I never deserved you, girl, Jess thought as she continued to try to paddle. None of us did.

Then the lights went out, a battery dying somewhere or a wire shorting, and the boat was plunged into darkness. There was only the intermittent red light on the rocks in the distance, and the noise of the ocean as it clawed at the cruiser.

They didn’t say anything, any of them. Jess figured she might have done different if Sweeney weren’t there; she might have bundled up with Burke and watched the floodwaters rise and kissed him one last time before she brought out her pistol and took the easy way out, Burke and Lucy first, and her last—but Sweeney was here, and the kid was still paddling hard. She could hear him breathing, hear how scared he was, and it didn’t seem right to just give up with him there. The mood wasn’t quite right for melodramatic goodbyes.

So they waited in silence, left to their own thoughts. Jess tried to make her peace and discovered she couldn’t, not after everything she’d been through, everything she’d risked and lost, every battle she’d won.

Damn it, it made her angry, fighting so hard and it all being for nothing, finally opening herself up to someone and him dying too.

It pissed her right off, and she couldn’t do anything with that anger but just keep paddling harder, even as she felt the first fingers of cold water wrap around her boots.

She paddled, sweating, breathing heavy, busting her ass and nearly busting that flimsy paddle—working so hard she nearly missed the sound of the engine in the distance, the lights on the horizon.

But Sweeney heard, Sweeney saw them. “There,” he said, standing and nearly falling overboard. “There’s someone out there.”

They were north in the strait, about a mile away, headed west toward Dixie Island and the cape beyond. From the sound and the speed, Jess could tell it was another powerboat, some kind of cruiser, and she felt sudden relief as she watched it, imagined they were all as good as saved.

But the cruiser kept going, and she realized it couldn’t see them, not with the lights out. It came abeam of the Grady-White and continued without slowing. Just another colossal fuck-you, she thought. Kicking us when we’re down.

But then she remembered the flare gun.

“Come on back here,” she said, scrambling up to the cabin, now two-thirds flooded, the water rising quickly. She muttered a quick prayer and dropped down into the cabin, which was choked with detritus, garbage and guidebooks and loose fishing gear, and she prayed the gun had somehow stayed dry.

It had.