Tsunami Blue (13 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Gabriel did not come back to the boat all night.

By dawn my body ached for him to the point of physical pain.

It was a new kind of pain for me. Foreign and unfamiliar. It was pain that couldn’t be treated with smelly remedies or by slamming whiskey or old medicines. No this pain was lodged deep in my heart. And I didn’t know what to do about it.

I really didn’t.

I longed for his touch, his kiss, his warmth, for, well, for everything that was Gabriel Black.
I’ll be home in plenty of time to practice.

I had believed him.

And now I didn’t. It was that Runner thing.

But it still didn’t make me feel any better.

And the sea had been restless too. All night it had whispered and taunted:
Coming. Coming. Coming.

Finally, just as the colors of daybreak streaked across the sky, I rolled off the bunk and got dressed.

I wore all black, to match my mood. Black jeans, the black sweatshirt, black shades, and my boots.

And when I slid into my skull boots, that badass feeling came roaring back. All I needed was my knife. It was then that I realized I’d stayed at the party too long. I had been captured by a Runner, abandoned by a Runner, and been made love to by a Runner. Almost.

And what had all this drama gotten me? An ache so deep in my soul I didn’t know if I could ever regain the numbness I had lived in for so many years. And I desperately wanted to reach numbness again. Because when I did, this pain—this raw, twisting pain—would go away.

I made myself some Starbucks and contemplated my next move. Escape was always an option. But I wanted this boat. I needed this boat. With the impending wave, I needed to broadcast, and Gabriel had the means to do it right here on this little ship.

A ship that was now mine.

It must have been the coffee kicking in, because I had just commandeered this vessel and claimed it as my own.
Now, see?
I told myself. Gabriel should have just come home last night and none of this would have happened. At least, not this soon. After all, if truth be told, taking the boat was always the plan. But I had been reconsidering the throwing-him-overboard part. Until this morning, when I woke to a cold and empty bed.

So I guess it was official. I was one of those woman-scorned types. Who knew?

I hummed an old Taylor Swift song from back in the day, and when I reached the part about saying no and coming home, I threw caution out the hatch and belted out the lyrics as loud as I could.

There. I felt better.

Until I heard the approaching dinghy and the loud, gruff voices that went along with it.

I peeked out the porthole.
Shit.
Runner scum. Two of them. Well, I hoped they liked country and western. If not I was pretty much dead. Oh, who was I kidding? I was pretty much dead anyway.

I watched, crouched in the V-berth, out a tiny porthole. I should be okay. Gabriel said they wouldn’t dare board. He said they’d be dead meat, he said—
Shit.
They’d just boarded.

Did they have a death wish? Didn’t they know Gabriel would kill them for trespassing on my boat? I meant his boat. That was now my boat. Whatever.

Exasperated, I scrubbed my hands on my face. Of all the mornings for Gabriel to have pulled an all-nighter. He needed to be here to kill these people. What was he thinking, leaving it up to me like this? And I’d had only one cup of coffee. I needed at least seven Christmas Blends—with cream—to kick their Runner asses.

They were talking at the moment, not seeming too interested in coming down here. This, at least, was good.

“Did you hear singing?”

“Thought so. Pretty bad. Hurt my ears when we were rowing over. Sounded like that country crap to me. Probably came from across the water from Horse’s boat.”

Pretty bad? What? A Runner critic? Are you kidding me?

“You mean Horse’s ass, don’t ya?”

Both men laughed at their little joke. I shook my head. Now they were comics and critics. Well, they were just annoying. They either needed to come down here and kill me, or I needed to go up there and kill them. Whichever. It just needed to happen soon.

“So who’s gettin’ Black’s boat?”

I raised my hand.

“Trace.”

What? The thieving bastard.
Well, see, there you go, Blue.
If someone was going to steal this boat, I just knew Gabriel would rather it be me than “Mr. Missing Persons” with a fucking ear fetish. I felt bad about thinking the F-word—I was trying hard now that I knew kids were around—but really. Jars of ears stacked around this boat for decor? No.

“That bastard, he always gets the good ones.”

“Yeah. Guess that’s what happens when you’re Runner royalty.”

“What makes that bastard royalty anyway?”

“Black has them convinced he’s the only one who can bring in Tsunami Blue. Alive. Untouched. In one piece. Now I ask you, where’s the fun in that?”

Runner royalty? And they believed this crap? That was it. I was heading up. Gabriel must have a knife hidden nearby. I started searching.

I listened to the men walk around topside and complain about how this went to Trace and that went to Trace, and to tell the truth I’d pretty much tuned out both of them and written them off as whiners, until, “…when Gabriel Black dies tonight.” Now, that brought me up short.

“Indigo won’t be happy when his precious Gabriel doesn’t show in Seattle next week.”

Precious? That wasn’t good.

“He’ll be even more unhappy when he finds out Gabriel had  Tsunami Blue in his sights and lost her to Trace. Black was supposed to deliver her personally, with a bow around her scrawny little neck.”

“He had her? Actually had her?”

“Naw, but Trace thinks he was close. Trace figured she had to be in the area, because that’s where Black was headed. With the net Trace is casting, it’s only a matter of time.”

I really hated the word
scrawny
. But what I really, really hated? Was that Gabriel Black was nothing more than a delivery boy.

“Yeah, and I just bet that bitch gets delivered without any ears.”

“Count on it, bro. I want to be there to ask her if she can still
hear
the waves coming.”

“Man, that’s messed up.”

“Not as messed up as when we did those girls, remember? Trace paid pretty damn well for the ear with that pretty little diamond in it.”

I heard them high-five each other and laugh like a pair of donkeys. I was frantic for a blade now. I couldn’t wait to get up there and feed them to Jaws.

My hand closed around the hilt of a mean-looking hunting knife. Nice. What better to gut two Runners with? Gabriel had hidden it well, but I had been raised by Seamus O’Malley. Nothing eluded me for long.

Except Gabriel
, the sea whispered.

“Not now,” I said in anger, my voice carrying up and away.

“You hear that?”

The Runner’s voice, nasal, nasty, and mean, hurt my ears. I would kill him first. Just because I couldn’t stand the sound of his voice.

“Hell, yeah, I did.”

Like nails on chalkboard or a screeching wrong note, I hated the second Runner’s voice even more. Well, it was his lucky day. I just bumped him to the head of the line.

They met me coming down. I met them going up.

Both were armed with those long, skinny fillet knives Runners favored. And it just didn’t matter what I was armed with. I was lethal with any blade. And so much better than they could ever hope to be.

“Which of you wants a go at me first?” I purred with my knife behind my back.

“Who the hell are you, girly?”

“Baby,” I said in a sultry voice, “it’s just little old me, scrawny Tsunami Blue.” And then I added, “Your worst nightmare, asshole.”

He came at me. Just like they always do.

I met him halfway, cutting his Achilles’ tendon in one swipe and slicing into the femoral artery on two. He’d bleed out in minutes, but I hadn’t the patience or time to watch him die. I delivered a kill shot to the heart, the same one I had planned for Gabriel on that first morning. The next time I saw him—and there would be a next time—I just might use it.

The second Runner screamed, jumping me from behind. Just like I knew he’d do. I turned with such speed that he couldn’t see the blade until I had sunk it into his stomach. He came down on me hard, and on my blade harder. A belly stab is the worst; it can take the longest time for the victim to die. But I needed him alive for a few minutes. I had a few questions. Like where in the hell was Gabriel Black?

It took a full ten minutes to get the info I needed. The Runner was…how should I put it? Not willing to share? Shy? Yeah, that about covers it. But in the end, I got what I needed. Gabriel was scheduled to fight in the cage at midnight tonight.

And all bets said he wouldn’t come out alive.

Chapter Nineteen

As dusk seeped into twilight I maneuvered Gabriel’s sleek, black-hulled sailboat out of the harbor, past the breakwater, and steered her out to open water. I thanked God for the absinthe and parties and the violence that engulfed Runner mentality when darkness fell. No one cared about an unmanned boat they figured would be fine until morning. What I would have given to see the look on their faces when they woke to find Gabriel’s boat gone. Now that would have been a Kodak moment.

The winter winds were up and I was under way in no time. I trimmed the sails the way I’d seen Gabriel do it. He had made it look easy; there was nothing easy about it.

But then, he knew what he was doing.

Still, with twice as much work, blistered hands, and a rope burn, I persevered.  

It was official: I was stealing Gabriel Black’s boat. And it served him right. He had stolen my heart. And it wasn’t even a fair trade. He could easily get another boat. I couldn’t get another heart. But I would try to find him tonight, confront him, and I would do my best to make myself hate him. Only then did I have a prayer of reclaiming the pieces of what was left of my heart.

I could admit it out here, alone on the sea with only the wind and clouds across the moon for company. I could admit that I had fallen in love with him, crazy as it sounded. Probably on that very first night. But it was over for me. I’d been used again, just as I’d been used all my life. Nothing new there. It just hurt more this time. A lot more.

Tonight, under the cover of darkness, I would find him.

I didn’t know what “the cage” was, and it didn’t sound good, but I needed answers too much to be intimidated.

I was going to find out once and for all who Indigo was and what he wanted with me. I needed to know what I was up against. Then I’d leave Gabriel Black and never see him again. He found me once, but it wouldn’t happen twice. Tears came to my eyes, and for one self-indulgent moment, I let them tumble and fall.

After a minute, maybe two, and I wiped them away with the sleeve of the black fleece Gabriel had given me. I vowed those were the last tears for Gabriel Black, my dark angel, my delivery boy, I would ever shed.

Blood still marred the teak where the two thieving Runners had met with their little accident. The “little accident,” of course, being me. I had waited to throw the bodies of the two men overboard until just past the breakwater. Not that anyone would have noticed. Around Runners, bodies went into the water all the time. No one noticed anything out of the usual. The
unusual
would have been if someone didn’t try to steal Gabriel’s beauty of a boat at morning light. I was so happy to beat them to it.

I suppose I should have spent more time contemplating the undeniable fact that I had just taken two more human lives. I should have felt bad, prayed for forgiveness, something. But I felt nothing for the men I had killed. In fact, out here on the water, with only the wind and waves for company, I was damn glad. Glad I had ended their miserable lives. I felt relieved. Relieved that they would never rape and murder a young girl again. Or cut off her ear. The left one, with the tiny diamond in it she had gotten for her birthday one week before.

“In the wind” works both ways. People listen to me. And I in turn listen to them. I’d heard about the little Uplander girl. And Max and I had vowed revenge if the killers ever crossed our path. At least, I was sure Max would have if he could people-speak. Who knew that would be today, on a beautiful little sailboat that I was stealing from the man I loved? Crazy.

Leaving the harbor behind, and with the guidance of the moonlight, I hugged the craggy shoreline of New Vancouver Island, looking for a small point of land. It looked like an arrow pointing inland. Inland to a small, hidden bay. A bay Seamus had told me about when I was young: close access to shore, a back way into New Vancouver, and loaded with sea piranha.
Don’t dip your toes, Blue
, he had said.
They’ll eat ’em and come back for more. Eat right up your leg, they will.

I saw it. It seemed so obvious, but that was the beauty of it. Unless you knew what to look for, you’d see nothing. Nothing but a craggy, unwelcoming shoreline that screamed,
Go away.

The bay was perfect: sheltered and hidden, and, man, did I need to take precautions. A boat like this would be missed in the harbor by the right men—men like Trace. Or, as I preferred to call them, monsters like Trace. I had no doubt that he would be looking for this boat, maybe within hours. I didn’t even know what he looked like. He was only a voice on the airways to me. I guess we had that in common. I shuddered. Just thinking about him made my ears burn.

Still, if I could steal this boat, someone else could too.

Dropping anchor was easy. Securing the sails, coiling lines, stowing the gear…well, that was flat-out exhausting. I hated to admit it, but it took me twice as long as it had Gabriel. Oh well, he had lots of practice. And I’d get better with time.

All of a sudden I wasn’t thinking about the efficiencies of sailing. Practice, getting better, lying in Gabriel’s arms—which would never happen again—that was what I was thinking of. My body ached. Not from the work, but for him.

Enough, Blue. Enough.

The next few hours passed quickly as I made ready for my late night visit to New Vancouver. I readied the dinghy, the same boat the two dead Runners didn’t need anymore. So nice of them to loan it to me.

I checked supplies to see if I needed to steal anything, um, that is,
buy
anything. Providing I could figure out how. Come on. I was a girl. How hard could shopping be? And I spent some time with the shortwave, memorizing every nuance of Gabriel’s tweaked and buffed-up model. Impressive as it was, he had put lots of gadgets on it that weren’t necessary. High-grade chrome, polished brass, racing stripes. Okay, so there weren’t really any racing stripes. But what is it with guys and their toys? Bigger is not always better.

I flashed on Gabriel naked in my sleeping bag. His sexiness, his size, intimidating and intriguing. Was bigger better? I guessed that remained to be seen. And as it stood, I would never find out. Sighing, I got back to the job I deemed the most important. I hadn’t been on the airwaves for a few days, which by itself wasn’t unusual. There wasn’t a Tsunami Blue show every night. But a killer wave was coming, and I was gonna be ready for it.

I thought of Nick and Alec, with their hazel eyes and freckles sprinkled across their nose. Yeah. I’d damned well better be ready.

Lastly, I armed myself.

Gabriel had quite the arsenal of knives and weapons. You just had to know where to look.

It was like an Easter-egg hunt without the chocolate. I actually enjoyed ripping into floorboards and prying out false ceilings. Gabriel would not have approved, but this was my boat now, and I would put it all back. If I got around to it. I hated to admit it, but I was kind of a slob. That’s what happens when you live alone. Still, if I had to point fingers, Max was way worse.

I did not find guns. Salt water was hell on weapons. Salt was in the mist, the wind, the spray, everywhere. Barrels and chambers and any moving parts corroded and froze. And though handguns used to be the deadly norm, it was a world of blades now. When your life depended on it, not many wanted to risk a gun malfunction. But a blade? Well, what can I say? They always worked for me. Every time. I loaded up. I’d never been shy that way.

I was ready. Gabriel had at least until one minute after midnight to live. I say that because the festivities started at the stroke of twelve. And all bets were that he wouldn’t last much longer. What the hell was the cage? And why did my heart pound and my palms sweat at the thought of Gabriel facing death?

I had to get going. I had to see for myself. As I climbed into the dinghy, I searched the water for the piranha my uncle had warned me about. But the tiny bay was calm and clear in the moonlight as only salt water can be.

 I started to row, slow, exacting strokes, and fell into an easy rhythm. I’d be at the shoreline in minutes. But then, out of nowhere, the sea started to whisper.

I rowed faster. The sea whispered louder. “Not now,” I said, and my voice echoed across the water.

Now, Blue
, it whispered back.
Tonight.

“No,” I breathed. Not tonight. My stomach lurched and I got that sick feeling I always do when the sea wants to fuck with me. Not tonight. I hadn’t broadcast, hadn’t planned, hadn’t warned, hadn’t prepared.
I hadn’t saved Gabriel
.

The sea caught my little dinghy and started to spin it slowly. I smashed an oar into the water out of frustration and it resonated like a rifle shot. The boat circled faster, and I knew enough to pull the paddles in or else they’d be lost. There was nothing I could do now but hang on.

The dinghy picked up momentum and suddenly the waters teamed with sea piranha. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them surrounded the boat, broke the surface, and, with rows of fangs gleaming in the moonlight, they snapped and bit at vacant air. As if they knew I was only inches away.

The boat spun faster. “Not fair!” I screamed. “Not fair.”

The sea laughed.

I felt like Dorothy in a spinning house, like a teacup in underwater Disneyland gone insane, like a hurricane on the old Gulf Coast. A coast that didn’t exist anymore. I felt sick and mad and scared all at the same time. And then I heard it. The wave would come ashore tonight, at the cage, just after midnight.

“The monster?” I whispered as I collapsed in the boat, weak from the force of the motion.

Nah
, the sea said.
Just a little one, Blue. A little monster.