The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

we and appreciate it, strangely more moved by Jackson’s fictionalization of the event than the event itself. What I’ve done. Me. I killed Cole. Stabbed him in the chest with the sharp end of the champagne bottle, long past his last breath, from the looks of it.

I know I did, though I can’t recall it now, his blood cooling on my skin. After all these years, my mother’s killer has finally paid for her death at my hands. I know I should feel something other than the heavy numbness that’s settled over me now that he’s stopped moving. Elation, anger, grief…something. But all I feel is oddly empty. After all my preparation, I hadn’t really wanted to kill anyone, it turned out. And now that I have, I feel only a dull, aching disappointment.

Stella rubs her wrists as Jackson helps her to her feet, both of them stumbling as the boat lurches with the waves. “What are we gonna do with him?” she asks, gesturing to Cole’s body.

“It’s my fault,” I volunteer. “I’ll take the blame.”

“No.” Jackson looks at me pointedly. “We’re gonna do the same thing he was going to do to us. Let the boat sink with him aboard and blame the storm.”

My guilt-ridden conscience cries out for punishment, but at the same time, I’m enormously relieved he’s clearly not going to let that happen.

“But his chest.” Stella points out. “It doesn’t look like he drowned.”

“There are sharks at sea,” Jackson reasons. “And he’ll be in such bad shape by the time he washes ashore, no one will be suspicious.”

“Do you know how to work the boat?” I ask. Jackson looks at me, and I can see in his eyes he doesn’t. “I don’t either.”

“I know how to operate a boat,” Stella pipes up.

We both turn to her, surprised.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked. I’m not completely useless,” she continues. “I learned for Call of the Sea. I haven’t done it since, but it’s not that hard.”

Stella grabs the flashlight from Jackson’s hand and steadies herself against the wall to step over Cole and mount the stairs to the bridge. After a moment, she nods. “Yeah, I can do this.”

“Good.” I meet her eye. “Thank you.”

Water sloshes over Cole’s lifeless form as waves toss the boat, but he’s heavy enough his body stays put. “We’ve got to move him out onto the deck to make sure he goes into the ocean when the boat sinks,” Jackson says. “It’s already taking on water, so it shouldn’t take long to go down. I’ll grab his arms.” Jackson kneels behind him, hooking his forearms beneath Cole’s shoulders.

“But your shoulder,” I protest.

“I’ll be all right,” he says. “The bullet only grazed me.”

I grab an ankle in each hand and lift as Jackson drags him toward the ocean-side door behind him, stumbling beneath his weight. The boat tips, throwing Jackson into the bulkhead. He cries out in pain and drops Cole, gripping his injured shoulder. “Fuck!”

“Go sit,” I say.

“I’m okay,” he protests.

“I can help,” Stella says.

I appraise her. She’s in pretty bad shape herself, but at least she’s not bleeding from a gunshot wound.

“We can both take his legs,” Jackson offers.

I drop Cole’s legs, moving to take his upper half as Stella stares at the mess I’ve made of Cole’s chest, fighting nausea. “Look at me,” I instruct. She lifts her eyes to meet mine, and I see the distress there. “You’ve got this,” I say. She and Jackson each take a leg. “Now lift.”

Cole’s deadweight is far heavier than I’d imagined. Even tugging with all my might, moving him is painstaking work, made no easier by the erratic lurching of the boat. Once outside, I’m immediately slammed by a wave and lose my footing on the rain-slick deck. Jackson reaches out and grabs my arm as I hold on to Cole’s bloody torso for dear life, wind threatening to throw me into the sea.

“That’s enough,” Jackson shouts over the din.

Another wave slaps me as I step over Cole’s body into the cabin, spluttering salt water. The three of us push him as far out the door as we can without stepping onto the deck. “Okay,” Jackson finally says. “That’s good. We want the boat to get a ways out before he goes overboard so he doesn’t wash ashore. Let’s start the engines and untie the ropes.”

Stella mounts the stairs to the bridge and inserts the key beneath the wheel. The engines roar to life. “It’s gonna start pulling when I put it in gear. Get ready,” she warns.

I nod. “We’ll do the front, then the back.”

She throws the boat into gear, and we all bolt out the back, holding on to the walls for stability as we stagger into the screaming storm. Standing at the sinking stern, I struggle to maintain my footing as the vessel pitches wildly in the surf, completely out of sync with the floating dock bobbing next to it.

We move to the edge of the boat, watching as the dock rises and drops, waiting for the two to fall into rhythm while the wind whips around us, threatening to throw us all into the roiling sea. “Okay,” Jackson yells. “In one, two, three!”

We jump from the stern onto the dock and dart to the bow. My raw hands chafe against the rough ropes as we fight to untie the dock lines from the posts while the boat rolls with the waves, pulling and slacking the cords unpredictably. When the last loop is undone, the rope jerks from our hands and the front of the boat veers away from the pier, tugging the back line straight. Jackson and I scramble to the stern to unwind the rest of the rope until it rips from our hands.

We watch as the boat plunges into the oncoming waves, listing heavily to one side. In a matter of seconds, she’s disappeared from view, swallowed up by the turbulent wall of wind and water that will doubtless soon sink her.

Stella sways, and I slip my