Rachel Gibson: Lola Carlyle Reveals All

“If you try anything…” She took two hesitant steps forward, her dog at her bare feet.

“You’ll sic your vicious mutt on me again?”

“No, I’ll shoot you.”

He even moved over for her and pointed to the wheel. “It has a tendency to vibrate below about fifteen knots,” he provided.

She stopped and motioned with the gun for him to move completely away from the helm.

Max shook his head as he watched her. He waited until she took one more hesitant step, then his arm shot out and grabbed her wrist. She tried to yank away and the gun exploded. The twelve-gage shotgun shell blew a ball of flaming red fire into the helm. It slammed into the GPS, smashed the bottle of rum, and sent sparks shooting in all directions. The ignited rum flowed like a flaming river across the controls and into the hole Max had created when he’d removed the panel to hotwire the engine.

Both Max and Lola hit the deck as the fifteen-hundred-candela ball burned its way through the faux-wood panel and shot beneath the console, where it exploded with a loud pop, sending flames up through the hole. The red flares lit one by one, burning the helm like ten mini blowtorches. The wiring cracked and sizzled and the engine shut down. Like the dying throes of the Titanic , the lights blinked out completely. The only illumination in the pitch-black night, the dancing flames and orange glow of the burning helm.

“Oh, my Lord,” Ms. Carlyle cried.

Max crawled to his knees and looked up at the blazing newspaper, the flames licking the windshield and igniting the custom-made canvas top. Apparently, his rotten luck wasn’t through with him yet.

Lola shone the beam of a MiniMag on what was left of the helm. The canvas top covering the bridge had almost completely burned away, leaving nothing behind but a few yards of charred canvas and the blackened aluminum poles. A light salty breeze ruffled her hair and fluttered the tails of her shirt against the very tops of her thighs and the bottom of her butt. The sea air stirred the white potassium bicarbonate covering the floor and what was left of the captain’s seat and helm.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening to her. She was Lola Carlyle and this wasn’t her life. She was on mental health vacation. In fact, she was leaving tomorrow to go home. She had to get home.

This was crazy and had to be a dream. Yes, that had to be it. Earlier, she’d boarded one last “snack and swizzle” tour of Nassau and had fallen asleep in the yacht’s stateroom, and now she was having a nightmare starring a demented madman. Any moment she would awake and thank God that it was all just a dream.

Through the darkness, the empty fire extinguisher sailed through the air and hit the helm. It bounced, then got stuck in the burned hole.

“What’s next? Napalm hidden in your underwear?” asked the all-too-real madman behind her, the anger in his voice slicing through the night air that separated them.

Lola looked over her shoulder at the moonlight touching his bruised and battered face. She’d expected to be murdered and turned into fish bait. When he’d tied her up, she’d been more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. Fear had sat on her chest and squeezed the breath from her lungs. She’d been so certain that he’d hurt her then kill her. Now she was too numb to feel anything at all.

“If I did have napalm, you’d be barbeque,” she said before she thought better of it. Then her self-preservation kicked in and she took a few steps back.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, sweetheart.” He moved toward her and reached behind his back. “Here.” He pulled out a knife encased in a fawn leather scabbard and grabbed her free hand. She flinched when he slapped it in her palm. “If you want to put me out of my misery,” he said, “use this. It’ll be quicker and less painful.” Slowly he moved to what until a few minutes ago had been the doorway, but now was just a metal frame and a bit of burned canvas flapping in the breeze. She heard him suck in a breath before he continued down the stairs.

At the first hint of flames, Baby had tucked his stubby tail between his stubby legs and headed for safer quarters. She’d run for cover too, or rather crawled across the floor and down the stairs. She’d stood on the aft deck below as the madman named Max had battled the flames. She’d watched, incredulous, as pieces of burning canvas floated away on the breeze.

The galley door slammed and echoed into the night. Then all was silent again, the soft lapping of waves against the side of the boat the only sound in the absolute stillness. She looked about her, out at the darkness. Out at nothing, feeling like one of those hurricane survivors she always saw on the news. Wild-haired, vacant-eyed, and numb. Her mind hardly grasping the reality of her situation, that she stood somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, aboard a disabled boat, wearing nothing but her underwear and white blouse, while a clearly deranged man slept below her feet.

Lola turned for the doorway and made her way down the stairs. The whole evening was surreal, like being trapped in a Salvador Dali painting. Warped and twisted and leaving her looking around and thinking, What is this ? She shone her light on the aft deck, and her footsteps slowed as she moved into the galley.

“Baby,” she whispered, and found him on the bench seat behind the table, awake and frightened and curled up on the pashmina she’d discarded earlier that day. By degrees, as if she expected the bogeyman to jump out at her, she shone the small beam of light down the galley and salon. Through the doorway to the stateroom, the beam moved across the thick blue carpet to the edge of the striped bedspread. She shone the flashlight up the spread and stopped it on the soles of a pair of black boots. At the sight of them, the fear she’d felt all evening rushed across her flesh, and she snapped the light off.

“Baby,” she whispered once again, and leaning forward, she felt around on the bench seat. She switched the knife she held to the same hand gripping the flashlight. Her fingers brushed the pashmina, and she scooped it up, along with her dog wrapped inside. Through the black galley, she walked as silently as possible until she once again stood on the aft deck. She moved to the same spot where she’d sat hours before, sipping wine with the other passengers of the yacht and listening to the owner’s pirate stories. The cool vinyl of the wraparound seat chilled the backs of her thighs as she sat, and she tucked her feet beneath her.

Baby licked her cheek as she fought back tears and tried not to cry. Lola hated crying. She hated being afraid and feeling helpless, but the tears leaked from her eyes before she could stop them.

Baby hadn’t been afraid. He’d been brave and fierce, but for the first time since she’d picked him up from the breeder’s a year ago, she wished him to be a rottweiler. A big mean rottweiler that could tear off a man’s arms. Or balls.

Lola brushed her tears away and thought of the box of aerial flares she’d found in the stateroom. They were useless now. The gun melted in the fire. But even if the gun hadn’t melted, she wasn’t brave enough to walk in that room and recover them. Not with Mad Max lying on the bed beside them.

He’d said he was a lieutenant commander, but she didn’t really believe him. He could have made it up. More than likely he was one of those modern-day pirates the owner of the yacht, Mel Thatch, had told them all about.

Lola unfolded the pashmina and wrapped it around herself and her dog. She stared up at the burned remains of the bridge and the stars dotting the sky, so compact in some places they appeared crammed one on top of another.