Page 103 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

“I suspected they might be at first, but then Caro said they’d need to check a thousand conchs to find one pearl, and that seems like a lot of work. But maybe I underestimated their desire to make money out of a threatened species?”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“We’ll work it out.”

“How? We’re stuck on a deserted island in western San Gallicano, population zero. Nobody’s expecting us back for at least three days, and with no shelter in this heat, we’ll be dead in two.”

Unfortunately, Cole was right. If I wrote a big ole “HELP” message in the sand, my team would come, but would they get here in two days? Possibly? Echo had many qualities, some good, some bad. Some both. She was paranoid, nosy, and obsessive, and I didn’t doubt she was keeping track of me via the network of satellites she had access to. That was the main reason I’d stopped Cole from getting frisky on the sundeck in daylight.

She’d spot the message within a day, I was confident of that. Then Priest would allocate a team, and they’d have to work out what they were getting into. Was it a simple shipwreck situation? Or had I gotten involved with something more nefarious? When they—hopefully—worked out heavy weapons were unnecessary, they’d fly to San Gallicano, and then they’d have to find a boat. If Cole was right about the curse of Skeleton Cay, and I was beginning to think it might be true, no charter captain would bring them to this area, so they’d have to scope out a vessel to “borrow,” and that might take several more hours.

Yup, we’d probably be dead from dehydration by then.

Unless we could buy time—fish eyes were a source of water, but we were short of a fishing rod. Perhaps we could make a spear?

“We need to find shelter.”

“Find shelter?” Cole asked. “Just like that?”

“Obviously, we can’t stay here.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, somebody took our boat.”

“But we can swim. We have wetsuits, fins, and buoyancy aids. Skeleton Cay is less than five miles away, and the current is heading west.” I licked the back of my hand and raised it into the air. “We’re upwind too, plus I have a compass.”

“For a moment there, I thought you suggested swimming to Skeleton Cay.”

“It’s the closest island of any significant size, and it has the remains of the old prison. If people lived there for any length of time, then there must be a source of freshwater, and we might find coconuts too.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Don’t come at me with that curse bullshit.”

“I’m more concerned about the five-mile swim. You’re still wearing a cast.”

“Right, but at least I’m less likely to lose a leg to ashark.” Cole didn’t smile. “Chill, I’m joking about the shark.”

And my leg was pretty much healed. Doc Martinsson told me I had to leave the cast on for at least six weeks, and I’d done that, although I didn’t plan to test my recovery with a gruelling open-water swim. My oversized left fin would fall off my bare foot, so the cast would have to stay, at least for now.

“We can’t swim to Skeleton Cay. It isn’t safe.”

“Either we swim or I swim, because I’m not staying here to die.” I glanced up at the sun as it dropped lower in the sky. “And I’m going now because this is a two-to-three-hour swim and I don’t want to arrive in the dark.”

“You can’t swim there on your own.”

“Oh yeah? Watch me.”

“Bella, please…”

Cole looked distraught, which made me feel kinda bad. Not a sentiment I experienced often.

“It’s okay,” I encouraged. “My dive watch has GPS. The water’s warm, and you’re a good swimmer. You can make it.”

“I’m not worried about me.”

Huh? Okay, that was actually a little insulting.

“As long as we leave now, I’ll be fine. If we leave it till the morning, we’ll both be weaker from thirst.”

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