by Kate Johnson
Dammit, Eliza. Don’t think about Edward. She forced herself back to the issue at hand, picking up another coconut. This one sloshed when she shook it. “Aha! We have a winner. Give me the machete.”
“Yeah, no,” he said, holding onto the large knife at his belt.
“Give it to me! What do you think I’m going to do with it?”
“You already cut yourself once today.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Fine.” She used her smaller knife to hack into the green shell. The first week she’d been in the Caribbean, she’d seen someone do this. He’d used a much larger knife and obviously had a lot of practice, but she was sure she’d got the general gist.
She made a rough square hole in the top and sniffed. Then she sipped.
“Sweet sweet nectar,” she moaned, and drank some more, before reluctantly handing it over. The coconut water was milky and sweet, and more importantly, there were loads of coconuts hanging around. The trees were too high to get much out of, unless Xavier had some mad climbing skills she hadn’t seen, but unless they were here for days they’d…
Here for days. She turned back to the shore and stared at the vast picturesque nothingness. The Caribbean wasn’t that big, surely. She’d been island-hopping for a week and a half, there were always boats going from one beach to another. Yachts. Seaplanes. Helicopters.
“I said, do you want to finish it?” Xavier said, and she turned back, accepting the last of the coconut milk.
“Should we think about signalling for rescue?” she said. After all, there had been flares in that emergency pack.
But Xavier shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t like it, so soon after we escaped. We shoot flares into the air and they’re gonna see them and guess it’s us.”
He was right, she knew that. “Could we signal to the air? If a plane or helicopter went over? Would those… people get into the air?”
He shrugged. “I never saw any flying capability. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try it…”
“Is it likely?” she pressed.
“No,” he conceded. “But I’d still rather give it a day, if we can survive that long.”
Eliza looked around at the beach with its coconuts and solar stills and tent to sleep in. “I think we’ll survive,” she said.
Chapter Four
RoyalGossip.com: Fears grow over missing British princess
Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom has been missing for twenty-four hours. That’s according to the Palace of St James, who report that she snuck out of her luxury resort in the Caribbean last night and hasn’t been seen since. The Princess’s best friend, Melissa Featherstonehaugh, had this to say:
“I told Eliza it was risky to leave her security behind but she insisted on it. We got separated at the party and I didn’t see her leave. I’ve been frantic ever since. Even though I know it’s not my fault, I feel terribly guilty.”
Princess Elizabeth works as an art historian and so isn’t expected to have many survival skills. The reaction on social media is that her actions have been ‘unbelievably stupid’ according to one commentator, and that she has ‘got what she deserved’ from another…
Xavier had grown up in Miami, which might be a vast sprawl of a city riddled with crime, but it had damn spectacular beaches, and the Bahamas only a couple of hours away. So the idea of a beach holiday didn’t hold the sway for him that it probably did for someone who grew up in a colder, wetter climate. Someone like Eliza, for instance.
Nevertheless, he could see the appeal on a day like this, sitting in the shade making a fishing pole out of branches and watching Eliza try to weave herself a hat from palm leaves.
“I know I’ve seen this done,” she said crossly, tossing aside her third attempt. Her skin was already pretty red from the sun, and she was taking more water than he was. She’d braided her hair, fastening it with one of those friendship bracelets, but sweat made it stick to her face and neck. Every now and then she pressed a hand to her head as if it hurt, which given the sun and the dehydration it probably did.
“Calm down, Princess.” She scowled at him, as she always did when he called her Princess. This, naturally, made him do it more. “There are plenty more palm trees.”
“Maybe I need to thin the stem more…” she muttered to herself, picking it up again. She’d made a brim, but the crown seemed to be defeating her.
“Or make it from grass?”
“Grass wouldn’t hold. You probably need to dry it. I need a wide brim. Ugh, have I started peeling?”
Her mood had gone downhill since she’d raised the prospect of rescue. They had food, water and shelter, albeit not much of any of them, and tomorrow he’d maybe set off a flare. But for Eliza that seemed a day too far.
Or maybe it was just the heat making her irritable. It was technically winter, but that didn’t make much difference around here. The sun still beat down, the mosquitoes still buzzed. They weren’t suffering the humidity of the summer but maybe, if they were lucky, a bit more rain might fall tonight. He’d take her cue and use some of the washed-up plastic to collect it for drinking, and maybe sterilising that bandana so she could make a better bandage.
He had some vague idea there might be more fruits to eat in the dry woodlands above the shore. Bananas, maybe? Mangoes? He was a city boy, trees all kind of looked the same to him. But he’d been taken on enough fishing trips as a kid to be optimistic about their chances of something more substantial to eat than coconuts.
Eliza would probably know. She’d figured out the drinking water thing, and the coconuts, too.
“How do we boil water?” he asked her, as the fire crackled merrily away.
“The stuff from the still ought to be clean enough,” she said, whittling at the palm stem.
“Sure, but to sterilise things. Like the bandanna, for instance. Or any of the metal implements, should we need to.”
“Why would we need to?”
His gaze strayed to the makeshift bandage on her arm. “No reason. You know any plants that make antiseptics?”
“No.”
“Eliza, what is it? Did I say something? ’Cos we need to learn to get along.” Oh hell, did she understand the things he’d said to her on the boat? Xavier began to sweat in a way he hadn’t when he was just facing Jorge and the crew.
Eliza scowled crossly up at him. “What’s wrong is I thought as soon as we found land we’d find people, or people would find us, and instead we’re stuck here on this beach until at least tomorrow when we can start to try to think about maybe putting up some kind of distress signal. This really isn’t the kind of beach holiday I was after.”
“Getting away from it all?” Xavier guessed.
She glowered at him. “I didn’t have anything to get away from. Bloody Mel,” she said. “Let’s go to the Caribbean, she said. Let’s island-hop, she said. Let’s sneak out and go to a party, she said.”
“Ah. One of those friends.”
“Yes. It wouldn’t surprise me if—no, I shouldn’t cast aspersions.”
Go on, cast them, the cop part of Xavier urged.
“You know how sometimes you’ve known someone since you were a kid and you’re not exactly sure why you’re friends with them?”
Xavier nodded. “Oh yeah. The one your mom wanted you to be friends with.”
“Yes! And there’s not actually a good reason not to hang out with them, you just have nothing in common.”
“Sure. And you feel mean for ditching them.”
“Even when they’re the ones who think it’s really hilarious to tell your actual grown up proper friends embarrassing stories from when you were a kid.”
Xavi laughed. “Oh, hell yeah. They’re worse than relatives.”
“Or the—” she began, and stopped herself. “Anyway. Mel decided that she was heartbroken and had SAD and was, like, so depressed, so she persuaded me to come on holiday. And it wasn’t like I had anything better to do…”
Xavier felt his brows go up. “Really?
You don’t have a job? Family?”
Once again, he got the sense she wasn’t saying what she wanted to. “I have a job. But it’s not hard to get time off. I’m not very useful.” She lapsed into thoughtful silence for a moment, then brandished the palm leaf hat and said, “Hence all the TV shows I watch. I went on a massive binge of survivalist ones a few years ago.”
“Ah. That explains things.” Xavier checked the line and hook from the emergency pack were securely tied to the end of the rod he’d made and got to his feet. “Well, any ideas what to do with the fish I’m going to catch?”
She rolled her peeling shoulders and stretched. “We could try to make a spit. Or wrap it in leaves and put it in the edges of the fire.”
“I bet you were a great Girl Scout,” he said, and went towards the rocks overlooking the water at the palm tree end of the beach.
The problem of bait had worried him, but then Eliza had suggested looking for clams and mussels. They’d only found open ones so far, but that was fine for his purposes. He fished out a bit of dead bivalve and baited the hook, then sat down to wait.
Across the lagoon, the roots of the mangrove trees were disappearing as the tide came in. He wondered idly about setting fishing lines from overhanging branches, but then he only had the one hook. Although he could make some more, perhaps.
He left the pole wedged with some rocks and went to search among the debris washed up by the tide. They said fish could get caught in those six-pack holders, so maybe he could use those, and there was a bit of netting he could perhaps use to catch crabs, and maybe something would have some wire or twine he could use in place of a hook…
He hadn’t realised how much time had passed before the fishing rod jerked and he ran back just as it snapped. No, dammit, that was his only fishing line!
He grabbed desperately at the rod as it slid down the rocks, caught it just as it slid into the sea, and triumphantly raised his arm to find a small fish wriggling on the hook.
Well, that wouldn’t feed them for long. But it was better than nothing. Xavier hadn’t eaten for nearly a day now, and the coconut flesh wasn’t doing a lot to keep him going.
He turned back to their little camp, and froze. Eliza was nowhere to be seen.
Oh shit, oh shit. What if the crew of the Rosa had come back? Had they captured her while he was paddling around in the shadows catching minnows?
He drew his gun as he raced back to the camp, threw the fish down where she’d been sitting, and yelled, “Eliza!”
Nothing. Birds called, flies buzzed, the wind stirred the trees. A deserted paradise could be damn loud.
“Eliza!”
He began to head into the woods, with no real idea where he was going, panic swamping him. If she was lost, if they’d taken her—
“Xavier? What is it?”
A flash of neon pink caught his eye and there she was, casually wandering towards him with her arms full of coconuts and her eyes full of hope.
“Is there a boat? Are we rescued?” she asked as Xavier holstered his gun.
“No. Jesus,” he swept her into his arms and hugged her, making her drop all the coconuts and complain. “Don’t do that! Don’t wander off! How could you be so stupid?”
She stepped back and eyed him coldly, all hope gone. “I’m not stupid.” She gathered up the coconuts, and seemed to be drawing a wall around herself as she did. “I’m fetching us vital sustenance. I found a low-angled tree. What did you bring us?”
She marched back to the camp. The fish looked really small and pathetic. “Oh.” He’d never heard someone put all the vowels into such a short syllable before. “Well, that will keep us going, I’m sure.”
“Eliza—you can’t just wander off like that, Princess!” Why didn’t she understand? “I thought the Rosa crew had got you.”
“Oh.” She stilled, her brow furrowing. Then it cleared. “And they’d have just left you standing out there, all conspicuous, would they, without shouting or shooting? And I’d have just gone without a fight? Is that what you think?”
“I’m not saying that, I’m saying…” What was he saying? He watched Eliza lay out the coconuts in apparent preparation for beheading with his machete. “We have to stick together. We need each other to survive. Now I don’t even know what’s in that jungle. If it is jungle. Some of these islands are just swamp. You could disappear in a sinkhole—”
“Or I could find a fully staffed five star resort,” she snapped. Her accent was getting even more Downton Abbey. She was managing to speak by barely opening her mouth.
“Did you?”
She glowered at the coconuts. “There could be a road.”
“If there was, wouldn’t there be a path here? Look at this place. You think if people could get here, they wouldn’t?”
“Maybe it’s private,” she said, her chin up, but her voice had lost some of its defiance. “Accessible only by sea. Or a helicopter.”
“Right, and there’s so much room to land one of those here.”
She looked at the beach with an assessing eye. “There definitely is. Especially at low tide.”
“Oh, now you’re an expert on helicopters? Let me guess, you saw a TV show about them.”
Her eyes flashed blue fire at him. “Several members of my family are qualified helicopter pilots,” she said. “My cousin flew Search and Rescue for years. A helicopter crash is actually how he died.”
A sudden silence followed, filled by birds and bugs and the roar of the tide.
“I’m sorry,” Xavier said. He had dozens of cousins, and they’d all grown up together like a bunch of puppies. The thought of losing one of them was horrible.
“Last year. Mechanical failure. Nobody’s fault. He’s still dead,” she said, her tone clipped. She sat down on the ground in the shade and picked up the dead fish he’d left there. “Do we gut this before we cook it?”
He felt terrible. Flopping onto the sand, he watched her carefully extract the hook from the fish’s mouth. “Yeah. I’ll do it when I’ve cleaned the knife.” He rubbed it with some sand, then held it over the fire to sterilise it.
Eliza methodically picked through the coconuts, testing them for ripeness. She’d given up on the crown of her hat, he realised, wearing just the brim over his dampened bandana. She picked up a coconut that had been carefully wedged upright in the sand and took a sip from it, as if it were a fancy cocktail she’d been served in a bar. When she spoke, her voice was cool, her words clipped and squashed together as if she didn’t want to open her mouth to let them out.
“The solar stills work. They haven’t collected a lot yet, but they will. And I thought if it rains again we can put out some of the empty plastics to collect the water. Also perhaps we can use the solar still method to distill some seawater. The principle is the same. We’d need some bigger containers—”
“I’m sorry. About your cousin.”
She shrugged, but he could see the hurt. “It is what it is.”
“Were you close?”
Another shrug. Her shoulders were definitely peeling. “More than some, not as much as others. I was godmother to his daughter.”
He had kids too. Even worse.
“Then my cousin Tom was in a crash last year too. He’s fine, but it rather puts the fear into one.” She gave an eloquent shrug. “So you see, I’ve got to get back alive, or the family will wonder if we’ve been cursed.”
She said it with some lightness, but he didn’t believe it.
“My dad died,” Xavier said, surprising himself. “Drive-by shooting when I was fourteen. He was at work. Construction.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s Miami. You want to know the ironic thing? Both his brothers were cops. My grandmére pleaded with him not to follow in their footsteps. Do something safe, she said. And he still got shot.” Grandmére had repeated that line every year on the anniversary of his father’s death and frequently in between, right up until she died herself.
“I’m
sorry.”
“It is what it is,” he said softly, and she looked up and gave him a bit of a smile. “It’s actually why I became a cop. It’s definitely why I went into Narcotics.”
“It was drugs-related?”
“Probably. We don’t know. But probably.”
She looked down at her hands. “Your grandmother was French? Grandmére?”
“Louisiana. It’s why all the boys in my family have French names.”
“But you say them the Spanish way, Xavier?”
“My Abuela does. Mom’s mom. People generally… follow her lead.” That was one way of putting it. No one argued with Abuela, at least not successfully.
“It’s rather the same in my family,” said Eliza, with some feeling, and they shared a smile.
Sleep didn’t come easily to Eliza, despite her exhaustion. It was amazing how an empty place could be quite so full of noise, from the muted crash of the waves to the rustle of the trees that she kept thinking was rain, and the miscellaneous bird and insect noises that started up as soon as it got dark.
Not to mention Xavier.
Eliza wasn’t used to having anyone else in her bedroom, let alone her bed. And since the little life raft was both bed and bedroom for them both, she was finding it somewhat more intimate than she’d planned for.
For a start, it wasn’t big enough for either of them to stretch out in, and curling up required a lot more spooning than she was comfortable with. She’d known him less than a day and trusted him even less than that.
Good Lord, had it really only been a day? This time last night she’d been at that stupid rave with Melissa, making bad choices about who should buy her drinks. Ugh, what had she been thinking? Sneaking away from her team, who were there to protect her from precisely this kind of stuff! Who cared if she didn’t get to talk to men or flirt with them or go home with them? The alternative was a damn sight worse.
Behind her, Xavier snored gently. Well, at least one of them was getting some sleep. Her neck and shoulders throbbed where the sun had scorched her, and itched too as it started to peel. She’d have to rack her brains for any clues about how to keep the sun off. All she could remember was a type of coral that excreted a natural sunscreen, but the most pertinent things she could recall about it were that it was only found in the Pacific and was endangered anyway.