Chapter Seventeen
Zach was at the end of his rope. They hadn’t seen anyone else out on the water, and there’d been no sign that anyone had been at or on any of the islands Rogers had passed by so far.
He’d never felt this helpless in his life.
And he hated the feeling. Marit needed him. He knew that down to his very core.
He wasn’t a big believer in fate or psychic connections or anything of that nature, but about half an hour ago, he’d suddenly felt something deep inside—and it scared the shit out of him. He’d had to sit down before his knees completely gave out on him.
He couldn’t explain what he’d felt when Linc had asked what was wrong.
All he knew was that something happened.
Something big. He was actually terrified that he’d somehow felt the moment when Pearson had killed the woman he was madly in love with.
But he refused to say those words out loud or give up on the search.
“I’ve got three more islands I want to check,” Rogers said.
“They’re long shots, since they’re the farthest away from Rockville, and if this Lucas person brought Marit out here, he would’ve burned just under half a tank of gas.
And before you ask how I know that, I just do.
I know how big most lobster boats are, how much fuel they can carry.
If he came all the way out here, he’d have just enough gas to get back to Rockville.
Of course, he could’ve stashed some fuel on one of these islands if he’d planned in advance. ”
Premeditated kidnapping was horrifying. Shit, any kind of kidnapping was bad enough, but the idea of Pearson planning what he was going to do, where he was going to take Marit, made Zach’s blood run cold.
“What then?” he asked. “If they aren’t there?”
For the first time, Rogers looked at Zach with sympathy, and said with a shrug, “Then we head back and see what new intel everyone else has gotten. Figure out a new game plan.”
Zach’s first impulse was to yell no! He wasn’t going back to Rockville.
But honestly . . . did he know that Pearson had Marit?
That he’d taken her out on his boat? No.
It was a hunch. A hell of a good one, but there was a possibility he wasn’t even involved.
A tiny chance, but a chance all the same.
“Do these islands have names?” Linc asked Rogers.
“I’m sure they do. Probably at least some sort of number. Like Island 432-B or something. But I don’t know or care what they are. Do you?”
“Not particularly. But if we find something, we need to know how to tell others to find us.”
“Boy, we’ve got GPS. I can give everyone the exact coordinates as to where we are. They’ll come running . . . so to speak.”
“Right,” Linc said.
Zach held his breath as they approached the first island.
It was relatively flat and very rocky on the shore.
There was no good place for a boat to tie up .
. . although if Pearson was desperate enough, Zach supposed he didn’t need an actual beach, he just needed to get close enough to shore to tie a line to a tree or something.
That was if he even planned on getting out of the boat himself.
While on his neighbor’s boat, looking for any sign of Pearson or Marit, Zach had had plenty of time to imagine all the different things that could be happening to the woman he loved.
Horrible things he never wanted to think about ever again.
But truthfully, Pearson didn’t have to do much of anything.
He could literally throw Marit overboard and leave her to die on one of these completely out-of-the-way and uninhabited islands.
“Best-case scenario is that he left her on one of these islands,” Linc said, as if he could read his brother’s mind. “She’s resourceful. She can survive for as long as it takes to be found.”
He wasn’t wrong. Zach nodded.
“I don’t see anything here,” Rogers said. “I’m gonna move on to the next one.”
Anticipation and dread filled Zach. He felt as if he were suffocating under the weight of the extreme emotions he was feeling.
He needed Marit to be okay. To be found alive.
He didn’t even care who found her at this point.
He just needed her found. He couldn’t live the rest of his life not knowing what happened.
As they approached the next-to-last island Rogers wanted to check out, Zach saw that it was unusual in the fact that it had a high point right in the middle.
As if sometime in the last millennium, there was some sort of earthquake or something that pushed the land up, as if someone had poked a finger into the earth from below.
The trees were thick here, and there were fewer rocks around the shoreline.
Rogers slowly moved around to the back side of the island, the side facing away from Rockville. It literally felt as if they were in the middle of nowhere. Like this was an island more appropriate for a Lord of the Rings adaptation on TV or something.
For a moment, as Rogers motored around the island, Zach thought he was hallucinating. Just seeing what he’d been hoping and praying to see the entire time they’d been out on the water.
A boat.
And not just any boat.
The words Men At Work painted on the side of the hull were almost too good to be true.
“Holy shit. It’s Pearson’s boat!” Linc breathed.
“No one’s on it!” Rogers added, sounding exhilarated that they’d actually found what they’d been looking for. As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, the man was on the radio, telling anyone and everyone that they’d found Pearson’s boat, and giving coordinates to their location.
“They could be in the cabin,” Linc said.
“Marit!” Zach yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Hush!” Rogers scolded. “You don’t wanna warn Lucas that you’re here if he doesn’t already know. He could do something rash.”
The man wasn’t wrong, but Zach wasn’t able to keep quiet. If Marit was here, she needed to know that help was on the way. To hold on. To stay strong for just a few more seconds.
“Get as close to shore as you can. We’ll get out and tie up the boat,” Linc ordered.
Thankfully, Rogers didn’t argue, he simply did as asked. As soon as the hull of the boat hit sand, Zach didn’t hesitate to jump out. His boots and pants immediately got soaked in the cold water, but he didn’t even notice. All his attention was on the shoreline.
As his brother tied up the boat, then headed for the Men At Work to see what he could find there, Zach stood on the shore and let his gaze touch on every inch of ground, every leaf, trying to find any indication of where Marit and Pearson might have gone.
“Boat’s empty,” Linc announced, coming to stand at Zach’s side. “Found some stuff I think will be interesting to the cops . . . bottle of some sort of liquid and a handkerchief nearby. Scuff marks that could be from a struggle or from lobster pots. Anyway . . . see anything here?”
Zach pointed to footsteps in the sand just past the rocks along the edge of the shore, then took a step forward to follow them.
But Linc grabbed his arm, holding him back.
“Let me go,” Zach growled, struggling to throw off his brother’s grip.
But Linc wasn’t listening. “Not so fast, bro. You need to be smart! Use your head. You can’t go tromping around making enough noise to wake the dead. Like Rogers said, warning Pearson that we’re here could go very badly for Marit.”
“This isn’t Iraq, or North Korea, or wherever it was that you crashed, Lincoln! I’m not trying to be a dick, but if Marit is out there with an unstable Pearson, I need to get to her now!”
Linc stared at him for a beat before nodding. “I’ve got your back,” he said simply, as he pulled out a pocketknife.
Zach wasn’t a stranger to violence, but his entire being was focused on finding Marit. If Pearson was hurting her when they found them, he’d do whatever he needed to do to make sure the man never touched anyone again.
Apparently having words with the asshole wasn’t enough to make him understand how serious the Youngs were about protecting one of their own.
Now he regretted not making his point in a more physical way.
Now he’d kill the man with his bare hands and deal with any consequences his actions brought down upon him.
Having Linc with him, with at least some sort of weapon, was reassuring, and it gave Zach the confidence he needed to stride into the trees.
It wasn’t long before the land began to slope upward, and before they’d taken too many steps through the trees, they heard the first sounds of exactly what—who—they were looking for.
Pearson’s loud and pissed-off rantings were easy to hear through the trees. His words carried on the wind that had picked up, now whipping all around them.
“Fucking bitch! When I get my goddamn hands on you, you’re going to wish you were dead! Whore! Cunt!”
Zach’s adrenaline kicked in. But even as he scrambled up the steep hill in front of him, it dawned on him that, aside from furious, Pearson sounded frustrated . . . almost desperate. As if he wasn’t getting what he wanted—namely, Marit.
Zach glanced behind him and met Linc’s gaze. His older brother nodded once, giving Zach permission to do what he’d been holding back from doing since they’d headed into the trees.
“Marit!” Zach yelled. “Where are you? It’s me! Zach! Are you here?”
Silence met his call, and for a moment, his heart felt as if it had stopped beating in his chest.
Then he heard the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard in his life.
“Zach? I’m here! At the top of the hill!”
Zach moved even faster than before. It felt as if he were trudging through molasses though, not able to get to her as quickly as he wanted.
Interestingly, Pearson had suddenly gone quiet. When he’d been swearing at Marit nonstop before Zach called out.