Monstrum (26 page)

“R
emember,” Cortés whispers to Murphy as we quietly assemble in the corridor outside the communications cabin a few minutes later, staying well clear of the glass window, “I just need you to lure him out here. I'll take it from there. It shouldn't be hard. It's Duke tonight. He's not that bright. But he's mean, especially when he's been drinking. And if he's awake, he's drinking. Leave him to me.”

“What're you going to do to him?” Maggie asks fretfully.

“Nothing fatal,” Cortés says.

“Will you get your priorities straight?” I tell Maggie, also keeping my voice down. “You need to be worried about what Duke'll do to us if he figures out what we're up to. What if he raises the alarm?”

“We'll cross that bridge if we get to it,” Murphy says. “Everyone know where your lookout posts are? And you know the signal, so you won't leave Sammy and me flat-footed with no warning if someone's coming, will you, now? But we'll need a good ten minutes or so to take a look at the radio and figure out our position and such. I'm hoping his computer brain won't fail us now, eh, Sammy-boy?”

Sammy looks pale but resolute. “No worries.”

“Don't screw it up,” An says, jabbing a finger in her brother's face. “This is our best and probably only chance. If they figure out what we're doing, they'll put us on lockdown in the cabin with a guard posted twenty-four-seven, if not worse, and I don't want to walk any planks tonight, okay?
Don't. Screw. It. Up.
”

“I'm so grateful for the vote of confidence,” Sammy says, bumping his fist against his heart. “
Verklempt,
even.”

“Oh, whatever,” An says, glaring, as she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Well, then,” Murphy says, looking at all of us. “Let's do it. Godspeed.”

“Godspeed,” we all murmur.

With that, we silently fan out. Gray and Carter dart down one half of the corridor to act as lookouts, clinging to the rail so they don't lose their balance as they go; Mike, Maggie and An head down the other half to keep a watch there.

Several steps out, however, the ship rides a nasty wave and Maggie hits the floor in a tumble louder than cannon fire in the late night silence.

We all stiffen and wait with strangled breath, our eyes huge, for Duke to storm out of the cabin and confront us. Maggie, who looks like she's ready to grab her samurai sword and commit seppuku for disappointing the team, frantically mouths
sorry
to anyone who'll look at her. I put my index finger in front of my mouth and make shushing gestures, hoping she'll stop before she does something else potentially disastrous.

We wait some more.

When nothing happens, Murphy gives us the sign to continue.

Cortés and I drop to our knees and crawl beneath the giant window that looks into the communications cabin, taking care to stay well under Duke's line of sight. Midway, Cortés pauses and slowly eases up just enough to peer into the window to see what Duke's doing. Then we continue past the cabin's door, and emerge in the area that will be Duke's blind spot when he comes out.

Murphy and Sammy walk up to the door, knock and then make a show of peering into the window and waving at Duke. Then Murphy thumbs the security code Cortés has given him into the keypad. I can't see Duke from where I'm standing, but I do hear his outraged cry at this intrusion, and it doesn't take long for him to hurry through the open door and appear in the corridor. He's facing the other way, toward Murphy and Sammy, but I notice at a glance that he's a short, barrel-chested, thick-necked blond guy.

With a Napoleon complex, a Jersey accent and a silver flask in one hand.

“What do you think you're doing, Pops?” He widens his stance, jamming the sausage fingers of his free hand onto his hips and hitching up his chin to get in Murphy's face, who's a good half foot taller than he is. “Did you steal the code? Eh? You know you can't just march up in here, causing a ruckus. The cap's gotta approve any communications, and he ain't approved nothing. What gives?”

Sammy gulps audibly.

Murphy doesn't so much as bat an eye. “I'd like to go into your fancy little communications cabin and radio for help so we can get off this accursed ship.”

There's an arrested second when Duke pauses and cocks his ear as though he wants to make sure he's hearing correctly, and then he throws back his head and lets loose with a booming laugh.

“You got some balls, Irish, I'll give you that,” he says, reaching for some radio thing he's got hooked to his belt. “But I'm still gonna hafta tattle on you.”

Cortés stirs beside me.

In a silent flash, he raises his arm and throws something I can't make out. There's a whistling
whoo-whoo-whoo
sound as it spins toward Duke, who turns to see what the noise is. His face is ruddy and unattractive, with a nose that looks like it's been broken badly and often, and the effect is intensified by the way his jaw drops open in a befuddled gape just as the whirling thing hits him in the forehead with a decisive thunk and clatters to the floor.

Duke sways for a couple of beats, long enough for me to think that we need to come up with a Plan B, and quick, because this isn't going to work.

Then his eyes roll up in his head and he keels over backward in a dead faint, forcing Murphy and Sammy to dodge out of the way or be taken out with him.

Astonishment glues me to my spot. I blink, dividing my gaze between Duke spread-eagled on the floor, and Cortés, who darts out to retrieve his thing and comes back to where I'm standing, looking rather pleased with himself.

I stare at him. My peripheral vision catches the others creeping out of their hiding places and also staring at him with dropped jaws.

Cortés's grin wavers.
“What?”

“What're you?” Carter demands. “Some kind of kid ninja?”

“Hell no,” says Cortés.

“What kind of weapon was that?” I cry.

“Say hello to my little friend.” Cortés holds it up for me to take a closer look. “Boomerang. Non-returning.”

The thing in his hand is a battered old piece of wood about two feet long. It's brown, flat, slightly bent on one end and has grooves in it. Cortés lets me hold it, and I discover that, in addition to it being really ugly, it's surprisingly heavy.

“Boomerang?” I ask. The boomerangs I know are the brightly painted and lightweight V-shaped ones Mona and I saw at a specialty toy store one time and couldn't manage to throw. “Boomerangs don't look like this.”

“I know. She's a beauty, isn't she?” Cortés is now working with Murphy and Sammy to grab Duke by the ankles and drag him back into the communications cabin. “See the carvings?” he continues, grunting with effort as they struggle with Duke's stocky body. “It's mulgawood. Probably about seventy years old. The indigenous people used it for throwing and hunting. This guy in Alice Springs, near Uluru, taught me to—”

“Excuse me. This is not the time for a boomerang lesson,” Murphy snarls, straightening up. Duke's body is now near his desk chair in front of one of the computer screens. To make the scene more realistic, Murphy tips over the chair. “Flask,” he tells Sammy, who dashes back into the corridor to retrieve it. “And aren't all of you kids supposed to be on the lookout in the hallway? So we don't get found out before we can even make the bloody distress call? Now, get!”

“Right.” Cortés grabs the boomerang from me and shoves it into an ankle strap beneath his jeans like some undercover cop hiding his piece. “Sorry.”

He, Mike and I run out of the cabin to resume our separate positions. The last thing I see as I glance back through the window is Murphy unscrewing the flask and pouring some liquor across Duke's gaping mouth.

“Do you think that'll work?” I ask Cortés quietly as we round the corner and take up our post at the shadowy base of a railed staircase at the far end of the corridor. “Making it look like Duke passed out drunk?”

“Oh, yeah.” Cortés divides his watchful gaze between the stairs and the corridor, but there's no sign of action. “He's going to be pretty out of it when he wakes up. I doubt he'll remember what happened.”

We pace back and forth, alert for any movement.

“You didn't tell me you had skills with a boomerang,” I say.

Cortés shoots me a wry smile. “You didn't tell me you had skills with a champagne bottle.”

That makes me snort. “I don't. I improvised.”

“Yeah? Well, thanks for saving my butt earlier.” His darkening expression makes something in my chest tighten uncomfortably. “Looks like I won't be getting dear old Dad a Father's Day present next year.”

“How can you joke about it?” I ask urgently.

Cortés's face falls. He turns sharply, rubbing the back of his neck and pacing away from me in a clear signal that he doesn't want to talk about it, but I can't let it go.

“It wasn't the first time,” I say.

“No.” His head comes up, and his glinting eyes, so stormy, tell the story of years of hurts and humiliations. “But like I told him, it'll be the last.”

Our gazes connect, and my breath stutters predictably as I realize our pacing has brought us face-to-face. I open my mouth to say something encouraging, like how brave and strong I think he is, but out pops something stupid.

“I've got your back, you know.”

Cortés stills, making me wish I could take it back.
I've got your back?
Really? I'm sure it makes him feel oodles better to hear that a seventeen-year-old girl he barely knows is willing to take on his all-powerful father if the need arises. I brace myself for a polite brush-off of some kind.

Which is why I'm not prepared for his answer.

“And I've got yours,” he says quietly. “I don't want anything to happen to you.”

The moment's intensity is too much. It's shimmering around him, humming between us, rising up and trying to escape from inside me. I can't breathe—my lungs have forgotten how.

When I can't endure the connection between us for another second, I pivot and take a step away to resume our watch.

“Bria.”

His husky voice reaches out, stopping me before I can get far.

He hesitates.

I stop and turn back.

“One of these days, when we've got a minute,” he says softly, unsmiling, “I'm going to try to kiss you. So you need to decide how you feel about that.”

I let the words sink in, realizing this is a turning point I might not be ready for.

I think about the danger we're in and our odds of escaping with our lives. I think about us living in distant cities if we do survive, with him surrounded by college hotties in New York City and me struggling to graduate from high school in Atlanta and make my hair behave.

I think about our chances of making it off this ship alive, and realize that if I die soon, never having kissed Cortés would be high on my list of regrets.

And when I look into the steady warmth of his eyes, I decide that, while I may have plenty of things to be scared of right now, none of them are between Cortés and me.

So I glance at my watch. “I have a minute right now.”

One corner of his lips curls as he reaches out for me. “Come here then.”

I go, grasping his warm fingers so he can reel me in and bring me up against the solid wall of his body. His grip is firm and sure as he lowers our joined hands to one side and uses his free hand to tip my chin up. He studies me, his eyes hooded and long-lashed, and I sigh helplessly, easing closer and crawling out of my skin with anticipation.

“Cortés. . .” I say, parting my lips and letting my eyes drift closed.

“Murphy and Sammy are done, Bria. I thought you'd want to know.”

Gray's voice, loud and hard, is like a lightning strike separating Cortés and me. We quickly step apart, and my face goes up in flames. Cortés steps in front of me—it's as though he wants to protect me from Gray's stony expression—and keeps a possessive hand on my hip.

“They got an SOS out, but it looks like you're not too interested.” Gray looks at me in a way he never has before, with flaring nostrils and murder in his eyes. He hates me in this moment, I realize, and the power of this hostility from one of my best friends slices right through my heart. He wheels around, heading back up the corridor. “If you two decide to come up for air, you need to get back to the cabin.”

“Gray! What's wrong with you?”

He pivots back around, looking incredulous as he sweeps his arms wide. “Do you
really
not know how I feel about you?”

This hits me like a bullet between the eyes, making me gasp.
“What?”

Gray sneers. “Right. That's what I thought.”

“Gray!” I look between him and Cortés, who's gone utterly silent and watchful. “You don't just . . .” Shaken and astonished, I flounder helplessly. “Why didn't you ever say anything?”