He unlocked Susan’s handcuffs, and Susan, stunned, but not too stunned to react, unlocked Edie’s. Then she set to work freeing her mouth.
“Now we leave the boat,” said Ben. He didn’t bother with the handcuffs for Kaytha. He used the rest of the roll of strapping tape and fastened her knees together, her ankles, her elbows. Susan thought how much it was going to hurt when that tape got ripped off and then she remembered that Kaytha was not a person to feel sorrow for.
“It’s too late,” said Edie. “We’re out at sea. You can’t run down the dock and call the police.”
“We can’t actually be out at sea,” said Ben. “The harbor is huge. We’ve left the wharf, but we’ve got to be within reach of it. Come on, girls. Before Billy gets back.”
Susan was massaging her wrists. Edie was not moving.
“Come on!” said Ben urgently.
“I’m staying,” said Edie.
They stared at her.
“This is my family.”
“Your insane murderous family,” pointed out Susan. Her mouth hurt. Her body was trembling. Her knees were weak. She was cramped from the curved position of the bunk and from being fastened down—and probably from fear. She wasn’t sure she could actually walk out of there.
Ben was not interested in Senneth family problems. He lifted Susan like a grocery bag, carrying her out the door with him, and up the tiny, curling stairs.
The stairs emerged at the far end of the main salon, right next to the wheelroom.
Billy was in the wheelroom.
Susan was still, ridiculously, in her colonial waitress costume. Hideously wrinkled and dirty, it fell now to cover her legs again and in the dark, if you hardly looked, she was just another woman in a long gown. Not, however, to Billy.
Ben went straight out the salon doors. They emerged on a narrow strip of deck, its varnish gleaming in the party lights, and there was nothing there. Nothing at all but water.
No land, no other boats, nothing.
The dark honey of the decks gleamed around them.
The guests were shadows, fluttering from salon to library, fax room to lower deck, upper deck to aft bar.
And Lady Hope’s location was, as Edie had said, out to sea.
Ben and Susan did not even need to discuss it.
They stepped up to the railing as Billy stepped up to them, and vaulted into the churning cold green water of the Atlantic Ocean.
Chapter 12
THE GUESTS HAD HAD a lot of wine.
They had had a lot of everything else, too.
Although some were up on the high deck, stunned by the views and the skies and the stars, most had returned to the salons, where they were in hot pursuit of each other and each other’s money.
Some guests were busy in the little library, where one was sending a fax and another was on the phone and a third was studying the marine maps. Two guests were in the deck house. There was a real wheel there, of the wonderful old-fashioned wooden type that are sometimes made into coffee tables. But there were also loran, radar, depth, speed and wind indicators, and enough other dials to resemble a jet cockpit. Rolled signal flags lay brightly in little slots, like bottles of wine.
The guests were mesmerized.
One woman said nervously to the steward that she thought somebody had gone overboard.
He smiled in a kindly fashion. “It can get noisy out here, can’t it? And sounds over the water are certainly deceptive, aren’t they?”
She felt like a fool.
“Are you a swimmer?” Ben Franklin asked.
Susan said, “Y.”
“Why? Because we’re in very deep water, very far from shore, that’s why.”
Susan giggled and blew out water like a whale. “YMCA,” she said, “had the only pool in my town. I can swim in a nice clean chlorine-scented pool.”
The Atlantic Ocean near Boston, Massachusetts, was not nice, not clean, and definitely not chlorine scented.
“Don’t you feel as if something hideous is about to bite your toes?” said Susan, treading water.
“Yes, but unless it’s a shark, I’d rather face it than Kaytha.”
“Sharks?” whispered Susan.
“I’m sure they hate New England,” said Ben Franklin.
They continued treading water. Susan said, “I’m not too fond of New England myself right now. Because that’s fog coming in and surrounding us. Real thick serious fog. And I can’t tell which way the shore is.”
“The current will carry us.”
“Yes, and what if the current is heading out to sea?” Susan pointed out.
“That’s the trouble with you Harvard types. Always thinking of alternatives.”
They took turns treading water, holding each other up. There seemed no point in using energy swimming when they might be swimming away from, rather than toward, safety.
“A hot July Sunday,” said Ben Franklin. “And if we’re out here long enough, you and I might actually freeze to death.”
We’re going to drown, thought Susan.
She could not think about it, about how her lungs would grab for air and find filthy salt water instead, about how it would feel, the pain and the terror, and how she would be sinking toward the unknown hideous bottom instead of being lifted into somebody’s wonderful boat.
But she couldn’t not think about it, either, and every thought she had was about her lungs or her flesh.
“Ben, I’m sorry I’ve never been nice.”
“Me, too.”
“Thank you for trying to save me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Ben, promise me something?”
“I don’t think I’m in a position to promise anybody anything.”
“Don’t let go. When we sink, I don’t want to sink all by myself.”
“What are you doing?” said Mr. Senneth nervously.
“Going back,” said the captain.
“Already?”
The captain shrugged his eyebrows. “I don’t think those two will get picked up, not at this hour, not with the fog coming, not with the tide going out. But I also think it’s time we docked, waved good-bye to our guests, packed our bags, and blew this town.”
“What about the necklace?” demanded Mr. Senneth.
The captain looked at him incredulously. “You lost the game, Ken. Lost by a big margin. We maybe could have kept going if Kaytha hadn’t started taking prisoners, but come on! It’s over. We have to bail out fast.”
“I can’t give up this name,” protested Kender Senneth. “I’ve built it up for nine years! I’ve got contacts in six countries under this name.”
“No contacts who will write to you if you go to prison,” the captain pointed out. “You stay in town if you want, Ken, but I’m taking out my other passport and then I’m taking a taxi to the airport. You will, too, if you think about it.”
“I want the necklace!” he said.
“You never had the necklace. You had your fake.”
“The exchange is Tuesday,” he said. “I know we can hang on till then. I can make the girl tell me where it is.”
The captain looked at him and knew how he would make the girl tell where the necklace was. He said, “Don’t start till I’m gone, Ken.”
“I have approximately six million more questions, but first I think we—”
“Excuse me,” said one of the musicians.
“Oh, are we in your way?” said Mitch.
“No, no, I just wondered if you could help me haul this down the stairs.” She was small for carrying rock-band equipment. The amplifiers were as heavy as she was.
“Oh, sure,” said Mitch, seeing no problem. Expecting to be right back. Acting as if he were still a nineteen-year-old living a normal teenage boy’s life. Acting, against all evidence, as if people on the Lady Hope were what they seemed.
The sounds were fat. Puffy overweight sounds: bloated horns and soggy wind.
The view continued to be what it had been: nothing. Vi
sibility zero. So that’s what it meant.
“Ben, I feel as if I’ve spent my whole life with zero visibility,” said Susan. “Now when I could see things more clearly, and care about the right things, and I know what counts and what doesn’t … now I’m really at zero visibility. Forever.”
“It would count to me if we sank using real names,” Ben said.
“Rusty Corder can’t be your real name. Rusty’s a nickname, too, isn’t it?”
“Short for Walter.”
“Walter,” she repeated. She began giggling. “You really stepped out of line when they were giving out the good names, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. It made him bob down in the water. “I was named for someone good,” he said.
Susan thought that was the most beautiful sentence she had ever heard. Named for someone good. Will anybody name a daughter for me? she thought, and years later that little girl will say, I was named for someone good?
I’m out of time, she thought. I wanted to do good in the world, be worthy of having a girl named for me, and all I am going to do is sink.
The top of Mitch’s head was still visible, going down the tiny stairs, when the captain came smiling to Hope’s side. “And did the most beautiful lady on board enjoy my boat?” he said.
She beamed at him.
“It’s traditional for the captain to ask a few guests to stay on after the party to salute the boat,” he said. “I’ll ask Mitch to join us, of course. Let’s retire to the Arabian Room.”
An Arabian Room! Really, the yacht held untold surprises, one after another!
The captain clapped a hand over her mouth before she could see it coming, grabbed her arms, and forced her down an opening in the deck. It was a glass-lidded hatch she had not even noticed. In the space below, Billy caught her legs, yanked her through, and swept her into a stateroom she’d never seen.
Each guest was personally escorted off the yacht.
“Lady Hope is such a beautiful boat,” said the guests. “Thank you so much for having us, Kender.”
“Lovely time,” they cried, waving, “wonderful company!”
“What happened to that darling little Ben Franklin?”
“He went home early,” said Mr. Senneth. “You know how the elderly like their sleep.”
Everybody chuckled, and waved, and thanked once more.
The caterers packed up. Billy and Kaytha began a sweep of the boat, to make sure nobody was hidden on board. Kaytha’s face had a horrible red strip, two inches wide, where the skin had torn when Billy peeled back the tape. Her wrists and elbows were painfully raw. But she was smiling. “We have Hope,” she explained.
“You’ve done enough damage, Kaytha. I’ll deal with her.”
“No,” said Kaytha Senneth. “You’re kind. You don’t know how to do this. You want to find some nice soft easy way out. Well, she knows where that necklace is! And there’s no soft easy way out. I’ll handle it.”
Kaytha said, “Where is Mitch, Hopester?”
“He went home,” said Hope. She was hideously afraid. Where was Mitch? The Senneths were onto her, and he was not here.
“I find it hard to believe he could tear himself away from you,” said Kaytha. “Ten minutes ago, you two were super-glued together. Where is he now?”
Hope pasted on a happy smile, busily being the silly pathetic teenager in love. “He’s gone on home to get a good night’s sleep. He’ll come for me in the morning. We’re going to drive out to Concord and see where Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott lived.”
“No, Hopey,” said Kaytha, smiling right back. “You’re not.”
She was stating a fact. She knew. Hope wanted to scream. Instead she kept up her act. “He promised, Kaytha,” she protested, wide-eyed and eager.
“We didn’t. Do you really think you’re going to have this life? Do you really think you’re going to go on being Hope Senneth, and having parties, and going on dates? Of course not. Your little allotment of time is up now, Hopesy.”
The master stateroom was immense. A California king bed was squarely in the middle, surrounded by glistening silver shelving. A tiny vertical bar opened up inside a circular silver pillar. A television set was neatly fixed in the paneled ceiling, so you could lie in bed, your pillow resting on a special angled headboard, and watch movies in perfect comfort. Down the silvered bookshelf ran a row of a hundred movie tapes, and inside the angled headrest were CDs, video games, and paperback novels. The bed itself was covered in cloth of black and silver. It was sort of Arabian, like a sheik’s tent.
“You may scream if you like,” said Mr. Senneth. “Nobody can hear you. There are no windows or openings on this level. Any sound you make will be muffled by the construction of the boat, and by the fact that we are actually below the water line.”
“It’s time to tell us where the necklace is, Hope,” said Kaytha. Her stare was so frightening that, to get away from it, Hope sat down on the edge of the bed. Kaytha immediately sat also, as if they were little cars stuck on the same track.
“We’re bringing Dr. Patel on board,” said Mr. Senneth. “A few injections and you should be chatting away about the necklace. It would spare you considerable pain if you simply talked about it now.”
Hope had a feeling that Dr. Patel usually saw Kaytha. Often. Would the doctor be willing to listen to her? She must know that Hope Senneth didn’t exist.
Oh, that would be a fine sentence to use on a psychiatrist, she thought. Hi, I don’t exist, but—
“Talk!” hissed Kaytha.
“I’m happy to talk,” said Hope, “but I explained to you over and over that I don’t remember who I am! You’re the ones who claimed me. You’re the ones who insist that I am Hope Senneth. You came out onto that plaza and said Yes, this is my daughter, come home to The Jayquith.” She let herself cry again. “I’m so sorry that Edie stole your necklace. I’m so sorry that I don’t still have it. But you’re talking about things I don’t remember!”
For a moment they still believed her. It was sweet praise, in a way, that she could still, with all that had happened, maintain her act.
“Fine,” said Kaytha. “But I’m not angry now over the necklace, or even over Hope Senneth, who doesn’t exist. But because you took Mitch from me.”
The knife seemed as huge as an executioner’s blade. The only thing more scary than the knife was the look in Kaytha’s eyes.
“So now, my dear cuz, I assure you I’m eager to use this knife between your little ribs.”
Hope dissolved. “All right! All right, I’ll tell you! I never had amnesia. I made it all up. I’m fine, I always was. Just don’t use that knife. Mr. Senneth, don’t let her use that knife, please—”
“It was a scam?” he said. “The whole thing was a con?”
She was astonished to see that he was pleased. Proud, even, as if she were his daughter, and had proved herself worthy.
“I’ve spent my life conning people,” said Mr. Senneth. “I’m very good. It’s a pity, Hope, that there is no Hope, and that you and I will never work together again. You are an artist.” He meant this. He was comparing himself, a con artist, to painters and sculptors.
“The amnesia was a crock?” said Kaytha. “You tricked us?”
Time. She had to gain time. Surely Mitch had plans, surely he was calling the police or the cavalry or the coast guard or whoever you called in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Kaytha,” she said, “if I’m not Hope Senneth, who is? Who was she? Whose passport is it?”
“My mother’s,” said Kaytha. “My mother had a hard time facing life. She decided not to go on living last year.”
“And you watched?” said Hope, remembering the hatred Kender Senneth felt.
Kaytha slashed down hard with the knife, but Hope grabbed a bed pillow and she held it between her and the blade like a shield.
The knife sliced into the pillow, a great crescent of silver going down, and a spill of feathers wafted into the
room. Kaytha laughed. “Make a wish,” she teased Hope. “Catch one, like a falling star or a milkweed seed. Make a wish. I will decide what comes true, of course. So chances are, your wishes won’t come true. But you could try.”
She was insane. You could see it. Hope had not known that insanity could be visible.
“You didn’t really need to act, did you?” Hope said to Mr. Senneth. “After what Kaytha has put you through, accepting a daughter with amnesia was nothing.”
“I was the actress!” said Kaytha. “You were nothing! I saw you down there, I saw what happened, and when Billy phoned us from the yacht phone to say that you didn’t know who you were, I said, Fine, then, we’ll know who she is! We’ll know for her! I plotted the whole father/daughter/cousin thing in two minutes! It was my script!”
“You were brilliant,” said Hope.
“Yes, I was,” said Kaytha. “But my father likes having you for a daughter more than he likes having me.”
Hope thought this was reasonable of him.
“So I’m getting rid of you. It won’t hurt if you tell me where the necklace is first.”
She did not dare tell them where the necklace was.
It had shaken Mitch terribly to get back up to the deck and find no Hope. No Mr. Senneth. No Kaytha. They hadn’t left Lady Hope, he was sure of that. He had to get help, but he couldn’t leave the yacht to do it; he had to be sure Hope was okay, take her with him. He was strong. He could shove any of these people overboard, if need be.
Except that one of them had a gun.
Mitch ducked into the engine room.
He knew it well, having spent many hours here when his parents owned Starry Night. Parts of the engine had been rebuilt, and he approved. His plan was to wait until the place was quiet, and then summon the coast guard on the modem in the wheel room. He’d say it was drugs, even though he knew now it was the necklace, whatever the necklace meant, or was. The coast guard would be here in a second. They were only a few wharves away. Maybe just to be sure he’d also fax something to the customs office at Fosters Wharf.
He’d have the boat overrun in a minute.