Chapter 9
For a long beat, Lucy stared out at the gray wash of rain and thought the beach must simply be empty because of the storm.
Sheets of water blurred the cove into indistinct shapes—pale sand, dark rocks, hummocks of wet foliage—so that where the launches had been moored earlier seemed to vanish altogether under her gaze.
Every time she blinked, the shoreline shifted: a sliver of boat hull here, a flapping tarp there, only to dissolve again into the steady drizzle.
She took a step forward, half expecting the vessels to materialize once her eyes adjusted, but the rain kept rolling in, erasing their footprints in sand and memory alike.
Her boots sank slightly as she reached the edge of the shoreline.
In the morning the water had lapped gently at the toes of the black basalt rocks that framed the cove—on one side a low cliff streaked with vines, on the other a jumble of worn boulders.
Now the same stones rose from the silt in mottled silhouette, but no boats bobbed against them.
No umbrellas, no chairs, no groups clustered to dunk stubs of sunscreen into plastic coolers.
Nothing remained except the relentless curtain of rain and the dull roar of the surf.
Lucy forced herself to swallow the quick spike of panic that filled her chest. Guides didn’t leave passengers stranded on an empty beach, she told herself. Operators didn’t collect every towel, every cooler, every snorkel mask and then disappear with them.
No, they must have moved around the far side of the island, taken shelter in some hidden cove beyond the black rocks, she told herself.
She scanned the shoreline where it arced out of view, imagining the launches nestled behind another jut of stone.
But the sweep of the cove before her remained barren: nothing but stormswollen water, rain, and the skeletal swish of palm fronds overhead.
A sudden voice behind her made her start. “Where is everyone?” Steven crouched on a patch where wet sand gave way abruptly to a narrow trail leading into the trees. His knees scraped damp earth, and he nearly pitched forward before catching himself.
When he straightened, he came to rest beside Lucy. His damp hair clung to his forehead, and his voice held that same open confusion that Lucy felt in her own gut, as if they’d walked up to find the world inexplicably emptied of its people.
“They must have gone around,” Lucy said, sweeping her arm toward the northern rocks. They sloped out of sight where the shoreline curved east. “Maybe there’s another landing on the far side. The guide might have pointed it out.”
Steven followed her gaze into the gray blur of rain. “Did the guide mention one?” When Lucy shook her head, he exhaled, pushing soggy strands of hair away from his face. “They wouldn’t leave us,” he said, voice soft but firm, as though stating that fact aloud could keep it from unraveling.
Lucy didn’t share his confidence. If the others had only taken shelter from the weather, they wouldn’t have hauled every single item into the trees and carried them away: towels, umbrellas, snorkeling gear, even Karina’s canvas tote with the phones.
The more Lucy examined the empty beach, the clearer it became that no one had simply hidden from rain. They had gone.
A gust of wind drove rain into Lucy’s mouth, salty and cold.
She grimaced, closed her lips against the spray, and instinctively glanced toward the nearest tree that curved over the trail.
Its broad leaves promised shelter, but when she took a step toward it, she spotted a long, thick branch lodged precariously overhead—deadwood that could snap free in the gusts. She yanked back.
“Not there,” she said, catching Steven’s arm before he could follow. “That branch—if it falls, it’ll crush us both.”
He squinted up at the high crosspiece, raindrops sliding along its weathered bark. “Is ‘widow-maker’ an official botanical term?” he asked.
Lucy let out a short laugh. “It’s the official term for things that kill you when you’re congratulating yourself for finding shelter.
” She gestured toward a squat building half concealed by trees, the battered ranger station, its roof collapsed in one corner, its door hanging on broken hinges.
“That building might be worse,” she said.
“At least you can see which bits are about to fall.”
They moved quickly across the beach, splashing through rivulets that turned their clothes damp to the touch.
The station had walls barely left standing, a half-roof riddled with holes, and a floor layered in gritty sand, brittle leaves, and more than one suspicious odor.
Once they reached it, Lucy stood beneath the remaining roof beams, tilting her head to watch dripping rafters as a leak overhead let water plink onto the broken boards below.
The structure felt neglected more than truly unstable—though Lucy’s “building expertise” came mostly from house-flipping shows and the annual porch-renovation fiasco her father staged with estate-sale lumber.
Still, nothing in the collapsing station looked likely to come down before they could find something safer.
Steven slung off his backpack beside the driest corner of the cabin floor and sorted through its contents.
Karina’s first-aid kit remained inside, along with two rolled towels, a plastic bag with a lighter, and the half-empty water bottle he’d carried up the trail.
He looked at the bottle, held it out to Lucy with a hopeful smile—one that dissolved when he noticed how she flinched.
“You drank half of it on the way,” Lucy accused, voice sharper than she meant. Fear lent her irritation—fear she needed to channel into something practical. “Do you have any more water?”
“I have gum,” he said, emptying his pockets onto the dry corner of the floor.
He laid out a waterproof camera, a pack of spearmint gum, a key card for the cabins, and a small wad of Eastern Caribbean dollars darkened by rain.
He counted them. “Seventy-three dollars. If there’s a convenience store on this island, we’re saved. ”
Lucy turned it over in her head. She carried nothing but the two hair ties wound around her wrist, the larimar ring Adam had bought her in Nassau, and the flimsy pouch of her swimsuit cover-up—no pockets.
Even her Velcro sandals refused to yield cordage.
She thought about ripping the cover-up into strips, but first she needed water.
“We’ll need more than gum,” she said, scanning the leaking roof. “Let’s collect rainwater. And then we need to find something that burns.”
Steven nodded, as if that answer made sense. “What do I do first?”
“Help me find a container,” she said, opening the first-aid kit.
Inside: adhesive bandages, gauze pads, antiseptic wipes, antihistamines, two electrolyte powder packets, a pair of rounded-tip scissors, and a mylar emergency blanket small enough to hide in the palm of his hand.
The trip should have been a breeze, a lunch and a little hike, but no one had anticipated the storm that chased them ashore.
He pointed at the blanket. “This reflect thing—could be good.”
“It’s shiny,” Lucy said, sliding it out of its plastic wrapping. “Great for signaling. But if we lay it flat, it’ll secure our location too well.” She tucked it to the side and dug two pairs of latex gloves from the bottom of the kit. “We’ll keep the lighter and tinder dry in these.”
He eyed the gloves. “Tinder?”
“The tinder we’re about to collect,” Lucy said.
She rose and circled the cabin’s perimeter, looking for anything that stayed dry under the eaves.
A tangle of palm fronds had gathered in one corner; a wooden shelf, gray with mildew, hung crooked from a rusty nail; a torn canvas tarp fluttered beside the collapsed wall.
She returned with both basins swung by plant roots—oil drums from a bygone ranger project, now rain collectors—and set them side by side.
Rainwater would pool there faster than the battered floor.
Outside, the downpour had softened to a steady patter.
Lucy knelt beside the shelf, pressed the scissors blade into its underside, and flaked off thin curls of dry wood.
It smelled musty but promisingly free of moisture.
She transferred the shavings into a scrap of towel Steven held open.
Nearby, he plucked small twigs from the undersides of lean branches where the canopy had shielded them—dry enough, if they could protect them from a final screech of wind.
They worked in companionable focus, each measuring the other’s movements without speaking.
The storm hammered its rhythm on tin roofs and leaves above them, but inside the cabin, their chatter was pragmatic: “Could that tarp cover the gap?” “Where are we going to tie it?” “Do you think the squall is letting up?”
Beneath the practical, a quiet current of fear wound through both of them. Lucy’s pulse pounded when she imagined Adam scanning the passengers once both boats landed and discovering two of them missing. Steven’s jaw clenched every time a branch flexed overhead.
By the time they’d gathered a reasonable pile of fibrous shavings, twigs, and dry bark, the rain had given them a slim window.
Lucy held up the tarp. “If we can stretch this across the open roof, we’ll have a halfway decent lean-to.
” She handed Steven the scissors and pointed at her cover-up.
“These towels won’t give us enough strips. I’m cutting up my cover-up.”
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t protest as she peeled off the white fabric, twisting it into long ribbons with quick, practiced cuts. Underneath, her dark green swimsuit felt cold against her skin. She worked fast enough that she barely noticed the wind flick them both with fine needles of rain.