Felix stood in the middle of the sundeck’s makeshift lawn, running one hand over his head, gripping his hair like he wanted to rip it out. The other was still clenched around Naia’s stuffed bunny. His mouth opened in a wordless scream before his chin dropped to his chest and he closed his eyes.
Addison was afraid to touch him because he looked about ready to explode, or maybe to curl up into the fetal position and cry. She didn’t know which one would be worse. All she knew was she wanted to hold him and tell him it would be all right.
But Charlotte was with him, murmuring that it would be okay, that his daughter was still on the ship somewhere. Addison turned away to give them privacy, but she doubted very much that that was the case, and by the look on Felix’s face, so did he.
Addison wanted to search the sundeck, search the whole ship and the surrounding waters. But all the show dogs disappearing at once could only mean one thing. The dognappers had gotten what they finally wanted, and then some. Along with it, they had taken both Naia and Princess.
Princess. A tear rolled down her cheek before she even knew she was crying. Addison felt both distraught and selfish at the same time. Felix was missing his daughter, his baby, and she was crying over her dog. But in a way, Princess was Addison’s baby. If she wasn’t, then why did it feel like someone had taken one of the silver spoons from the dining deck and hollowed out her insides?
She wished she had a DeLorean like in Back to the Future, to go back in time. She would tell her past self not to bring Princess that night, to leave her at home. She’d tell Felix not to bring Naia. Hell, while she was at it, she’d kiss Felix on Phillip’s balcony rather than push him away.
Her head spun, caught in a useless cycle of regrets and random thoughts—fear for her precious Princess, guilt for worrying about Princess when Naia was missing too, pity for Felix. She glanced at Felix, but he was hugging Charlotte now so she turned away, adding self-loathing to the mix of emotions circulating through her.
Hugging herself, Addison shuffled to the back of the boat, heels sinking into the fresh sod. She leaned against the white picket fence and stared out into the night.
There was quiet splashing in the water below. Addison thought it had come from the bow, where the deckhands were probably attempting to dislodge the small boat that had crashed into the Belle. But then there was another splash behind her. It was soft and rhythmic, coming from the stern.
She peered into the night. More fog had rolled in since she was last outside with Zoe and Piper. Maybe that was why the recreational boat hadn’t seen the Belle. Although she couldn’t see how, since it was a three-hundred-foot-long floating torch made up of string lights.
The bay water was so dark beyond the boat, reflecting their own halo of light immediately around them. She searched for the source of the splashing and saw a dark shape drifting inside the halo’s sparkling ripples. It was a boat, big enough for about ten people.
Oars dipped in and out of the water as it rowed away. In the light, gold letters flashed along the side of its hull. San Francisco Belle. It was one of the Belle’s lifeboats. Inside the hull was a stack of boxes.
Addison’s frantic brain finally caught up with the scene playing out before her. They weren’t boxes. They were dog kennels. The kennels. The dogs. Naia. Princess. Her knees buckled and she gripped the railing for support.
The dognappers were right there, still so close. She should have been able to hear the dogs’ barking and whining echo across the water, but they were silent. Her mouth went dry as she considered why.
“Felix.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She licked her lips and tried again. “Felix, look!”
It felt like a bad dream. Surely this wasn’t happening. She couldn’t be the only one to see this happening. But then again, at that very moment, all the guests and crew were distracted by the head-on collision up front.
She suddenly realized the “accident” had been intended as a distraction. The smaller boat had intentionally run into them. But surely all the dog minders hired to watch over the show dogs hadn’t run to gawk at the accident. Where were they?
Addison heard Felix’s footsteps swishing across the grass, but she didn’t want to take her eyes away from the shape in case she blinked and lost it. She pointed straight out into the darkness, and Felix’s eyes followed her finger. She knew he saw it when his grip tightened around one of the fake fence posts and it busted off in his hand.
The lifeboat disappeared from the Belle’s aura of light, blending into the foggy night. She yelled, “Stop!” But her voice was downed out by the long blast of the horn.
The Belle’s engine whirred somewhere in its depths. The dark waters below churned around the stern of the boat until it looked like boiling water. The paddle wheel slowly began to turn and the Belle inched forward, away from all of the dogs floating away.
Felix threw the piece of wood aside. “We have to go after them.”
Charlotte gripped Felix’s jacket and shook her head. “They’ll be long gone by the time we dock. Besides, Naia might still be on the boat. We’ll go talk to the captain.”
Addison barely heard Charlotte. Her eyes were moving over the crime scene.
“Maybe we don’t have to wait,” Addison told Felix, pointing to the other side of the ship. “Look. There’s another lifeboat. They haven’t gotten very far. We can follow them.”
Felix was already tucking Naia’s bunny into his inside jacket pocket, charging toward the spare lifeboat. Addison hurried after him, her heels digging into the grass like lawn darts, slowing her down. By the time she reached the boat, Felix had already climbed inside and was grabbing the power controls to lower it into the water.
“Wait. Where are you going?” Charlotte asked him.
“To get my daughter back.”
“We haven’t even called nine-one-one yet,” she said. “Why don’t you wait for the police?”
“That will take too long. We haven’t been able to catch this guy yet. If we let him go now, we might not be able to find Nai—” He couldn’t finish the thought. He blinked, long and slow. “This could be my only chance.”
Addison threw a leg into the boat. “You mean our only chance.”
Felix held a hand up to stop her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
“No you’re not. It might be dangerous.”
He tried to push her out, but she swatted his hand away.
“I’m going and you can’t stop me. I want to help you get Naia and Princess back. The longer we argue about it, the more we risk them getting away.” She fixed him with a steady stare. “We’re in this together, remember?”
Felix seemed to consider this a moment before reaching out and helping Addison to climb inside the hull. Her poofy dress took up nearly the entire width of the boat. The moment her butt hit the bench across from him, he hit the down button on the control switch.
The lifeboat jerked to life. Addison gripped the bench beneath her. With a whir of gears and pulleys, they descended the three decks to the water below.
“Charlotte!” Addison called up. “Go find Zoe, the event coordinator of this party, and tell her everything that’s happened!”
She saw Charlotte nod just before they hit the water. Addison squealed and shivered as the spray from the paddle wheel reached them. Felix took off his jacket and tossed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, wrapping it around herself. She felt the bulge of Naia’s stuffed bunny inside the jacket and swallowed hard.
“I can’t move in the monkey suit, anyway,” he said.
Felix reached down to pick up the oars resting next to their feet. He placed them in the eyelets on either side and started rowing in the general direction the dognapper had gone.
Addison knew they needed to make up for lost time, so she spun around, her back to Felix. Setting her clutch down next to her so it didn’t fall in the water, she grabbed another pair of oars and began to row. As they floated farther and farther away, the bay fog swallowed the San Francisco Belle.
Addison tried to keep the same pace as Felix, but she felt the powerful surge of their little boat with each one of his strokes, and she knew she wasn’t helping much. Her oversized ball gown getting in the way of the oars didn’t exactly help either. And since there were two more sets of oarlocks, it was definitely not meant to be a two-person rowboat. But every inch counted, every inch brought them closer to Naia, to Princess, to all the stolen dogs. To saving the day.
This is what Addison tried to remind herself of when her back began to ache, when her muscles screamed as though the flesh was being torn from her bones, when her arms felt like hardening cement. But still she rowed. For Naia, for Princess, for all the dogs and their worried owners—and to keep her dad feeling proud of her.
Felix’s grunts grew louder with each stroke, but he never slowed for a second. Addison bit hard on her lip to keep from crying out each time she dipped the oars into the water and heaved back as hard as she could. She didn’t want to be the reason they lost the other boat.
The fog weighed down on them, much thicker than before. Addison glanced behind her every couple of minutes, worried they could be ten feet from the other boat and never see it. But they kept making their way toward the bright glow breaking through the fog: the Financial District.
Soon, over Addison’s own heavy breathing, Felix’s grunting, and the splashing of their oars on the water, she heard another set of rhythmic splashes. Muffled as it was by the haze, Addison knew they were gaining on the dognapper. There was no doubt it was him because who else would be crazy enough to row a boat out on the bay in the dark and the fog?
Biting down so hard on her lip that she tasted blood, Addison worked through the pain. She knew Felix could hear the sound too, because their boat’s momentum suddenly increased with his sudden burst of power. A last desperate effort.
The distant splashing suddenly stopped. Addison and Felix kept rowing. With each stroke, Addison’s heart quickened. What was going to happen when they caught up to the thief?
Someone yelled out. “Throw me the rope!”
Addison heard answering calls. Her eyes grew wide as she realized there were more than one dognapper. But of course there were. In order to steal this many dogs, there’d have to be.
The hidden voice reached their ears again. “Come on, hurry!”
Moments later, a loud roar echoed across the water, followed by the quiet purr of an engine.
Felix grunted. “They’re going to get away.”
He groaned, and Addison imagined him trying to go faster, but they’d been going so long.
“Okay, go, go, go!” that mystery voice yelled over the engine.
The purr turned into a growl as the engine revved. Then it quickly faded into the distance, until all that was left was the splashing of Felix’s and Addison’s oars.
Felix stopped rowing. “Shhhh.”
Addison turned around to see him holding up his hand, tilting his head to listen. But there was only silence.
In mere seconds their lifeboat floated over white foam, churned up by a motor. They’d been so close, but the boat, the dogs, and Naia were gone.