The three of us rode our bikes furiously though the neighborhood, headed for the marina at Tod’s Point. In summer, the narrow access road that twisted through the neighborhood was always choked with shoregoing traffic. Fortunately, it was a chilly October, so the traffic was light.

I tore through intersections without looking for oncoming traffic. I didn’t care. People were going to have to look out for me, because I was on a mission. On my back was a pack that held the vessel. I had a vague idea of how I might be able to coax the Boggin inside, but wished I had run it by Everett first, because I had no plan B.

If my idea didn’t work, we were sunk.

Theo and Lu struggled to keep up and were nearly hit more than once by cars I’d cut off. I had the sick feeling that I was leading them toward disaster.

We flashed past the guard booth and into the park that held Stony Brook’s beach. It was a great place, with acres of wooded trails, a sandy beach, picnic areas, and a marina for small private boats. My legs were screaming tired, but that didn’t stop me from pumping even harder. The road snaked around the shoreline for another mile, until it led us to the series of floating docks that was Tod’s Point Marina. I sped into the parking lot, scanning for my parents’ car, hoping we’d find them packing up.

I found our car, and the three of us skidded to a stop behind it on the sandy blacktop.

My parents weren’t there.

“My mother’s purse is on the front seat,” I said.

“With her phone in it, I’ll bet,” Lu said.

I pushed off again, pedaling for the docks. Normally, I’d have locked my bike in the rack, but there was no time for that. I jumped off while it was still moving, dumped it, and ran for the shore.

The floating docks were put into the water every spring and taken out in November before the Sound froze over. There were slips for a few hundred small recreational vessels, both powerboats and sailboats. Running down the interconnected docks was like speeding through a labyrinth, but I’d done it enough times to know exactly where I was going. Our slip was on the dock farthest out from shore, with the other fixed-keel boats.

I ran from dock to dock, wending my way closer to ours. It was a chilly morning, so nobody else was there working on their boat. I kept my eyes on the masts of the boats that were tied up side by side, hoping to see ours. I didn’t even worry about what I would tell my parents when I got there. All I wanted to do was keep them from going out on the water, where anything could happen.

I made the last turn and sprinted to the end of the final dock to see that…

…our slip was empty.

I wanted to scream. Or cry. Or hit somebody. None of that would have changed things. My parents were out on the Sound and sitting ducks for the Boggin.

“How long do you think they’ve been gone?” Lu asked as she and Theo caught up, breathless.

“They probably got here and did some work,” I said. “Then they had to rig the sails. It’s all a guess, but they probably shoved off about an hour ago.”

Theo looked around at the cove, which was an inlet of Long Island Sound. The wind was kicking up ripples on the water.

“There’s a good breeze,” he declared. “They could be anywhere.”

“No, when they go out for a short Saturday sail, they always do the same thing. They loop around Great Captain’s Island.”

“Then let’s go catch ’em,” Lu declared.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Lu got a devilish gleam in her eyes that I saw only when she was ready to do something crazy…which was fairly often.

“You’re asking me if I want to take my father’s ski boat, with a four-hundred-twenty-five-horsepower monster of an inboard engine, and open it up to catch somebody in the middle of the Sound? Do you know who you’re talking to? Have we met?”

“It’s not as simple as that, and you know it,” I said.

“Yeah, but you won’t let anything happen to us, right?”

She didn’t wait for an answer and took off running.

“You didn’t answer her,” Theo said.

“What can I say? I’m making this up as I go along.”

We followed her along the floats, headed for her father’s slip.

“Do you really have a plan to catch this thing?” Theo asked.

“Yes,” I answered truthfully.

“Care to share?”

“We’re going to beat this thing at its own game,” I said. I didn’t go into any more detail because I didn’t want him shooting down the only plan I had.

We ran off the docks that held mostly sailboats and sprinted to the docks that held the powerboats. Lu’s father’s boat was in a slip on the dock closest to shore. She immediately started unsnapping the canvas cover that protected it. Seconds later she pulled back the canvas to reveal a gleaming yellow-and-white Glastron beauty with seats for four and a sunken deck for two more in the bow. The cockpit looked like something you’d see in a race car. Or a fighter jet.

“Wow,” Theo said as the boat was revealed. “It looks fast just sitting there.”

“I know, right,” Lu replied as she quickly stowed the cover under the rear bench. “You want to be holding on to something when I throttle up.”

“Your dad lets you take this out on your own?” Theo asked.

“It’s an ongoing debate,” Lu replied. “He won’t let me take it out alone until I prove I can do it, but I can’t prove it unless I take it out on my own.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked.

“It means I’m about to prove it.”

“Don’t you have to be sixteen to take a high-powered boat out without an adult?” Theo asked.

“You going to turn me in?” Lu asked coyly.

“No, but you can handle this thing, right?” Theo asked in a shaky voice.

Lu reached under the dashboard and took out the ignition key. She slipped it into the ignition and turned it. The monstrous inboard engine responded instantly and roared to life.

She looked at us with a devilish smile.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I can handle this.”

Theo gave me a nervous look. “I don’t know what worries me more, getting in this monster with her or facing the boogeyman.”

“Cast off,” Lu commanded.

Theo jumped on as I untied the bowline that was secured around the cleat on the dock and tossed the rope on board. With a quick shove I got the craft moving back out of the slip and hopped aboard.

Lu stood at the wheel, looking confident. She eased the craft out slowly, being sure not to bounce off the nearby boats. When we were clear, she reversed the engine, and we were under way.

“I’m supposed to go slow until we’re out of the cove,” Lu said. “Coast Guard rules. Can’t make a wake.”

I wished she wouldn’t be so cautious.

I got my wish.

“But under the circumstances…,” she said, and pushed the throttle forward.

We didn’t launch, but we definitely sped along faster than the Coast Guard would have liked, creating a wake that jostled all the boats that were moored along the channel.

I took the shotgun seat next to Lu while Theo sat on the bench seat behind us. My pack went on the deck, between my feet. I didn’t want to risk losing the vessel over the side once Lu really opened it up.

“So you’ve got a plan, right?” Lu asked.

“I do. But if anything goes wrong, get away as fast as you can. I don’t want to put you guys in any danger.”

“I think it’s too late to worry about that,” Theo said, tugging on his ear.

We zipped past dozens of moored boats, headed for the mouth of the channel and the wide-open Long Island Sound.

“Thank you, guys,” I said.

“Don’t thank us,” Lu said. “We don’t want that boogey coming after us, either.”

“I know, but this is my battle,” I said. “I’ve lost one set of parents. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost another.”

Nobody commented on that. I think they were both imagining themselves in my shoes. The idea of losing your parents was beyond horrible, even if you didn’t always get along with them.

“Did you make peace with them?” Lu asked.

“Sort of. My mom made peace with me,” I said.

“Go figure,” Lu said with mock surprise. “I guess now it’s your turn.”

We moved along in silence except for the low growl of the engine, which sounded almost angry, as if annoyed by the fact that it was being held back from unleashing its full fury.

It would get the chance soon enough.

The Long Island Sound is a huge body of water that lies between the south shore of Connecticut and the north shore of Long Island. If you travel west, you eventually hit the waterways that surround New York City. To the far east is the Atlantic Ocean. The U.S. Navy berths many of its nuclear submarines out that way, in New London. That’s how deep the Sound is. It’s like an inland sea.

There’s another town beach, on an island about a mile from the marina. It’s called Great Captain’s Island, and during the summer there’s regular ferry service out there. You can’t miss seeing it, even from a distance, because there’s a big old black-and-white-striped lighthouse on the far shore that towers over the small island. It’s the turnaround spot my parents always use when out for a short sail.

We were about to pass the last of the buoys that mark the channel. Once beyond that, there was no speed limit.

“The Sound is empty,” Theo remarked. “Once summer is over, nobody goes out anymore.”

“Good,” Lu said. “Nobody to get in our way.”

When we cleared the last spit of land and the tall trees that grew right up to the shoreline, Great Captain’s Island was revealed, along with its unmistakable lighthouse. It seemed so far away.

“That’s it,” I said. “Head straight for the lighthouse.”

Lu gripped the wheel with her left hand and grasped the throttle with her right.

I tensed up.

Lu gave us a look and a sly smile.

“Hold on,” she said. “This is going to be fun.”

I grabbed on to the seat cushion, and not a moment too soon. When Lu jammed the throttle forward, I was thrown back into the seat like a fighter pilot being launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The engine sound shifted from a low growl to pounding thunder. The deck hummed with the surge of energy as we took off and flew over the glassy water.

“Whoa!” Theo exclaimed out of surprise. Or excitement. Or fear.

Lu wasn’t exaggerating. It felt as though we were flying.

“It’s a calm day,” Lu yelled over the fast thumping of the engine. “No swells. We should be there in ten minutes.”

The conditions were perfect. The sky was blue, and the wind had died down, so the water was about as flat as I’d ever seen it. It was actually a terrible day for sailing but perfect if you wanted to get somewhere in a hurry and had a few hundred horses pushing you there.

“What are we going to tell your parents?” Theo asked.

“Hopefully, there won’t be any trouble and I’ll just tell them I was worried they’d be stuck out here with no wind, and offer them a tow.”

“And what if there’s trouble?” Lu asked.

“Then explaining myself will be the least of our problems.”

We shot across the glassy surface for five minutes, watching the island and the lighthouse grow larger as we drew closer. I kept scanning the horizon, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There were no other boats out. Between the lousy wind and the late season, most people must have decided it wasn’t worth it. It was just my luck that my parents were the ones who didn’t care and went out anyway.

“Grab the binoculars under your seat,” Lu called out.

I reached down and pulled out a small pair of black, waterproof binoculars. They may have been tiny, but they had incredible magnification. Holding them up to my eyes, I could make out the windows on the lighthouse.

“Do you see them?” Theo called.

I scanned the water around the island.

“No!” I shouted back.

“Maybe they didn’t go there,” Lu offered.

I hated to think that was possible, because it meant they could be anywhere. But there was another possibility I liked even less. What if the Boggin had already gotten to them? I pushed that thought out of my head and continued my search.

“Scan the shoreline,” I called back to Theo. “Maybe they went up the coast instead.”

Theo turned around, got on his knees for balance, and squinted against the sun to try to catch any sign of them along the mainland we were rapidly leaving behind.

“I don’t see any sails anywhere,” Theo announced.

“They might have dropped them,” I called out. “If the wind is really bad, they’d use the outboard motor.”

“That would make it really hard to see them,” Lu said.

I turned the binoculars back to the mainland, searching for a moving mast. I looked off to our right and then to our left. I spotted a few boats, but they looked to be tied up to moorings. There was no sign of my parents.

“Hey, Marcus,” Lu called out. “Do your parents sail all the way around that island before heading back?”

“Yeah!” I yelled.

“Take a look,” she called out while pointing ahead.

I spun around and looked through the binoculars to see the sails of a small boat that was clearing the lighthouse as it appeared from the back side of the island.

“That’s them!” I shouted with relief. “I can see two people on board. They were behind the island. They’re okay!”

I was never more excited to see my parents. The relief I felt was like having a massive weight taken off my chest.

“I’ll head on a course that’ll cut them off,” Lu yelled. “We should get to them in about five minutes.”

I could breathe again.

“Hey, are you crying?” Lu asked.

My eyes were tearing, for sure.

“No!” I exclaimed. “It’s the wind.”

I sat back in my seat, behind the windshield, and wiped my eyes. Flying along at that speed really did make it windy, but that wasn’t why I was tearing up. Until I saw that my parents were safe, I didn’t realize just how truly terrified I was that something might have happened to them. I may have been crying, but they were tears of total relief.

I raised the binoculars to get another look and saw my father peering back at us with his own binoculars. He recognized me and waved.

I waved back. My feeling of relief was complete.

Plink!

Something bounced off the deck in front of the windshield.

“What was that?” I called out.

“I don’t know,” Lu said. “Something hit us.”

Plink! Plink!

Two more small objects hit the deck and bounced into the water.

“I saw that!” I exclaimed, standing up. “What were they?”

“Hail,” Theo said as he stepped up between us.

“Hail?” I repeated. “Like, ice from the sky? But it’s not even—”

I looked up, and my words caught in my throat.

A huge black cloud had drifted over us.

“Where did that come from?” Lu asked.

“Better question,” Theo said. He pointed off our starboard side and said, “What is that?”

Far in the distance, rolling in from the east, was a wall of fog so thick that it looked like a white curtain.

And it was headed our way.