This is it! I thought. Terror gripped my throat like fangs.
My dad and the others must’ve followed us. Now Wong is going to kill me.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. I was crazy scared, but I didn’t want to wake anyone else just so Wong could hurt them, too.
Wong held a finger to his lips.
My eyes were clogged with sleep. My body felt like a heap of broken bones. But fear is adrenalin, and my brain was on fire.
He pointed his big knife right at my face.
“You must promise,” he whispered, “not to report us. These people paid thirty-seven thousand dollar each to get to Vancouver. Relatives pay same amount when they arrive—if they arrive. They will all get deported if you report us, and I will go to prison.”
“So . . . I don’t get it.” I sat up, still whispering. “Are you letting me . . . go?”
“First promise,” he whispered fiercely, holding the tip of his knife right in front of my nose.
I nodded. He searched my eyes. The moment stretched on into infinity. The knife trembled in Wong’s hand.
I held my breath.
He moved the knife away from my face and quickly sawed through the rope. My hands burst free, along with my breath.
I rubbed my wrists till the circulation came back. Shai rolled toward us, her eyes open, full of shock.
“Why?” I asked Wong. My stomach squirmed like a sack full of eels. This didn’t make sense. It was the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean.
“I’m not a kidnapper, not a killer,” Wong said. “I will not go to prison for this. I am a geoduck diver. Legal. I came from Hong Kong two years ago. Now I help Chinese people from Fujian and other provinces come here. But this is a mistake. The captain . . . he is evil. It’s all going wrong. I must do the right thing now. Yin yang.” He stood up.
Yin yang? “What does that mean, ‘yin yang’?”
“Come!” he whispered urgently. “No time now.” He started up the ladder to the deck.
It was slowly sinking in. He is letting me go. He is helping me escape! Now it hit me like a surge of electricity.
I shot to my feet and scampered up the ladder. When I reached the open hatch, I looked back down into the hold. Shai stared up at me.
I wished I could take her with me. Take all of them with me. Free them all.
“Come!” whispered Wong, tugging my shirt.
Shai lifted her hand and whispered something I could barely hear: “Maybe I’ll see you in California.” She was smiling. I started to wave back, but Wong yanked me up on deck and silently lowered the hatch, then jerked his head to follow him.
“What will you tell the captain?” I said as he helped me down the ladder into the dinghy.
“Shhh! I will say you had a knife. Cut the rope yourself. Then cut me.” He drew his blade swiftly across the palm of his hand. Blood seeped out, a string of shiny red pearls. I grabbed my own hand, as if he had sliced it instead of his.
“Now go!” he hissed. “The next cove.” He pointed and scuttled away, silent as a cat.
The dinghy bumped against the hull with each wave. I untethered it and grabbed the oars, climbed in, and started rowing in the direction Wong had pointed.
The Sea Wolf seemed to be around a point from our cove. I didn’t know how far I had to row, but I did know there would be waves out there. The oarlocks rattled as I pulled with all I had. I put my back into it, used my legs. My brain flashed to the last time I rowed this desperately: it was in Desolation Canyon when Dad was injured. It was life or death, and I had to row us to safety. It felt like life or death again now.
As I approached the point, lights went on in the stern and the bow of the Sea Wolf.
Was Captain Evil awake? Did he hear me when I climbed into the dinghy and took off? Was he coming after me?
Tension bound me tighter than any rope.
Moonlight seeped through ragged holes in the clouds. Just ahead of me, I could see huge boulders at the point, waves crashing over them. I gripped the oars even tighter and started to rise and fall with the swells. Waves broke over the front of the boat, spraying my back and head.
As I rounded the point, the dinghy was hit broadside by an enormous wave. The boat started to flip. I slung my weight toward the wave, leaning into it, and my boat slid down, then rose again.
Waves crashed. The surf boomed. I battled with the sea . . .
. . . until finally, finally, I was riding the surf into the next cove. What a rush! I coasted for a moment, then rowed again. There was no time to lose. I had no idea when and if the Sea Wolf would come after me.
At last, deep into the cove, a bird whistle floated my way.
Dad!
It was like a song from home. I whistled back, softly, and continued rowing toward shore.
Dad and Cassidy splashed out toward me, grabbed the bow, and pulled me in.
“You okay?” Dad almost shouted.
“Yes! I’m alive, right?”
“Hey! I was about to come save you, man!” Cassidy said as he helped me out of the dinghy. His face was blackened with charcoal, like a commando. “I had this whole plan—”
Dad cut him off. “Later, Cassidy, right now there’s no time.”
I was about to say, “It’s a good thing you didn’t come. You woulda got me killed!” But in that instant I understood something. Again. Something I’d learned last year in Desolation Canyon.
I realized that yes, Cassidy was macho, irritating, and full of himself, but a part of me envied him. His strength. His courage. And even though his rescue plan probably would’ve added to the danger, his goal was to cover my back. To save me. Like he’d saved Dad.
Dad drew me into a silent hug. I think he was crying. Lisa ran up and kissed my cheek. I pulled away from Dad, but she’d already stepped back.
“There’s no way we were going to leave you,” she said.
I looked out into the cove. We were all in danger. Captain Evil would want blood. My blood, especially.
“Shouldn’t we hide the dinghy?” I asked.
“Actually,” said Roger, “if we leave it here and they see it, they’ll come in first to see if we’re still here. That could buy us time.”
They had already broken camp and loaded the kayaks. They were ready to go. Now we lugged the kayaks one by one to a stretch of shoreline that was around a point in the opposite direction of the Sea Wolf. We would be making our run to Bella Bella today, where we would catch the ferry back to Port Hardy.
If we made it without getting caught.
“What happened out there, Aaron?” Lisa asked. She was right behind me, helping carry a very heavy kayak. “How did you escape?”
“That diver, Wong, cut my rope while the others slept.”
“Why would he do that?” she asked.
“He said something about ‘yin yang’.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have no idea.”
As we lowered the last heavy kayak to the small, sharp stones where the water lapped, there was a stillness like before a storm. Our ears were tuned to every sound. If I’d heard a motor just then, I think my heart would’ve exploded.
On the western horizon, the full moon balanced on the water, like the slightest wave would knock it over the edge of the world.
I felt like that, too.
