Voyage After the Collapse (The Pulse Series Book 3) Read online

  Casey had told Grant before that unlike herself, Jessica always had a boyfriend. And a boyfriend was clearly what she thought was missing in her life ever since the incident with Joey Broussard in New Orleans, when he refused to come with them despite Grant’s invitation. Jessica didn’t know of course, that Joey had traveled to the cabin later, along with his friend, Zach. They had done their best to find Jessica and Casey but Scully made sure that would never happen. It was an adventure that Grant and Scully had agreed never to divulge to Jessica or the others, as it was no benefit to them to know of it. What was of benefit to Jessica and their entire group was that Joey Broussard was out of the picture for good.

  This kind of romantic complication with his new friends was the last thing Grant expected to happen on top of all the more serious matters of survival they were all dealing with. He knew it was human nature, but his experience with women and especially serious relationships with them was extremely limited. Above all, Grant didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially either one of his two new best friends. But with both of them apparently wanting more than just friendship, it seemed almost inevitable that it would happen one way or the other, unless he was strong enough or foolish enough to ignore the temptations of each. Time would tell; but first he had to know Casey was okay. Jessica he did not have to worry about; she was apparently still asleep in his bunk and would probably be there until daylight, unaware of what was going on. Grant hoped it would prove to be a non-issue and that the Casey Nicole would catch up well before daylight and he wouldn’t even have to mention it to her. But for now, the rain showed little sign of letting up. If only Casey and Jessica were both down there, he would happily stand watch in it every night of the voyage so they could stay warm and dry out of the weather.

  * * *

  Tara Hancock collapsed to her knees at the bow pulpit of the Sarah J. Clinging to the stainless steel rails with both hands, the tears rolled down her cheeks, mixing with the pouring rain beating against her face as she stared into the awful black waves in front of her. How could they ever hope to find Rebecca in this? Visibility was so limited that even if she were floating in the kayak dead ahead, they wouldn’t see her until it was to late to avoid running right over her. Tara wasn’t fooling herself about the odds of finding her daughter, despite Casey’s constant reassurance as she stood next to her, shining the insignificant beam of her flashlight into the dark void. From the time she’d first sailed with her mom and dad after they’d purchased the boat, her dad had emphasized the critical importance of staying on board. Like most beginning sailors, he’d taken a basic sailing and seamanship course and the instructor had demonstrated the difficulty of finding a man overboard by throwing a seat cushion into the water and then having him try to sail back to retrieve it. Without the crew keeping a constant vigil on the floating object as the boat was brought about, it was almost impossible to find it again; and those drills were practiced in good weather and in broad daylight. How could she have hope of finding Rebecca in this?

  She was already blaming herself for bringing her daughter out here in the first place. Why did she listen to that idiot, that so-called-captain, Larry Drager? Why did she think it would be a good idea to let him take control of her boat and steer them out here to the middle of nowhere in the open Gulf of Mexico? They had to leave Cat Island, there was no question of that, but she didn’t have to go with these strangers and she knew now she should never have struck out on a major crossing like this with no offshore sailing experience. Tara had never sailed anywhere with her parents that required keeping the boat moving around the clock. They’d always reached their destination in the daylight and anchored somewhere secure for the night. This offshore stuff was a whole different level of sailing, but she’d thought it would be okay because she’d trusted Larry. She’d even trusted him enough to go down below and go to sleep with him in charge of the boat, and worse, with her daughter alone on deck with him.

  Now he’d betrayed that trust as surely as that despicable Brad Hancock had betrayed her and Rebecca. Larry Drager, the ‘professional’ delivery skipper had fallen asleep on his watch with her deeply depressed daughter alone at the helm. Tara had been so pleased to see Rebecca emerge from her cabin that she had disregarded the danger. It was encouraging to see her take a seeming interest in what Larry was doing and want to help. Tara had wanted to believe it could be a turning point in her daughter’s outlook, and she’d put enough faith in him to leave Rebecca in his care. Now, because of him, Rebecca was lost at sea and it seemed impossible that they would ever get her back. Time seemed to stand still for her as she clung there to the bow, but at some point, she heard Larry calling for Casey.

  “I’ll be right back, Tara. I can’t hear what he wants over the noise of the rain.”

  When Casey returned to the bow, she said that Larry was about to bring the boat about, and that Tara would have to move back, at least as far as the mast until the jib was sheeted on the other side and they were on the new tack.

  “NO!” Tara screamed. “We’re not giving up! I won’t let him turn around! This is my boat and that’s my daughter who’s out there somewhere in the water!”

  “He’s not even thinking about giving up, Tara! Uncle Larry would never do that, especially not now. He’s turning around so we can sail the other tack back on a parallel course to our original one, but downwind a bit. He’s certain that we will find her by sailing back and forth in that direction, because downwind is the only way she could have gone in these conditions!”

  Tara considered what Casey was saying. It made sense if that was indeed what he was doing. She wasn’t going back there to question him about it though. She would communicate with him through Casey if she had anything to say to him at all. Larry Drager was the last person she wanted to see right now, and if they didn’t find Rebecca soon, she didn’t want to ever see him again. She didn’t know how she would get rid of him though. He was bigger and stronger than her and he and Casey had guns and she didn’t. The way she felt about now she would just as soon force him overboard in the dinghy if he didn’t find her daughter, but she knew that realistically, that wasn’t an option. She didn’t want to think about any of that right now though. She would probably as soon go overboard herself if they didn’t find her. After all, what else would she have to live for? The world had fallen apart and turned into a horrible place of violence and death anyway. If Rebecca were indeed gone for good, Tara wasn’t sure she wouldn’t just follow her. Without her to care for, what was the point in living like this?

  EIGHTEEN

  CASEY COULD NOT IMAGINE what this poor woman beside her was going through. She had been through a lot of uncertainty herself since this all began with the blackout, but she couldn’t think of anything much worse than the helplessness of knowing someone she loved was missing from a boat at sea.

  They had been looking for at least two hours, and now for the forth time, Larry brought the boat about on a new tack as he gradually worked his way back and forth downwind of their original track. With each new run across the area of greatest probability into which she might have drifted, the odds were looking worse. Casey knew enough about the margin of error in such a method to know that they could easily miss the girl, even if she was aboard the plastic kayak. If she wasn’t, then there was practically zero chance they’d find her, especially after this much time. It was still another half hour until daylight, and every pass they made in the dark limited the chances of seeing her to a very short distance from the boat. The only thing that gave Casey a bit of encouragement was the fact that the rain had slowed from a downpour to a light drizzle. In these improved conditions, they could both see and hear better than before, and Casey hoped that meant Rebecca might also see or hear them searching for her.

  Her throat was sore from yelling, so she had to take longer breaks between her shouts, but she still kept them up periodically as they cut back and forth through the dark waves. It was during one of these breaks of silence that Casey heard what
she thought was a faint voice coming from somewhere out in the dark. She put her hand on Tara’s shoulder and whispered to her to try and quiet her sobbing as she froze in position and waited, straining to hear it again, if it was real. Some two or three minutes passed by with nothing but the hiss of moving water past the hull—and then there it was—a distant cry barely audible above the sound of moving water. Casey glanced back to the cockpit and saw that Larry showed no signs of having heard it. He was still scanning the waters on both sides of the boat as he steered, in case the two of them on bow missed something. Warning Tara to stay put where she was and keep a sharp lookout, Casey scrambled back to the cockpit as fast as she could.

  * * *

  Larry Drager turned the helm hard to starboard as Casey helped him readjust the sheets to the new course. He still hadn’t heard a thing but he didn’t doubt his niece, as she was adamant that what she heard was real. Even if it wasn’t, it was the only possibility they’d chanced upon since they began the search, so Larry was certainly going to investigate it fully. He directed to Casey to cleat the main sheet so that the sail could still spill some wind, keeping the boat speed in control. Then he stood at the aft end of the cockpit seat, hanging onto the Bimini frame to get as high as possible for a better view as he steered with one foot. Casey was on the coach roof next to the mast, and Tara was still shining her light from the bow, her focus revived after Casey insisted she heard something.

  Although the rain had slacked off and the sky was clearing, the wind had picked up, and even with the sheets slack the Sarah J. was sailing a little faster than Larry would have liked in a situation like this. It would be better to have the second reef in the main, but there was no time to fool with that now. If the voice Casey thought she heard was real, the girl had to be close and he wanted to find her while Casey still had a good idea where she thought the sound came from.

  Larry had to admit that although he would search these waters until everyone on the boat was exhausted beyond the ability to continue, until Casey came aft to tell him she heard something, he had really begun to doubt they would be successful. The odds were stacked too high against them with the weather like it had been when they first discovered Rebecca missing. Larry assumed that they had missed her on an earlier pass, if she was even still afloat. Daylight might enable them to find the kayak if they searched several more hours, but even that was unlikely.

  He had been wondering how he was going to deal with Tara in that moment when the search had to be called off. She was going to need more help than he and Casey could ever give her, but where would she find it? They were days away from reaching the other side of the Gulf and going back was not an option. Scully and the others would be worried and confused too by daylight if they weren’t already, and the next priority had to be reconnecting with them. It was a nightmare all the way around, and Larry cursed himself for falling asleep even for one minute. It was one of the dumbest things he’d ever done, and he’d done a lot of dumb things in his day.

  A scream from the bow snapped him back to the present and he looked to see Tara standing at the pulpit and then climbing higher, putting her feet on the rails as she clung to the forestay and focused her flashlight in one area. Larry couldn’t see anything but Tara was still screaming.

  “THERE SHE IS! I SEE HER! STOP THE BOAT! STOP!!!”

  Larry brought the helm hard over again, not quite believing what he was hearing, but then Casey confirmed it as the bow swung upwind and the sails luffed.

  “I SEE HER! THERE SHE IS, UNCLE LARRY! SHE’S IN THE KAYAK!”

  * * *

  Daybreak came and the crew of the Casey Nicole still had not spotted the light from the Sarah J. Artie Drager was a nervous wreck, worrying about Casey as well as his brother. With the horizon expanding around them in the increasing light, he climbed the ratlines on the mainmast port shrouds until he was as high up as it was safe to go with the catamaran underway. From that vantage point, he scanned the waters for 360 degrees, expecting to see the triangular outline of a sail somewhere, but there was nothing. They were alone in the vastness of the Gulf, for all he could tell, and no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes and tried to make it so, he could not see any sign of the Tartan 37 that carried his precious daughter and his only brother.

  Grant and Scully were equally anxious with the coming of dawn, and none of them had slept since discovering that the light of the other boat had disappeared. As Artie stood there on the uppermost step, clinging to the rigging, he saw the starboard companionway open and then Jessica stuck her head out, oblivious until now that something was wrong. Grant and Scully could fill her in. He wanted to remain where he was a bit longer as the morning light grew brighter. There was still a heavy overcast, so he’d doubted they would see the sunrise. From the way it looked, more rain was coming soon and the day was shaping up to be as nasty as the night before. If the Sarah J. did not materialize out of the gray soup that surrounded them soon, Artie was going to insist that they turn back and look for it. He knew Scully thought it better to stay on course and plan to rendezvous with Larry at one of their two possible landfalls, but it was his daughter and his brother who were missing. He couldn’t bear the idea of sailing three or four more days and nights without knowing. When he finally determined that they were not close enough to see from the rigging, he climbed down to express these thoughts to the others.

  “Gonna be a hard t’ing, try to find dat boat by going bok de weh we comin’, Doc.”

  Artie already knew Scully was going to say this, and he understood why. Two boats moving across the open sea, even if they had been on the same course and within sight hours ago, could be apart by miles on a parallel course, even if they were moving at the same speed. Turning back to look for them might be fruitless, unless, as Artie feared, they had been inadvertently stopped for some reason. But what if the boat sank and the four of them were adrift in the dinghy, or worse, in the water in their life jackets? That made it worth going back to look, even if it was unlikely such a thing happened.

  “I know we might be wasting time going back, and they might even be ahead of us by now since we slowed down, but if they’re in trouble, we’ll never know.”

  “I agree,” Grant said. “What’s the harm in looking? If we sail back say six or eight hours, or at least as long as it takes to get to where you think we might have been when we lost contact, that will only put us behind something like less than a full day, right? I’m no expert at navigation, especially not on the water, but what difference does it make if we lose a day? If they are okay and they get to land ahead of us, surely they’ll wait for us, right?”

  “Larry he wait, not to worry ‘bout dat. If everybody wanna go bok, it’s okay, we goin’ bok. But I t’ink Larry he okay an’ we find him waitin’ when we arrive dem Dry Tortuga Island.”

  Artie was glad to hear Scully say that. He knew if they didn’t look he wouldn’t sleep again until they made landfall and found out if he was right. Either way, if they didn’t spot the Sarah J. the rest of this passage was going to be hell for him, but at least he would feel better knowing they had checked to make sure disaster had not befallen the other yacht.

  Sailing the other way, Scully had them help him set as much sail area as the wind would allow, so that they were soon clipping along at nearly 15 knots—practically flying compared to the sedate speeds at which they had been sailing when they had to accommodate the monohull’s slower pace.

  “This is incredible!” Grant said, wiping the spray off of his face as they crashed over the wave tops.

  “I told you! My brother built a hell of a boat! I can’t believe he would abandon it to go sail on that sea slug! But then, of course I can! That’s what women will do to a man. Sorry Jessica,” Artie said when Jessica gave him a look.

  “I didn’t like it at all, how quick he was to invite her and her kid to join us. I mean there are plenty of people who are in danger and could use our help. It’s not like we can help them all,” Jessica said.

/>   “Yeah, but most of them don’t look like Tara or have a pretty boat like hers, even if it is slow. I just hope it is as safe as he said it was. I know Larry knows what he’s doing, and he wouldn’t knowingly put Casey in jeopardy even if he were foolish enough to throw caution to the wind over a woman. I just hope we find them soon.”

  But the morning hours slipped by as the miles dropped astern in the wake, and still there was no sighting of another sail anywhere on the horizon. Scully estimated they had traveled even farther on their backtrack than the point where they’d last seen the Sarah J., and he said it would be foolish to go farther that way. It was raining again anyway and visibility was down to less than a half a mile. But even if it were not, they could not have known they had already passed the Sarah J. some three hours back. His stomach twisted in knots with worry over Casey, Artie reluctantly helped Grant and Scully bring the Casey Nicole about to resume her course. Now, unless by chance their courses somehow converged again, he had no choice but to wait until they made landfall to find out if she was going to be there safe or not.

  NINETEEN

  LARRY DRAGER FELT THE weight of the world instantly lift from his weary shoulders at the sight of that frightened teenaged girl sitting there clinging to the drifting plastic kayak. She was waving and calling back to them, clearly wanting to be rescued now, no matter what she’d been thinking when she made the decision to leave the Sarah J. earlier. Larry was relieved that he’d been right about her untying the towline so she could leave on the kayak. There was little chance Rebecca would have lasted this long without it, and even less that they would have spotted her. All of that was behind him now though. The important thing was to get her safely back aboard. He yelled for Casey to come help, ignoring Tara, who was so overjoyed at the sight of her daughter that she didn’t even hear his shouts.