Page 116 of No One Aboard
She would need time, she knew. She would need the man’s trust. She would need the coordinates on the paper in her pocket. But most of all, to find Rylan and escape what she’d done, Tia needed the ship.
So she smiled through cigarette smoke, thinking about her family and the sea and how she was now more than ever like Lila’s sister, Elaina.
The thing that should have died.
“I’m Lainey.”
Chapter 56
Jerry Baugh
It had been one month since Jerry Baugh foundThe Old Eileenempty on the Atlantic. It had been eleven days since Agent Koshida told him his brother was murdered. And it had been twenty-eight minutes since Jerry bought a clip-on tie from Walmart and sat down in the restaurant to meet with Detective Madden.
Madden sat opposite him and ordered a gin and tonic. Jerry scanned the many beers on the menu, then got a club soda.
“So...” he said, stirring the carbonated bubbles in his drink.
“So.” Madden steepled her hands and leaned in. “Here’s what we know.”
She reviewed the case in detail: everything from the half-baked meat loaf in the stove to Nico de la Vega’s drowned body (still the only body they had managed to recover). She laid out the message in the mirror, the absent life raft, the cat left behind.
“Steve,” Jerry interrupted, suppressing a burp from the soda.
“Excuse me?”
“He’s notthe catanymore. I named him.” Jerry shifted in his seat and tried for a smile. It felt strange, so he dropped it. “Steve.”
Jerry might have been befuddled by his new sobriety, but he could have sworn that Madden smiled back.
“Anyhow,” she pressed on, “this case is going over my team’s head at this point. Now that the FBI are involved and all.”
Jerry adjusted his tie. He had thought about buying a real one before realizing he didn’t own a single shirt with a collar. But this dinner meant something, so he’d done his best with the clip-on and a T-shirt. It was the end of an era, after all. “So that’s it, then? You think we’ll never know?”
Madden opened her mouth, but their waiter, a perky teenager, came by to get their orders. Jerry asked for salmon, Madden steak. She resumed when the waiter was gone.
“This is a high-profile case, Jerry. It’s not just gonna die out. Actually, Will—uh, Agent Koshida—informed me as a courtesy that his people are taking Ernie Carmichael in for interrogation. They think that Cameron’s crimes ran deeper than just him, and he had a whole network of friends like Matamoros doing it too, maybe. But as far as the missing people, well... We’ll just have to see if time decides to tell, right?”
“Guess so.” Jerry creased his napkin over and over in his lap. “So that’s that, then. We just... move on.”
Madden nodded.
Jerry’s gaze dropped to his lap. He had moved on, at some point, from Steve’s death. But with everything churned up again, he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.
“Jerry...” Madden said. “I’m not supposed to say this. False hope and whatever. But I want you to rest easy from this whole thing. For Steve. Uh, human Steve.”
False hope? Jerry braced himself. “What is it? What do you know?”
“They found another body. And they think it might be Francis Cameron’s.”
Jerry sat back in his seat. Madden watched as he tried to make sense of the whorls in the table. “I... He...” Jerry swallowed. “How did he die?”
“Drowned, they think.”
Drowned. Jerry didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to do or what to feel until a smile, a real one this time, broke over his face. “Well, goddamn. Sounds like... I dunno...”
“Justice,” Madden said, and she lifted her gin and tonic to him and drank.
They sat in silence until their food was delivered, and they both dug in. The salmon tasted fine, but Jerry could tell it wasn’t fresh. Summer was half over, and by November, hurricane season would be through. In four months, he’d be back on the seas cruising inSheila 2.0and eating enough fresh fish to last a lifetime. Until then he’d live at the docks, day-fishing in shallower waters.
