THE LOCK CLICKED OPEN. GRACE HELD HER BREATH AND SLOWLY pushed the door inward.
Her dad was sitting on a small cot inside the storage room, his legs cuffed to a thick steel ring in the floor. His hair was ruffled and he was dressed in rumpled clothes that looked two sizes too big for him. The air in the room was stale and cold.
“Grace?” he croaked. He stretched his arms out toward her. “My word, is that really you? Am I dreaming?”
Grace raced to his side and threw her arms around him, ignoring the pain that flared in her injured arm. “Dad!” she cried. She buried her face in his chest.
“It’s okay, Gracie,” he soothed as he rocked her back and forth. “You found me…I thought I was buried for good.”
Grace held him tighter. “I thought you were dead,” she sobbed. He felt so thin and frail. She never wanted to let him go.
“I’ll be okay now—thanks to you.” He pried her gently away from him and looked up at her and Mai. “How did you kids find me?”
Grace stared up at her dad. His eyes were rimmed with red and his face looked pinched and pale. Uneven grey stubble covered his chin.
CRASH!
A loud bang came from outside the storage room. “Oh no you don’t!” Fred yelled. There were more sounds of a scuffle and then Fred’s sweaty face appeared in the doorway.
“Good news, Grace. Stanley woke up and he’s not dead. So you’re not a murderer.” Fred smiled weakly, but he looked scared. “Don’t worry, we’ve got him under wraps,” he added, holding up a roll of duct tape. “Get it? Duct tape? Under wraps?”
“You’re making jokes?” Mai shrieked. “He could be a murderer!”
Fred gulped and looked behind him, then gave a shaky thumbs-up.
Jeeter appeared beside him in the doorway. “Grace, we should get your dad out of those cuffs.”
“Oh, right,” Grace said. She reluctantly relinquished her grip on her dad’s hand so she could pass the keys to Jeeter. Part of her thought he might be a dream and that he’d disappear if she let go.
“Sir, do you think you can walk?” Jeeter asked. “We should get to the other boat and get out of here in case those other men come back.”
“What other men?” Grace’s dad asked, frowning.
“The Sandstar people. They could come back any minute.”
“They were here?” he asked. He took Jeeter’s arm and tried to stand. He wavered and gripped Grace’s shoulder for support.
“Take it easy, Jonathan,” Jeeter said.
“I’m a bit dehydrated, I think,” he said. “This has taken a toll on—Marcus, my word, what are you doing here, son?” he broke in, suddenly recognizing Jeeter. “I didn’t recognize you without the long hair.”
“Roger came out here to check on the tar ponds project. He had planned to come even before anything happened to you. He let me come, too—I wanted to see you again. But you had…disappeared…by the time we got here.”
“Didn’t he get my email about Rick Stanley? I hoped he might put two and two together and figure out what was going on.”
Jeeter nodded. “He did, but you’d never said anything about Stanley working for Sandstar, just that he was acting strangely.”
Grace’s dad frowned. “I guess that makes sense. I didn’t know for sure that there was any connection myself until I saw the barrels out at the PA4. But by then it was too late. Rick followed me there that day. He captured me and brought me here before I had a chance to tell anyone about the dumping.”
“I tried to get Roger to look into your car crash,” Jeeter explained. “But he wouldn’t listen…he said he’d checked with the police and it was ruled an accident. But I…I couldn’t let it go. I knew there was something wrong. So I tried to find out about Stanley on my own. Well, with Grace, I mean.”
“Well, the important thing is that you found me,” Grace’s dad said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how you managed to do it. I’m sure there is an explanation as to how you and Grace ended up here together. However, we have more pressing things to deal with at the moment. Has anyone contacted the police or the Coast Guard?”
“I tried to find a radio, sir,” Jeeter said. “But Stanley showed up and I had to hide.”
“Well, we’ll have to get out of here as quickly as possible,” Grace’s dad said.
“Yeah,” Grace added. “We don’t want to be here when those Sandstar guys come back.”
Fred and Jeeter duct-taped Stanley’s wrists in front of him. At first, he refused to climb the ladder. But when Jeeter threatened to lock him up and leave him in the belly of the boat, he scurried up the ladder without another word of protest.
After Fred and Jeeter had tied Stanley up on deck, they returned to help Grace with her dad. It took a while to get him loaded onto the other boat as they had to stop every minute or so for him to rest. Eventually, they managed to get him aboard. Thankfully, there was no sign of the Sandstar yacht yet.
Grace’s dad collapsed on a small bench on the deck. Sweat was running down his face and he was breathing fast. “My word,” he gasped. He held a hand against his chest and closed his eyes. “You’d swear I had just climbed Mount Everest.”
“Take it easy, Dad,” Grace said.
He didn’t answer. His face had gone white. Grace put her hand on his forehead. It was cold and clammy. “Mai, there’s something wrong with him,” Grace said. “He’s unconscious!” Who knew what months of captivity and little food and drink had done to him?
Mai knelt down beside Grace’s father and held his wrist. “His pulse is really fast,” she said.
“What’s wrong with him?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know, Grace,” Mai replied. “But I think he needs a doctor.” She handed her bottle of water to Grace, and placed her jacket around Grace’s dad’s shoulders. “Let’s keep him warm and see if he’ll drink any water.”
“Who knows how to drive?” Fred called from the door of the wheelhouse.
They all exchanged looks. Nobody spoke up.
Stanley snickered at them. “Not one of you knows how to drive a boat? This should be good. Do you have any idea what the currents are like around here?”
“Well if we drown, so do you!” Jeeter snarled.
“Fred, your dad owns a dive shop,” Mai said. “Don’t you know how?”
Fred shook his head. “My dad won’t teach me. He says I have to wait ’til I’m older. Besides, he doesn’t have time to show me—he’s always either working or out diving.”
“I’ve sailed a small boat on a lake before,” Jeeter said. “It can’t be that different, can it? I’ll give it a try.” He disappeared into the wheelhouse and a few seconds later the engine roared to life.
“Way to go, Jeeter!” Mai cheered.
“You’d better get us moving!” Fred said, pointing out to sea. The Sandstar was headed toward them—fast!
“I’m trying!” Jeeter called back.
Suddenly, the boat jolted backward.
“No, no, no!” Fred screamed. “The other way! You’re going to hit the other—”
SMACK!
“…boat.”
“Whoops!” Jeeter said. “Okay, okay, I think I’ve got it now.”
The boat jerked forward. Grace almost fell off her seat on the bench. She lurched over to grab her dad and keep him from toppling onto the deck as the boat continued to pitch in place. “Jeeter!” she screamed.
“I don’t know what’s wrong!” he called back.
“We’re still tied on!” Fred said. He raced to the side and grabbed the rope, fumbling to untie it.
“They’re going to catch us!” Mai cried. She pointed at the Sandstar yacht, which had almost reached the wharf.
Fred pulled at the stubborn knot, but it wouldn’t come undone. “I can’t get it!” he cried.
WHOMP!
Grace chopped the rope in half with a small axe she’d found onboard. The axe sunk into the boat railing and the vibrations shot up Grace’s arm, making her teeth chatter.
“Geez, Grace, you almost took my head off!” Fred said as he fell backward away from her.
“Yeah, but we’re loose,” she answered.
“Hold on!” Jeeter called back to them from the wheelhouse. The boat surged forward, quickly pulling away from the wharf. They picked up speed and veered left, away from the approaching yacht.
But they weren’t fast enough. The Sandstar was right on their tail!