west, watching smoke rise in the distance, hoping for someone to come and tell me there’s been a miracle, that it was all a mistake. That she wasn’t on that yacht, that she was found safe and sound with Larry Ellison and his family, or floating unharmed on a piece of flotsam, or had escaped Moreno and was waiting for me on the other end of the docks the entire time.
That moment never comes.
With every hour that passes, I die a thousand little deaths until there’s nothing of me left but my shadow.
* * *
Like a ghost, I haunt the port of Vis for weeks, mute and grieving, soaking up every nugget of information that comes in from the various authorities about the explosion—what’s been found, how the cleanup process is going, what they’re trying to do to contain the huge diesel spill from the engines. I stay there long after the news crews have left, long after the rest of the guys from Metrix have returned Stateside, long after logic tells me there’s no more reason to stay, until finally, the reality can no longer be denied.
Mariana’s gone.
Again.
Only this time, she’s gone for good.
Thirty-Six
Ryan
Two months later
“Tell me you’re eating, at least. Last time I saw you on Skype, you looked like a chemo patient.”
“Christ, Connor, you sound like my grandma. And that’s not a compliment, by the way. The woman was a giant pain in the ass.”
His answer over the line comes across gruff. “Brother, tell me you’re eating so I don’t have to ask my wife to hack into the traffic cams in Paris to get me photographic fucking evidence!”
My lips lift to the closest thing approximating a smile I’m now capable of. I practiced it in the mirror of my hotel bathroom just this morning, aware that people have started to cross the street in apprehension when they see me walking toward them.
I’m sure it’s the crazy look in my eyes, but it could be the wild hair and scraggly beard, too. I’m starting to look like Armin’s twin. All I need is a rug glued to my back, and I’ll be set.
“I’m eating. As we speak, which should make you happy.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I sigh, shaking my head. He’s worse than my grandmother.
“Here, listen.” I lean over the table and shove another big hunk of country bread smeared with duck confit into my mouth, chewing into the cell phone as loudly as humanly possible.
Cows are quieter eaters. Champion pie eaters are quieter. I sound like a blue-ribbon hog at the trough.
Several people at nearby tables turn to send me outraged stares, like I’ve offended their ancestors with my abominable chewing, but after four weeks in France, I’m used to that. I ignore them.