The Never Game

The dispatcher was asking more questions. Shaw ignored her. He left the line open and set the iPhone next to Standish. Her eyes were dim, lids low.

Shaw released the tourniquet for a moment. Then tightened it again. He pulled a pen from Standish’s breast pocket and wrote on her wrist, slightly lighter than the ink, the time he’d twisted it tight. It would let the med techs know that it had been binding the arm for some time and that they should relax it to get blood circulating, to minimize the risk she’d lose the arm.

No words passed between them. There was nothing to say. He set the pistol next to the phone, though it was clear the woman would be unconscious in a few minutes.

And probably dead before help arrived. Yet leave her he had to.

He pulled off his jacket and vest and covered her with them, then stood. Then:

Sprinting toward the sea, Colter Shaw eyed the craft closely.

The forty-foot derelict fishing vessel, decades old, was going down by the stern, already three-fourths submerged.

Shaw saw no doors into the cabin; there would be only one and it was now underwater. In the aft part of the superstructure, still above sea level, was a window facing onto the bow. The opening was large enough to climb through but it appeared sealed. He’d dive for the door.

He paused, reflecting: Did he need to?

Shaw looked for the rope mooring the boat to the pier; maybe he could take up slack and keep the ship from going under.

There was no rope; the boat was anchored, which meant it was free to descend thirty feet to the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

And, if the woman was inside, take her with it to a cold, murky grave.

As he ran onto the slippery dock, avoiding the most rotten pieces, he stripped off his bloodstained shirt, then his shoes and socks.

A powerful swell struck the ship and it shuddered and sank a few more inches into the gray, indifferent water.

He shouted, “Elizabeth?”

No response.

Shaw assessed: there was a sixty percent chance she was on board. Fifty percent chance she was alive after hours in the waterlogged cabin.

Whatever the percentages, there was no debate about what came next. He stuck an arm beneath the surface and judged the temperature to be about forty degrees. He’d have thirty minutes until he passed out from hypothermia.

Let’s start the clock, he thought.

And plunged in.

65

“Please. Save yourself.”

Twenty minutes later Colter Shaw was inside the sinking ship’s cabin, at the bulkhead door separating him from Elizabeth Chabelle. With the flowerpot shard, he continued to try to chip away the wood around the hinges.

“You with me, Elizabeth?” Shaw called.

The Seas the Day settled further. The water was now streaming in through the gap in the front of the cabin. Soon it would be cascading in.

“My baby...” She was sobbing.

“Keep it together. Need you to. Okay?”

She nodded. “You’re nah... nah... not police?”

“No.”

“The... then...?”

“Boy or girl?”

“Wha... what-t-t?”

“Baby. Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“You have a name for her?”

“Buh... Buh... Belinda.”

“Don’t hear that much.

“You need to get as high as you can on the bunk.”

“And your...?” Whispering. “Name?”

“Colter.”

“Don’t... Don’t hear that much.” She smiled. Then began to cry again. “You... you... you’ve done everything you... you can. Get... out. You have a family. Get out. Thank you. Bless you. Get out.”

“Farther, climb farther! Do it, Elizabeth. George wants to see you. Your mom and dad in Miami. Stone crabs, remember?”

Shaw squeezed her hand and she did as he’d asked, paddling to the bunk and climbing it. He tossed away the useless ceramic shard.

Time left on the hypothermia clock? It would’ve run out. Of course.

“Go!” she called. “Get out!”

Just then gray water, flecked with kelp, poured into the forward cabin through the gap where the window had been.

“Go! Puh... Please...”

Die with dignity...

Shaw scrabbled to the front window frame and, with a look back toward Chabelle, vaulted through and outside, into the ocean. Dizzy from the cold, disoriented.

A wave hit the boat, the boat hit him, and Shaw was shoved again toward a pylon. His foot found a deck railing and he pushed himself out of the way just before he was crushed.

He heard, he believed, Chabelle’s sobs.

Hallucination?

Yes, no...

Shaw turned toward the submerged stern of the boat and swam hard for it. He’d stopped shivering, his body saying, That’s it. No point in trying to keep you warm.

With the forward window gone, the water rushed inside as if flowing through a rent in a broken dam. The ship was going down fast.

When the cabin was almost entirely underwater, Shaw took a deep breath and dove straight down.

At about eight feet below the surface, he held on to a railing and, remembering where the door handle was located, gripped it hard. Bracing his feet on the cabin wall, he slowly extended his legs.

The door resisted, as before. But then, at last, it slowly swung outward.