by R. R. Banks
Yep. There it was.
You have got to be kidding me.
****
Virgil
“What do you mean she’s missing?”
I gripped the windowsill so hard that I felt like my knuckles were going to break. I kept my eyes trained through the panes at the darkness ahead of me, knowing that if I turned around I was going to strangle the men who were standing behind me. There were chairs in my office, but I hadn’t invited them to sit and they wouldn’t dare do something that I hadn’t offered them. They would stand just as they were, hovering close to the door, on into Armageddon if I required it of them, and at that moment I felt like that was an entirely possible situation.
“I’m sorry, sir,” one of the men said.
“I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry,” I growled. “I want to know what happened.”
“We tried to get her.”
At that point, I whipped around to face them, not really caring if I did end up throttling either one of them.
“What do you mean you tried?” I demanded. “You’ve tried a dozen times. I can understand some of those failures. Getting her out of the mall after the fuss that she put up would have brought far too much attention. But this? This is absurd. You were on a cruise ship. Floating around in the middle of the ocean. She literally couldn’t get anywhere.”
“She jumped off.”
The man I only knew as Blue and didn’t care to know any more about said the words as if he thought it was his only chance to say them. I blinked a few times as what he said sank in.
“She what?” I asked, my voice lower now.
“She jumped off of the cruise ship. We chased her and the man that she was running with up onto one of the decks. I thought that we were going to be able to get her, but they jumped.”
“They jumped?” I repeated.
I knew that I was aggravating him, but I didn’t care. I bought and sold him. He would stand there and say what I wanted to to him and he would take it. He really had no choice.
“The two of them jumped,” he said. “They jumped down into the water and swam to another boat.”
“What boat?” I asked.
“There was a smaller boat,” the other man, the one I referred to as Green, told me, taking his turn in trying to explain their epic failure. “It was a few yards away from the cruise ship and they got onboard.”
That didn’t make any sense. Other vessels weren’t allowed to get near commercial cruise ships. It was illegal and could cause serious problems for whoever had allowed their boat to wander too close to the path of the liner.
“What did it look like?” I asked.
“Just a small boat,” Green said. “Large enough for a cabin, but not as big as commercial boats.”
“So not a tour boat or a fishing vessel?”
“No.”
I tried to process what they were telling me had happened. It sounded absolutely preposterous. Yet, the call that I had gotten from the cruise security team had mentioned that there had been an accident and I needed to meet the ship at the next port. Could the men be telling me the truth? Could Eleanor have actually evaded them yet again by throwing herself down into the ocean? I knew her well enough to know that she didn’t like the water and only went on cruises because she knew that the decks, particularly the luxury decks where she always reserved her cabins, were well above the surface of the water. They had mentioned that a man was running with her. Who could that be, and why did he jump with her?
“You have to find her,” I said. “I don’t care what you have to do. You find out what happened to that boat and where she is now. I’m supposed to meet the cruise ship in two days and when I do, I want to make sure that she really is missing, if you understand what I mean. We don’t need her talking to the authorities finding out what possessed her to throw herself off of a perfectly good cruise ship.”
Both men nodded solemnly and I dismissed them, sinking down into my desk chair and clawing my hands through my hair. How could this have gone so wrong? I had no choice but to find her. With any luck, she never made it out of that boat, but if she did, I needed to make sure that she never had the opportunity to tell her story.
****
Gavin
“Please let someone live there. Please let someone live there. Please let someone live there. Please let someone live there.”
I still hadn’t encountered anyone to listen to me, but I had been talking to the jungle for two days now and it had been a pretty good listener so I figured I would just keep going. I had climbed down off of the rocks and was now moving as fast as I could through the trees in the direction of the shack that I had seen from the ridge. I couldn’t believe it when I had seen it and now that I was down on the ground it was concealed by the trees, making me worry that I really had imagined it, or that I was going in the wrong direction and wouldn’t actually be able to get to it.
A vine hanging from a tree tried to grab me and I swatted at it, quickly realizing when it moved out of the way that it wasn’t a vine but a massive snake dangling down in hopes of scooping a snack from the jungle floor.
“Oh, shit.” I said, ducking out of the way and starting at a faster clip through the trees. “Please let somebody live there. Please let somebody live there.”
I was nearly to a clearing ahead of me when a figure jumped out in front of me. I almost swung at it before I realized that it was a man so wrinkled it was entirely possible that the jungle sun had turned him into a raisin.
Almost not alive, but I’ll take it.
“Are you alright, son?” the man asked as I leaned over and rested my hands on my knees to draw in a few calming breaths.
I shook my head. I had actually intended on nodding, but apparently my mind had decided to mutiny and just go ahead with whatever it thought.
“Lost,” I managed to say.
“Well, I would say so,” he said. “I didn’t think that we had any neighbors around these parts.”
“We?” I asked.
“Of course. Me and the Mrs. Come on. I’ll introduce you. You look like you could use a cup of tea.”
Tea?
I straightened up and followed the crinkly man through the trees toward the clearing ahead. When we stepped out from the cover of the trees I immediately knew that I had seen what I thought that I had. The shack looked much larger when I was standing a few yards from it than it had from the vantage point of the rocky ledge and I noticed signs that the man and his wife had been there for some time scattered across the clearing around it. There were baskets woven from leaves that were far more complex than the ones we had managed on the other island, stacks of cut stalks, and piles of fruit. A firepit to one side had a spit over it that held two large fish and a chunk of something that I could only assume was meat of some kind.
We were a few steps away from the shack when a tiny woman who looked even older than the man came out holding another basket filled with what looked like loaves of bread.
Here I was thinking I was a badass survivalist getting through the few days on the two islands and these two ancient people are just going about their lives, making baskets and baking bread and shit.
“Well, hello,” the woman said with a cheery smile. “Who do we have here?”
The old man looked at me, his face scrunched up as he searched his brain for the name that I hadn’t given him.
“I’m Gavin,” I said, walking toward her with my hand extended.
“Hello, Gavin,” she said, shaking my hand with the gusto of a woman who was no stranger to hard work, but the softness in her eyes of a grandmother that should be baking apple pie. “I’m Sophie, and this old coot who was so rude to not introduce himself is Edwin.”
“It’s nice to meet both of you.” I didn’t think that I had ever said anything more sincere.
“Can I get you some tea?”
Again, with the tea.
“That would be nice. Thank you.”
I followed her around th
e side of the house toward another firepit. A pot was settled in the glowing embers and she reached for the leaf-wrapped handle. She poured boiling water into a worn cup and tucked a linen-wrapped teabag into it before handing it to me.
“Here you go, sweetie. Drink this. It will make you feel much better.”
The smell coming from the cup was strongly floral and I could only imagine that this was not tea that she had picked up at the grocery store on the way out on her tropical vacation.
“Thank you,” I said.
“So, what brings you to our neck of the jungle?” Edwin asked, laughing at his own joke.
I rapidly went through the story in my head, trying to figure out how I could trim it and present it so that it wasn’t as offensive as it would be if I told them the truth.
“I was on my boat and got caught in a storm. I crashed on an island a little ways from here and then I used a safety raft to get here. Did you get stranded here, too?”
The two stared at me for a few seconds before shaking their heads slowly.
“Nope,” Edwin said. “No, can’t say we did. We’ve been homesteading this place for a little bit now. It was kind of a dream of ours as young folks.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Oh. Well…” Edwin sighed and looked into the distance as if trying to calculate. Apparently, time had gotten out of his grasp, too. “Seems to me like it’s been about…. oh…. forty years.”
Holy shit.
I tried to withhold my grimace.
“I guess you don’t have a boat?” I asked.
“No. That’s one thing we don’t have,” Sophie said. “We just never saw need of it.”
My head dropped and I rubbed my fingers into my forehead.
“How am I going to get out of here?” I asked, not really intended on saying it loud enough for them to hear me.
As nice as they seemed, I really didn’t relish the thought of becoming their tribal neighbor.
“Why don’t you just use the phone?”
My eyes snapped up to look over my hand at Edwin.
“The phone?” I asked.
Was this a coconut shells and vines situation?
“Sure,” Sophie said. “You go right ahead.” She gestured toward the shack. “Oh, wait. I’m going to have to come with you.”
I let her go in front of me and I fell into step behind her, letting her guide me to the front door of the house. As soon as I stepped inside I knew that I was not dealing with people quite as crazy as I thought. In front of me I saw a long table set up with various pieces of equipment, including a satellite telephone.
“Now, you’re going to have to give me just a minute to get the juices going. When it’s ready, keep in mind that it’s not going to sound super clear.”
“Get the juices going?” I asked.
“Here you go, Sugar Dumpling,” Edwin said.
I looked up and saw the elderly man dragging what looked like and old bicycle out of a room to the back of the house. He brought it up to the side of the table and attached a cable on it to a generator sitting on the floor.
“Thank you, Sweetie Lump,” Sophie said, walking toward the bicycle.
What the hell is going on here, Coconut Pants?
Edwin took Sophie’s hand carefully and helped her up onto the bike. She grasped the handlebars and positioned her feet on the pedals. Her pedaling was slow and labored at first, and I had my doubts that she had the strength to really get going, but then she seemed to get into a rhythm.
“Um,” I started, “what’s happening?”
“I haven’t fueled up the generator in a bit,” Sophie said as though that completely explained everything.
“Are you alright?” I asked. “Do you want me to do that for you?”
Sophie waved me away and made a few little sounds that reminded me of a chicken.
“Don’t be silly. This is what keeps me young. Gets the joints going.”
Perfect.
I had downed the entire cup of tea by the time that she was finished on the bike and I was questioning what she had put in it. I could have sworn I was feeling a bit of a buzz. Edwin picked up the receiver on the phone and held it out toward me, then pulled it back to hold it against his chest.
“Is it long distance?” he asked.
He stared at me for a few awkward, stony-faced seconds and then dissolved into a cascade of tobacco-laced giggles.
“Oh, you,” Sophie said, whacking her husband playfully in the center of the chest.
Edwin handed me the phone and gathered Sophie into his arms for a decidedly sloppy kiss. I couldn’t decide if that was adorable or sickening, so I turned away from them and dialed the number, drawing in a breath as I prepared to explain to my client what was happening.
Chapter Nineteen
Eleanor
The next morning, I woke with the heat of Hunter's body molded around mine. It enveloped me with the warmth and sweet, musky scent that still lingered from the night before. He stretched and kissed my cheek.
"Good morning," he murmured against my skin.
His voice was smooth and contented, seemingly changed by the fulfillment of the desire and tension that had built up between us. As much as I enjoyed knowing how much I had satisfied him, I found myself wanting to coax it back into the husky arousal and deep, grumbling pleasure that it held the night before. As if he could hear my thoughts, Hunter rolled me onto my back. He leaned forward and ran his tongue along the side of my breast. I felt his teeth nip into my skin and I made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a giggle. Hunter pushed back away from me and stood, walking across the plateau where we had slept the rest of the night.
He went to the same boulder where he had hidden the supply box full of condoms and returned with a basket of fruit. The leaves were barely holding together under the weight of the fruit, but Hunter was holding it together in an effort to preserve my feelings. As he got closer I noticed that there was a knife tucked into the basket with the fruit.
“You planned this, didn’t you?” I asked.
He winked at me and lowered to his knees in front of me. He pressed one hand to the middle of my chest and eased me back from the reclining position that I was in to lying down again.
I rested my head on my bent arm so that I could watch Hunter as he took the knife out of the basket and selected one of the pieces of fruit. He cupped the fruit in his palm and sliced it open with the knife, revealing the juicy salmon-colored interior. Using the tip of his knife, he flicked out the large black seeds and then made small slits along the flesh. He put the knife back into the basket and pushed the basket aside. Setting one half of the fruit aside, he brought the other half up and squeezed it so that a stream of juice ran down onto my chest. I gasped at the unexpected feeling and Hunter dove forward, catching the dripping juice with his mouth.
He bathed me with his tongue, lapping the sweet nectar from my skin. Gathering some of it onto his lips, he lifted his head to kiss me, sharing some of the bright flavor with me. I kissed him eagerly and took my arm out from under my head to rest fully on the rocks again. Arching my back, I presented my breasts to Hunter, aching for more attention.
Hunter obliged, crushing the fruit against one of my breasts. The soft texture of the flesh stimulated my nipple and I parted my thighs, bending my knees up so that I could draw my body closer to him. He suckled the juice and bits of fruit from my breast, feeding some of it to me with another passionate kiss. I rocked my hips, but he didn’t touch me the way that I expected him to. Instead, he pressed his hand to the center of my chest and brought it down until it reached my hips. He applied guiding pressure to my hipbone to flip me over onto my belly. His hand traveled down my back and onto my thigh and he swept my leg up so it bent beside me, lifting my hips slightly. He brushed my hair over my shoulder and I felt the cool juice touch between my hipbones and trail down my spine, pooling at the small of my back. Hunter’s tongue followed it, licking it off of my spine and
then sucking up the small pool like a shot. His hand tucked beneath my hips and lifted them up higher so that he could press the fruit against my core.
The soft, cool flesh stimulated me and I felt my body responding passionately, bucking back toward him and lifting my hips higher. An instant later I felt the fruit leave and his tongue delve between my thighs and into the heat of my core. Hunter’s tongue was nearly frantic, a stark contrast to the slow patience of the night before as he explored the fantasy that he had held within him and carefully played it out. Even hours later my body was still sensitive from that powerful encounter and within seconds of his focused, determined ministrations, I felt myself rushing headlong toward orgasm. Just before I tumbled over the edge, though, Hunter pulled away and I heard the tearing sound of him opening another condom. An instant later he took his position behind me again and plunged his engorged cock into me, pressing me down against the rocks as he fucked me with blinding intensity.
At that angle, every intense thrust slammed into my g-spot and it was only seconds before I exploded, crashing into tremors that made me scream out into the stillness of the morning. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Hunter pull his hips back so that he could grip the base of his cock and rub the tip through my spasming folds, occasionally nudging at my humming clit. I groaned and arched back to press toward him as he continued to tease me. Finally, he positioned the head of his erection against my opening and grabbed hold of my hips, pulling them back hard so he could plunge into me again.