D. MacHale - SYLO

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Kent called.

“I don’t see anybody else on board who knows more,” was Tori’s cocky reply.

I had total faith in her, and in her father’s opinion. He said that if anybody could pilot a boat through a crapstorm, it was Tori. I also put faith in Quinn’s opinion. Tori could sure as hell tie knots.

“Ready?” she asked me.

“Absolutely,” I replied.

Tori turned her baseball cap backward and hit the throttles. The engines roared, the boat lurched forward—and the crack of a rifle cut through it all. I spun around to look back at the bluff to see a SYLO sharpshooter sitting on top, with his rifle trained on us.

“They’re here!” I shouted over the roar of the engines. “That must have been the guy who got Feit.”

I looked at Tori. She was slumped over the wheel.

“Tori?” I called.

She didn’t answer.

A blossom of blood was growing on her back, soaking her shirt.

My brain locked.

I didn’t know if I should shake her or scream for help or grab the wheel. I probably should have done all three, but I felt as though I’d been hit in the head with a baseball bat.

It was the second gunshot that pulled me back into the moment. I heard a crack and then the fiberglass console directly between the two of us was shattered by the impact of a bullet.

“Kent!” I shouted.

Turning around I saw that both Olivia and Kent were huddled down on the seat, beneath the stern rail and the engines.

“She’s hit, help her!” I screamed.

He didn’t move.

“Now!”

I tried to gently pull Tori back off the wheel but this was no time for being careful. We were flying over the water’s surface under full power and nobody was steering. First priority was to take control.

Kent finally came forward and grabbed her by the shoulders.

Tori moaned in pain.

“What do I do?” he cried. He was near brain-lock as well.

“Get her back there and lay her on the deck,” I screamed. “And stay low!”

He unbuckled her seat belt, then reached under her arms and dragged her off the seat. I didn’t have time to worry about her. We were under attack. I undid my own seat belt and slid into the captain’s chair.

“She’s bleeding!” Olivia cried, as if she was more worried about getting blood on her clothes than about Tori’s life.

“Get us outta here!” Kent yelled.

Thank you, stater-of-the-obvious. I hoped that with each passing second we were getting further out of range of the sharpshooter. Just to be sure, I made a short turn to keep from traveling in a perfectly straight line and making us a perfectly easy target. I barely touched the wheel and the boat responded instantly.

“Whoa, easy!” Kent hollered.

Tori had called it. This boat could maneuver. The slightest adjustment made a dramatic turn.

No more shots followed. We were definitely out of range. But now I was the captain of the boat so I set a course that would take us out of the mouth of the bay. Chinicook was north of Pemberwick Island and the bay was to the northernmost shore of Chinicook. All I could think to do was get out of the bay, round the top of the island, and then head west, staying as close to the island for protection for as long as possible before turning into the open sea and the five-mile crossing to the mainland. It was the best I could come up with.

“How is she?” I called back.

“I don’t know,” Kent replied. “She’s bleeding bad. Front and back. The bullet must have traveled straight through her shoulder.”

“It freakin’ hurts,” Tori moaned out.

She was conscious. At least that was something.

“Put pressure on it to stop the bleeding,” I ordered. “Then find something to bandage it.”

I didn’t know anything about bullet wounds, but it seemed like Tori may have caught a break if the bullet went through her shoulder without hitting anything vital—like her heart or her lungs. If she could talk, I had to believe we had some time to get her help. But where? There were no hospitals in the ocean, and we definitely weren’t going back to Arbortown. It made getting to Portland all the more critical.

“What do I use?” Kent cried. “There aren’t any bandages back here!”

“Look under the seats,” I ordered.

Olivia responded and started lifting up cushions. It wasn’t an easy job because we were bouncing over the swells, but she stayed focused.

“Here!” she exclaimed and pulled out a first-aid kit.

“There’s gotta be gauze or something,” I said. “Pack the wound and then use a bandage to tie it up.”

“Got it, got it,” Kent said. “Jeez, there’s blood everywhere.”

“So shut up and stop it,” Tori ordered.

It was good to hear her voice. She was with us and alert. But for how long?

We were nearing the mouth of the bay. It was time to turn but I had no idea how shallow the bottom was. The last thing I wanted to do was run aground or hit a rock, like I did the last time I was in command of a boat. To be safe I steered a wide course that I hoped would get us out of the bay.

I kept glancing back to see how Tori was doing and was surprised to see Olivia really stepping up.

“I don’t think it’s so bad,” she said to Tori, though it sounded like a lie to make her feel better. “It looks like the bullet went clean through. We’ll stop the bleeding and you’ll be okay.”

She gingerly took off Tori’s sweatshirt and then her flannel shirt to reveal the wound. Olivia used some alcohol on cotton pads to clean it up. It actually seemed as though she knew what she was doing. Once the blood was wiped away, the wound didn’t look quite so bad.

“Jeez,” Kent said. “It really did go clean through. It’s just a hole on either side.”

“Yeah, a hole that’s bleeding,” Tori pointed out.

Olivia made two thick pads out of gauze and placed one in front on the wound just below her collarbone and the other on her back, just inside of her bra strap.

“Get the bandage,” she instructed Kent.

There was an Ace bandage for wrapping sprained ankles that Olivia used to hold the gauze pads in place. She wound it under Tori’s armpit, covering both gauze pads.

“Sorry, I’ve got to make it tight,” she said to Tori kindly. “It’s the only thing that’ll stop the bleeding.”

Tori said, “It’s like you’ve done this before.”

“You learn all sorts of things in the Girl Scouts,” Olivia answered casually.

“Really?” Tori said. “I don’t remember going for the gunshot-wound merit badge.”

Olivia wrapped the bandage several times around then secured it with adhesive tape.

“I think that’s got it,” Kent declared.

“I do too,” Olivia said.

“Looks like you really dodged a bullet,” Kent said. “So to speak.”

“Shut up, Kent,” Tori barked. Then looked to Olivia and softened. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Olivia replied, then staggered to the side of the boat, leaned out, and puked.

Kent gave me a surprised look and a shrug.

Olivia could have puked on my shoes for all I cared. She had earned it. Fixing up Tori like that was probably the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, but she didn’t back down. It gave me new respect for her. She wasn’t the liability I thought she would be.

With Tori stable I turned my attention to the hardest thing I was ever going to have to do—getting us somewhere safe. I hadn’t seen any trace of the other boat that had blasted off before us. They must have taken another route. Or maybe it was already on the bottom of the sea.

I worried that the helicopters might come after us, but there was nothing in the air. As far as I could tell, we were alone on the ocean.