“It’s cold,” Larry said, “but watch where you step. There are a lot of footprints in the sand here, and I don’t think Thomas and Mindy made all these.”
Grant looked to where he was pointing and saw that he was right. There were many boot prints going in all directions around the fire and up and down the beach. He saw the barefoot prints of another man and small prints made by someone wearing shoes, Mindy undoubtedly, judging by the size of them.
“What do you make of it, Grant? Someone came here after them, or were they here at the same time?”
“I don’t know. I need to look around some more. Let’s see if there’s anything there in that coconut grove.”
“Should we call out to them?” Jessica asked. “Maybe they’re close by.”
“They might be, but the men that made these tracks might be too, although I don’t think any of them are that fresh.”
“Yeah, with the coals of that fire completely cold, these tracks could have been made yesterday or even the day before,” Larry said.
“Either way, we ought to keep quiet. I don’t have a good feeling about what happened here.”
“Me either. I don’t think Thomas and Mindy would leave their boat overnight unless they had a really good reason. Certainly not just to hike to the ruins.”
“Look at this!” Grant said, reaching out to put his hand on the bark of one of the nearest palm trees when the three of them reached the grove. What caught his eye were the splinters of wood on the far side of the trunk opposite a small hole in the front. “That looks like a bullet impact to me.”
“I agree, and it looks recent,” Larry said.
“That’s what I thought too. And there’s more… look over there. Someone was doing a lot of shooting here for some reason.”
“Maybe it was Thomas and Mindy,” Jessica said. “They had that AK that Scully loaned them. Maybe they heard something in the woods and started shooting because they were scared.”
“Maybe, but what about all these boot prints? Hang on a minute while I look around in the edge of the woods and see what I can find.”
There were some faint tracks in the palm grove in the few places where the sandy soil wasn’t covered with fallen fronds and old coconuts. Scanning carefully, Grant found more of the small prints that he was sure were made by Mindy. Some of them had boot prints over them too, suggesting that she was followed when she came this way. He worked his way to the back of the grove and into the thick forest beyond, disappointed to find little sand or soft ground that would register an impression. Realizing that wouldn’t work, he then began looking at the low-growing foliage, searching for broken twigs, bruised leaves and other evidence something as large as a human had passed. It didn’t take him long to find the trail, because no one could get through such a thicket without busting through vines and such. Certain that someone had taken off into there, Grant turned around and went back to talk to Larry and Jessica.
“I’m pretty sure they went into the woods there. Why, or how far, I don’t know.”
“And they may have come back out since then too,” Larry said.
“But they haven’t returned to their boat. That tells me something might have happened. Maybe it was related to the bullets that hit these trees or maybe not, but I’d like to try and follow that trail and see what I can find out.”
Grant knew Larry wouldn’t like the idea of them separating here, and he said as much. But he also said they couldn’t all go because they certainly couldn’t risk leaving the Casey Nicole unattended.
“I won’t be gone long,” Grant said. “An hour, maybe a little more. Maybe I can find some clues.”
“Or we could sail around to the other side and then go to the ruins. There’s an easier way than through the bush from here.”
“Yeah, but what if they didn’t make it that far?” Grant didn’t want to sound grim, but he also realized that he might not find Thomas and Mindy alive. He knew the thought had crossed Larry’s mind too as soon as he saw the boat locked up and empty, not to mention the bullet-pocked palms. A lot could have happened in the three days since the couple had arrived here, and they both knew it.”
“If you want to go, then go for it. But make it quick and be careful. We can’t exactly come in there after you if you don’t come back, because like I said, I’m not leaving the Casey Nicole here unattended.”
“I can guard it!” Jessica said. “I know how to shoot now.”
“You do, but I’m not leaving you alone, here or anywhere else, regardless.”
“I could go with Grant then, if that would….”
“No,” Grant cut her off, before Larry could answer. “It’s going to be rough, cutting through that scrub. I can move faster alone. You two don’t need to worry about me. Just hang out here and enjoy the beach. I’ll be back soon, and hopefully, I’ll have some answers.”
* * *
Myron Benson was in a foul mood. It had been three days since they discovered the little sailboat anchored at Darby Island and he was just now going back to get it and to search for the woman who ran away into the bush. If he had just brought the sailboat with him, towing it along behind the skiff when he and Sidney left to take Samuel back to the village, he could have sailed it back there the next day. Instead, he ended up getting stranded on the little cay he called home because his cousin Delbert borrowed the skiff without his permission. He had taken it just after dark while Myron was out of sight of the harbor having a drink with Sidney and discussing their plans for the next morning. The 50-horse Johnson outboard on the skiff was the only running engine left in the village after thieves had stolen several of the fishing boats in the weeks since the solar flare.
Myron knew exactly where Delbert went—to the settlement on the north end of Great Exuma where he was consoling the wife of his best friend who had been murdered by looters not long after the collapse. The only way to get there and back was in that skiff, and Delbert had taken advantage of the fact that it was unattended and ready. Myron had stormed back and forth to the waterfront all day the next day and following night, but it was not until he’d spent two nights with his lady friend that Delbert decided to come back home. Myron cussed him and threatened to beat him half to death, but Delbert didn’t care. It had been worth it to him and Myron knew he would do it again if he got the chance. Delbert would repay him by helping him and Sidney today, but if he failed to keep his mouth shut about what they were doing, Myron promised him their kinship would not save him from his wrath.
Myron and Sidney had said nothing to anyone else in the village about the little sailboat and the American couple that had been aboard it. For one thing, they didn’t want to have to share whatever else they might find of value aboard it, as he planned to sail it to one of the towns to the north and try and trade it for something more useful. Myron had kept the AK-47 he’d found on board out of sight, rolled up in an old foul weather jacket he kept in the skiff. The rusty old Winchester .30-30 they’d found in there after the woman escaped he gave to Sidney, who was delighted to acquire it.
The other reason Myron wanted to keep this quiet was that the woman was likely still alive and there was always a chance someone he knew might spot her on the island and get her side of the story. As long as he had nothing to connect him to her or her dead husband, the shooting would be easy to deny, but he was anxious to find her and make sure that didn’t happen, regardless.
They had convinced Samuel to make up a story about the accident that put out his eye, so no one was the wiser, including Barry, the old man who called himself a doctor but was really only trained as a paramedic decades ago when he lived in Nassau. There was nothing he could do for Samuel’s eye but remove what was left of it and bandage the empty socket. He would wear a patch over it for the rest of his life as a reminder of what that woman had done to him. Myron knew Samuel would love to come with them and finish her himself, but he was still in far too much pain for anything of the sort.
But now at last, they were on
their way back to Darby Island, several miles to the northwest. Myron, Sidney and Delbert had brought with them sharp machetes to deal with the thickets they would encounter following the trail of the woman, and they had a twelve-gauge pump shotgun, along with the .30-30 Winchester and the AK-47 from the sailboat. Myron and Sidney also had the duty pistols they always wore on their belts. The two of them had been constables in their district before the grid collapse. The job generally involved very little action and they both supplemented their meager pay with fishing and other side activities, some of them marginally legal, and some far from it. One of the best perks of being constables was that they were armed, a rare privilege among the citizenry of the Bahamas, and one that gave them a decided advantage in the conditions that prevailed since the blackout. The encounter with the young Americans wasn’t the first time the two had used their issue weapons for personal gain, and Myron was sure it wouldn’t be the last. The acquisition of the AK would be especially helpful in times like these, which Myron knew were not getting better anytime soon. He had extra ammunition available for it because there had once been an old SKS rifle among his department’s weapons that had unfortunately been stolen years ago. He had reloaded the 30-round magazine that was in the rifle when they boarded the boat, and he had the remainder of a 250-round packet with him in the skiff.
They would go back to the anchorage where they’d left the little sailboat first. There was always the chance the woman had returned there, trying to leave on the boat or perhaps looking for the body of her dead husband. If they didn’t find her there, then they would have to go into the bush after her. There was a lot of ground to cover and many possibilities, but he had some idea of where to look first. If she went far at all, he knew she would eventually come to one of the old roads or paths that crisscrossed the island, leading to the old crumbling mansion in the interior. It would be a likely place to hide and one of the first that they would check, but he hoped she would be near that same beach, as that would make his day much more pleasant than one spent bushwhacking all over the island.
The three of them at last rounded the point to the south of the secluded anchorage where the little boat was anchored; expecting to find it waiting there just as they’d left it. What they had not anticipated was finding another boat there as well, anchored right beside it. This one too was a sailboat, but it was much larger and rigged as a two-masted schooner. The other thing that Myron recognized right away was that it was a catamaran—one of those two-hulled contraptions that had become commonplace in the islands in recent decades, but were unheard of during his childhood. Judging its size against the little boat, which he knew was less than 20 feet; Myron estimated the catamaran was 35-40 feet long. There was no one in sight on the deck, and he wondered if whoever had sailed here on it was already ransacking his little prize, cleaning out the cabin before he’d had a chance to even go through it properly. He backed off the throttle of the outboard immediately upon spotting the other boat, and now Sidney and Delbert turned to look back at him, to see what he would do next.
“Grab that shotgun and rifle!” Myron said as he reached for the AK with his free hand, to sling it over his shoulder.
“I don’t see nobody on de boat,” Sidney said.
“No, but someone may be inside. Watch close and be ready. Watch the beach too. Maybe they went ashore. If they have been talking to the woman, they will know what happened here. We will have to kill them all!”
His guess that someone went ashore seemed to be confirmed when Myron spotted a sleek, two seater kayak pulled up on the sand as they drew closer. Whoever had landed there though was no longer on the beach or among the palms of the coconut grove. He continued his slow approach, keeping the motor at idle speed, having decided there was no one presently on either of the two sailboats. But then a hatch suddenly popped up atop of one of the catamaran’s twin cabins, and a man’s head appeared. Someone was indeed at home, and that was most inconvenient for Myron. It was also unfortunate for this stranger, who was about to pay the price for interfering with his business at the wrong time.
Twelve
LARRY AND JESSICA STOOD there in the palm grove where Grant left them for several more minutes, until they no longer heard him moving through the underbrush.
“What are we going to do while we wait?” Jessica asked, locking eyes with Larry as she stood there smiling.
“Oh, I don’t know. Work on the boat maybe? The bottom needs scrubbing again. You might wish you’d gone hiking with Grant instead.”
“I don’t think so, Captain Larry Drager,” Jessica said, taking his hand. “I think I’d rather be on the boat than in the woods. I’m getting used to this sailing life now. Do you want to swim back out or take the kayak?”
“We’d better leave it there for Grant. Let’s swim.”
Larry followed her into the water. She stopped and turned around when it was chest deep, throwing her arms around him and pulling him close for a kiss. Larry didn’t resist, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them either. It was just something about being out there in the open that made him uneasy.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Jessica whispered. “I didn’t think we’d ever get a chance to be alone again.”
“Me too, Jessica. Come on; let’s go back to the boat. Grant may come back any minute.”
“You’re not afraid he’ll steal me away, are you?”
“No, but you have been infatuated with him since the minute you met him, according to my niece. And it’s been pretty obvious to me and everyone else since we’ve been on the boat.”
“Maybe I was, before our little camping trip on that island, Larry. Grant had his chance, but he likes Casey better. You all know that. It just took me longer to figure it out than everybody else. I’m not worried about it anymore. Part of it was that he just seemed like such a nice guy after being with that jerk, Joey that I was dating before. But you know what, Captain Larry? I had a crush on you when I first met you too, when Casey and I spent that vacation sailing with you in the Virgin Islands.”
“Aw come on, Jessica. There’s no way I’ll believe that! You were what, eighteen?”
“So? Do you even know how handsome you are, Larry? I couldn’t let you know at the time, because you’re Casey’s uncle. She would have thought it was weird if I even mentioned it. Besides, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, the way you lived before, sailing all over the world and stuff. You probably thought of me as a kid anyway. How could I have known I’d be living on the same boat with you someday and sailing to these places you told us about? I wouldn’t have believed it, but here we are, just the two of us, anchored next to a deserted island in the Bahamas!”
“Not completely deserted,” Larry reminded her, pointing at the kayak on the beach.
“Let’s stop wasting time then, in case he does come back sooner than we think. Hopefully, he’ll have Thomas and Mindy with him when he does.”
“Yeah, that would be good. I sure don’t like the vibe here after what we’ve found.”
Larry wasn’t going to let that ruin the moment though. He knew he might be making a mistake and setting himself up for heartache, but he couldn’t resist Jessica’s charms. He hadn’t stopped thinking about that night with her on Bitter Guana Cay or looking forward to the next time they could be alone. There was no way of knowing where this would lead and what problems it would bring, but that was true of everything he did, especially now. His first responsibility as a captain, brother, uncle and friend was to keep his crew safe and be a leader. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get attached to one of his charges in a deeper way. Jessica was a lot younger, to be sure, but she and his niece were both adults; and more so now than before the world changed. Jessica’s newfound infatuation with him may not last, but Larry figured he might as well enjoy it while it did. It had been a long time since he’d been with a girl he really cared about. His recent relationships had been short-term flames, never quite satisfying and barely wor
th the trouble or effort. He missed caring deeply, or even caring at all. It had been years since he had, but maybe it was time to try again.
When they were back aboard the Casey Nicole, Larry let himself imagine, just for now, that all was right with the world. He was living the life he was meant to live, cruising the islands of paradise on the perfect boat he’d built himself for that very purpose. And at that moment, aboard that boat, he was anchored in crystalline tropical waters with the most gorgeous young woman that had ever been in his arms. For however briefly it might last, Larry could allow himself to believe that all that other stuff was a bad dream from which he’d just awakened. This was reality now, entwined in Jessica’s embrace, a trade wind breeze cooling the cabin through the open hatch overhead, the gentle waves of the anchorage lapping against the hull outside. Farther away, he could hear the rattle of palm fronds in the wind, and then there was something else—a sound so unexpected he thought he was imagining it at first. But it persisted, and Larry suddenly sat up to listen.
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