Page 9 of Crash Over Us
He laughed. “Or you found the someone missing.”
Gabe and I sat back on our heels. I watched as our tanks were loaded onto the abandoned boat. Holy shit. Another guy, dressed in fishing coveralls, boarded our cutter.
“Where are the other tanks?” he shouted.
Gabe hit his shoulder against mine. “Are they stealing our gear? That’s what’s happening?”
I sighed. “Yeah. Fucking pirates for diving equipment.” I’d heard about this becoming increasingly more prevalent in the states south of us, but it seemed North Carolina could no longer be spared.
The guy with the gun kicked my knee. “Where are the rest of the tanks? He needs them.”
“Tell him to look in the cabin. They are labeled.” I didn’t want to tell him he was a fucking moron for needing to read the signs. “But they’re going to need the key.”
The cutter was outfitted with military grade diving equipment. Each set was worth a minimum of five thousand dollars, and we had six full dive sets on board.
“Where’s the key?” He waved the gun closer to my nose.
I pressed my lips together. It wasn’t worth getting my head blown off over tanks and scuba gear, but my stubbornness made it hard to just give in to this fucking petty robbery. They knew we were unarmed and had locked our guns in the holding case in order to make the first surface swim. I was pissed.
“The key!” The side of the gun smacked across my cheekbone. Shit. That hurt.
“It’s in the key box,” I mumbled. “Which is also locked.”
“The main key is in the console,” Gabe answered for me. “The key box is below deck.”
“At least someone is cooperative,” he snarled. “Did you hear that? Key box below deck!” he yelled across the boats.
“Got ‘em!” his friend hollered back.
It didn’t take them long to figure out the key system and to start unlocking the lockers that contained the dive equipment.
They started to transfer all the dive gear to the fishing boat that had been their decoy. The tanks, masks, regulators, wet suits, and dry suits. I didn’t want to add up the value in my head as they stole from the cutter, but it tallied anyway. They had to have nearly thirty thousand dollars in equipment and gear, probably more since they seemed to grab anything they could spot.
Gabe huddled closer. “Do we have a plan?” he whispered.
“Since they have guns and ours are locked onboard the cutter, we are kinda fucked right now,” I answered.
“So we do nothing?” he questioned my response. I didn’t like it either, but we were outnumbered and had no weapons.
I shook my head. “No, I think they’ll head out and leave us behind. They want dive gear. They’re sea rats. They aren’t murderers.” That was another hope I still held on to, but I wasn’t sure why I believed it.
The guy responsible for keeping us still shook the gun at us again to stop us from talking. I saw the outline of a hammerhead shark tattoo on his right forearm. It was the only distinguishable mark I could identify on him or any of the crew.
“Boat’s clear,” someone shouted. I knew he was talking about the cutter. They must have stripped it of anything valuable and loaded it onto the decoy boat.
“Let’s go!”
I exhaled, waiting for them to load us back on our boat, but suddenly someone hit the throttle, and Gabe and I fell backward in a pile. Shit.
“I thought they were going to let us go,” he groaned as I pushed off him.
I looked at the driver of the boat. The bandana covering his nose and lower face, along with the sunglasses he wore, concealed his identity. I turned to see the abandoned vessel was following behind us. If we jumped and dove into the water, they’d run over us or pick us up. Neither would get us out of this fucked up situation.
SIX
Margot
PRESENT TIME
