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Belladonna.
Suddenly, however Milo managed to acquire this boat didn’t matter. Noah didn’t matter, and I knew I didn’t have time to talk McKenzie into going home. Cordelia was already steps ahead of us, and if she found the trident first…
“Sure, come with us! Get your luggage.” I grabbed McKenzie’s arm and pulled her onto the hull as Noah stood yelling on the dock.
“Get off my uncle’s boat! He’s gonna kill me!”
“I’m sorry, Noah!” I shouted. “I swear it’s an emergency! We’ll bring it back!”
“No! Get back here!” He stepped back, as though surveying the scene of his uncle’s boat adrift as the space between it and the dock widened. With obvious hesitation, he took a running leap and found himself dangling from the side of the boat. McKenzie and I rushed to pull him up.
“What the actual hell is wrong with you? All of you?” He brushed himself off as he clumsily got to his feet, struggling to balance with the boat’s motion.
“It’s a lot to explain,” I panted as I caught my breath, “but you have to believe me when I say that your uncle’s boat missing might not be the worst of our problems if we don’t set sail right now.”
“That’s it, I’m calling the cops,” Noah reached for his phone. McKenzie shot me a worried look before lunging forward to stop his hand.
“Noah.” In one of the calmest tones I’d ever heard from her, she spoke to him, looking straight into his face before looking back at me for a split second. “If Katrina says it’s this important, it must be. She doesn’t lie.”
I blinked back a flood of guilt as I realized the depths of McKenzie’s trust. She would blindly follow me like this, without even knowing why. And yet lying was all I’d ever done to her. I hid everything from her. But how could I tell her the truth?
It was to keep her safe. Mostly.
To my surprise, Noah seemed to listen. As though letting her words sink in, he looked at me, then back at her and finally up to Milo, who was too busy at the helm to notice.
“Why do you really need this boat?” His voice was pure. The question was genuine.
I took a breath. “This is going to sound absolutely insane.”
“Well, you’ve already kidnapped us.” McKenzie giggled. “Might as well spit it out.”
“We’re going after something. Something that could cause the end of life as we know it if we don’t find it first.”
“Man, I should’ve known you were crazy when I found you hiding in the back of my car. I knew something was up, but this is a whole new level of deranged.” Noah threw his hands up in defeat.
McKenzie’s expression began to darken, and her eyes narrowed as she pressed her brows together. “Katrina, where are we going? You’re being so cryptic.”
“To…” I swallowed and clenched my jaw. “To the Bermuda Triangle. To…to find a trident.”
They both stared at me in silence in a way that made my gut flip like a fresh-caught fish in a net. By now our boat was far enough out that there was no chance they could get off now. They were in this whether they believed me or not.
Just then, Milo’s voice broke the tension from above. “Can someone give me a hand with the sails? We need to get the mainsail up if we want to maintain speed against these headwinds.”
“I’m gonna go help him,” I uttered, using the excuse to slip away before one last pathetic attempt to reassure them. “You guys have to trust me. Make yourselves comfortable because this won’t be a short trip.”
Praying Noah wouldn’t change his mind about calling the police, I climbed the short stairs up to the deck to help Milo, leaving our two new reluctant crew mates standing in silence at the stern.
“You stole a boat?” I grabbed the line to the mainsail, tugging it as I tried to figure out what to do with it. “From your boss?”
“If we took La Esperanza we might not make it back. We might not even make it there,” Milo gritted his teeth, pointing at the sails. “I already unfurled the jib, now you just hold the line here and make sure it keeps tension on the winch.”
I tried to follow, but this was my first experience with sailboats. I took the line in his hand and held it taught as he began to pull the seemingly endless rope out and the large sheet above us began to drop slowly.
“But you stole it, Milo! You’re not a pirate anymore. You can go to prison for things like this.”
“And I would’ve been hanged for it back in 1725.” He froze for a second as his eyes sharpened at me. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help? If we don’t find this trident, there’s a lot more at stake than incarceration, Katrina.”
I groaned as I squeezed the rope in my hand. “I know…” I sighed. “I just don’t want things to end badly.”
