Seaswept (Seabound Chronicles Book 2) (23 page)

“Do you think Neal
got the signal? Enough to let him know we’re alive?” David asked.

“These things are
supposed to have a direct line of sight to the sky. I doubt it even connected.
We need a new exit strategy, and fast. Even you can’t talk your way out of cracking
Monty’s skull.”

Esther winced as
David adjusted the wad of soft wool on her face.

David dropped his
hands to her shoulders and drew back to look at her. “How friendly are you with
the Harvesters again?”

“The captain won’t
forgive easily,” Esther said, “but I have a few friends there.”

“Do you think if
we row out to their ship, they’ll take us on?”

Esther laughed
hollowly. “Is that our best plan after all this time?”

She could see the
first mate shooting them down before Cody and Luke even said a word. Captain
Alder certainly wouldn’t stop her.

“You got a better
idea?” David said.

“Anything that won’t
involve us getting blown out of the water. And we don’t want them to hurt Zoe.
She’s supposed to be their leverage to get the technology, but I wouldn’t put
it past Captain Alder to do something drastic.”

“The situation is
rather delicate,” David said. “We should hide old Monty. That’ll give us some
time to think.”

“Wait
a second! Time!” Esther would have smacked her forehead, except it would hurt
her face too much. “Quick. Push Monty under that table and help me search the
boxes again. We need to find your dive watch.”

Chapter 30—Escape

The watch wasn
’
t there.
The siren pulsed through the Calderon facility.
Esther felt the beating of the alarm through her body.

“My stuff was
here. Where’s your watch?” she exclaimed, kicking the box at her feet.

“Why exactly do
you need it?” David asked.

He shifted the
last box aside. He had acquired a new coat for himself, and he found an old
newsboy cap, which he set on Esther’s head. She tossed it back at him.

“It was
top-of-the-line equipment in its day. I’d bet my favorite pocketknife it has
the battery I need to fix the satellite phone.”

“This broken one
is three times bigger than the watch itself,” David said, gesturing at the
phone on the conference table. Fluid leaked out of the battery like blood.

“If we find the
same type of battery, it would be better, obviously, but the one in the watch
should be powerful enough for a call or two.”

“And you can make
it work?”

“It’d be a hack
job, but I can get a location signal out,” Esther said.

It was just
electrical work. Neal knew about satellite stuff, but she could reroute power
and fix circuits better than anyone. She looked around the room. The brightly
lit fluorescent room.
Of course!

“Hang on. I can
use the wiring from the lights! We won’t be able to move with it, but we can get
a message out if we can get it near a window.”

“Will that be
enough?” David asked.

“Has to be. Unless
we can get all the way back to the workshop. I think we crossed the point of no
return when we clobbered Monty.” For the first time since Monty walked in, she
smiled. “Also, the Calderon guys are probably figuring out what I did to their
ships right about now.”

“Pardon?” David
raised an eyebrow.

Esther grinned. “I
added a glitch to the system. Felt bad messing up my good work, but they’ll be
able to fix it eventually. They’ll still be better off than they were before I
got my hands on their ships.”

David opened his
mouth to ask more. Suddenly the sirens stopped and the lights went out. The
gentle hum of electricity disappeared from the building completely. They were
still for a breath.

“We need to move,”
David said.

“Right behind
you.”

Esther picked up
the satellite phone in one hand and reached for David’s arm with the other.

“Chelle’s room is
nearby,” he said, his voice floating through the dark. “We can hide there.
She’ll probably come to the meeting room first when she gets back from the
ships.”

Esther couldn’t
help flipping the light switch a few times. The power was definitely out.
Salt.

“When they find
Monty, we’re dead anyway,” she said.

“Not if they can’t
find us,” David whispered, and pulled open the door.

The hallway was
deep-sea black. Voices shouted at the far end of the corridor. Esther and David
pressed their backs up against the wall, but no one came. Quick as silverfish
they darted to a door ten steps away and slipped inside.

Chelle turned
around at the sound of the door. She stood amidst the shadows in her room, a
candle in her hand illuminating her startled face.

“David? What is
she doing here?” Chelle said.

Esther had to bite
her lip to keep from swearing, but David’s entire aspect changed.

“Oh. Hi, babe,” he
said, a layer of calm muffling the panic in his voice. “Esther got lost. I met
her outside just now. I remembered you have candles in here.”

He smiled with all
his teeth. It occurred to Esther to wipe the scowl off her face a few seconds
too late.

“Why is her face
bandaged? And where did you get that coat?”

Chelle took two
swift, dancing steps over to the intercom panel on her wall.

“Wait!” David
shouted a little too forcefully.

Chelle whirled
around, triumph on her face.

“I knew it!” she
shrieked. “You’re still on her side, aren’t you? You’ve been different since
she got here.”

Chelle may have
been talking about Esther, but her eyes were on David. The candlelight made her
features gaunt. Esther edged sideways toward a small table by the door. She
thought she saw something, but she couldn’t make any sudden movements.

“Please, Chelle,”
David began. He was too far away to reach her.

“Don’t argue,” Chelle
said, voice lowered dangerously. “I can tell when a man is trying to manipulate
me—and when he’s loyal to someone else. You’re escaping.”

Esther froze.
Something glinted beside a collection of shells on the side table. David was
still mostly blocking Esther from view.

“Chelle, please
listen,” David said. “You’ve not been honest with me either. And you’re not one
to talk about manipulation.”

“Ha!” Chelle
scowled, the expression and the shadows disfiguring her pretty face. “You knew
who I worked for that night on the
Amsterdam
.”

“It was a little
hard to tell after you drugged me with sink,” David said.

Esther felt a leap
in her gut at those words.
He didn’t invite
her back to his cabin after all!
She took a quiet step toward the side
table.

“Even so, I never
kept secrets. You were thinking about joining the Calderon Group even then.
Admit it. I know Burns made you an offer.”

David didn’t answer
Chelle’s statement directly. “They’re not planning to let us go after Esther
finishes the technology. Isn’t that true?” he said.

Chelle didn’t
respond. Esther took another step.

“They’re planning
to kill us,” David said, “when this is all done. Of course we’re trying to
escape.”

The shadows in the
room seemed to expand. Finally, Chelle answered.

“Not you,” she
whispered, widening her pretty eyes. “You could stay. They don’t want the
technology wandering back into the hands of the Harvesters. But you could
become one of us. We’d be the most powerful company on the sea with that energy
system. She’d probably want to return to that floating tub of hers no matter
what, which is why they’ll prevent her departure permanently. But you’d have
seen the truth soon enough. You’d be happy here.”

Chelle’s voice
broke a little at the end of her speech. It might even have been genuine.

Esther stepped
back from the side table and the shell collection and stood behind David’s
shoulder, her hands hidden. She couldn’t see David’s face, and she almost
couldn’t hear his next statement.

“I’d never be happy,
Chelle, not without her.”

Esther’s fingers
stopped their rapid movement. David’s words sank into her like raindrops on the
sea. Then her hands leapt into action again.

Chelle laughed
hollowly, her face hardening. “I’ve known since I met you on the
Amsterdam
that you were pining for
someone, David Hawthorne. It’s a shame. We’ll have to kill you both. It’s less
messy than risking you escaping and giving the tech to our enemies.”

She pressed the
alarm button on the intercom. It must have been battery operated, because it
gave a piercing shriek.

But another sound
filled the room, pitched lower than the alarm. Crackling, indistinct, it was
pure music.

The satellite
phone vibrated in Esther’s hands as the signal connected. She dropped the
excess watch parts onto the floor.

“What’s that?” Chelle
said, stepping forward.

The satellite
phone crackled, and Esther mashed the call button on the front panel, which was
dangling by a few wires from the main casing, where Esther had inserted the
battery from David’s dive watch. She’d spotted it lying on Chelle’s side table
amidst the shells.

“You did it!”

David stared at
the partially repaired device like it was his firstborn child.

“What is that?” Chelle
demanded.

She rushed over,
her candle flickering, but David blocked her way. He held both arms out in
front of Esther.

“Back off, Chelle.
I don’t want to hurt you.”

“The guards are on
their way,” she said. “You’re done.”

“What guards?”
David said. “Everyone’s out fighting the Harvesters.”

For a moment
Esther glimpsed fear on Chelle’s face. Her hand went to her side. Then Esther
leaned over David’s arm and blew out the candle, plunging the room into
darkness.

“Hallway. Quick,”
she shouted.

She found the door
and backed out of it. The corridor was still dark. David followed as the pop of
a gunshot split the air.

“David!”

“I’m not hit,”
David said. “Run!”

Esther took off
down the hallway, David following quickly on her heels. They heard Chelle
scream in frustration. Another shot rang through the darkness.

“This way.” David
overtook Esther and led her down a side corridor. “That thing working yet?” he
shouted.

“It better be,”
Esther gasped.

She pressed the
call button every few seconds, praying it would connect before sucking up the
last of the power from the little battery. They needed to get outside.

They ran until
they reached a doorway at the end of the corridor. It was locked, but David
leaned back and kicked at the handle. Seconds later they spilled out the door
into the muted daylight. The hillside dropped away beneath them. They dashed
along the side of the building, staying low to the ground. At the end they
rounded a corner and started climbing the rough volcanic rock.

“Is she behind
us?” David asked.

Esther chanced a
quick look, scanning the path and the empty windows and doors of the facility.
“Not yet.”

“Good. Let’s head
south. We need to stay close to the coast, but we don’t want to be anywhere
near the battle.”

They climbed away
from the harbor and toward the southwestern part of the island. Esther’s feet
slipped and caught on the stone. She was out of practice walking on land. A
strong wind pushed against them as they scrambled over the rocks. Rain swept
over them in bursts. Esther protected the tatters of the satellite phone with
both hands. When she lost her footing, David steadied her.

Abruptly, they
came to the edge of a cliff.

“Let’s rest here,”
David said. “It’ll take time for her to send people after us.”

He dropped heavily
onto the rock. His face was almost as pale as his hair. He still hadn’t fully
recovered from his period of starvation.

Esther looked down
at the sea. The cliff wasn’t as high here as it was on the side of the island
where she’d first approached in the lifeboat. This drop couldn’t be more than
twenty feet. The wind howled, fierce and sharp, carrying a sound that could
have been thunder, or it could have been explosions from the battle between the
Harvesters and the Calderon ships. Mist coated their faces, both from the sea
and the fitful rain.

The sea itself
spread before them like molten steel. The clouds were feathers of iron. As they
watched, the sun dripped a string of gold through the clouds and into the sea.
Esther took a deep breath. She had missed that wide, empty view.

“You okay?” David
asked.

“Yeah.”

She sat beside him
on the rocks, and he put his arm around her. The gesture was both awkward and
familiar, as if it were something that they used to do all the time but had
only recently rediscovered. She wanted to say something about what he’d said to
Chelle but instead occupied herself with the shattered phone and trying to make
sense of the cacophony of her feelings.

She felt a whirl
of elation, almost euphoria. David had finally declared his feelings for her.
She was deliriously happy, yet terrified at the same time. She attributed that
to their current state of peril. They weren’t out of danger yet.

She snapped
another piece of the phone back into place, guessing how it was supposed to fit
together. She twisted the wire connecting the battery to the device to make
sure it was tight enough.

“—er. Copppp
. . . yy.”

A sound that was
decidedly not mechanical came from the phone.

“What was that?”
David sat up straight.

“Shh.” Esther
twisted the wires again.

“Do you . . . chchchch
. . .
Luc—
”

“Hello!” Esther
shouted at the device. “Do you copy?”

She gripped the
wires tight, her hands shaking.

“Esther! Do you
copy? This is the
Lu
. . .
a
.”

It was Neal, his
voice struggling through the mangled device.

“Neal! Neal! It’s
Esther. Can you hear me?”

Finally,
the voice broke through loud and clear: “Esther! This is Neal! I’m on the
Lucinda
. We’re almost there.”