Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(48)

“A nephew to corrupt. I could handle that. Uncle Garrett…”

Maia pictured Garrett with a baby in his lap, the two of them taking joy rides in the wheelchair. The baby would be wearing a tie-dyed jumper, a miniature Jimmy Buffett hat. “Did you ever think about getting married?”

He glanced down at Lane. “I’m not exactly an attractive package, in case you hadn’t noticed. Kind of an extreme fixer-upper.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

“You’re telling this to a man without legs?”

“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”

Footsteps in the hall. Maia hoped it was Tres coming back, but it was only Mr. Lindy and the college boy Ty. Ty was clutching his stomach as if he were sick, and Mr. Lindy was helping him walk. They didn’t look inside the room as they passed.

“Maia, you’re lucky,” Garrett told her at last. “You and Tres. You stuck with it.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Maia promised.

“I used to think there was a perfect match out there for everybody, you know? Alex told me that. Older I get, I realize there’s just matches you make work, and matches you give up on. Ain’t nothing perfect about it.”

“You’ll find the right person, Garrett.”

He scratched his beard. “That’s not what worries me. Question is, will the right person stick around?”

In the dim light, the lines on his face seemed deeply etched. His hair looked even more gray than usual. He gazed down at Lane Sanford as she slept, as if trying to memorize her face.

Maia felt the baby kick. She put her hand against her belly.

A boy, she thought. And though she had never been religious, she prayed: Please, let him be healthy.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, darlin’?” Garrett told her. “I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

She wanted to stay up. She wanted to wait for Tres to return safely. But her eyelids were as heavy as lead. She closed them and drifted off, imagining Tres holding the hand of the baby as he took his first step away from her.

27

“Tell me,” I said.

Jose took his eyes from the broken window. “Señor?”

“You didn’t want me to come in here. What happened to Alex?”

He shook his head, no longer evasive. Just bewildered. “I don’t know.”

A shard of glass shook loose from the window frame. It flew past us, embedding itself in the wall.

“Señor, we must leave,” Imelda said. “Señor—”

I pushed toward the window, screening my face with my hands. The dark shape of the lighthouse loomed through the horizontal rain. The ocean churned below, waves surging against the side of the house. If Alex had fallen into that maelstrom, there was no chance of finding him.

I yanked the piece of red fabric off of the window. A piece of Alex’s shirt. No doubt about it.

“Señor!” Imelda shouted over the storm. “Please!”

Wind buffeted me back into the room.

I didn’t want to leave, but the glass and debris were too dangerous to contend with.

I stepped back and tripped over something hard.

I looked down. It was a wooden statue of a woman, about two feet tall, carved from cedar. The details, especially the face, were amazingly intricate. She had her arms crossed, one hand raised palm up, as if she were asking a question.

My mouth tasted like metal.

I was sure of two things about the statue—two things that were impossible to reconcile. First, this was the same statue I’d seen Alex Huff carving when I was a child, the day I’d surprised him in the lighthouse. Second, the woman’s face looked a lot like a young mother I’d recently seen in a photograph.

She looked like Rachel Lindy Brazos.

Garrett crumpled the piece of red fabric. “You’re telling me Alex jumped?”

“I doubt it was suicide. If he went out that window, he was pushed.”

“No way, little bro. So his window was broken. So what? Half the windows in the place are broken.”

“It was busted from the inside.”

“He’s not dead,” Garrett insisted. “We gotta search the house.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t mention the wooden statue I’d left in the bedroom. I still couldn’t process what I’d seen—the adult face of Rachel Brazos, carved in cedar by Alex Huff when Rachel and he would’ve both been teenagers.

“Fine,” Garrett said. He glanced over at the beds, where Maia and Lane were both asleep. “I’ll search outside. Little bro, you stay here for a change.”

“Garrett, you can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

His stare was a little on the crazy side. “I’m not gonna sit here if something’s happened to Alex.”

“We’ll find him,” I promised, but I was thinking about the ocean pounding the walls of the house, washing over the entire island.

There was a loud knock behind me. “Tres.”

Benjamin Lindy stood in the doorway, looking weary and rumpled from his time with the college guys. He’d lost his tie. A strand of gray hair curled over his forehead, geriatric Superman-style. “I need to talk to you.”

“What a coincidence,” I said. I turned to Garrett. “Give me two minutes. We’ll figure it out.”