D. MacHale - SYLO

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re as good as home free.”

She gave me a quick, sharp glance. She didn’t appreciate my sarcasm.

The boat was a thirty-five-foot workhorse that was used for one purpose: catching lobsters. Quinn and I knew the routine all too well. There were empty bins on the deck behind the wheelhouse that normally held bait or the day’s catch. Bait would be put into a mesh bag and stuck in steel-cage traps. The traps would be lowered overboard and marked with a buoy. Every lobsterman had his own colors, so everyone knew whose was whose. After a few days, they’d travel back and haul them up with a winch to see how many dumb lobsters had wandered inside. They’d be measured to make sure they weren’t undersized and the lucky runts would be tossed back overboard. The bigger boys would have their claws strapped with rubber bands so they wouldn’t kill each other, and then they were all dumped into the deeper plastic bins that were filled with seawater to await the market and an eventual date with melted butter. The traps would be rebaited and dropped over to once again lie in wait. It was a Maine dance that had been going on forever. I couldn’t help but wonder if the tradition would continue on Pemberwick when things got back to normal.

Actually, I couldn’t help but wonder if things would get back to normal.

“You like lobstering?” I asked Tori, trying to make small talk that would take my mind off the steadily growing tension.

“If you had asked me that a couple of weeks ago, I would have told you how much I hated it.”

“And now?”

She shrugged. “Right now I’d give anything to be out here with my dad, just hauling out spiders. Funny how perspective changes things.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Perspective. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

Tori gave me a surprised look as if she were seeing me for the first time.

“That’s fairly profound,” she said sincerely.

I thought about taking the compliment and shutting up, but that wasn’t me. “It is,” I said. “And whoever wrote the song I stole the lyric from really knows what they’re talking about.”

I gave her a winning smile. She rolled her eyes and looked back ahead. So much for impressing her with my poetic observations on life.

“Keep an eye out,” she commanded.

As if on cue, I felt the boat rock as the V-shaped hull was buffeted by the surge of a wave. After chugging along for nearly ten minutes, we were one turn away from hitting the open ocean. I looked back to see the vague, gray shape of the Patricia ’s wheelhouse making its way along the same route we had just taken. Quinn looked to be exactly five minutes behind us and finding his way without a problem. Ahead of us was the unknown. I ducked out of the wheelhouse and looked up to see stars appearing in the rapidly darkening sky. We had timed it perfectly. Tori wheeled us to starboard, skirted the last scrub-choked outcropping of sand, and gently pushed the throttles forward to help break us away from Pemberwick’s grasp. We motored through a protected cove where the surf was minimal. Still, I felt the Tori Tickle rise and fall on a wave as if we were being lifted up and given a gentle nudge that would send us on our way.

“And here we go,” I said without thinking.

We were officially in harm’s way. I scanned the horizon, hoping not to see any patrolling Navy vessels. If there was a destroyer waiting outside the cove, our journey would have been a short one. But there were no ships to be seen. I looked back to Pemberwick, scanning for any sign of a missile-carrying helicopter. The sky was clear. We had already gotten further than the cigarette boat had.

“I’ll get us out of the cove before heading north.” She looked at me and added, “Don’t want to run aground.”

It was a dig over what I had done with the Willards’ boat a few months before, but I didn’t call her on it.

She kept the running lights off and the engine throttled down. I wanted to lean forward and jam both throttles to the max to pile on the speed and get away from there, but knew that could be a fatal mistake. The whole plan was to move as quietly as possible and slip under their radar—perhaps literally.

The cove was on the western shore of Pemberwick, the side that faced the mainland. That was huge. If we had had to circumvent the island, we would have certainly run into one of the Navy ships. As it was, we only had to travel a straight line. It was five miles from shore to shore.

Five really long miles.

Tori spun the chrome wheel, turning us to starboard and on to a northbound course that would run us parallel to shore. I would have preferred that we just kept going west, but the whole point was to put some distance between Quinn and us. We’d be headed west soon enough. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

The sea was calm, as predicted. At least seasickness wouldn’t be an issue, unlike the last time I had been out on the ocean when we traveled by ferry to my ass-kicking at Greely High.

I looked west to see the hazy outline of the mainland. It seemed much closer than five miles but that’s how it worked over the water. Distances always appeared smaller than they actually were. It was far enough away that I couldn’t make out any lights. The area where we would land was fairly remote anyway. It wasn’t like Portland was right there. Once we hit land, we’d have to find our way to the city. It was a problem I hoped we’d get the chance to face.

“Enough,” Tori announced. “Let’s get outta here.”

She was as anxious as I was. We hadn’t been traveling north for anywhere near five minutes but I didn’t complain. The longer we stayed near Pemberwick, the better the chance of being spotted from shore. Tori spun the wheel and we turned again, back on our original heading, due west. The island was behind us, the mainland ahead. I wondered if I would be able to hold my breath for the entire five miles.

“You see anything?” Tori asked, as if I would have kept it to myself if I had.

“Nothing,” I replied.

I kept moving my gaze from side to side, scanning up and down the coast for any signs of a Navy vessel. I didn’t think they’d be hard to spot. They had no reason to be out there with their running lights off, like us. At one point I thought I saw a single light bobbing far north of us, but couldn’t tell for sure if it was a ship, or a star reflecting in the water. I chose not to sound the alarm, not that we could have done anything about it, anyway.

“I don’t see Quinn either,” I said as I gazed south.

“Good,” Tori replied. “That means nobody else can either.”

We traveled in silence for several minutes. It was excruciating. I kept expecting to hear the shrill whine of a missile that was headed our way, or the bright floodlights from a Navy destroyer that had spotted us. Instead, there was nothing but the low, steady growl of the twin diesels and the lapping of the dark sea against our hull.

I stood right next to Tori and whispered, “Are we there yet?”

It was a joke. She didn’t find it funny.

“We’ve gone about a mile,” she whispered back.

We were both whispering for fear that the sound of our voices would carry over the water.

“A mile is good,” I whispered. “Two miles would be better.”

Pemberwick was shrinking behind us. I wondered how tight the naval blockade was. They had to be fairly close in order to spot any boats trying to leave. It wouldn’t make sense for them to hang too far back. That would only increase the area they had to monitor. My spirits started to rise. Was it possible? Could we have done it?

I stared south, trying to spot Quinn, but there wasn’t enough light. Again, that was good news. Visibility was low. By complete dumb luck we may have taken off on the perfect night. I fought the urge to grab the walkie-talkie and call him.