Page 31 of On The Beach

Franco swayed a little as he pointed a finger at the large boat, his voice a loud whisper.

"Is that it?"

"Yeah, that's the one," I muttered, nerves kicking in.

What the fuck was I doing? And, more importantly, why the fuck was I doing it?I had no answers, just questions.

Papa Lou's Ferry to and from the mainland was the only lifeline off Reef Harbor. To keep Belle with me for a few more days, disabling it was the only viable plan I'd managed to come up with.

"It looks like a big mother." Franco blinked, looking all the way up to the ferry from our teeny-tiny boat.

"Let's go," I urged.

"You sure?" Franco slurred. "It's abigmother."

"You gonna think about your mother when you have to climb that thing," Cato offered unhelpfully. "Especially since you're not sober."

"You drank more than me," Franco accused him.

"Yeah, but you're still more drunk."

I was already regretting dragging my friends into my half-baked plan. But desperate times called for desperate ideas—and better to sabotage a ferry than to admit to Belle that I wanted her to stay.

"Can you both shut the fuck up and move the fuck on?" I rage whispered.

Cato scratched his head, looking skeptical. "This is a commercial boat. If we get caught, we're not just screwing around with a rowboat, Mick. They'll throw the book at us."

"Which is why we're not getting caught," I insisted. "Just a quick job. We pull a wire, unhook something, and make sure it's out of commission for a day, two, or threemax. Then we get out of here."

Franco nodded with an almost solemn expression. "Got it. Like pirates." He hiccupped. "Low-key, uh…non-swashbuckling pirates."

We secured the boat as quietly as possible, scrambling up onto the dock, trying to look as inconspicuous as three guyssneaking around a commercial ferry in the dead of night could look.

We climbed onto the ferry on a creaky metal ladder hanging off of it. I worried the entire way up that Franco would fall over my head and take both Cato and me down. We should've left him on the boat, I thought as he swayed above me, asking if someone wanted to singMy Heart Will Go On'cause he felt like we were on the Titanic.

Once we got on deck, we looked around and found that no one was paying any fucking attention to this boat. There was zero security. I'd been counting on that. Papa Lou ran a tight outfit. There was Papa Lou, and then there was his brother Unca Pep, who was around five hundred years old, if a day.

I pointed to the back of the ferry. "Let's go."

When we got into the engine room—area—roomwas too fancy a description for what this was, Franco, wobbling slightly, eyed the hull. "So, uh, where's the…off button? To make it stop working?"

"There's no button. We're just gonna disable it."

"How?" Franco asked.

I looked at Cato. Fuck, if I knew.

Cato cocked an eyebrow. "Hombre, why do you think I know anything about this?"

I stuck my hands in the pockets of my board shorts. "It's a feelin'."

Cato scanned the dock with a practiced eye, calm and calculating like he'd done this sort of thing before. Which, I was certain, he probably had.

He smirked at me. "Y'know, I've done stealth work on boats before, Mick, but, uh,"—he gestured at the ferry's patched-up hull—"those were generally armed. This? This is sabotage-lite. Civilian stuff."

Franco, half-listening, nodded enthusiastically,his eyes slightly glazed from the rum he'd downed earlier. "So, like, uh, you're sayin' this is an easy job?Pfft, that's what I said!" He stepped over to a metal hatch on the side, yanked it open, and promptly fell backward as a burst of stale bilge water sprayed him in the face.

Franco swore, staggering back onto his feet and wiping his face with his sleeve.

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