Furious by Jeffrey Higgins (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📕

expansive shallow end for kids. Parents and children splashed in the cool water, filling the air with giggles, screams, and joy. My father gave me ten dollars for snacks, and I skipped to the food truck to buy an ice cream cone.

Fifteen minutes later, I returned and found two dozen people huddled together, staring at something on the ground. I called for my father but did not see him. The pinched expressions of the people—now quiet and solemn—pulled me toward them like the gravity of a black hole.

I parted the crowd and saw my father laying on the cement, pale and still.

A lifeguard, a boy no older than eighteen, blew air into my father’s lungs. Even then, I knew it was a poor attempt at CPR. I watched as my father’s lips turned blue, and the color left his body. He died before the ambulance arrived.

I stood there and watched with ice cream dripping between my fingers and tears streaming down my face.

Later, I learned my father had hit his head and been underwater just long enough for liquid to seep into his lungs. The lifeguard had failed to roll him over and expel the fluid from his airway before starting CPR, and his efforts blew chlorinated water further into my father’s bronchi, deep into his lower lobes. The lack of air caused a cardiac arrest, but the lifeguard never did chest compressions, depriving my father’s brain of oxygen.

I had watched the life leave my father’s body, all because nobody knew how to administer CPR. If they had, my father would have survived, but instead, he died. Needlessly. The person I had cared about most had been ripped from my life, lost, because no one had proper medical training. It had been the defining moment of my life, the reason I became a doctor, the reason I never swam again.

Yet here I was on a boat. A nightmare cruise.

Was I smart enough to think my way out of this? Was there a solution to the puzzle?

I could confront Brad and try to overpower him—end it right now—but that would result in my gruesome death. Or I could give up and accept defeat. It would be easy to slip off the stern, sink below the surface, take a final breath of saltwater.

I wiped my eyes. No, I would never give up. I had to take responsibility for my decisions and deal with my situation. Win or lose, I would fight to the end.

I needed to fix the satellite phone.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I did not hear Brad. I heard nothing. I was taking a huge chance, but if I fixed the phone, I could direct rescuers to us. I had to risk it.

I unlatched the compartment door and cracked it open. The berth remained empty. I stepped into the cabin and closed the portal behind me, because I could not allow Brad to discover my hiding place, my only sanctuary onboard. I tiptoed through the debris and peered into the salon.

No Brad.

I had not seen what he had done with the phone after he ripped it out of the wall, but if he had thrown it overboard, I was dead. I hoped it lay somewhere in the main cabin. It had to be there.

I stepped through the doorway and surveyed the furniture and tabletops. No phone. I squatted beside the companionway and squinted through the shadows on floor.

There!

The satellite phone lay under the couch against the port wall. I squinted past the companionway into the night. No sign of Brad.

I limped through the galley, to avoid walking in front of the steps, and slid between the couches. I ducked under the dining table and crawled toward the port wall. I placed my cheek against the deck and stretched my arm under the couch. My fingers touched something plastic, but it squirted out of my reach. I stretched my fingers wide, pulling the muscles in my arm and back, and touched it again. I hooked the phone with my fingernails and dragged it to me.

I examined the satellite phone receiver in the dim light. Shaped like a walkie-talkie, it had a video screen, dial pad, and buttons for preset channels and scrolling. The power button was larger than the others, positioned on top. Wires hung from the bottom, like roots dangling from a vegetable freshly pulled from the earth. Four bundles of copper wires stuck out of the ripped black casing. Each bundle had a distinct color—red, black, green, white—and while I did not understand their individual functions, it did not matter, because color coding negated my lack of technical knowledge. I only had to connect the wires from the headset to the same colored bundles in the other half of the cord.

The satellite phone cradle hung beside the charred navigation panel on the aft wall, just above the captain’s chair. The chart table lay only a few feet away, but to reach it, I had to cross in open view, within feet of the steps.

A shadow flittered across the floor, and I glanced through the companionway hatch. Brad walked through the cockpit. He extended his arms with his elbows locked and his fingers curled, as if he suffered from cramps or some kind of neurological impairment. He cocked his head and stared over the gunwale at the horizon, with his back to me.

What was he doing?

The smart move would be for me to retreat through the galley and hide in the engine compartment again, but I had the phone, and I was so close.

I can do this.

I crawled from under the dining table and moved across the deck on my hands and knees. I squeezed past the captain’s chair, turning it until it faced the companionway. I crouched behind it. The sky was visible through the hatch, but not Brad.

I steadied my breathing and counted to ten. Still no sign of him.

I set the knife on the floor, stood behind the chair, and inspected the satellite panel. If Brad