Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(29)

“Yes, señor. They have been most kind to me and Imelda.”

Something in his voice—as if it were difficult to say Imelda’s name. “You are married, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

I noted the shift from señor to sir. His tone had become guarded, maybe a little obstinate.

I decided not to press him further. For one thing, I wasn’t sure it would do any good. Also, I wasn’t sure it would be wise. Despite the smile, there was an undercurrent to Jose that I didn’t quite understand.

I looked back at the phone numbers. Corpus Christi, Kingsville, San Antonio.

“Jose, do you have the registration cards for this weekend’s guests?”

“At the front desk, sir.” He looked relieved to have an excuse to go. “I will get them.”

While I waited, I stared at one of the photos on the bulletin board: Alex Huff as a teen, squatting at the dock with a rope curled in his hands. The boat in the photo wasn’t anything like the forty-thousand-dollar one I’d just scuttled. It was a simple twenty-footer—the same boat Alex had once taken me fishing in. Despite all the time that had passed, the sight of it still unsettled me.

That afternoon, twenty-five years ago, the sky had been clear and bright. We took the boat out so far Rebel Island seemed to sink into the sea. The water was green as chlorophyll, hot with the smell of salt and fish. In the distance, a shrimp boat trailed its nets, a mob of seagulls circling above the wake.

“Bait your hook,” Alex told me.

He’d brought a bucket of live shrimp—translucent gray things that snapped and jumped in the lukewarm water.

I hated the way they felt—like slimy fingernails. My twelve-year-old mind couldn’t comprehend why adults would ever want to eat these things. I pinched one between my fingers and proceeded, grimly, to impale it on the hook, its crescent body just the right shape.

Put the point through the brain, my father would’ve advised me. That little black dot. Don’t worry. It can’t feel anything.

I had trained myself to bait a hook without flinching. But whenever I did so, I felt like I was deadening my own brain—forcing myself not to feel. It was just a stupid shrimp. Its entire nervous system consisted of a gray line and a black dot in a colorless body. Why should I care?

Alex cast his line. “Old man giving you a hard time?”

He sounded almost sympathetic, but I didn’t trust him. I was pretty sure this was some kind of setup, a prank that Alex and Garrett would laugh about later. Yet I didn’t want to go back to the island. I didn’t want to see my parents.

“Didn’t they tell you?” Alex asked.

“Tell me what?”

He studied me. “Not my place. Ask Garrett.”

He might as well have told me to ask God. I figured I’d be more likely to get an answer.

We fished until the sun began to slant into my eyes. Alex hadn’t brought any bobbers, so I couldn’t tell if I got any bites. He said he didn’t believe in bobbers. He could feel a tug on the line just fine. Couldn’t I?

The ocean toyed with me, plucking my line like a guitar string. Every swell was a false alarm. I reeled in and found my shrimp still impaled on the hook.

I had just recast when something scraped against the hull. At first I thought we’d run into a sandbar. Then I looked off the port side and saw the beige tip of a fin going underwater.

“Shark,” Alex told me calmly.

I dropped my fishing pole as if it had become an electrical line. I scrambled away from it, trying to get to the dead center of the boat.

“What are you doing?” Alex demanded.

“Shark,” I repeated.

“Jesus.” Alex leaned over and saved my fishing rod from getting dragged into the water. “We’re in a fishing channel. Lots of blood and guts from the big boats. Of course there are sharks. Take your rod.”

I just stared at the water. It was calm and green, no sign of anything stirring underneath. “I want to go back.”

“Suit yourself.” Alex reeled in my line. My shrimp had been nibbled into a fluffy gray mass. “Your parents are getting a divorce.”

“What?”

“Your parents. They’re getting a divorce.”

“No, they’re not.”

Alex didn’t argue. He could probably see the impact his words were having on me. For months, I’d known something was wrong: my dad’s angry outbursts, my mom’s evasiveness and tears. Then there’d been the scene in the hotel room.

“He’s been screwing around,” Alex said. “Nothing new. Garrett’s known about it for years. Your dad’s a drunk. A dirty old man.”

“That’s not true.” Which was a stupid thing to say.

Alex laughed. “Whatever, Tres.”

Anger built up in my throat. I’d heard Alex brush me off too many times before, whenever he and Garrett played a cruel joke on me because they were bored.

“My dad’s better than you,” I said, my voice cracking.

“Yeah?”

“I saw in the lighthouse.”

I should’ve known from the steely light in Alex’s eyes that I was entering dangerous territory. I needed to stop. “You get high and carve girls out of wood,” I said. “Who were you making up there, anyway? Your girlfriend?”