Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath (The Pulse Series Book 4) (19 page)

Larry was pretty disappointed because he’d really expected Russell to come here, at least for a short stopover. If the man he’d spoken with was telling the truth, it was almost guaranteed that he hadn’t, because he would have been spotted right away. This left Larry at a bit of a loss as to where to look next. Staniel Cay was about in the middle of the Exumas chain, which stretched more than 100
miles north to south. Russell could have still sailed to the Exumas, but there was no way of knowing if he’d made landfall north or south of Staniel Cay. If they guessed wrong they could waste days looking in the wrong direction, giving him even more time to gain distance and disappear for good. Tara was going to flip out when he went back to the
Casey Nicole
and told her they had found nothing. She was going to blame him and she was going to make any decision he wanted to make next even more difficult.
 

Though they were sailing close enough to shore to clearly see all the waterfront houses, Larry didn’t see one near the north end that fit the description Russell gave for his friend’s place. Of course he could have been lying completely, or the guy he had said was a friend may have been lying to him. It was all so typical of boat bums like Russell. He may have met the guy in passing one day at the dock in Nassau and then created this elaborate delusion in his mind about him being a good friend who’d invited him to come visit. Who knew the truth? Probably no one and it didn’t really matter.
 

Since he knew there was a cut to the east side of the island at the north end, Larry decided to sail on that way and run back down the other coast on the way back. There was a small chance that Russell could have the
Sarah J.
tucked away somewhere outside of the anchorage, but the main reason Larry chose this route was to avoid passing through the middle of all those boats again. A return trip might invite trouble, and it just wasn’t necessary, as the dinghy was sailing well and they had plenty of time to circumnavigate the island and return to where the
Casey Nicole
was anchored by mid-afternoon. Besides, he was enjoying this time away from the others, especially Tara, and he was enjoying Jessica’s pleasant company now that she wasn’t aboard the same boat as Grant and Casey.
 

Once they cleared the north end of Staniel and were sailing south again, Larry steered the dinghy far enough from shore to avoid the moderate surf pounding the rocks on that side. There was no place to anchor a big boat here, and as long as they kept away from shore, no one to worry about.
 

“The water is so gorgeous here,” Jessica said.
 

“It is that. Too bad we couldn’t have come here under different circumstances. Thunderball Cave is an awesome place to dive.”

“So what do you think? Are we going to go north or go south looking for him after we get back to the boat?”

“I haven’t decided yet. When we get back, I’m going to study the charts and analyze the wind and current he would have had since he left Green Cay. Try to get into his mindset and see if I can figure out what I would do if I were him and decided not to do the logical thing and come here.”

“Why would he do anything logical? There was nothing logical about that idiot!”

“You’ve got that right.”

“Hey, can we stop for a minute on one of these little islands? I really need to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone around. I’ll land on that beach straight ahead.”

There were four little cays strung out south of Staniel on the way to Bitter Guana. The largest one had a deep cove near the south end and this was where Larry steered, easing the bow of the dinghy up to the edge of a narrow beach.

“I’ve got to go too,” he said. “I’ll meet you back here in a few minutes. Don’t wander off too far.”
 

“I won’t. I promise.”

Larry had brought a small Danforth anchor along in the dinghy and he carried it up onto the sand and set it with just a short length of anchor line out to hold the dinghy to the beach. Jessica picked her way through the coral rocks in the direction of the interior and Larry walked west along the beach to the end of the cove. Thinking they were alone there and not planning to go far from the dinghy, he left the shotgun where it was, still partially hidden by the life jackets piled on top of it. He immediately realized his mistake as two men carrying rifles stepped out of the scrub between him and the dinghy when he had turned to walk back to it.
 

“Hold it right where you are, mon! Don’t make me shoot.”

The two men were 15 or 20 yards away; both apparently local islanders, dressed in ragged shorts and T-shirts and carrying old, weather-beaten weapons that looked like bolt-action .22 hunting rifles. One was aiming his from the hip in Larry’s general direction, and the other turned to intercept Jessica as she emerged on the scene to make her way back towards the dinghy.

“Hey, we don’t have anything you want, and we’re not here to make trouble. We were just stopping here for five minutes and passing on.” Larry hoped this was all a misunderstanding and that the men were just reacting defensively to strangers.
 

“Got somet’ing we want, mon—de boat! You don’t move, you an’ de woman, you don’t get hurt. Try to get in de way, you gonna get shot. You got dat, mon?”

Jessica was looking at him now from where she was facing the other gunman. Larry felt like a complete idiot for leaving that shotgun in the dinghy, though he also realized that if he’d brought it he might have gotten shot in the back before he even saw these two. He had no doubt they meant what they said. The one facing him looked to be in his forties, and the other perhaps a decade younger. Both were lean and hard, and had a desperation about them that told him they would stop at nothing to get that dinghy with its sail rig.
 

“So, you’re going to take our boat, mon. And leave us stranded here on this rock with no way off, no water, no nothing…”
 

“Better stranded den dead, mon. Got a little dinghy on de other side. When we goin’ you habin’ dat one. But we need de sailboat an’ we goin’ now.”
 

They directed Jessica over to the end of the beach where Larry was standing and the younger one waded out with the anchor and got in the dinghy while the other backed slowly away from Larry. When the one in the boat shouted with joy, Larry saw that he had found the shotgun and was waving it triumphantly overhead to show his buddy. Larry stood there beside Jessica, her hand in his, watching helplessly as the other one boarded the boat and the two of them sailed away.

Twenty-four

R
EBECCA
WAS
LYING
IN
her bunk, thinking of her options as the morning turned to afternoon while Russell continued his routine of running the engine for a while, and then shutting it off to sail until it cooled again. She had to get rid of him and somehow take the
Sarah J.
back to her mom and the others before they left Green Cay. She knew that as soon as they could get the catamaran back in the water, they would set out to look for her, but she feared they would look in the wrong places. She had to get there before they left or they might never find her. She didn’t know how she would sail the boat and find her way all by herself, but that was a problem she could figure out later. The first thing she had to do was get Russell off the boat, but she wasn’t sure how she would do it.
 

She’d come close when she made the sudden turn and caused him to slip and fall, but the damned lifelines had kept him from going overboard, and he wasn’t going to be that careless again. He didn’t know for sure that she’d done it on purpose, but realizing how easy it was to fall overboard had prompted him to put on the PFD harness.
 

Without making it obvious, Rebecca had looked for the rifle that she knew he had as soon as he let her out of the cabin. When she saw the padlock in place on one of the cockpit locker lids, she knew he’d probably put it in there, and her suspicion was confirmed when she’d checked the hook where her mom kept the key and found it missing. Russell wasn’t completely stupid, and if she couldn’t get her hands on a gun it was going to be hard to do what she needed to do, especially now that he was clipped into that harness whenever he went forward. It would be so much easier if he simply went over the side without her having to do anything, but now she doubted that was going to happen because it wasn’t even stormy weather. She was going to have to make it happen, whenever the time was right, but she had to do it in a way that was one hundred percent certain, because she knew there would be no second chance if she failed.
 

At least he wasn’t afraid to let her come up on deck. That was a start, and she knew the more she gained his trust, the better her chances would become. He was likewise trying to gain her trust, which was why he was giving her a little more freedom. Listening to him talk, she could tell that he actually thought he was doing her a favor by bringing her out here. He thought her mom and Larry and all the others were idiots when they said they didn’t believe the blackout was all planned and deliberate. Like her mom had said after the first night he ate dinner with them, he was a know-it-all who thought he had the answers to everything. And the worst thing about him was that he wouldn’t shut up. All he wanted to do was talk and talk and talk.
 

Maybe that’s why he took her with him when he took the boat, just so he would have someone to listen to him while he ran his mouth. But Rebecca was also old enough and smart enough to know there might be a lot more to it than that. So far he hadn’t tried anything or even suggested anything inappropriate, but she had no doubt that if she were on the boat alone with him for long enough, that could change. She was not going to wait long enough to be in the position to find out. Rebecca had never thought about killing another person before, even though she’d wanted to end her own life a few times even before that night she’d nearly done it. But now she didn’t want to die and she thought she
could
kill if that were the only way for her to live, or the only way to keep this guy from doing what she was afraid he would try. If she could get him off the boat without killing him, that would be best, but if not….
 

Her thoughts were interrupted when he began yelling her name with great excitement in his voice. It was getting close to sunset, and somehow he was still awake and full of energy, not the least bit sleepy after all this time at the helm. And now he was practically jumping up and down out there as he had apparently found the way to the islands he was aiming for:

“Rebecca! Come see! Land! Look! We made it to land! Come check it out!”
 

She stuck her head out of the forward hatch, which she could open again now that he’d removed the rope that was holding it down. Ahead in the distance she saw a thin sliver of land that looked much like the little island they had left behind, only smaller. Most of the shoreline appeared white, and she knew that was sand reflecting in the sunlight. There were some larger rocks in the middle and stacked up near one end, but she saw no trees at all, and hardly any vegetation. There was nothing else there, no sign of human activity, no boats in sight—
nothing
.
 

“We made it!” Russell shouted again. “We’ve reached the Jumentos!”
 

Rebecca wondered how he could be so sure of where they are. She only saw one island, not a chain of them, like Larry described. But still, her curiosity led her to go back up to the cockpit and get a better look. When she got there, Russell was staring off to the south of the island through her grandfather’s binoculars.
 

“There!” he said, handing the binoculars to her. “Look right down there, and you can see the next island. There will be more. It’s a whole string of them and they lead the way south, like stepping stones to Cuba!”
 

With the binoculars, she could see the island he was pointing to. It looked a bit bigger than the one they were near, but with the sun so low it was mostly in silhouette and she couldn’t make out any details.
 

“How do you even know which islands these are? Larry said there are hundreds of little islands in the Bahamas.”

“There are, but I know these are the Jumentos because they’re right where I expected to find them from plotting our course on the charts. What we need to do is sail to the other side of that closest one, and then we can find a place to anchor and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we can explore the chain and find the best place to hang out for a while.”
 

Rebecca was glad they had found land, whether these islands were really the Jumentos or not. The longer they kept sailing, the harder it was going to be for her to find her way back to Green Cay. Russell may have been wired while they were moving, but she knew he had to be tired and that once they stopped, he would probably sleep for a long time. She didn’t know if she would have her chance then or not, but the more she thought about it, she figured she would not. He wouldn’t go to sleep without tying her up or at least locking her up in her cabin again. He might be stupid, but he couldn’t be that stupid. That got her thinking that maybe she shouldn’t wait. He was tired now but she had gotten some rest and even napped several times during the long day while she was in her bunk. As they neared the island, the wheels were turning in her mind. It might not happen, but if the right moment came along, this could be her chance because Russell was distracted by the sight of the land and focused on getting through the reefs and shoals to the other side before it got dark.
 

He had the chart book spread out on the coach roof in front of the cockpit and asked her to take the helm while he studied it and stared at the shoreline of the little island.
 

“I’m pretty certain we’re here,” he said, holding up the chart and pointing. “There’s plenty of water on the north side of this cay as long as we stay about a quarter mile off it. I’m going to stand up by the mast where I can see and I’ll tell you if you need to make a course correction.”