Read Chapter 14: The Siren's Outcrop

The Siren’s Outcrop rose out of the sea like a row of rotten teeth, black and slick with spray. Mack throttled the Sea Serpent down to idle and stood at the helm, squinting into the grey afternoon light. The chart in his hand showed a passage—barely wide enough for a dinghy—threading between the rocks. He’d never attempted it. The name alone had always been enough to keep him clear.

“She’s there,” Rosa said from the starboard wing, her voice clipped and professional. She pointed at a crumpled shape wedged against the base of the tallest rock. A cabin cruiser, hull stove in, listing at a drunken angle. Cruz’s boat. Mack had seen its silhouette less than six hours ago, ploughing into the squall line like a man with somewhere to be.

The squall had passed. Cruz had not.

“No sign of movement,” Abigail said from the wheelhouse door, binoculars pressed to her eyes. “No lights, no smoke. Could be abandoned.”

“Or could be a hundred ghosts waiting below deck,” Mack said. He killed the engines and let the Sea Serpent drift into the lee of the outcrop, where the water lay flat and dark as oil. It smelled like kelp and brine and something else. Something sweet, like rotting fruit left out too long in the sun.

He grabbed his dive knife from the console—Jake’s knife, its worn leather handle a familiar weight in his palm—and slid it into his belt. “Abigail, you’re with me. Rosa, hold the helm. If you hear a single shot, you haul anchor and you don’t look back.”

Rosa met his eyes for a half-second. That was all she’d given him since she’d betrayed them to Cruz. A half-second of acknowledgement, then the wall came back up. “What about Alvarado and Luis?”

“If they’re alive, they’ll find us. If they’re not, they’re not.” Mack swung himself over the rail and dropped into the Zodiac, Abigail following with a messenger bag and a flashlight. He fired the engine, and they cut across the narrow channel toward the wreck.

Up close, the damage was worse. Cruz’s boat had come in fast, too fast, and the rocks had opened her hull like a tin can. The deck was scattered with loose gear—coils of rope, a shattered radio, papers soaked and plastered to the wood. Something lay in a heap near the bow. Mack stood in the Zodiac as they bumped alongside, and he felt his stomach turn before his mind even finished registering what he was seeing.

There were bodies. Three of them, arranged in a loose semicircle like they’d been seated for a formal dinner. Their faces were grey, their eyes open and empty. But it wasn’t the manner of death that made Mack reach instinctively for the knife at his belt. It was the expression on each of them—mouths wide, locked in silent screams, as if death hadn’t come fast but had crept toward them slowly, wearing something they recognized.

“Ghost-touched,” Abigail whispered. Her knuckles were white on the flashlight.

Mack stepped aboard, boots crunching on scattered debris. He checked the pulse of the nearest man—cold, no doubt—then moved toward the cabin door. It was ajar. He pushed it open with the flat of his blade and peered inside.

“Cruz?” he called. No answer. The cabin was empty. The wheelhouse was empty. The engines were cold and dead, and the bilge was already filling with seawater. Whatever had grounded Cruz’s boat had also made sure no one aboard would be leaving it.

“There,” Abigail said. She was at the rail, pointing at the island itself. The Outcrop was little more than a slab of rock the size of a football pitch, bleached white by seabirds, riddled with caves at sea level. One of the cave mouths was darker than the others, a ragged scar in the stone.

Mack followed her gaze. For a moment—just a moment—he thought he saw movement inside the dark. A shape, tall and thin, watching them. Then it was gone.

“He knows we’re here,” Mack said. “If he’s got the package, he’s in that cave. And if he’s touched the gold, he’s not Cruz anymore.”

They climbed the rocks, boots slipping on algae and bird guano. The cave mouth yawned before them, and the air inside was cold, ten degrees colder than the air outside. Mack flicked on his own flashlight and swept the beam across the walls. The stone glistened, wet with seepage and sea spray. Deeper in, something glittered back.

Gold. Coins scattered across the cave floor like a child’s spilled treasure. And in the midst of them, seated cross-legged, was Cruz.

His eyes were open. His mouth was open, too, and he was laughing. The sound wasn’t Cruz’s laugh—Mack had heard that laugh, mocking and sharp, during the takeover. This was wet and hollow, like air bubbling up through a sunken chest.

“Mack Donovan,” Cruz said in a voice that was not entirely his own. “You came to take what’s mine.”

“I came to take what you stole.” Mack stepped forward, knife low at his side. Abigail hung back at the cave mouth, her flashlight shaking. “The package, Cruz. Where is it?”

Cruz’s head tilted at an unnatural angle. He held up a hand, fingers crusted with dried blood, and in it was a single gold coin. “He said I could keep it. The captain, old Blackwood, he said I could keep it if I brought his logbook north.” Cruz cackled—a wet, phlegmy sound. “But he lies. They all lie. The dead always lie.”

“Cruz, listen to me.” Mack kept his voice low, calm. He’d been under this spell himself, felt the specter crawling behind his own eyes. “You reached into a wreck that isn’t yours. You took a coin that carries a price. Put it down and I can help you.”

“Help me?” Cruz rose, swaying, eyes never leaving Mack. His free hand went behind his back and came out holding a length of iron rebar, sharpened to a crude point. “You’d have done the same, Donovan. You already did. I saw it in your eyes when you looked at that coin. You’ve got an old friend whispering in your ear too, don’t you?”

Mack’s jaw tightened. Jake’s knife was heavy in his fist. He saw it then, in the flickering light—the ghost of Jake Donavan, not standing before him but behind Cruz’s eyes, a shadow in the mad captain’s face.

“I’m not here to fight you,” Mack said.

“Good,” Cruz said. And he lunged.

The rebar came down in a wild arc, and Mack barely got his left forearm up to block. The impact jarred through his bones. He stumbled back over coins, slipping, and Cruz came again, screaming now—some old pirate oath mixed with curses in Spanish. Mack dodged a second swing, felt the rebar whistle past his ear, and drove his shoulder into Cruz’s chest.

They went down together. Coins scattered beneath them. Cruz was stronger than he looked, but it wasn’t Cruz driving the limbs anymore. Mack saw the black flicker in his eyes, the tightening of the jaw that wasn’t human. He got an arm across Cruz’s throat, pinned the wrist holding the rebar to the ground, and pressed the flat of Jake’s knife against Cruz’s cheek.

“Put it down,” Mack said, breath ragged. “Put. It. Down.”

Cruz’s eyes cleared—just for a second. A human panic broke through the blackness. “Mack, please,” he said, and his voice was his own. “Please don’t leave me here with them.”

Then the blackness returned, and Cruz howled.

Mack didn’t strike. He couldn’t. He’d killed enough men in the water, watched enough light go out of eyes to know that this wasn’t the way. Instead, he shifted his weight, lifted Cruz’s wrist, and slammed it against the stone. The coin flew from his fingers, spinning through the air to land somewhere in the dark. The rebar clattered away.

Cruz went limp. Whatever had been driving him bled out of his face like smoke, leaving only a hollow, shaking shell.

Mack pulled a length of dock line from his pack and bound Cruz’s wrists behind his back, then his ankles. He dragged him near the cave wall, propped him against the stone, and turned to Abigail.

“The package,” he said. “Find it.”

Abigail moved hesitantly between the heaps of lost gear, the scattered gold, and the small fortune in wrecked detritus Cruz had apparently looted from the Santa Catalina’s hold. Her flashlight stopped on a canvas-wrapped cylinder wedged beneath a collapsed crate. She pulled it free and held it up.

Waterproof. Sealed. Intact.

“It’s here,” she said.

Mack took it from her, feeling the weight and the history of it in his hands. He looked down at Cruz, trembling and mute among the stolen coins.

A laugh echoed through the cave—dry, ancient, unmistakably not theirs. It came from deep within the rock, and it did not sound pleased.

They grabbed Cruz’s bound arms and hauled him out into the waning light.