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June waited for a morning when Walt had taken little Mai to the beach, then she rode her bicycle to the bazaar in Pekerjaan. She left the bike in a rack and followed the market’s narrow maze-like paths until she came to a dark stall that sold flags and weapons. She ignored the knives and brass knuckles on display and looked over a small selection of guns on a velvet cloth under glass. She picked out a Nambu pistol that the dealer referred to as a “baby,” but he nodded his approval and told her it was a good gun for a woman her age. She shrugged off the insult.
He had no idea!
By the time Walt and Mai returned to their bungalow, June’s bicycle was back in the shed, and the Nambu was hidden under a magazine at the bottom of her bag.
She marked off another day on the calendar. The Maria Calypso would return in less than a month.
Dear Mai,
I wish we’d had more time. Wasn’t that the point of all this? To have more time?
There’s nothing I can do now except wait and pray that I’m right about what he wants me to do. When the time comes, please don’t look back.
And please forgive me.
The day after June James signed her first book contract, she got busy writing a second novel. She was twenty-two years old, and she recognized full well how lucky she was. There would be no sophomore slump for her, no dithering about what she should write; she had a publisher and a future readership, and she felt it was her duty to deliver. This, now, was her job.
For the rest of her life, she would keep to a strict writing schedule.
She wrote a thousand words a day, six days a week. When she finished a draft, she took exactly two weeks to revise it. Then she popped it in the mail to her editor—years later she would attach it to an email—and began her next manuscript.
It was a comfortable routine. It was satisfying work.
Her boyfriend Walt Dennison bought her a new typewriter to celebrate her debut novel. Nestled within the keys was a ring with the barest hint of a diamond set in it. She immediately said yes. She was not the type to question what she had.
When the many appointments and decisions involved in planning the wedding began to interfere with her writing schedule, she told Walt she didn’t care about flowers and cakes, she didn’t like dressing up or wearing make-up. She didn’t want any of that.
He asked if she would, maybe, like to elope.
They were married in a roadside chapel on Key Largo, and Walt repacked their luggage while June banged away at her new portable typewriter. When she had achieved a thousand words, they drove to PortMiami to board their honeymoon cruise.
The Maria Calypso left the Port of Miami with a hundred-eighty-two passengers. A young woman in a grass skirt presented each of them with a plastic lei as they boarded.
Two days after setting sail, newly minted bride June Dennison stood at the stern of the ship with her husband, watching the ship’s wake and thinking about the responsibilities that awaited her back on land.
“We should have opened the gifts before we left,” she said.
Walt said, “Will you stop with the gifts? They can wait.”
“And all those thank-you cards to write.”
“Oh, come on,” Walt said. “You’re a terrific writer.”
“Not that kind of writing, and by the time we get back I’ll only have a week for book revisions, and I’m already—”
“Fine,” Walt said. “Let me deal with the gifts and cards.”
“Honey, you and I both know you won’t. When we first met, you had a pile of unpaid bills on your kitchen counter. If I hadn’t opened your mail the electricity would have—”
“I was getting ready to pay that.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’d have gotten around to it.”
“Thank you,” Walt said. “But I concede your point. You are better at everything except rubbing your feet. I’ll do that while you take care of the cards.”
“It’s a deal,” June said. She smiled up at him and pulled back her damp hair. “You know, you’re allowed to throw that thing away now.”
“How dare you,” He touched the colorful plastic lei hanging around his neck, tiny beads of seawater shimmering in its petals. “This is my honeymoon souvenir. I’m gonna wear it forever.”
June sighed and half-closed her eyes, enjoying the ocean spray on her face.
“I’m gonna be buried with this lei,” Walt said. “When the time comes, pick a suit for me that goes with it.”
“Walt,” June said.
“It should be purple, but sort of an understated purple. And maybe a pink pocket square.”
June was squinting into the mist. “Honey, what’s that?” She pointed out at the ship’s wake.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“You see him, too?”
Walt turned from the rail and waved at a uniformed woman who was exiting the stairwell behind them.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said. He pointed out at the water. “Is that guy supposed to be out there?”
Captain Billy Prescott felt a tingling sensation in his left hand, followed by a shooting pain that traveled up and down his arm and made his scalp itch. He paged the infirmary, and when there was no response, he sent the quartermaster to find Dr Kobuszewski.
But Vincent Kobuszewski was in the engine room talking to the electrical engineer, and the quartermaster didn’t think to look for him there.
Captain Billy was hunched over a control panel, when Safety Officer Amanda George entered the wheelhouse. She was too preoccupied to notice his discomfort.
“Captain,” Amanda said. “There’s something in the water behind us.”
Billy said nothing.
“I wouldn’t mention it, but it’s … well, sir, it’s really strange,”
she said.
Billy’s vision began to blur.
“You’re not going to believe me,” Amanda said. “There’s a man in a white suit, and he’s standing in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. He’s rowing along with a pole, like a gondolier, and he’s gaining on us.”
Billy moaned.
“I swear,” Amanda said. “I’m not making this up.”
For the first and only time in his life, Billy Prescott had an epiphany. He understood instinctively what was happening. With the last of his strength, he fell against the ship’s conn, and the Maria Calypso began to pick up speed.
The security officer finally realized she had walked in on a private drama. “Captain, are you all right?”
Billy straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath as the pain in his chest eased.
“Get the gun from the safe,” he said. “Shoot that thing out of the water.”
Doctor Vincent Kobuszewski was on his way to the wheelhouse when he encountered the safety officer sitting in the aft stairwell, staring into space, and cradling a Smith & Wesson .357 in her lap.
“Feels like we’re gaining speed,” Vincent said. “Any idea what’s going on?”
Amanda shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense, ...
