Page 71 of Sunburned

“A good situation?” Cody echoed, his face dark.

“I’m sorry, what I mean, if anyone will find him, they will.”

If her intention was to calm us, it didn’t work. Allison broke away, running up the stairs as a wail escaped Samira’s throat and she sank to the ground, pulling Gisèle with her.

“Goddammit,” Cody repeated, balling and unballing his fists as he paced the teak deck. “Goddammit.”

Samira was letting out a high-pitched keening, clearly in shock as she rocked back and forth on the floor, her face buried in Gisèle’s chest.

“Somebody needs to call Search and Rescue,” Cody said. “Has anybody called Search and Rescue?”

“Yes,” Marielle said. I could see she was holding on to her composure by a thread. “We are in communication.”

I was aware of the boat rolling beneath my feet, the sun warming my shoulders, the rivulets of water from my wet hair dripping down my back. Yet simultaneously I felt nothing, an odd numbness buzzing beneath my skin.

I could see the scene from above like a drone shot in a movie as I glided back up the stairs to the main deck, where the crew members conferred in low voices, their routines disrupted. I found my way back to the place on the side of the boat where I’d stood with Laurent, out of the fray and shaded from the Caribbean sun by the hulking upper floors of the yacht. Leaning on the railing with trembling arms, I fixed my eyes onMoon Two,gently rising and falling with the ocean swells, the large rock looming above the tender like a guardian. From this distance there was no sign anything was amiss.

Not yet.

Tyson would be out of oxygen by now. Sure, there was a possibility he had surfaced somewhere else, but it wasn’t likely. I had the strangest sense of déjà vu, the sinking sensation of knowing how it would all turn out.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone coming toward me and glanced over to see Jennifer, looking lost. “Hey,” she said. “The crew said Tyson’s missing?”

I nodded. “It doesn’t look good.”

“My God,” she murmured, joining me at the railing. Close up, I could see she was pale with shock, the lines of her makeup contouring dark against her blood-drained face.

We stood shoulder to shoulder, watching as an angular Search and Rescue boat cut across the water and tied up on the mooring ball next to the one whereMoon Twowas moored. The back of the rescue boat opened like the tailgate of a pickup truck, and two divers splashed into the water.

“Cody’s gonna be a mess,” she murmured. “And Samira, God. Nobody wanted him dead.”

My head snapped toward her. “No.”

She quickly registered my discomfiture, fumbling to walk back what she’d said. “I just mean, even if he was an asshole and maybe sometimes people talked about wishing he would die, they didn’t mean it.”

“Right,” I agreed.

But I was unsettled by her declaration, even more so by her attempt to walk it back. Tyson’s death—if he was even dead, which was as yet unconfirmed—was an accident, surely.

Or was it?

I thought of the blackmail, the falsified environmental reports…and I had in fact heard more than one person in the last twenty-four hours express the wish that Tyson would die. I couldn’t say I hadn’t thought it myself.

Other than Cody, I hardly knew these people, I realized. Theyseemednice. That didn’t mean they were.

I considered the shark-gray yacht lurking in the water not a hundred meters from our boat. If the developers had muddied the water, was Laurent safe down there?

He was a rescue diver, I reminded myself. Diving with other rescue divers. He knew the area, and what he was getting into. He was fine.

“Sorry,” Jennifer said, picking nervously at her nail polish. “I always say the wrong thing.”

I turned my attention back to her, shaking my head. “It’s not you. It’s just—” I glanced over at the neighboring yacht.

Jennifer followed my gaze across the bright water. “They were down there at the shipwreck,” she said, turning back to me, slack-jawed. “You don’t think they could have killed Tyson?”

I grimaced. “I think we should probably wait for more information before we start pointing fingers.”

“Sorry,” she agreed. “You’re right. I watch too much true crime.”

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