For Ethan, the lower sleeping chamber on the boat was like a prison. With the hatches battened down, he was all alone, and there was nowhere to go. That alone was bad, but the worst of it was the storm. As the waves hit the boat, and the winds took them whenever it may, he felt it infinitely harder than anyone in the upper deck did. At times, as he was thrown from one wall to the other, he found himself wishing for a seatbelt. Later, in those brief moments when the sea stilled, the minutes seemed to stretch into hours.
During one such lull, a longer one, he found himself thinking about Dora and some of the events that had happened in the first couple of days after Kylie was kidnapped. At first, everyone had assumed that Kylie would be found quickly. No one had anticipated that the situation could ever go on for as long as it was going.
