A ringtone cuts through the dark flat.
I flinch.
Pretty sure Mal does too and I reach for him on instinct as Skylar follows the sound to the living room.
He comes back with Sol’s phone and the name on the screen drops my stomach.
Hanna.
Oscar’s friendly ex.
Aras’s mam.
Why is she calling Sol?
The phone rings and rings in Skylar’s hand, but he doesn’t answer, and eventually, it stops, leaving that awful heavy silence to descend once more. To cloak us in limbo with nothing but thunder and wind, and the sickening churn of our worst fears.
He’s out there.
Sol’s phone beeps. Like an echo.
I blink hard. “Is that her again?”
Skylar scans the screen and his expression changes.
I wrench myself from the window. “What?”
“Oscar’s monitor lost connection.”
The words land slow, and I try to rationalise them. Try toremembereverything I know about the device Oscar wears on his arm. The small white circle taped to his muscular bicep. And as sludgy as my brain feels, I know there are a dozen reasons for it to disconnect from Sol’s phone before I get to the shit ones.
Salt water.
Poor signal.
Or maybe he turned the remote sharing off. Maybe he and Sol have had the mother of all rows at sea and that side of their friendship is done.
A ludicrous thought if I ever had one. One the storm answers with the most brutish crack of thunder yet. Makes me jump, but I’m distracted by activity in the harbour below. Car engines. Headlamps. Men moving across the quay in rain macs as harbour lights flick on.
It’s Christmas Day. Boats should be tied fast, fishermen home with their families. But down below, they trickle out into the night.
Checking lines.
Counting vessels.
I watch with building dread as their collective gaze swings to the cove and the empty space where theSironashould be. As they turn back to the horizon with the same urgency lighting my nerves. The same horror blocking my throat.
Mal.
I find my brother in the dark and he nods.
Let’s go.
26JACK
We reach the quay at the same time as the harbour-master. He already has a handheld radio pressed to his ear, trying to raise theSironaand another vessel that hasn’t come home.
Other fishermen mill around, taking shelter by the new lifeguard base, hoods up to the lashing rain and wind.