Chapter 1
Jerry Baugh
Jerry Baugh didn’t see the ship. He didn’t notice the red warning on the screen. He was, in fact, cozied up in the cockpit of his
Dyer 29 lobster boat, feet propped between the rungs of the helm and hands stacked on his belly.
Jerry’s day of deep-sea fishing had been successful—a
sailfish bill, broken at the hilt, currently stuck out of his bomber jacket pocket—and he was thinking about whether the meat
should be marinated in lemon juice or just plain old butter.
He was too distracted to detect the boat in his path—white and gleaming, suspended between the black water of the Atlantic and the starless, moonless sky with the same sinister beauty of an iceberg.
Or a ghost.
When the boat alarm went off, Jerry jolted in his seat, sending his Bass Pro Shops cap tumbling down his chest. A single drop of sailfish blood had, at some point, fallen onto the face of his watch, which read nine minutes after midnight.
He detangled his feet from the helm and peered at the radar. He was heading two hundred and fifty-eight degrees toward
Hallandale Marina. The strange white sailboat blocked
his way.
Jerry switched off the autopilot and eased the throttle to slow down, his heart thumping soundly in his chest. If the alarm hadn’t sounded, he might have shipwrecked them both.
This sent a surge of anger through him. Why hadn’t the captain of the sailboat moved out of
his way? Sheila 2.0 wasn’t subtle, her engine making an ugly chewing noise not unlike a trash compactor. They should have heard her coming.
Jerry allowed his boat to chug closer before he killed the engine and processed what on the devil’s blue sea he was looking at.
It was a sailboat, yes, but not like the rust-laced ones that docked near
Sheila 2.0 in the Hallandale Marina.
This boat was mesmerizing.
It had twin aluminum masts, a wood-finished deck, and sunbathing mattresses laid out on the
chart house. The body of the boat was a blinding white, smooth, curvaceous. The cap
rails were teak and coated with a glittering crust of sea salt. No one had cleaned them in some time. Cursive lettering on the side spelled out the boat’s name.
The Old Eileen
Jerry stared, a bit starstruck. Boats like
Sheila 2.0 were made to choke marine diesel oil and seawater until they finally died twitching in a harbor like a waterlogged beetle on its back.
Boats like
The Old Eileen were made to be beautiful.
Jerry found his radio, hooked to his waistband, and cleared
his throat before speaking into it.
“Eileen, Eileen, Eileen, this is Sheila, Sheila, Sheila, over.”
He waited.
There was a time when Jerry was younger (and a good bit stupider) that he wanted to buy a sailboat instead of a motorboat. It was romantic, the idea of harnessing the wind to travel
the world. But in the end, it was those same winds that terrified him. Wind could overpower him, seize control of the boat and bend its course. Jerry would have had to accept that possibility. He would have had to bare his throat to the mercy of the sea.
A mercy, he had come to understand, that did not exist.
“Eileen, Eileen, Eileen!” Jerry repeated into the radio.
They must be asleep. Jerry leaned forward and sounded his horn—five short blasts to signal danger. He waited for the radio to crackle to life, for a silver-spooned captain to sputter
apologies, or maybe for an underpaid deckhand to rush up top and get the boat moving once more.
There was only the sound of the luffing, useless sails, and the ever-shifting sea.
Jerry frowned and fiddled with the fish bill in his pocket.
He should leave.
He fumbled in the dark to switch the engine back on. He would report what he’d seen to the coast guard, get the captain in trouble for being so reckless. He’d be back in Florida by dawn.
But Steve . . .
Jerry glanced at his dash where he had taped up a photograph of himself with his younger brother. It was the last picture taken of Steve before he died. Jerry closed his eyes for a moment. He would have traded his boat, his bait, and everything he owned if someone had stopped that night to help Steve.
“Well, shit.” Jerry rubbed at his clavicle and swallowed hard. He would be in and out. Just to make sure all was well.
Jerry moved across the deck, aware of every sound his shuffling feet made. He rummaged through his fishing equipment, eyes never leaving
The Old Eileen. His calloused, practiced
hands fit right around the harpoon gun, and he felt a measure of reassurance with a weapon in his grasp. He wasn’t scared, he was too old for that, but there was nothing quite like a creaking, old ship on the ocean at night to make a man into a boy again.
He tucked the harpoon gun under one arm and set to work
lowering his tiny dinghy. He’d take one moment to wake
whoever was on board, then get right back on his boat. Good
deed done for the day. Maybe the decade.
Jerry grunted as he climbed up the
Eileen’s porthole and over the rail. The deck was empty save for an orange life preserver tied to the stern, the boat’s name written in black on the top and a slogan in italics around the bottom.
Unwind Yachting Co.
Safe to sail in any gale!
With no one in sight, Jerry located the companionway stairs that led down beneath the cockpit and gave one last scan of the deck before going below.
Downstairs, the chart house was neat and captainless, but the ship’s manifest was sitting in the center of the table, open to the first page.
SHIP’S MANIFEST—THE OLD EILEEN
SKIPPER—Captain Francis Ryan Cameron (55)
MATE—
MJ Tuckett (67)
CREW—Alejandro Matamoros (54), Nicolás de la Vega (22)
PASSENGERS— Lila Logan Cameron (54), Francis Rylan Cameron (17), Taliea Indigo Cameron (17)
Seven souls. Seven souls aboard
The Old Eileen, and not a single one had answered the radio, which lay next to the manifest like an amputated limb. Jerry picked it up and felt an ice-cold trickle of sweat on the back of his neck.
The cord had been cut.
Jerry’s knuckles went white against the harpoon gun. Bad things happen at sea. Storms kill and brothers drown.
But the radio cord hadn’t been severed by the ocean.
Jerry crept through the luxurious salon and to a door that must lead to a cabin. He let his trigger hand slip down for a moment so he could turn his radio to 16—the international maritime emergency channel.
Just in case.
He opened the door to the cabin.
The master bedroom. King-size bed with an indigo comforter and cream sheets. Velvet couch molded to fit the tight corner. A woman’s lipstick lay open on one bedside table, rolling back and forth as the boat rocked.
There was no one there. No sleeping captain, no apologetic deckhands, no life whatsoever. Had they just . . . left?
Jerry checked the next room. This one held two twin beds with identical navy bedspreads. One bed was unmade, with a variety of books scattered at its foot. The bedclothes on the other were tucked in, military-style.
A sketchbook was half hidden by the pillowcase, open to an illustration of some kind of monster.
Jerry mopped his brow with a rag he kept in his shirt pocket, not caring that it had dried sailfish blood caking the edges. He should have motored on by and called the damn guard.
He forced himself to concentrate. He was doing the right thing. The captain could be out cold and in need of help.
There were only a few more rooms.
But the last cabin was just as quiet.
Jerry peeked into the galley and the bilges, running out of places to check.
The heads. Each of the three cabins must have its own personal bathroom, and he hadn’t yet tried any of them. Hands slick with sweat around the harpoon gun, Jerry retraced his steps, checking first in the crew members’ head, then the master suite’s, then back to the room with the twin beds and the drawing of the monster.
He nudged open the last bathroom door and looked inside.
In the mirror, his own ref lection stared back at him, interrupted only by a string of crimson words that had been written on the glass.
A weight dropped anchor inside his stomach, flooding Jerry with a kind of dread he had avoided for thirty years. The harpoon gun slipped from his hands, and he reached for his radio, unable to peel his gaze from the message on the mirror.
Save yOur Self
The Convey
OPINION: The Ocean Is Our Great Equalizer (why the newest Atlantic disaster seems to
spell K-A-R-M-A for the one percent)
MIKE GRADY
The Camerons—a family of four headed by television darling Lila Logan and business tycoon Francis Cameron—have been reported missing after their multimillion-dollar sailing yacht turned up eighty miles offshore without a single person onboard early in the morning of June 9. Authorities and reporters have leaped into extensive action. The Atlantic has already been tempestuous at the beginning of this year’s hurricane season.
Potential upcoming storms have given the search a dangerous time component in an investigation reminiscent of the Titan, the infamous submersible that imploded with five passengers aboard on its way to see the Titanic wreck. The world had plenty to say about the Titan and its affluent victims, and this latest oceanic mystery has the potential to play out the same. Francis and Lila Cameron both had modest childhoods, but thanks to the entertainment industry, the business world, and the good old American dream, they have skyrocketed into the fraction of Americans who own multiple homes (Palm Beach villa, LA bungalow, and a sleek Aspen chalet, if anyone’s wondering), not to mention the multimillion-dollar sailing yacht that came up empty in the early hours of yesterday morning. While I’m not necessarily here to say that the Atlantic Ocean is doing a better job than God or taxes to rid us of the elite, I do want to pose a big-picture question while authorities are sussing out the how did this happen? and where did they go? Of it all. My question instead to you, dear reader, is this: Why the Camerons?
Excerpted from No One Aboard by Emy McGuire, Copyright © 2025 by Emy McGuire. Published by Graydon House.
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