The Shippers(80)

But this hickey was supposed to be used only for good.

I assessed my situation.

Disadvantages: I was all alone at the end of a peninsula on a cay in a wide ocean with no other humans around—and Pork Pie was definitely harboring some malice.

Advantages?

I was a good swimmer, so I might be able to fling myself into the ocean. He was not sober—so I had more wits about me. My cell phone battery was charged. I wasn’t wearing ridiculous footwear, for once. This was a tourist site, so other people might come along. The lighthouse might provide refuge for me, if I could run that way and get there first. And I had a cross-body purse with a leather strap that, if it came down to it, I could use to strangle him.

Was it hard to strangle someone?

I’d never tried it before.

Pork Pie seemed larger now than he had this morning.

Was that possible? Maybe the beer had bloated him.

I recommenced walking, holding the lighthouse in my line of sight.

I’d taken a self-defense class back in high school, and the one thing I could remember from that class was our instructor telling us that our best bet against a male attacker was to kick him in the “you-know-where.”

And so that’s what I wound up doing.

The more Pork Pie messed with me, the clearer it became that he had no intention of just, say, losing interest and going back. I put up with him and put up with him—until, with the lighthouse still a good two hundred feet away, he decided to try to shove his hand up under my sundress.

That was it. No more polite deflection.

It was you-know-where time.

“Cut it out!” I shouted at a murder-level volume—and then I launched my foot at his crotch with every bit of high school soccer muscle memory I had. I hit the target, and then, as he dropped to the ground, I took off running in the only direction there was to go.

To the lighthouse. As they say.

It wasn’t much of a head start. And Pork Pie didn’t stay down for long. I could feel him gaining on me as I pumped my arms and legs with everything I had, grateful to my sneakers as I hurled myself toward the door of the lighthouse.

I’m honestly not sure what I would have done if it had been locked.

But it wasn’t.

I reached the door, turned the cast-iron ring handle, and scrambled in. I threw my full weight against it to slam it behind me—then found a bolt on the inside and shoved it into the locked position.

For a second, as I leaned back against the door, breathing, I felt a wash of relief.

But that’s when Pork Pie made it to the door—and I guess the pain had given way to rage because he started beating on it. And kicking it. And throwing things at it.

It was a metal door—iron, maybe?—and everything he hurled against it made thunder sounds. And while I didn’t really think he could break down the iron door … I also wasn’t gonna stick around to find out.

I sprinted for the spiral stairs that wound around the interior walls of the lighthouse, Fibonacci style. The steps were also made of iron, and I clanked up them in double time. That lighthouse was four stories tall—how many steps is that?—but I don’t remember pausing, or resting, or even slowing. I hauled myself to the top on pure adrenaline, entering the light chamber through a trapdoor.

And then I lowered the trapdoor behind me, and I sat on it. For good measure.



* * *



NEXT, THERE WAS nothing else to do but call for help.

Only when I pulled my phone out and saw it trembling in my hands did I realize how scared I actually was.

I should call Cooper, I thought, commanding my hands to stop shaking and behave.

This time, he answered, and I said, all business, “Cooper, I’m in trouble.”

“What’s going on?” Cooper said, instantly on it.

How to sum it up? “I came ashore looking for you and headed to the lighthouse, but a drunk dude followed me. He tried to get handsy, and so I kicked him in the you-know-where.”

Cooper knew that catchphrase. “Did it work?”

“It worked. I got away. But now I’ve locked myself inside the lighthouse, and he’s losing his mind with rage outside the door.”

I held the phone toward the trapdoor so Cooper could hear. It sounded like Pork Pie might be beating at the lock with a crowbar.

Over the sound of the banging, Cooper said, “You’re inside the lighthouse?”

“At the top,” I confirmed. Like he might climb with a toprope up to get me.

Which he actually might. This was Cooper, after all.

Then Cooper said, “I’ll be right there,” and he hung up.

But then twenty minutes went by, and nothing. Then another twenty.

After an endless hour or so, I noticed that the banging had stopped. Had Pork Pie lost interest? Wandered back to his ship? Found someone else to menace?

The railing around the light chamber made it hard to peer down below. I decided to go down and put my ear to the door.

I lost my balance a little as I started down the stairs—enough, in fact, that I got that dropped-stomach feeling as I looked down. I caught myself—which was good. But in the process, I dropped my cell phone through the hatch, and it went tumbling down the staircase instead of me.

I watched it go in horror. It hit a stair, and then bounced up and hit the wall, and then hit another stair, and then another wall, and zigzagged on and on like that before plummeting, at last, to its death on the cold stone floor below.