Reckless Girls(48)

Relief floods through me as I gesture toward the lagoon. “Guess he cleared out while we were gone?”

Nico squints out at the water, shading his eyes with one hand. “Guess so.”

“Thank sweet fuck,” Jake mutters, then grins at us. “I’d say that’s cause for celebration. Come over. Let’s pop some bottles, and toast to the end of that little fucker.”

“Sounds good to me,” Nico replies, his arm slipping around my waist.

It’s hot, both of us are sweaty, and I’m still thinking of him and Amma in the pool, his arms around her. I slide away from him.

He doesn’t say anything, but I feel his eyes on me as I climb into our dinghy, Brittany and Amma following.

The sun is slowly sinking below the horizon, and all of us are a little waterlogged as we come aboard the Susannah.

I’m the first to descend into the cabin, already craving a cold bottle of water from our tiny fridge.

But when I reach the bottom stair, something crunches underfoot.

There’s a bit of gray plastic under my shoe. It takes me a moment to process that it’s our radio—or rather, what’s left of the radio. Shattered plastic, bent metal, loose wiring.

“What the fuck,” I breathe.

“Lux?”

Nico is coming down the stairs behind me, and he quickly takes in the destruction.

“Do we have a backup?” I ask as he brushes past me to survey the mess.

“No,” he says, tersely. “This was it.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then quickly brings his fist down on the counter.

“Motherfucker!” he roars, and I instinctively jump back, my heel crunching yet another piece of plastic.

“It had to be Robbie, right? I told you we needed to be worried about him!” I feel panic rising in my chest and my mind starts spinning.

“Is this really the time to play I-told-you-so?”

I stare at Nico. “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m trying to remind you that sometimes I’m actually right about shit, and maybe you should’ve listened to me instead of acting like I was fucking crazy.”

“Well, clearly you weren’t crazy, and he is, okay? Are you happy now?”

“No!” I’m shrieking now, but I can’t stop myself. “I’m not happy.” Robbie was here, in our boat, among our things. He’d been watching and waiting for a chance to enact some kind of petty revenge.

“Nico!”

We hear Jake shouting, and we rush up to the deck. Brittany and Amma look between us and Jake on the deck of the Azure Sky, his hands cupped around his mouth.

Like Nico, he’s scowling, his shoulders tense, and I know without even asking that Robbie got their stuff, too.

“How bad?” I call over.

“Fucking mess,” Jake calls back, then waves at us with one arm. “Come on over, let’s talk.”

The four of us pile back into the dinghy, Nico’s movements jerky and rough, and then we’re all on the deck of the Azure Sky. The happy drowsiness of the afternoon has completely vanished, all of us standing stiffly, arms crossed, looking around. He could still be out there somewhere. Hiding out on the other side of the island. Waiting for us in the jungle.

And now we have no way of getting help. No contact at all with the outside world. We don’t have a radio, and neither does the Azure Sky.

All of us are completely cut off.

“We have to leave,” I say, and all five heads turn in my direction.

It sucks to cut the trip short under these circumstances, but it’s obvious to me that we can’t stay, not when Robbie could still be lurking, and is clearly dangerous and destructive.

“Lux, calm down,” Nico says, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I recoil. “Calm down? Seriously?”

He frowns. “I’m just saying that panicking isn’t going to help us right now.”

“She’s not panicking,” Eliza says, coming to wrap an arm around me. “She’s being sensible. We don’t have radios, for fuck’s sake, and clearly this guy is more unhinged than we thought if he’s willing to do something like this.”

“I get that,” Nico says. “But Lux always does this. Acts like the fucking sky is falling.”

The words are like a punch to my gut. “What are you talking about?”

“And besides,” he goes on, shoving a hand through his hair. “It’s not safe to be on open water with no radio. If we get into trouble, we’re fucked.”

“We’re fucked now,” I remind him, but he shakes his head.

“Let me think of something, okay? Maybe I can fix them, or—”

I can’t stop the incredulous laugh that bursts out of me. “What, with coconuts or some shit? I like Gilligan’s Island, too, Nico, but get real.”

“Lux is right, mate.”

Jake has his arms crossed, his expression unreadable behind his mirrored sunglasses. “Radios are fucked. There’s no fixing that. But I have a satellite phone. Not the most reliable thing on the planet, but if I can get it up and running, I can try to get in touch with any boats in the area. See if anyone is headed this way, if they might have a backup radio or two that they can spare.”

He shrugs. “It’s not much, but I think it’s our best option right now.”