Fathom Page 10

  Despite their kindness, I couldn’t help feeling powerless and trapped with these strange people who wouldn’t give me a straight answer on anything. I still didn’t understand why any of this happened. Would I ever know?

  “Please,” Sam said. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  Eamon looked up from making sandwiches. He and Walter glanced at one another again, passing a wordless communication they alone understood. Samantha and I could do that too. We’d been friends so long, we could almost read the other’s mind when time and place called for it. I'd never realized how annoying it must have been for everyone around us until now.

  Eamon leaned on the dark laminate top of the kitchen counter. “I know this is frightening for you both. Why don’t you take your food up to your rooms and relax? After a good night’s rest tonight, we’ll talk about getting you back home tomorrow.”

  Eamon gave us paper plates of food and beckoned us to follow him up the stairs. He showed us down a long hallway to a room at the very end.

  “If you need anything, please help yourself,” he said. “There are snacks and water here in the bedroom. Bathroom is the first door on the landing.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He left us with a small smile before closing the door. Were we prisoners?

  I stood in the middle of the room, holding my plate, and looked around. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom was almost bare except for two air mattresses with sleeping bags and pillows, two towels with brand new travel size toothbrushes in the wrapper, and six big bottles of water. Though it looked comfortable enough, I still felt like a captive in a cell. I moved to the window and sighed at the incredible view of the backyard ocean.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the men at the tide pools?” Samantha asked from where she sat on her air mattress. Her lunch lay untouched on the plate beside her. I turned to her and hesitated a minute, biting my lip.

  “I don’t know. I guess I was afraid you’d get scared and want to leave.”

  She stared at me, her brows knit. “How could you not tell me?”

  Didn’t I just answer that? “I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t know something would happen.”

  She looked down and scowled.

  “What, are you mad at me now?” I asked.

  “You’ve been lying to me,” she said. “You knew there was something going on. We’ve had these creeps watching us this whole time, then you ran off and left me in the middle of that stupid theme park. Did you really want to complain to that man about all your precious little fish, or did you just want to go after the seashell?”

  My stomach tightened in anger. How could she think that?

  “I didn’t know it was the same guy when I first followed him. You think I’m on some weird quest or something?”

  She shook her head and lay on her air mattress. I looked down at my food, my appetite gone. Sam was mad at me, we were trapped up in this bedroom for who-knows-how-long, and nobody in this place had the decency to explain why. All I knew now was I couldn’t live through this without Samantha backing me up. I sighed in reluctant surrender.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I said again. “I’m sorry all this happened.”

  She sighed too. “Why are we trusting them?”

  “They did save my life,” I replied, grateful she was talking to me. I moved my shoulder a little bit. It didn’t hurt anymore. Though I was grateful to Eamon for healing it, I knew he only did it because he thought I was someone else. If he had known I was just Olivia Owens from Glendale, Arizona, he might have just let Samantha call 911 or something.

  “Should we tell our parents?”

  “No. They don’t need the extra worry. We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  Sam didn’t talk much after that. Other than sit on our beds and wonder what tomorrow was going to bring, we did little else to pass the time. Through the window, the sun had gone. The clock on Samantha’s cell phone read a little after ten p.m. when Natasha poked her head in.

  “Samantha, Uther says I can take you back to your house to get your things.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I come too?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not. It isn’t safe for you to go back there. You’re more easily recognized.”

  “So it’s okay for me to get shot at?” Sam asked with a scowl.

  She chuckled. “You won’t get shot at. I’d go on my own, but I need you to help me so I don’t leave any of your things behind.”

  Sam sighed and nodded.

  “All right. We’ll go in a few minutes.” Natasha turned to go but stopped with her hand on the doorknob. She looked back at me. “Did you really follow Doran Linnaeus into his office?”

  I frowned down at my feet crisscrossed beneath me. “I wish I hadn’t now.”

  “I think it was very brave of you. Right crazy, but brave.” She smiled in a reassuring way and for the first time, I noticed a dimple appear in one of her cheeks.

  “You’re a marine botanist?” I asked.

  “I am. I provided the flower beside your bed when you were recovering from your wound. It promotes healing.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to take Samantha.” She closed the door and left us alone.

  “I should be the one going,” I said. “All this is my fault.”

  “It’s fine,” she replied. “Just promise me you won’t do anything else stupid.”

  “I promise.”

  Natasha came back a few minutes later.

  “You ready to go?” she asked.

  Samantha nodded and stood. “How long will we be?”

  “Not too long. We have to take an unusual route to make sure we aren’t being followed. We have to be inconspicuous.”

  I thought two women entering a house late at night would look more suspicious than in the middle of the day, but I kept quiet.

  “Okay.” Samantha looked at me over her shoulder. “See you in a bit.”

  She walked out with Natasha. After their muffled steps disappeared down the staircase, I lay down and waited for sleep to come. But it didn’t, just like it never does when you have a lot on your mind. I stood and paced for a while.

  I needed to use the restroom. But I didn’t want to wake anyone up. Going pee in a strange house with a strange group of people felt weird. But my bladder wouldn’t relent, so I opened the door to my room. I tiptoed over the carpet, passed closed doors along the hall, and reached for the first doorknob on the landing. The sound of quiet voices drifted up from downstairs and I stopped. I couldn’t tell what they said, so I crept closer to the staircase and listened.

  “… should tell them everything.” It sounded like Walter.

  “We don’t know anything about them.”

  Staying out of sight, I went a few steps down the stairs and sat down.

  “We know enough,” said Walter. “She brought us the vessel.”

  “Calder was going to bring it back anyway.”

  “She’s been through so much though, Eamon. They both have. Don’t they deserve to know why?”

  “What’ll the others think?”

  Others? What others?

  “It’s the same as when we brought in Natasha and Uther.”

  “They were adults willing to take the risk. These girls are just kids.”

  “Yes, but they’re old enough. Olivia especially has a right to know why this happened.”

  “Walt, I’ve been doing this a long time. We’ve never seen fit to inform the victims before. Why now?”

  “Other victims haven’t stuck out their own necks to help us.”

  Doing what? And what victims? Holy crap, who were these people?

  “Maybe. But I really think you ought to let this go. We can send them back to their home in Arizona and monitor any movements.”

  “I would rather put them on their guard before sending them off.”

  One of them sighed.

  “I apprec
iate your advice. But this time I have to say no. It isn’t our secret to tell.”

  There was a pause. I leaned closer, hoping one of them would slip out the “secret.”

  “We can discuss it with Cordelia,” Eamon continued. “She’ll meet us at the pier at midnight.”

  One of the bedroom doors opened. I jumped. I got up to hurry back to my bedroom, but I was too late and came abruptly face to face with Calder Brydon in the hallway. I gasped.

  He wore a rugby tee shirt with striped pajama pants, his hair rumpled from sleeping. As soon as our eyes met, he blanched. I opened my mouth to apologize—though I was sorrier I had gotten caught than I was for the actual snooping—but he shouldered past me and headed down the stairs.

  I hurried to my room and shut the door. Only when I heard Calder’s door close again did I dare to venture out to look for the bathroom. This time, I didn’t run into him, though with some twisted kind of recklessness I couldn’t explain, I sort of wished I had.

  I lay on my side, facing the wall, when the bedroom door opened a while later. The glow from the hallway spilled into the room.

  “Shh…I think she’s asleep,” whispered Natasha.

  “Should I wake her up?”

  “No. Get some rest. We’ll tell her in the morning.”

  The door closed and I could hear heavy luggage drag on the floor between our beds. I turned over.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Oh!” Samantha startled, dropping one of her bags. “You scared me. I thought you were asleep.”

  “Sorry.” I propped myself up on my elbow. “What did you need to tell me? What’s going on?”

  Samantha hesitated, her face subdued and frightened.

  “We got chased.”

  I sat up. “Chased?”

  “We’re all right. We made it back without them following us.”

  “Who’s ‘them’?”

  “That Linnaeus guy’s men.”

  “Are you sure? What happened?”

  “We got to your aunt’s house okay. We got the luggage loaded, but when I went back to lock up the house, a car came around the corner. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but Natasha told me to hide. She jumped into the car and drove off.”

  “She just left you?”

  “She had to,” said Sam. “The men in the car went after her. I was fine. She came back after a few minutes, but when we got back on the road, they found us again. Natasha drove like a total lunatic, but we shook them off long enough to switch cars. That was the only way we could get home okay.”

  “Why did you switch cars?”

  “To throw off the bad guys. That Uther guy has a couple cars stowed away in different parts of the city in case something like this happens.”

  “Wow. Did Natasha tell you anything else?”

  “Other than teasing me for having so much luggage, no.”

  I groaned in frustration. “Eamon and Walter were talking earlier. I kept hoping they’d come out and say what the big secret is all about.”

  “When was this?” Sam asked as she sat on her bed.

  “Not long ago. I was…sort of eavesdropping. Walter said the both of us deserve to know the truth, but Eamon said they should just send us home.”

  “Really?”

  “He also mentioned some lady named Cordelia he was going to meet at the pier tonight at midnight. He said he’d discuss it with her. Maybe she’s the boss of this operation.”

  Sam sighed. “I’ll be glad when this is over.”

  “Me too. Definitely.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. The clock on Sam’s cell phone read 11:54. I thought about Eamon and Walter’s discussion an hour ago about the meeting at the pier with the unknown Cordelia. I tapped my fingers on my knee, then looked at Samantha. She met my eye.

  “Ready to go find out?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  We jumped up at the same time and crept out the bedroom door.

  Sneaking around was quickly becoming my thing. I felt little fear and my frustrations drowned out my guilt as Samantha and I left the bedroom and crept down the stairs. The dark, quiet house kept still, hushed and waiting. No scowling Scottish guy impeded us. This would be an easy one.

  I looked out the back window of the family room. Eamon and Walter had just left. I could see them walking in the sand by the light of the moon, heading down the beach to the right of the house. They both carried a small bundle.

  “Let’s go out the front door and circle around,” I said. “I don’t want them to hear us.” Sam followed me through the front door and around the house. We kept to the shadows of the neighboring house, which had large boulders surrounding its back deck. Eamon and Walter walked several yards ahead toward a long pier not far off. With the low roar of the surf, I didn’t worry about them hearing us. I hurried to the next hiding place—the neighbor’s wooden deck stairs.

  We darted from hiding place to hiding place: another staircase, a lifeguard’s tower, and a sand dune, until Eamon and Walter stopped at the tall, thick poles beneath the pier. At the edge of the rolling shoreline, they waited. We hunkered behind the hill, spying like two crabs in the sand.

  Several minutes passed. A cramp clenched in my neck from checking either side of the empty beach for anyone approaching.

  “What are they waiting for?” Sam whispered. “There’s nobody here.”

  I turned around to check behind us, then looked back at Eamon and Walter.

  “There’s gotta be—” I stopped. My mouth fell open. “Sam…” I breathed, leaning forward.

  “What is that?”

  A head emerged out of the ocean. Then a torso.

  A person. A man.

  From the water.

  “Olivia, how did he…?”

  “Where did he come from?” There weren’t any boats nearby and the pier was empty.

  The man trudged out of the water, unsteady on his feet. He held something like a wet towel wrapped around his waist. The moonlight shone on his sodden hair. He approached Eamon and Walter, who shook hands with him.

  The man looked back at the water and waved one arm at something. I looked to the silvery swells, confused because there were no ships to wave at.

  “What’s he—?”

  “Look!” Samantha hissed, pointing at the water. I squinted and stretched my neck farther. Then I saw them…

  I gasped. Samantha swore underneath her hand covering her mouth.

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. It had to be the moonlight on the water, the way the currents played. The waves and the reflections and the late hour and the craziness of the day. Those people, out in the ocean—the ones the man had waved to—dove back beneath the surface. Did they...were those…no, they couldn’t have been. But they looked almost like lithe, shining fish tails flipping up behind them.

  My breath came in sputtering gasps. I froze to the spot and gaped at the ocean, then at Eamon, Walter, and their new friend as they walked back to the house. But just as they came level with where we hid, the man stopped.

  And looked right at us.

  I should have ducked. I would have. But a knife suddenly appeared at my throat.

  “Get up,” said a terse female voice in my ear. I got to my knees, but the blade kept me from moving any more. I turned my eyes toward Samantha without moving my head. She had a weapon poised at her jugular as well. Her mouth hung open with terror.

  I looked down at the thin, pale hand holding the knife. I wanted to look behind me to see who our assaulters were, but the blade sat close enough to shave the fine hairs off my neck.

  Eamon, Walter, and the third man approached.

  The knife shifted but didn’t pierce my skin. “What are you doing here?” said the woman behind me.

  “Let them go,” the man from the water said. The knives didn’t move. For a second, Eamon and Walter stared at us, aghast. Eamon stepped forward.

  “They’re with us,” he said quickly. “They recovered the vessel.”

>   The knife came away from my throat. A hand shoved me into the sand. I couldn’t get up until someone grasped my arm and pulled me, trembling, to my feet. It was Walter. He held my arm in one hand and Samantha’s in the other. I curled my hands toward my chest and looked up in his face as though trying to ask, is this really happening?

  He sighed and started walking, still clutching us both by the arm. I looked at the ocean—tranquil and empty. I turned to watch the people walking ahead of me. One was the man from the water. The other, a woman with a sheet of long, dark hair. She wore a towel tied around her waist, similar to her companion. Eamon walked a step behind them. Had the woman been the one holding a knife at Samantha’s throat as well as mine? A chill rankled me. Eamon turned and looked at us over his shoulder. By his expression, I knew we were in a lot of trouble.

  But as Walter dragged us along, all I could do was stumble and try to breathe.

  We arrived at the house’s back patio.

  “Sit,” Eamon commanded as we came to the stairs leading to the house’s back door. Sam and I sat. Walter led the people from the ocean around the house and out of sight. Eamon stood in front of us, his arms folded.

  “Explain yourselves.”

  “I…I…” My mouth stopped working. Samantha’s mouth still hung open.

  “What did you see?” he asked. I didn’t answer. I could only think of the image in my brain of the ocean, turned silver by a night sky. The things breaking the surface, apparitions from the verses of a fairytale, had taken shape and burst from the pages.

  “Right then,” said Eamon when neither of us could find our tongues. “Up to your room and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll talk.”

  Sleep?

  “But…” said Sam as she nervously rubbed her neck, “what about—”

  “They won’t harm you. They’ve gone with Walter.” Eamon helped each of us to our feet. “Upstairs now.”

  We hurried into the house and up to our room. Samantha shut and locked the bedroom door behind her, then leaned against it.

  “What. Just. Happened?” she asked. Her eyes shone, glassy and round.