“Of course there’s a storm,” Molly mutters, wiping rain from her mouth, her arm tremoring inside the tightened bracelet. Molly’s eyes are my eyes. We’re two trapped animals. Heavy footsteps scatter back and forth above us on the deck. The storm must be stressing out our kidnappers because they haven’t stopped scuttling around since we shoved off. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“You tried to warn me. Why all of a sudden? What happened?”

I blow out sharp breaths—in through your nose, out through your mouth—and tell the story of my deliveries to Ricky Hannigan, his death, his Nightlight warning, and how after traveling to Costa Rica…here Nightlight is, printed on the side of our boat. “But I live in Tucson and don’t know any Ricky Hannigan,” Molly says, her eyes narrowing with calculation. My story—and all of its disquieting incompleteness—has plucked her nerves. “My dad’s the one who hired these people…” Her shoulders fall, defeated by her next thought: “Our families wanted us gone.”

A thick ache moans in my chest. Mom and I have been fighting so much since my junior year ended, but I never thought she could do something like this to me. The whole idea is unbelievable—poor white trash Marcia Major, working night shifts and paying for her son’s kidnapping with her overtime checks. “I dunno,” I say. “Wherever we’re going, it’s not a boot camp.”

“It might be a boot camp. Just a little extra boot—”

Rain floods our cabin as the canopy tears completely away from its hooks. A heaving splash ricochets off the floor, soaking my hoodie with tons of seawater. It was my turn to get drenched anyhow, but Molly didn’t escape clean either: her pink party dress clings to every corner of her scrawny frame. I can almost hear her thinking, Why did I turn down Briggs’s coat?

As the floodwaters settle above Molly’s ankles, footsteps grow louder at the top of the stairs. Where the canopy used to be, Briggs looms overhead, floodlights silhouetting his dripping, body-built shadow. His blue eyes still shimmer, but they’re darker—riskier—like ice over blacktop.

He descends the stairs shaking a key ring…

Once Briggs unshackles Molly and me, we’re brought above deck to join the other kidnappers: blurry, faceless men in the storm-darkened afternoon. They hustle past us, their strained breathing like a whisper in my ears: these men are freaking out about something. My flip-flops squish through inch-deep water along the upper deck, and I crane my neck to the sky as the downpour hits my dry lips like nectar. I open wide to hydrate my even drier gullet, and although it does nothing to clear my mental fog, the rain does absorb the frustration that has grown around it.

As wave after wave spills over onto the deck, kidnappers grab plastic buckets and chuck the sea back into itself a gallon at a time. “Do not lose us out here,” Briggs shouts at the captain—an older, stooping man gripping the boat’s helm. “This’ll only get worse as the night tears on!”