A second is all I need. I drive both my knees hard at his groin, catching him with just enough force to knock him off balance. Instinct curls him up and I twist out from underneath him, clawing for the side of the boat. He launches at me, grabbing my ankles as I hook an arm over the side of the boat, dragging me backward so I crack my jaw against the deck and taste blood in my mouth.

“Bitch.” He flips me over onto my back and slams me down again, sending a shockwave of pain through my body. For a second, everything goes white and I have the strangest memory of my mother. It was the winter before she died; she was still well enough to move around, and my father had made a fire pit in the back, clearing a drift of snow, so that she could have s’mores for her birthday.

The fire was so high at first that we couldn’t get close. We’d stood back, waiting for it to calm, as my dad used a piece of steel tubing to spread the logs apart.

Isn’t it amazing? my mom had said, pointing to the very center of the fire, where it was blue. All of that burning, just because it wants to breathe.

In my memory, her hand is very cool, and it’s clear what she’s really saying: if I don’t fight, I’m going to die.

The pain ebbs. Brent has a rag in one hand. I catch a whiff of chemical scent. Chloroform, or gasoline.

I wrench my head to the side, gasping for clean air, fumbling for something, anything, I can use as a weapon, striking out with my fists, my legs, writhing and twisting, on the slickness of the deck.

He tries to shove the rag into my mouth but I cough it out. I slither away from him. But he’s too strong, and I’m too tired. I’m a fish, lashing out in its last moments still tethered to a hook.

The fish hook.

I’d forgotten the fish hook and lure Condor made for me, still nestled in cloth in my front pocket.

I tug the zipper open just as Brent clamps the rag, wet with chemicals, tight to my face. Instantly, I’m blind; the acrid scent takes over, gagging, the rag suffocating.

And just before I slip entirely, I swing with the fish hook latched between my fingers.

Brent screams and draws back. Oxygen floods my lungs, drives off the darkness, brings the world back into focus. Something warm hits my face. Blood. I’ve slashed him just below the eye, a gaping, ragged cut.

I scrabble backward and the hook spins out of my grip. Before I can find it he gets his hands around my throat—no longer worried about marks. He crushes my windpipe in his fist.

I feel along the filth of vomit and blood until the fish hook bites back in response.

This time I aim more carefully.