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“What are the odds,” Graham said, “that they’ve realized we’re out of gas and are just coming over to help?”
“Slim,” Ellie said, her heart thumping hard. She’d never so much as stolen a pack of gum before, never sneaked a cigarette or cheated on a test, and now here she was, about to get caught stealing a boat. It wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t the one to have stolen it. She’d gone along with the plan. Because Graham had stolen it for her, and she could almost feel the guilt scrawled all over her face as she watched the gap between the two boats grow smaller. Theirs was more of a ship, really, huge and white and angular, with blaring red lights along the top. When they were close enough, a man in dark sunglasses and a bright orange Windbreaker raised a megaphone.
“Please remain where you are,” he said, the words crackling. “Do not move your vessel.”
“We couldn’t if we tried,” Graham mumbled.
“This is bad,” Ellie whispered. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s not good,” he admitted, but when he saw her face, he forced a cheerfulness into his voice. “It’ll be fine, though. It’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll work it out.”
When the coast guard ship drew up alongside theirs, the man lowered the megaphone. “This boat has been reported missing,” he called out. “Know anything about that?”
Graham cupped his hands around his mouth to call back. “It’s my fault, sir,” he said. “I was only borrowing it.”
The officer took off his sunglasses and squinted at Graham. “You’re that guy,” he said, looking perplexed. “From those movies.”
“Exactly,” Graham said, bobbing his head encouragingly. “I’m up here filming a new one, and we’ve been using the boat—it was a production guy who called it in, I bet, right?—and I guess I just forgot to let someone know.”
Ellie marveled at the ease of his explanation, the nonchalant way in which he chalked the whole thing up to a misunderstanding, and the reaction of the officer, who seemed to be absorbing all this with a thoughtful air. If it had been Ellie, she would have been stumbling through the story, flustered and nervous. Even if she were telling the truth, she would somehow manage to appear guilty.
“Give me a minute,” the officer said, holding up a finger. “I just need to verify this.”
He disappeared back into the cabin of the boat, and Ellie turned to Graham. Before she could say anything, he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “It does come in handy sometimes, this whole being-recognized thing.”
Even so, they waited in tense silence. A few Jet Skiers streamed past, their yellow life jackets bright against the water, and a plane flew low overhead. Ellie wasn’t wearing a watch, and her phone was now somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic, so she had no idea what time it was, but the sun had crossed the highest point, and she imagined it must be well after noon by now.
When the man returned, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed the back of his neck. “I spoke with the guy who called it in,” he said, then glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “He didn’t realize you were the one who’d taken it. He said it’s no trouble at all, just to bring it back in one piece.”
Graham flashed a smile and lifted his hand in a little gesture of gratitude. “Thanks, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry to have caused any confusion.”
The officer nodded, and was about to turn around when Ellie called out to him. “Actually, we’re out of gas,” she said quickly, and he raised his eyebrows, looking weary at the prospect of another problem from the movie star on the borrowed boat. He didn’t offer any suggestions, just stood there looking at her, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “What should we do?”
Forty-five minutes later, the coast guard had towed them into a marine gas station in the small town of Hamilton. The two officers had been cordial about the whole thing—though Ellie suspected that underneath their professional veneers they were both thinking about what an idiot you’d have to be to run out of gas—and Graham even signed an autograph for one of their daughters.
They left them in the hands of a mustached man who set about filling the tank, bidding them good-bye with a smart tip of their coast guard caps. Ellie watched them go back out to sea, relieved to be on dry land, her stomach still flopping around like a beached fish.
“How far to Ke
“Ten minutes by bus,” he said without looking over.
“Why would we take a bus?”
“Because your gauge is busted,” the man said, straightening up. “I just filled you up and it’s still showing you’re empty. I need to fix the dial. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
Graham handed over his credit card, and they agreed to return later in the day. There was a local bus that arrived every half hour, stopping at each town along the coast, and the attendant crooked a finger up a tree-lined road to where they could apparently find the stop just in front of the town’s tourist center.
Their legs were rubbery after so many hours on the water, and they made their way across the street unsteadily. Ellie was relieved to see that the tourist center wasn’t far—a narrow wooden building that looked more like a tree house than any kind of office—and the bus stop was directly in front of it, nothing more than a red plastic bench and a nearly unreadable schedule tacked to the back of a stop sign.
Graham squinted at it. “Twelve minutes,” he said, then glanced at the tourist office. “Let’s check it out.”
Inside, an older woman with a halo of wispy hair was hunched behind the desk, her head bent over a thick book. Ellie began to wander around the periphery of the small space, which was lined with brochures about everything from sailboat rides to whaling trips to blueberry-picking expeditions, but Graham walked right up to the desk.
“Happy Fourth,” he said brightly, and the woman glanced up, her face registering no recognition. If there was an element of the job that required a welcoming demeanor, then she was certainly out of her depth. She made no move to ask if they needed help, only pursed her lips and stared at them over her glasses.
Graham pointed at the computer behind the desk. “We’ve had kind of a rough morning,” he said, his voice a little too saccharine, “and I was just wondering if it might be possible to borrow your computer to check in about something. Just for one quick minute.”
From where she was standing before a panel of brochures about lobster-related activities, Ellie smirked. She had no idea what he wanted the computer for, but it was obvious the woman—staring up at him with a befuddled expression—had no clue who he was, and even Ellie didn’t believe he could make this happen on charm alone.
But he flashed her a dazzling smile, uttered a somewhat sheepish “please,” and just like that, without a word, she was moving aside, tucking the book under her arm and clearing a space for Graham to sit beside the counter, like he was in charge of all tourist-related information for the town of Hamilton.
Afterward, as they walked out to wait for the bus, she rolled her eyes at him.
“What?” he asked. “Didn’t think I could pull it off?”
She shook her head in amusement. “What’d you need to look up anyway?”
“I just wanted to make sure there was nothing new,” he said. “Before we go see your father.”
Ellie blinked at him, impressed that he’d thought of it. “And?”
“Just the same old stuff,” he said. “Graham Larkin’s a brute, Graham Larkin’s a thug. Nothing you didn’t already know.” He said this jokingly, but there was a tightness to his voice too, and she remembered that he hadn’t checked the news before they’d left. That he’d done it for her—to make sure she was fully prepared before approaching her father—touched her deeply, and as the bus came squealing around the corner, she laid a hand on his arm.