The Catch: A Novel by Taylor Stevens

and stepped across the boat for the bench. If she planned to keep the boat running, she would have to hire a full-time guard for it in Mombasa anyway. “I won’t pay two thousand shillings a day,” she said. Paused and returned his cocky smile. “That’s Lamu-only price.”
    Sami grinned, then laughed. He interpreted for Mohamed, who also laughed, and still smiling, Sami nodded. “Five hundred shilling for day,” he said. “Mombasa price.”
    Munroe stretched out her hand and Sami shook it. The offer was still overpriced, but she needed him loyal, and although a good paycheck didn’t mean he wouldn’t eventually steal from her, it notched the possibility down slightly.
    “Have Mohamed stay with the boat tonight,” she said. “Go get whatever you need. We leave before the sun. If you’re not here, I travel without you.”
    “I be here.”
    “Bring a flag with you,” she said.
    “Flag?”
    Munroe used impromptu sign language to indicate what she wanted: a Kenyan flag to fly aft so that on the small chance they encountered officials on the water, there’d be less inclination to stop the boat and check for papers.

    M UNROE FOUGHT FOR sleep throughout the night and, unable to find it, finally rose in the early-morning dark. Showered off the sweat again, which in the humidity tended to collect as a permanent layer, pulled down the two hand-washed shirts she’d hung before going to bed, and then redressed, button-down over the T-shirt, protecting her skin, shielding her gender.
    She tossed the last of her things into her bag, pulled a pillow off the bed, debated calling Amber Marie then opted against it. Without any news to add, the conversation would turn on itself with long lingering silences, and Munroe didn’t have the desire or the emotional energy to be Amber’s life support.
    At the front desk she traded payment and the room key for her passport, and when she carried her stuff down to the boat, she brought the pillow. Sami was already at the pier when she arrived, and together the three of them returned to the hospital to collect the captain.
    They beached the boat, trudged past the reception desk and down the open breeze-filled hall, and when Munroe stepped across the threshold, the captain, who’d been unconscious for more than two full days, turned to face her and opened his eyes, expressionless and unblinking.
    She stepped closer, waved a hand in front of his face, got nothing, and gradually his lids shut again.
    Munroe injected the sedatives into the IV tube, waited a few moments, then untucked the bottom sheet from the bed and showed the boys how to use the sheet as a sling to carry him out.
    The captain stank. She didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want the boys to touch him either. With effort they got him and the IV attachment into the boat, and when they had him situated under the makeshift sailcloth tent, Munroe put the pillow under his head and, with the duct tape she’d taken from Djibouti, strapped him to it. This would do better than her vest at protecting him, though not by much.
    She balled up the soiled sheet and threw it onto the sand. Someonewould find it. Wash it. Use it. Not even disposable containers meant for single use in the West would go to waste here. Munroe paid Mohamed and sent him off. She attached the flag that Sami had brought, and without any fanfare they began the slow journey down the channel, back to the open ocean, back to the full throttle of the engine’s cry, where time and monotony would allow her mind to wander freely and the puzzle of the captain and the
Favorita
to become the chew toy that would keep the demons quiet and the memories at bay.
    T HIS CLOSE TO the equator daylight began and ended at nearly the same time year-round, making it possible to pace and predict by the shades on the horizon, and so the rise of the sun in its arc across the sky marked the progression of time and the concept of distance and brought, with its rising, the heat.
    In