by Jordan Rivet
“That’s acceptable,” Esther said. She felt like she’d been running, but she forced herself to breathe slowly.
“You see, Hawthorne,” Burns said. “That wasn’t so difficult. You should have given in to us days ago.”
David didn’t respond. Esther couldn’t sense anything from him and she wished that he were easier to read. Burns snapped the fingers on his good hand, and the bearded guard lowered his gun.
“Any chance we can get something to eat?” Esther said.
Half an hour later Esther and David were seated at the folding table, with a steaming plate of shellfish and an assortment of dark-purple sea urchins between them. A big stack of graying, pulpy paper sat beside their meal. Burns had told them to start by drawing out the design, though Esther knew she could build it without any notes.
“This is too easy,” David said after swallowing a mouthful of shellfish. Despite his extreme hunger, he maintained his impeccable table manners. Esther dug into her meal with more gusto.
“Speak for yourself,” she said through her food. “I had to fight my way through whole ships of pirates to get here.”
“I mean Burns,” David said. “He agreed to your terms too quickly.”
“Why wouldn’t he? The worst that can happen is we’re not able to complete the technology, and then he dumps us in the sea. It’s not much of a risk for him to give us a chance. And when we do build the technology successfully, he can easily drop us off somewhere. This energy tech is worth way more than one trip, and he knows it.”
Esther reached for another sea urchin.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” David said. “There’s not a man on this island who would stop him from slitting our throats after the separator is complete.”
“I assume that has been the plan all along. He won’t want anyone else to get their hands on the tech. That’s why I said we have to stay together,” Esther said. “We need to escape, and this buys us some time. You won’t be much help building the system, so you can work on our exit strategy.”
“There will be a catch,” David said. “Something we haven’t thought of yet.”
He pushed his broken glasses up on his nose.
Esther tipped the last sea urchin onto David’s plate. “We have to risk it,” she said, “unless you have a better plan.”
David smiled, sending a warm tremor through Esther’s body. “I’ve missed your confidence, Esther,” he said. “You’re good in a crisis.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
They sat silently for a moment as they chewed the tough urchins. Esther reached forward to squeeze David’s wrist, then changed her mind halfway there and reached awkwardly for another chunk of shellfish.
Chapter 26—The Workshop
“HAND ME THOSE PLIERS,” Esther said.
“Sure.”
“Not those. The ones with the yellow handle.”
“These ones?” David held up a different pair.
“Yeah. Now hold this panel out of the way for me while I adjust this tubing. Not there, just here, exactly where it is now, see?”
Esther and David moved awkwardly around each other in the cramped space. They’d been in the workshop provided by Burns for three days. Despite the coldness that hung in the mists around the Island, the workshop was stifling. Esther’s patience was wearing thin as David shuffled around her and clumsily tried to help her with the machine.
“Stop moving. I need you to be still.”
“Quit snapping at me,” David said. “You’re impossible to work with.”
“I’m the one doing all the work here. Made any progress on our exit strategy lately?”
Esther moved David’s hands sharply to the left as he let the panel drift away from its precise position again.
“We can’t get out of here without inside help.”
“There has to be a better way. Stop moving! You need to spend more time on it and less time sleeping and playing cards with Harry.” And chatting with that woman, she wanted to say.
David shook his head, and the panel in his hand slid a fraction of an inch.
“He’s still our best bet. He has a natural sense of fairness, and he doesn’t want Burns to kill us.”
“That strategy worked out so well before I got here. Let go. I’ll do it myself.”
Esther pushed David’s hands away from the machine a little harder than she meant to. He gave an exasperated sigh and went to sit on one of the cots that had been set up for them in the corner.
She felt bad for snapping at him and for giving him a hard time about sleeping. He still wasn’t in good health. They were fed regularly now, but he needed all the rest he could get before they made their getaway. When they’d moved down to the workshop on Level 7, David had crashed on a cot and slept for eighteen hours straight. Esther used that time to get a jump on the energy system, resting for a few hours at a time.
But while he was asleep, that woman had come to see him.
Esther had just woken from a quick nap on the cot beside David’s. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and sat, pulling her knees up to her chest. David looked so peaceful, with his blond hair pushed back on his forehead and one arm tucked underneath the thin pillow. He didn’t snore or move, breathing slowly and heavily. His sunken cheeks revealed what he had been through since being taken from the Amsterdam. Esther felt a tight pain in her chest as she watched him, listening to the quiet deep in the rock of Calderon Island. They weren’t safe here by any stretch, but they were finally together.
Then the door opened.
The woman who came in was tall, with copper-colored hair. She wore soft, flowing trousers and a sleeveless shirt exposing delicate arms and an elegant pattern of freckles. She looked all too familiar. The image of this woman pressing up against David at the Rusty Nail and crossing the gangway of the Lucinda with him flashed like lightning in Esther’s head.
She leapt up, scrubbing her fingers through her hair, and stood in front of David’s cot.
“So,” the tall woman said.
“What do you want?” Esther said.
“I went to visit David this morning and was told he’s been moved here with a . . . friend. I don’t like being made to walk all the way down to the lower levels.”
She had an accent. French, Esther thought.
“David needs rest,” Esther said. “I guess you’ll have to walk back up again.”
The woman didn’t move. She studied Esther, an unfriendly smile spreading across her face. “You must be Esther. I’ve heard about you.”
Esther didn’t answer. She wanted to ask whether the woman had heard her name from David or from one of the Calderon guys. She wanted to know how often she visited. She had used David’s name in a very familiar way. This woman had facilitated his capture from the Lucinda and apparently hadn’t done anything about him being starved. There couldn’t be something going on between then, could there? Esther crossed her arms and waited as the other woman looked her up and down.
Finally, the woman laughed. “Tell David that Chelle came to see him,” she said, turning to go.
“If I remember,” Esther said. “I have lots of work to—”
The door slammed before she could finish. Esther felt like she’d been slapped.
By the time David woke up, she had been heavily immersed in her plans for the energy system. She snapped at him when he rose, bleary-eyed, from the cot. Hurt and confusion had crossed his face for an instant, but she hadn’t been able to take it back. David tried to help her with the machine, but he was still weak, and his efforts were inept. Esther couldn’t bring herself to ask about Chelle. The woman’s visit had stolen all the words she planned to say to him. She didn’t know what to do now.
Chelle had visited twice more, and she and David chatted and laughed in the corner while Esther worked. Esther and David had talked less and less, and soon silence had set in like a persistent cough.
Esther felt tense all the time. She worried about Zoe and what would happen if th
ey didn’t get out soon. She had to finish building the system as quickly as possible. She felt taut, like a wire, aware she was pushing David away yet unable to release the pressure.
Now David was wrapped in a blanket, a board across his knees. He sketched on the leftover paper: ship designs most likely. She remembered the posters and drawings that had been tacked to his cabin wall in the Galaxy Mist what seemed like a lifetime ago. She wanted to go over there and lie beside him. She wished he’d slide down and put his head on her chest the way he had in that same cabin the night they’d spent together. She wanted to reach out to him, to see if he still felt whatever had compelled him to abandon his life on the Galaxy to help her, whatever had compelled her to chase across the sea to save him. Thinking about it was agonizing. She hated him for making her feel so confused. But she had to keep working. They had to get out of this mess, and then maybe they’d see where they stood.
Harry the guard came into the workshop, followed by Chelle. They went over to the cot to talk to David, and Esther ignored them a little too intently. Chelle sat beside David and leaned close over his shoulder to examine the sketch. Esther still hadn’t asked him why he’d invited her back to the Lucinda that night—or why he was still friendly with her now. She didn’t want to know.
Chelle let out a laugh like rain on sea glass, and Esther scowled. Didn’t David find that laugh annoying by now? She watched them over the top of the separator as she tightened bolts on the outer casing. Chelle laughed again, this time joined by the two men. Was David leaning closer to her?
Suddenly there was crack as the head of the bolt Esther was tightening broke off. Her wrench clanged against every part of the machine as it fell to the floor. Esther dove beneath the generator to retrieve it, her face burning. She refused to look at the trio on the cot as she stood up and slammed the wrench back into the toolbox. Now she would have to drill out the broken bolt and replace it. She scrubbed a dirty hand through her hair.
“I need access to the ships,” she said, speaking in the general direction of Harry and Chelle without making eye contact. “I’ve done as much as I can on the components here, and I need to take measurements before installation.”
“All right, Esther, it’s not a problem. Calm down,” Chelle said.
I am calm, Esther thought. She bared her teeth in what she hoped looked like a smile. Chelle managed all the traffic in and out of the harbor. David insisted that they stay on her good side in case she proved to be a more useful ally than Harry.
“I’ll also need a few of your mechanics to help me with the installations so they’ll understand how the system works,” Esther said.
“Yes, yes.” Chelle waved a delicately freckled arm and turned back to admiring the sketch. She leaned in closer, pressing her chest against David’s arm.
“And I’ll need Hawthorne with me,” Esther said a little louder than she intended, “to help.”
Chelle laughed her annoyingly tinkling laugh. “He’s not really a mechanic. We all know that by now.”
“It’s part of the deal. Burns promised.”
“I’ll be there,” David said. “Why not? If nothing else, it’ll be nice to see the harbor.”
His words stung; she couldn’t deny it. Did David have to act so indifferent to her in front of Chelle? The embarrassment was excruciating, especially when Chelle followed up his words with yet another laugh. That was it. Esther didn’t have another kind word to say to David Hawthorne.
She turned back to the separator, a hulking contraption that would provide enough biofuel to power the entire island. Esther had been able to modify her ship generator plans to suit the Calderon Group’s base. Her hopes of a land-based power source had been unfounded. The Island currently ran on extravagant amounts of stolen crude oil. It would run out eventually. They really did need her. She hadn’t even begun installing anything in the ships yet because she needed to build this machine first. The good news was that plenty of algae grew in the waters around the Island. The Calderon Group would be totally self-sustaining soon.
From the outside the separator looked a little like an old ship, an ugly hunk of metal taking up a good quarter of the floor space in the workshop. The most important part of the machine, the algae chambers, looked like a row of portholes on a cruise ship. They already had permanent green tints from the test runs. Pipes the width of Esther’s wrist moved the separated algae oil to the refinery and then moved the fuel to the huge generator. Wires snaked away from it, connecting to a row of circuit breaker panels. Conduit wires ran from there to different parts of the base. The circuitry was all already in place from the old power system, and Esther was quite proud that she had been able to adapt her system to work with it.
The base was a former research facility buried in the island, with just one level sticking above the rock. Harry had told them that when the Calderon Group discovered it, the workshops and labs had been ransacked. They must have been stocked with weather-monitoring equipment of some kind, but everything had been destroyed or taken away when other groups of survivors found the island. Nothing edible grew on it, so no one else had lived there when the Calderon Group arrived and decided to make it a permanent base. Still, Esther had been able to find enough materials amongst the spoils of their salvaging operations to construct the large separator and several versions of her prototype for the ships. Each time she refined her design. She’d already decided on a few modifications she’d like to make to the Catalina and the Lucinda if she ever got back to them.
“Esther, did you hear me?”
She jolted as if she’d been shocked by the wires she was adjusting. David had come over to her.
“What?”
“Chelle says we can get to work on the ships first thing tomorrow morning. You ready?”
He faced her across the separator, with his back to the other two.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Can you show me how to splice this connection again?” David tapped a group of wires with one hand and brought his other finger to his lips. He tossed his head slightly in the direction of the cot.
Harry and Chelle were engrossed in a discussion of one of the drawings. He was laughing at whatever she was saying, a wheezy, overloud sound. Neither looked over at the two prisoners.
“Okay,” Esther said slowly. “First you need to select the right material. Check to make sure the wire isn’t rusted out.”
She retrieved a length of wire from the workbench and guided David’s hand along it, feeling for any roughness that would indicate corrosion. His fingers were long and slim, smooth against the calluses on her hands.
“What’s up?” she said in a lower voice.
“I think I know where Neal’s satellite phone is,” David whispered. “Chelle might be able to get me close to it.”
“Really? Then you measure out the wire. Be sure to cut extra so you have some slack.”
Esther demonstrated, her heart thudding. A breakthrough. Finally.
“I’m going to try tonight. There’s some sort of celebration in the main canteen on Level 2. I went up there a few times before you arrived. And before they started starving me, obviously. I’ll just need to slip away for a few minutes.”
“How will you get the phone back here? It’s pretty bulky.”
“I’ll just turn it on and try to get a message to Neal,” David said. “We need someone to sail closer in case we have to escape in a rowboat.”
“What if their comm team picks up the signal? They’ll know what you’re up to.”
Esther glanced over at the pair on the cot, but they were still occupied.
“I can’t miss the chance to go to the upper levels of the base while Chelle is around,” David said.
“Can’t Harry help you?” Esther mumbled.
She sliced through the two wires David held between his fingers.
“Chelle’s place is only one level above the canteen on the same hallway where I think the phone is. It’ll be easier to make an excuse to go back
to her room than to wander away with Harry.”
“You’re going back to her room,” Esther said flatly.
“This’ll work,” David said. “I need you to act like everything’s normal tonight during the celebration. Don’t make a big deal about me going off with Chelle.”
“Why would I make a big deal out of it?”
Esther sliced the rubber coating off the wires and pulled out her lighter to burn off the remaining threads. She held the flame a little closer to David’s fingers than was strictly necessary.
“Perfect. Just act natural.”
David handed the wires back to her decorously before she could singe his fingers.
Chapter 27—The Canteen
HARRY STAYED IN THE workshop after Chelle returned to her duties. He was often their only guard, though technically he was supposed to be stationed outside the door. There wasn’t anywhere for them to go on the Island, and security was fairly lax.
David and Harry talked about the ships they’d met during their years at sea. Unlike David, Harry had been doing hard labor since he was old enough to hoist a sail, but they liked the same models, and both had strong opinions about yachts. Esther listened to them debate the finer points of hydroplane racing while she worked. She tried to pick up on exactly how David had managed to become friends with his captor. He was good at keeping the conversation moving, but he still hadn’t broached the subject of Harry helping them, and it had been days. How long would it take?
Then almost as an afterthought, David asked Harry if he could go to the celebration in the canteen that night.
“Don’t see why not,” Harry said, “so long as you don’t try to escape.”
“Of course,” David said. “We have a bargain to uphold.”
“Damn right,” Harry said. “Yo, Esther, you want to come too?”
“Me?” Esther popped her head out from underneath the separator.