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I reach out and he pulls me to my feet. I lean forward into his arms and he kisses me, gently, tentatively at first, but soon our lips fall into a rhythm and all the horror of the day is washed away by his touch. Emilio’s what I’ve been searching for, he’s my truth.
“I’m still mad at you,” I whisper when we break apart and I lean my chest against his chest. “You still have a lot of apologizing to do.”
“I’ll win your trust back, I swear it. For now though, let’s get the hell out of here.”
We hurry through the door and into the garage storage area. Lesley’s in the shadows at the far end, gesturing impatiently. We hurry and Nathan and Dom are waiting outside.
“Welcome back,” Lesley says, squeezing my hand. We hurry around the side of the house and up toward the street.
Paolo’s parked in the Jeep halfway down the block and grins as we approach.
“She’s home,” she says and winks at me as everyone piles inside. I have to sit on Emilio’s lap, but that’s all right.
The Jeep pulls forward, heading back to Calico House. I lean against Emilio and try to think about the good times we had on the boat, the pleasure of his hands on my body, the ecstasy of his pain ripping through my skin. I can almost push away the horror of the last day, but it lingers there, like a stain.
We reach Calico House. The Jeep rolls up the gravel driveway and slows to a stop as Jayson comes running from the porch. His eyes are wide and he’s in a panic as he gestures back behind him toward the path that leads to the caves.
Emilio climbs out, but he doesn’t let go of my hand, like he’s afraid that I’ll run away again.
“What’s going on?”
Jayson manages to get a hold of himself. “Emilio, it’s the boat. They got the fucking boat.”
Emilio’s hand falls away and he begins to run.
Chapter27
Emilio
I’m dimly aware of Jayson at my elbow struggling to tell me what happened. “I was doing the usual check of everything like you told me to and when I got up to the cave, it was filled with this thick, black smoke. I went inside and followed the lights down to the dock, they were all on, and the boat was blazing hot, just like a fucking inferno.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“Nobody, it was totally empty. I found a gas can but that’s it.”
I run faster. The others fall behind as I let my highly conditioned body draw me forward. My brain’s working in a thousand different directions, but I keep coming back to one thing.
Without that boat, I’m finished.
My power lies in being able to do the smuggling runs. Without that fucking boat, we’re screwed. I’ll have to take the ferry back to the mainland and spend days or weeks trying to find a similar boat to buy, and that’ll cut into all the profits we’ve made in the last couple years if I’m lucky. It’ll be like starting over, except there are a hundred different ways I can fail—Cask can step up and take control while I’m out of commission, or Dean Wotherspoon can crack down on our society, or a dozen other enemies might take advantage.
I reach the cave mouth. Jayson’s right, black smoke rolls from inside. It’s not so thick that I can’t stoop down beneath it and dive into the caves. Someone shouts my name, but I don’t look back.
That boat is everything to me. It’s the first thing I bought with my own money, the first investment I ever made, the first tool I ever used to grow my own venture. I’ve nearly died on that boat, nearly watched other people die, and had incredible afternoons out on the water—the day with Kaye ranks easily at the top.
Now it’s burning. Soon it’ll sink beneath the water and fall down into the flooded caves beneath the surface, and with it, all my hopes and dreams and my identity.
I reach the dock and cough into my elbow. The heat from the blaze is heavy here, and the smoke is thickest. I struggle forward, trying to get closer, but the boat is fully engulfed. It feels like embers from hell, sizzling at my skin.
I drop to my knees as other people appear around me.
Kaye. Lesley. Jayson, Paola, Dom and Nathan. My brothers and sisters. My pet. The people I care about most in the world.
Kaye’s arms wrap around me tightly as the others mill around. Dom and Nathan try splashing water. Jayson stands with his hands on his head. Paola cries quietly near the entrance. Only Lesley stands there and does nothing, only watching the flames.
“There’s nothing we can do,” I say softly. My voice sounds like it’s a thousand feet away. “It’s gone.”
“You don’t mean that. We can still—”
