The room was spinning again.

Annica sat up in the bed, swung her legs over the edge, and placed her bare feet flat on the floor. She needed the stability, a sense of ground she’d lacked for days. Her own senses had been knocked astray since the afternoon, when things had gotten really bad. Really since that last glass of wine. Annica stared at it, the plastic cup sitting in a ring of sweat on her nightstand, the white Zinfandel inside slowly waving from rim to rim.

Who was she kidding? It wasn’t the wine.

Still, she could barely stand the sight of it, her stomach almost curdling with each wave of glistening liquid. It sloshed back and forth like a pendulum, the little waves in the glass symbolic of what was happening outside her room’s porthole. If she had stomach enough to get up and walk over to the tiny window, she’d have an unfortunate view of the angry Pacific, its horizon bobbing up and down. The line would move above and below the porthole with sickening exaggeration, the sky and the water trading impossible heights and depths.

Another wave of nausea swelled through her. She had to stop thinking about the ocean. Instead, she tried to think of a cure, an escape . . .

What was that trick for seasickness? Staring at something that wasn’t moving? She’d been staring for an hour at the insides of her cabin with no relief. If anything, it made everything worse.

Or was the trick to stare out the window at the horizon itself?

Just thinking about moving made her stomach heave.

And then the most ingenious idea came to Annica: chugging the rest of her wine, then downing a few more glasses after a handful of anti-nausea pills. Maybe she’d get some sleep that way, waking up sixteen hours later, clear and refreshed and on calmer seas . . .

Damn. While the idea of an overmedicated escape seemed enticing, it would mean she’d miss her appointment. That was the whole reason for taking this slow boat hell ride to Hawaii: an interview for what could possibly make her next big story. The idea was to meet with several cargo ship deck hands covertly, squeezing as many details as she could from their interviews. They would be her insiders, the whistle-blowers on what might be an international smuggling ring scandal. The crewmen might also be hot, and sex-deprived, in case one of her sailors ended up not having any useful information.

It sounded exciting and romantic when she’d first thought it up. But that was back in the continental United States, and on solid ground. Were it not for the story she was supposed to chase down across the Pacific, Annica would have been flying in style. First class. Through the air, she’d reach the big island in a fraction of the time. And if there was turbulence, a fraction of the nausea.

But here she was, on day four, the second to last before she reached the big island of Hawaii. It was also the day of her biggest interview. If she could hold her lunch long enough, Annica would be meeting with someone known as Cole, a member of the private security team that watched over operations at Hilo Harbor. He was the first to come forward, and what he had to say would be perhaps the most damaging. Cole would be the juice her story needed. Without him, all this would just be a free trip to Hawaii, and a crappy one at that.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. She had to think positively. Worrying about the possibility of Cole’s interview being a bust, and of the pointless and unnecessary seasickness she’d suffered through for it, well, that would do her in completely.

She took a few more breaths, pushing the nausea away with her mind. She was fine. In a few minutes, she would get up and get dressed, and then sway out into the hall. She didn’t need pills or alcohol, or any cheap tricks against the ravages of seasickness. She needed a clear mind. She needed her story. Everything else was unimportant.

It almost worked. Faking it till she made it—a usual go-to that had gotten her through any number of sticky situations in the past. Nausea, in comparison, was hardly a problem at all.

She was almost good enough to stand, when the ring of her phone sent a shock wave of bile-churning anxiety through her stomach.

It amazed her how quickly things could go wrong, how disastrously close she was to the edge of—

No. Don’t throw up.

Her mouth was met with a rush of saliva. She swallowed it away and answered the call to the best of her ability.

“Just checking up on you,” Jackson said. “I was getting a little nervous. It’s been awhile since you checked in.”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to get reacquainted with the process of speaking. It felt so foreign.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I hope so,” Jackson said, suspicion edging into his voice.

“Busy interviewing, writing notes, writing. Working.”

“Are you okay, Annica? You sound . . . drunk or something. You’re not on a cruise ship, you’re—”

“Seasick,” she said, blurting it out. “It’s really bad. We’re in this giant fucking storm and I can barely move.”

“Oh.” Jackson sounded almost relieved about it. Bastard. “We’ve just had that storm here on the island. Can’t imagine what it would be like on a boat . . .”

Annica desperately wanted him to shut up.

“High waves?” he asked.

She swallowed again and said, “What do you think?”

“Yeah, they sound pretty high.”

Annica made the mistake of looking out her porthole again. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but a deep-seated reaction to her sudden pressing urge to escape.

“I can almost hear them from here,” Jackson said.

“Can we talk about this later?” Annica turned away from a rising wall of ocean outside her porthole.

“Talk about what?” Jackson said. “The waves?”

“No.”

“I just wanted an update.”

“You’ll get one,” she said. “After I throw up.”

“How long will that be?”

“I don’t know. I also have to talk to Cole at some point.”

“Wait,” Jackson said. “You waited four days, until you’re almost at the port, to talk to Cole?”

“Yeah. He’s been trying to change his mind.”

“You mean he’s trying to change yours.”

“That, too,” Annica said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

“So what’s the deal? Think he’s got some pressure on him?”

“Aside from me? I don’t know.”

“Don’t let him go,” Jackson said.

No way. She wasn’t about to let the key to her story slip through her fingers. In the past, when she was a rookie reporter, she’d let a few career-making leads slip away due to old hang-ups—those pesky voices in her head that suggested what she was about to do was rude. Or possibly illegal. But now she realized that those things rarely mattered in the big picture. Especially for the big story, where lives hung in the mix.

“Annica?”

“I’ve got this.”

“Just think of how much harder it’ll be, tracking him down on the island.”

“Jack, I said I’ve got this.”

But first, she had to get on her feet without doubling over and vomiting. Then make it out the door. That was her first priority.

“And I want a report right away,” Jackson said.

“That’s nice.” Annica was standing and somehow feeling a little better. Maybe the bed was to blame, like it was for a lot of other troubles in her life.

“Annica, I’m serious.”

“I don’t work for you,” she said, stepping into a pair of pants. “And thank God.”

“We’re business partners.”

She finished with her belt, thinking about the last time they’d been more than business partners. Much more, when it was his hands at her belt, unfastening instead of buckling up. Shaky hands instead of dead calm. Alive instead of bored and nauseated.

It had been nearly four years since that night of frantic hands and lips in the back of Jackson’s car. In that time, the sadness had since gone away, leaving her with just a lingering boredom. That’s what it was, the distinct lack of something. An emptiness. A wanting. Through all her work, this was the biggest story of all. The one she’d been chasing down the hardest.

“We’re business partners,” Jackson said again, his voice slowing and dipping into a lower register. A familiar, non-business tone. “Intertwined ones, at that. And we have a lot in the mix. A lot to lose.”

“Yeah,” Annica said. That word was becoming a habit around him.

“I’ve got skin in the game already,” Jackson said. “In Hawaii.”

“I know.”

“My resources, and three of my agents. We’re all down here investigating this, mostly because of your intel.”

“I know,” Annica said again.

“I listened to you when—”

“I know,” she said, almost shouting. “This is real, Jackson. There’s a story here, and I’m on it. I’m on a fucking cargo ship.”

“I know,” Jackson said. “I know.”

She hung up.

Two minutes later, Annica was wobbling down the guest-level hallway, her pace slowing each time the boat rocked to its apex. For such a giant sea vessel, it was incredible how much movement she felt. When she boarded it back in Oakland, they’d tried warning her about what a light load meant. The more containers the ship carried, and the more weight, the less “action.” Apparently, her boat just so happened to be extremely light. Were they even shipping anything?

The plan was to meet Cole outside, on the deck where they could find some privacy. That was before the storm. With an ocean this rough, the captain had the decks closed off to passengers. It only made sense for people to hunker down in their cabins, with their wine or their nausea pills, the beads of their Holy Rosary or whatever else they needed to get them through the rocky ordeal. With this in mind, Annica was continually amazed at how many normal-looking people she encountered outside her room. The color of their faces full and healthy. Not gray-green like hers surely looked.

The crewmen, of course, looked just fine and dandy—some finer than others. But they all went about their business like the ship was perfectly still. Their bodies, relaxed and sure, moved to match the tilt of the ocean. Annica, on the other hand, was in a constant and distracting state of awareness about just how insignificant their ship was compared to the stormy Pacific. When things got bad, her hand would be the first to a wall or railing, desperately clinging on while others strolled about as if the ship had been anchored safely at port. When Frankie, her contact, slapped a hand on her shoulder, she turned around and almost lost her lunch.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m good,” she said, forcing a smile back at the chief cook. “As good as I look.”

He frowned. “You kinda look like shit.”

What a gentleman. She pushed off the wall and stood unsteadily on her feet. “Where is he?”

“Downstairs.”

“Which one? Which level?”

“Storage.”

She didn’t like that. While the location was good and private, there was something just a little too creepy about meeting her mystery man in “storage.” Cole had been in touch via email only up to that point. She didn’t even know what he looked like. Annica had learned over the years to balance privacy and security. A whistle-blower wouldn’t talk to her without privacy. But too much privacy might mean that no one would talk to her ever again. She needed a middle ground when it came to these types of meetings, keeping the contact happy—and keeping herself alive.

“Can we meet anywhere else?” she asked the cook.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t have time to set anything else up now. What’s wrong with storage?”

“Nothing.”

“You gonna go down there and talk to him? I set it all up for yous two.”

“I know,” Annica said, her smile warming up. “And thanks.”

“He thinks I’m crazy.”

“You probably are.”

He nodded and then said, “Yeah, well, if I’m crazy, then you’re fuckin’ nuts.”

“That’s right, Frankie.”

“Good luck,” he said, walking off before she could answer.

For a minute, she watched Frankie’s chef coat get smaller and smaller down the hall. And then she turned to face a set of double doors, behind which would be a stairway, and then another door, and another spiral stairway, and then the storage level.

She just hoped it was well lit.

Frankie, and presumably Cole, had left the door open for her. She could only assume they’d made sure the room would also be clear of any other personnel. But if they hadn’t, it was just a damn storage room. She’d been caught trespassing through much worse.

She pushed through the double swinging doors, pleased to find the room well lit, clean, and free of spy novel clichés. No dim flickering light, swaying with the motion of the ship. She was almost surprised at not hearing the eerie patting sound of a dripping water pipe. Instead, it was just the low droning of the ship’s engine.

And then a loud clattering of metal. She jumped back against the wall, despising herself immediately for the overreaction.

It wasn’t like her to be skittish, but something about her felt weaker, her nerves shot. Maybe it was from feeling so sick all day, the constant rushes of adrenaline she’d faced every time she was brought to the brink of vomiting.

She found the source of the noise around a blind corner of cardboard-stacked shipping pallets. They lay scattered on the floor: metal baking sheets.

Did something scurry by and knock the sheets to the floor? Rats?

And then the whole storage room tilted to the side, spilling two more exceptionally blackened sheets across the tile floor. It was far less scary this time. The rocking of the ship, oddly enough, now gave her a bit of comfort. Anything was better than the rodent alternative. “The rodent agenda,” as her old Virginia Beach roommate used to call it. A simple agenda: the repulsive bastards existing just to scare the living piss out of Annica.

The thought of their tails alone made her feel a little queasy. It took the place of her seasickness. Was it unfounded and irrational? Sure. At least it got her mind off things. But for how long? The storage room, and the ship on a whole, appeared neat and tidy. There were no signs pointing to a rodent infestation anywhere. No signs, either, of anyone waiting in storage for her, whether it was Cole himself, or someone with bad intentions waiting to take advantage of the privacy. The kill zone.

Feeling the distinct sensation that her life was about to be snuffed out, Annica spun around to check behind her. An empty aisle between the cardboard and kitchen supplies. An empty storage deck, as far as she could tell.

An empty story, too.

Cole was the lynchpin for her investigation. He was everything, a voice from the innermost sanctum of this scandalous inside story. And he’d been dodging her like a rat, a no-show since the cargo ship set its course for Hawaii. A no-story. God damn him.

All she wanted now was to be left alone, by everyone save for one person. Not Cole, but Frankie. Not an interview, but a personalized dish from his kitchen. Maybe a hamburger and fries, something greasy to settle her stomach.

The chief cook was nowhere to be found in the hallway outside the storage room. But there were others, urgent voices wafting down the hall. The rushing sound of footsteps. She felt an energy, something inside the ship coming to life. If she thought it had been busy on desk before, despite the storm, it was full-on rush hour now. Annica followed two crewmen up the spiral stairs. Not closely enough to be noticed, but enough to see them piling through the external door. She followed them out into the wind and rain of the outside deck.

She stood there for a moment, her hair crashing around her head, her clothes whipped tight against her body, and stared at what the crewmen had been running toward. A whole gang of them, some in raincoats, others in T-shirts. They were huddled up against the railing, holding something—no, someone—everyone grappling with a limb. Their voices rang out even above the wind, the sound getting more frantic with each listing of the haul, each wave forcing the ship high into the air, and then crashing back down deeper and deeper, until she feared they would slice through the water and strike the bottom.

The ship rocked back one last time before the crewmen finally wrestled him aboard. They stood with him, holding him away from the railing. He wore plain clothes, a black jacket and pants. When his face would momentarily peek through the crowd, she could see his stony gaze. A fixed stare, down to the surface of the ship, and then back up into the sky past Annica. A face gray with wind and sadness. A beautiful, high-cheekboned sadness. Eyes that smoldered inward, deep into his skull. But no resemblance to anyone she knew, or expected to know.

They trudged forward, the group of them, arms holding him up and steadying their catch. Their big fish for the day, a man of similar stature. He was tall, well built, muscles filling out his frame. A fellow crewman perhaps. You had to be strong in this line of work. His rescuers were talking to him, his head nodding slowly in response. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. Annica felt compelled to watch this man, to solve the mystery by some inference from his looks. What had he done? And why?

The reporter in her quickly gathered the facts. A man had been pulled aboard from the wrong side of the ship’s railing. It was definitely the wrong side, especially with the waves rolling several stories high. But it had happened, and for as quick as it started, the adventure seemed to be over.

Still, she wanted to wait and watch. But someone’s hand got in the way, grabbing her shoulder, spinning her. Frankie.

“Come on,” he said. “Leave it.”

“Huh?”

“Leave him.”

“Leave who?”

Frankie was holding her by the arm, practically dragging her back inside the ship. In the dry warmth, she took inventory. Her clothes were wet, hair heavy with rain, but she was fine. She pulled her arm loose from Frankie and wiped her face with it.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding out of breath. “I don’t want to get you in trouble. Didn’t want him to see you.”

Annica could still see the mystery man through a porthole, his rainy face glistening in the deck lights, switched on for the bad weather.

“You might have to wait in your cabin till this blows over,” Frankie said.

She kept her gaze at the window, to the storm outside. It showed no signs of letting up.