“Nico!”
We hear Jake shouting, and we rush up to the deck. Brittany and Amma look between us and Jake on the deck of the Azure Sky, his hands cupped around his mouth.
Like Nico, he’s scowling, his shoulders tense, and I know without even asking that Robbie got their stuff, too.
“How bad?” I call over.
“Fucking mess,” Jake calls back, then waves at us with one arm. “Come on over, let’s talk.”
The four of us pile back into the dinghy, Nico’s movements jerky and rough, and then we’re all on the deck of the Azure Sky. The happy drowsiness of the afternoon has completely vanished, all of us standing stiffly, arms crossed, looking around. He could still be out there somewhere. Hiding out on the other side of the island. Waiting for us in the jungle.
And now we have no way of getting help. No contact at all with the outside world. We don’t have a radio, and neither does the Azure Sky.
All of us are completely cut off.
“We have to leave,” I say, and all five heads turn in my direction.
It sucks to cut the trip short under these circumstances, but it’s obvious to me that we can’t stay, not when Robbie could still be lurking, and is clearly dangerous and destructive.
“Lux, calm down,” Nico says, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I recoil. “Calm down? Seriously?”
He frowns. “I’m just saying that panicking isn’t going to help us right now.”
“She’s not panicking,” Eliza says, coming to wrap an arm around me. “She’s being sensible. We don’t have radios, for fuck’s sake, and clearly this guy is more unhinged than we thought if he’s willing to do something like this.”
“I get that,” Nico says. “But Lux always does this. Acts like the fucking sky is falling.”
The words are like a punch to my gut. “What are you talking about?”
“And besides,” he goes on, shoving a hand through his hair. “It’s not safe to be on open water with no radio. If we get into trouble, we’re fucked.”
“We’re fucked now,” I remind him, but he shakes his head.
“Let me think of something, okay? Maybe I can fix them, or—”
I can’t stop the incredulous laugh that bursts out of me. “What, with coconuts or some shit? I like Gilligan’s Island, too, Nico, but get real.”
“Lux is right, mate.”
Jake has his arms crossed, his expression unreadable behind his mirrored sunglasses. “Radios are fucked. There’s no fixing that. But I have a satellite phone. Not the most reliable thing on the planet, but if I can get it up and running, I can try to get in touch with any boats in the area. See if anyone is headed this way, if they might have a backup radio or two that they can spare.”
He shrugs. “It’s not much, but I think it’s our best option right now.”
“Right, because you always know what’s best,” Nico says. There’s a sinister expression on his face, one I’ve never seen before, almost a sneer.
Jake matches it with a confident grin. “In this case, reckon I do.”
Before they can get into it, Amma steps forward, laying a hand on Nico’s arm. “We should check the island, see if we can find him. Because maybe he’s not even here, right? He could’ve done this as one last ‘fuck you,’ and then taken off.”
She turns to Jake, cool as can be. “You have a gun, right?”
He nods, feet planted solidly on the deck. “It’s not a bad idea. There’s only one other place to anchor here, over on the east side of the island. Let’s go see if his boat’s there. If it is, well. We’ll deal with that. If not, then we can assume Amma’s right, and he did this before leaving, just to fuck with us one last time.”
Jake looks to Nico. “You in?”
Nico nods, not looking at me, and then Amma says, “I want to come, too.”
I wait for someone to tell her that’s a stupid idea, but no one does, and before I know it, the three of them are in the Zodiac, motoring to the other side of the island.
“Are you alright?” Eliza asks, squeezing me, and I shake my head. I’m scared and pissed off.
She always acts like the fucking sky is falling.
Like I’ve been some nag holding him back this entire time, a total drag, instead of the other way around. I’m the one who got the Susannah fixed for him. I’m the one who cleaned hotel rooms so we could pay rent—even though he could have solved both of those problems with a single phone call, if he was man enough to swallow his pride.