“But we can’t see a thing.”
It was true. They could see each other’s holograms now, dimly. But with a canvas hatch in place, they could not see into the cockpit to know what was going on out there.
“I could unzip it and take a look.”
“Too risky,” she said.
He was glad she said that, for he’d been thinking the same thing.
The lifeboat was not zigging or zagging. If it was indeed a test of some kind, it required explanation.
At once their holograms began to sparkle with digital interference, like a TV signal going bad.
He hurried to use the Wave Phone before they were too far out of range of the DHI projectors and the phones’ communication antennas. He texted:
do u c us?
and sent the text to Philby.
Only moments later came the reply:
mvng awy frm ship, arnd islnd
Finn showed the screen to Charlene.
Her breath warmed Finn’s ear. “I know this island. There’s nothing in either direction. If we leave the beach area—”
She fell across and on top of him, pressed against the life preservers as a radical change in course threw them both sideways. They struggled to separate and sit back up.
“Heading toward the beach,” she whispered.
“You sure?”
“Yes. We’re inside the reef. We wouldn’t risk heading out to sea anyway.”
The lifeboat jerked again as the engine slowed.
“Anchor!” a voice called out.
Simultaneously, Charlene and Finn looked over at the anchor mount in the center of the compartment—directly in front of the canvas hatch. Then, at each other.
They crawled back into the wedge where the curving hull met the gunwale, Finn pulling the life vests from behind them. When not in use, a vest held together as a rectangular block of orange plastic. Finn stacked the vests in front of them as a screen. Charlene helped hold them in place.
The sound of a zipper running was followed by a hairy, dark-skinned arm reaching inside. Then a shoulder and the top of a bald head appeared. A clanging and two choice swear words rang out as the crewman freed the anchor from its bracket. The rattle of a chain. The clap of a line.
But not the sound of the zipper closing.
“He left it open,” Finn whispered, already moving the blocks of life vests out of their way. In a moment they were free of the vests, and Finn moved cautiously toward the hatch, placing his eye to the canvas and peering out.
The lifeboat lunged. Finn’s head went entirely out through the open space.
Charlene grabbed him by the knees and hauled him backward. They both froze—stone still. Listening. Waiting…Finn’s face was scrunched into a pucker.
During the brief moment his head had been out in the cockpit he’d seen a darkened sky faintly blue at the edges; the back of a man’s coveralls; the anchor swinging in the grasp of a hand at the end of a hairy arm; the bow of a second lifeboat.
The engine cut to an idle, then reversed and accelerated. The lifeboat shuddered.
Finn and Charlene were thrown on top of one another again as the bow ground into sand and the boat came to a stop.
“Quickly. We need that Creole freak back aboard before sunrise.”
Creole freak? Finn wondered. Charlene had heard the same thing, and they exchanged the same quizzical expression. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.
The sound of the second lifeboat approached. Its motor roared as it swished to shore.
More than one man left the lifeboat.
But was it all three?
Finn looked outside again. An empty cockpit. He saw clouds in the sky he hadn’t seen a minute earlier. He dared climb out farther, confirming the empty cockpit. He crawled carefully—silently—to the exit hatch, the door to which had been left open. He stole a look toward the beach.
Six men, all in crew member coveralls. Three in front, three behind.
Charlene squeezed in alongside Finn, her head blocking his view. When she turned to speak, they were so close they nearly kissed.
“The bungalows,” she said.
“Bungalows?”
“Massage bungalows.”
“Massage,” he said.
“If you repeat everything I say, Finn, we’re going to be here a long time.”
“So it’s not a test,” Finn said.
“Apparently not.”
“More like a pickup and delivery.”
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” she said. “Yes.”
“So either these crewmen are knowingly working for the Overtakers, or are being used.”
“I would guess they are just following orders. So maybe one of the officers is with the OTs.”
He tried to see a way around the idea of the Overtakers being involved. But the existence of the hyenas kept bringing him back to reality. Who else would have hyenas guarding the lifeboats?