Colleen could feel her body telling her to do the same. They’d both guzzled the bottles of warm water Beckett had found at the bottom of the fishing bucket, and they’d had nothing to eat. Colleen had ignored her body’s pleas for food and water, ignored the sharp and insistent pain in her hand and wrist, and urged Beckett farther and farther out, following an internal compass that told her they had to keep going.

She gazed out and there it was—she swore she saw a silver boat glittering in the far right corner of her sight, bobbing at the whims of the surging ocean. “There!” she screamed at Beckett.

He paused and tilted his baseball cap forward. “I don’t see anything,” he said over the wind. “Colleen, we have to turn back.”

“Right there! Right there . . .” She pointed. “Three o’clock.”

Beckett shook his head, not seeing what she did, and yet he drove toward her finger’s direction. As they drew closer, she was more and more sure: yes, there was silver glinting on the waves. Then he saw it, too, and he gunned the boat to its limits. They bounced over waves his small boat was not made for, Colleen’s spine jarring with each hit as the boat slammed against the current and she cradled her wrist in her opposite hand.

They reached the johnboat as the sky darkened, as a brilliant sunset settled over the horizon behind them and the water turned a darker blue. The moon rose in front of them.

“Dad!” Colleen shouted as they drew closer. Over and over she called that one name. But no gray head popped up. No man waved at them in desperation. “Call someone.” Colleen turned to Beckett as he eased his Whaler closer to the johnboat. “Tell them.”

The boats bumped together and Colleen jumped from one to the next, landing crooked and falling on her bottom in the metal hull of her dad’s boat, twisting her foot as she lifted her injured hand so as not to use it. There he was, lying flat on the bottom of the boat, his face hidden under the bench seat. “Dad. Oh, God, Dad.”

She fumbled to her knees, ignoring the pain as she bent to see his face under the bench. He must have been hiding his face from the sun. Colleen placed her hand on his neck, something she’d seen done in movies and medical shows. This was where the pulse was, right? Yes, there was a slow lumbering wave beneath her fingertips that revealed a beating heart. His chest rose and fell, slowly but steadily.

She shook him gently. She said his name into his ear. She tried to lift his eyelids but withdrew in horror to see his eyes were rolled back to expose the whites. She looked at Beckett, who was tying the boats together, lashing them with a rope from stem to stern.