Page 89 of Uncharted

“Just your type of girl,” Haley says.

“You are my only type of girl, Sassy. And don’t you forget it.”

Her smile lights up the dark room. “You are so full of yourself.”

“I like it better when you’re full of me.”

“Dante?” She tilts her head back and laughs. Leaving her long, delectable neck available for me to kiss. “Whoever put those stickers on the tanks to make them look level? They must have had a second set. What would they have done if the first one went crooked?”

“We didn’t find any.”

“Right, because they put them on and they worked. But what would they have done with the other ones? If they had extras? Thrown them away, right? We need to search the trash.”

“The trash?” Trash is a big deal on a yacht. Rich people tend to make a lot of it. It’s the first thing we deal with when we get to port. “I made linguine for crew dinner with chicken that night. I watched Shayla clean up. If that trash was still in the crew mess, we wouldn’t be able to stand in here.”

“Sam must have gotten rid of it. But did he put it in the pit on the bow, or did he pitch it overboard?”

Chapter39

Down and Dirty

Haley

It’s almost lunchtime when I head to the engine room. Sam and Zane are working on the engine. It’s hot and muggy and super hard to breathe. I’ve only been in here a few minutes and I want out. Everywhere below deck is warm, but here... In here, it’s become unbearable. Sam and Zane both have their shirts off. Their backs are smeared with grease. “How are you guys doing?”

“Little Bird! Better now that you are here.” Zane steps toward me. “Wait, don’t touch me. I’m absolutely filthy.” I give him a kiss anyway. “I don’t want to get you dirty. Well, at least not this way.”

Sam groans. I turn and kiss him on the cheek too.

I’m not sure how he’s going to react. But he smiles at me in the dim light. “We’re making progress. Not as fast as if Green was here, but he saved the tender from a bigger tear, thanks to his sacrifice.” Sam clears his throat. “And we still have a fucking starboard outer wall too.” He shoots a look at Zane.

“Yeah, I did the math. The arc of the WaveRunner wasn’t going to hit the boat. There was a small possibility that it might have hit the reef instead of the deep pool of water that it fell into. But I get you. I get the point. Things might not have gone how I thought they would. I mean, they did. Because my math was right.” Zane flashes me a smile. “But they might not have. Pass me the wrench, Sam.” Zane ducks back down under the... generator? Maybe. I wish I had a better understanding of yacht mechanicals. Then I might be more helpful.

“Dante said lunch will be ready in ten. It can hold, so whenever you get hungry, come on up.”

“Thanks, Haley,” Sam says. “I’m not hungry. You can go eat if you need to, Zane.”

Zane pulls out from under the equipment. “I’m good for another hour at least.”

“I almost forgot,” I say. “We found some things. But I would like to go through the galley trash from the night we left. Did you take it out?”

“Yeah, it’s in the bow pit. I started to go through some of the trash, taking out the food waste and dumping it into the ocean. The rest, I put back. But that grew old really fast. I double-bagged most everything to keep the smell from coming up.”

“Okay, great.” It comes out of my mouth out of habit. Because am I actually excited about going through garbage that is months old? No, no, I am not. But I want to know why this happened to us as much as any of the guys do. And since they haven’t come up with anything for me to do yet, I’m going to do it. I pivot and head out of the engine room.

I’m down the corridor when Zane calls out to me. “Little Bird, there are hazmat suits in the toy hauler room.”

“Great, thanks.” I wave.

“If you wait, I can help you later,” he calls to my back.

“You’ve got more important things to do. I can pick through garbage.”

He stares and then nods and heads back to the engine room.

The toy hauler room is full of everything. But after opening a bunch of cabinets, I find a box of white suits. I take out a couple and head up to the galley because I have a feeling I’m not going to want to eat afterwards. “Hey.”

Dante puts his knife down and lifts his arm, calling me to him. “Hey back at you, Sassy.”

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