Chapter 232

“Where is it? Where’s the dinghy?” Victor asked Captain Burns while keeping me shielded from the fire with his body.

“Here, in this compartment.” Captain Burns opened a hidden storage compartment and struggled to pull out what looked like two duffel bags.

He placed them on the deck, and Victor helped pull the uninflated lifeboats from the bags.

While they did that, I stuffed our bottles of flavored water and the snacks into my mini backpack. I was terrified, but doing something helped calm me a little.

What happened? How did the boat catch on fire and spread so quickly?

“Take this one to the platform off the stern and pull the cord to inflate it,” Captain Burns instructed. “They are two-person dinghies. You and the girl get in that one. I’ll be right behind you in the other.”

I hesitated, afraid to step through the wall of thick black smoke to follow Victor.

“Hurry and get off the boat with your boyfriend, miss!” Captain Burns shouted over the now roaring sound of the blaze. “I just filled the fuel tanks before I picked you folks up. The fire is going to reach them any second.”

My legs shook, but I forced myself to run through the smoke. Victor had pulled the cord, and the dinghy rapidly inflated. He pushed it into the water off the back of the yacht, and Captain Burns tossed him a paddle.

Victor held out his hand to help me into the rubber boat. “Come on. I’ll help you.”

I looked at the tiny dinghy and then out over the vast ocean and froze. I was too frightened to move.

“Please, Daisy. You’ve got to hurry, sweetheart. Get in the dinghy. If we stay on the yacht, we’re going to die.”

The smoke intensified, and I started coughing. It drove home the danger of the fire, and I looked over my shoulder at the blazing yacht. He was right. I had to move quickly.

Taking Victor’s hand, I flung myself into the dinghy and landed on my side.

When I sat up as best I could, I saw the inferno behind Victor and Captain Burns. The orange, red, and blue flames leaped into the air, and the black smoke rose high into the sky.

It was horrifying.

“Victor, come on!” I shouted over the din. “Please, let’s get out of here.”

Victor looked at Captain Burns, who was pulling life jackets from another bin. He held out two of them.

Victor grabbed the life jackets and tossed them next to me before stepping into the dinghy and pushing us away from the burning yacht with the paddle.

He sat next to me and put an arm around my shoulders. “Everything is going to be okay, sweetheart. We made it.”

As our dinghy was quickly drifting away from the yacht, I saw Captain Burns donning a life jacket before inflating his dinghy.

He was stepping into the life raft when there was a deafening boom, and fire shot upwards from the yacht. Victor covered me with his body as debris rained down on us. Some of it was burning.

A chunk of burning wood landed on my thigh. I screamed from the pain and brushed it off. It landed on the floor of our lifeboat and began to melt the rubber.

“Oh, no!” I screamed as Victor picked up the flaming piece of wood and tossed it into the sea.

I clung to Victor as what was left of the yacht continued to burn about seventy feet away.

“Where’s Captain Burns?” I asked. “He was still getting off the boat when it blew up.”

Victor picked up the paddle and tried to move us closer to the burning debris.

But we were rapidly drifting away from the wreckage, and the small paddle was useless against the strong current.

Victor pulled his shirt over his head. “I’ll swim over and find him.”

I grabbed his arm as panic shot through me. “No! What if you can’t get back before the dinghy drifts away with me in it? Please, don't leave me alone in the middle of the ocean.”

Victor realized how fast we were drifting away from the wreckage and relented. “I hate leaving him out here. What if he’s still alive and injured?”

Guilt sliced through me. I was being selfish. “Do you think he survived the explosion?”

“I don't know, but the current is too strong for me to swim in,” he admitted. “It’s pulling us further out to sea fast.”

“What are we going to do?” I was too scared to cry.

He pulled me into his arms. “We are going to settle into this lifeboat and stay calm while we watch for other boats or planes to try to signal.”

Holding up my mini backpack, I said, “I grabbed our drinks and snacks. Let’s share a bottle of sparkling water.”

“Just a little,” Victor advised. “We need to ration it. We don’t know how long we’ll be out here.”

That’s when I realized how bad things were for us. I returned the bottle to my backpack and zipped it shut.

“I can wait,” I said and settled into Victor’s arms. Whatever we had to do to survive, I would do.

The blazing sun moved across the sky as our lifeboat drifted on the current. We allowed ourselves to sip out of one of the bottles, half emptying it by the time the sun began to sink into the sea.

The night was more terrifying on the open waters than the daytime. Doubts about our survival wriggled through my mind.

I knew by the way Victor held me tightly that he had the same thoughts.

“We can’t give up,” he said.

“We’re going to be rescued,” I insisted. Saying the words out loud gave me hope.

“People are rescued from these situations all the time,” Victor said. “We need to keep watch for ships.”

My stomach let out a growl in answer to his words. Breakfast was twelve hours ago.

“Let’s eat something,” he suggested. “What did you bring?”

“There’s cheese and crackers, chocolate bars, and potato chips,” I replied.

“Let’s eat some of the cheese and crackers and a little chocolate,” he suggested.

I took half of the cheese and crackers and one chocolate bar from the backpack. We slowly savored them, washing them down with what was left in the one bottle of water.

It was amazing how good the chocolate tasted as it melted on my tongue. The snack made us feel stronger both physically and emotionally.

Victor was right. People are rescued from situations like this all the time. Somebody had to notice the yacht burning and notified the authorities, who were probably looking for us right now.

But the sun had fully set by then, and the darkness made the water look black. And then I thought I heard something moving in the water nearby.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“No, what,” Victor said and huddled closer to me.

We listened to the lap of the water against the lifeboat for several long moments. When the sound wasn’t repeated, Victor suggested we try to rest.

“Kiss me goodnight so I can pretend we are safe in our bed at the beach house,” I requested.

Victor’s lips found mine, and we drew strength from each other as we kissed. The stars began twinkling overhead as the moon rose near the horizon.

“It’s kind of romantic being out here alone on the water,” I said before I began to run my tongue over his lips.

“Anywhere I am with you is romantic,” he replied. “I love you, Daisy.”

“I love you too,” I answered. “Someday, this is going to be a crazy story we tell people at parties.”

We laughed and began to kiss again as we grew more confident of our survival. Making love in a lifeboat drifting on the open ocean would be an unforgettable memory.

As he nibbled on my lips, his hand began to caress my body. I writhed in ecstasy when his hand roamed inside my bikini bottom and found my pleasure center.

I thought it was my lust for him that made the dinghy seem to jump. But in the next second, something bumped into me hard through the rubber of the bottom of the lifeboat.

“What was that?” Whatever it was, it was big.

“Shhhh,” he whispered in my ear. “Be silent, and don’t move a muscle. I just saw a fin break the surface of the water near us.”

“A fin!” I squeaked. “Like a shark?” Why was this happening to us? I just found total happiness. Was it all going to be snatched away from me so soon?

“Yes, it was a shark. You must remain silent and perfectly still,” Victor repeated. “Our lives depend on it.”