Justice
Two more islands. Two more dead ends.
The first one had a rocky interior and no fresh water source and we were back on the yacht within thirty minutes.
The second one looked promising from the water, decent tree cover, a long beach on the south side, but when we went ashore there was nothing.
No fire pit, no shelter, no footprints. Just sand and birds and the ocean laughing at us from every direction.
Bryce had gone quiet. He was sitting on the stern staring at the water with his jaw tight and his hands between his knees and I could feel him pulling away from the faith I’d been selling since we left Virginia.
Five islands down and nothing to show for it.
The math was getting harder to argue with.
Prime was still solid, still scanning the horizon, but even he had stopped making conversation about an hour ago.
The silence on that yacht was heavy and I was starting to feel the weight of it in my chest.
The sun was getting low. Orange light spreading across the water, the sky starting to bruise purple at the edges. Tomás looked back at me from the wheelhouse and I already knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Mr. Banks, we’re losing light. We should head back and pick up tomorrow.”
“One more island.”
Prime looked at me. Bryce didn’t move. Tomás waited.
“One more,” I said again. “Then we’ll call it.”
He turned the yacht toward the next island on the list and I stood at the railing telling myself I wasn’t desperate, I was thorough. That’s when Bryce stood up.
“Yo.” He pointed northeast. “What’s that?”
I walked over and followed his finger. There was a small island about a mile out, green canopy, narrow beach, nothing special from this distance. But above the tree line, barely visible against the orange sky, was a thin column of grey smoke rising straight up into the still air.
Smoke. On an island that shouldn’t have anybody on it.
“Tomás. Take us there. Now.”
He opened up the engines and the yacht cut through the water.
I stood at the bow with my hands on the railing, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
It could be anything. Fishermen. Campers.
Somebody burning debris. It could be nothing.
But my body didn’t believe any of those explanations because my body already knew what my brain was afraid to confirm.
As we got closer I could see the beach more clearly. White sand, palm trees leaning over the water, a rocky area on the east side. And near the tree line, close to where the smoke was rising, I could see two figures on the sand. One sitting upright. One leaning back against the other.
I couldn’t see faces yet. We were still too far out.
But I knew my brother’s frame. I knew the width of his shoulders and the way he held his head and the posture he carried even when everything around him had been stripped away.
I’d been looking at that silhouette my entire life across dinner tables, boardrooms, and family cookouts.
I knew it from a mile away on a beach I’d never seen before.
“That’s him,” I said. “That’s Quest.”
“You sure?” Prime was beside me now, squinting at the shore.
“I’m sure.”
I didn’t wait for the boat to anchor. I didn’t wait for Tomás to find a depth that wouldn’t scrape the hull.
I kicked my shoes off, climbed over the railing, and dove into the Caribbean.
The water hit me warm and I started swimming hard toward the shore, arms cutting through the surf, salt in my eyes, clothes dragging against me.
I could hear Prime yelling something behind me but it didn’t register because the only thing that mattered was closing the distance between me and my brother.
My feet hit sand and I stood up in the shallows and started running through the knee-deep water toward the beach.
The figures were clearer now. Quest was sitting behind Mehar, holding her against his chest, his arms wrapped around her from behind.
She was bent forward, gripping his forearms, and I could hear a sound coming from her that stopped me for half a second because it was raw and guttural and full of pain.
Then she looked up and saw me. Soaking wet, fully clothed, standing in the surf like a crazy person. Her face broke open and the sound that came out of her mouth was half scream and half sob.
“JUSTICE!”
I ran to them. Dropped to my knees in the sand next to Quest and grabbed my brother by the back of his neck and pulled him into me.
He was thinner than I’d ever seen him, sunburned, his beard and haircut grown out wild, his clothes torn and faded.
He didn’t look like the CEO of Banks Reserve.
He looked like a man who’d been fighting to survive for weeks and winning by the thinnest margin possible.
But his eyes were sharp, clear, alive. When he grabbed me back and held on tight I felt something in my chest crack loose that I’d been holding together since the day his plane disappeared.
“My nigga,” Quest said, his voice cracking on the second word. He pulled back and dapped me up and held my hand and looked me dead in my eyes. “She’s in labor, Justice. It started an hour ago. The contractions are close.”
“Fuck.” I looked at Mehar. Her face was drenched in sweat and tears and her belly was enormous and she was gripping Quest’s arm like it was the only thing keeping her from flying apart. “Okay. We gotta move. The boat is right there.”
Tomás had brought the yacht as close to shore as the depth would allow, maybe forty yards out. Prime was already in the water wading toward us. Bryce was right behind him, moving fast, his eyes locked on his sister.
Quest scooped Mehar up off the sand. She cried out and grabbed his neck and buried her face in his shoulder.
He carried her toward the water and I walked beside him with my hand on his back, steadying him because his legs were shaking and his body had nothing left but will.
We hit the water and Prime was there, taking Mehar’s weight from the other side, and together we walked her through the surf toward the yacht.
Bryce reached them first. He put his hands on Mehar’s face and looked at her and didn’t say anything.
He just looked at her. His sister. Alive.
Breathing. In pain but breathing. His chin trembled once and he pressed his forehead against hers for two seconds and then he stepped back and helped lift her onto the swim platform at the back of the boat.
They laid her on the deck and Quest knelt beside her, dripping wet, shaking, holding her hand. He leaned down and pressed his lips against her forehead and said it quiet enough that I almost missed it.
“I told you. I told you we were getting off that island.”
Mehar laughed and cried at the same time and grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him and another contraction hit her mid-kiss and she screamed into his mouth and the sound echoed off the water.
“Tomás!” I yelled toward the wheelhouse. “We gotta get to the next island. Wherever there’s a hospital. Full speed. We got a baby coming.”
The engines roared to life. The yacht swung into action.
Mehar screamed again, Quest held her, Prime stood at the bow watching the horizon like he could will the hospital to come closer through sheer focus.
Bryce sat next to his sister and held her other hand and the five of us plus Tomás raced across the Caribbean toward a hospital that was at least an hour away.
An hour. Mehar’s contractions were coming every few minutes and we had an hour of open water between us and a delivery room.
I looked at my brother. He looked at me. And for the first time in weeks, he didn’t have to pretend everything was going to be okay. Because it was. Or it was about to be. Or it had to be. Because we didn’t come this far to lose them on the water.