Page 45 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

As she walked, she recognized the other sound she’d heard. The boys must have gassed up the generator for the trailer. The sound spoiled something about the place, disrupted the ancient beauty. And the smell of burning fuel hit her nostrils. They were pollution. Toxic.We taint and ruin, she thought before pushing that negative thought away quickly, too.

Mav and Gustavo were fighting, their voices carrying through the thin walls of the trailer as she approached, loud enough to be heard above the generator, which wasloud.

God, people, nature.That’s what Petra had said in their initial meeting and it resonated. Her abuela used to say in heavily accented English,You can’t fool Mother Nature.

If that was true, and those were the only important things, then what the hell were they all doing? What would Mav say were the most important things?Thrills, views, money—not necessarily in that order.

She pushed in the door, and they didn’t see her at first.

Gustavo was pointing angrily at his phone.

Hector was sitting with his head in his hands, like the abused kid forced to listen to his parents arguing.

On Gustavo’s screen there was a big swath of red. He tapped it hard.

“This storm,” he said. “It’s coming, Mav. Tonight.”

“It’s a little rain. So what? It just adds to the atmosphere.”

That cocksure smile, those folded muscular arms. How was he always so confident, even after everything? How had his life, a challenging one in spite of how it might look online, not brought him a shred of humility or self-doubt? For a moment she hated him a little. But it passed.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

They all shifted their gazes to her, caught, like their mom had just walked into the room.

She was Wendy. They were her Lost Boys.

Mav lifted his palms. “Gustavo’s freaking out about the rain.”

“Angeline, it’s not just rain.” Gustavo moved over toward her. His dark eyes pinned her. For an adrenaline junkie, he was reliable, levelheaded. “It’s a tropical storm. High winds, heavy rain. The hotel—the empty elevator shafts, the basement—it all fills with water. The land here, it swamps. It’s dangerous.”

Mav came over to stand beside him. He looked back and forth between them.

“Guys,” he said. “We have forty-eight hours and then we have to leave. I don’t have to tell you how much money is riding on this, do I? Spon con, advertising dollars, the WeWatch bonus?”

It was a balancing act, how much they spent on things like this and how much they earned. If they didn’t get the views—and truthfully, until Malinka’s live, they’d been losing subscribers at an alarming rate, views were down dramatically, and so was revenue—they didn’t get the payout.Even the sponsors weren’t paying as much for content since Chloe had gone missing and the Moms Against Mav campaign. All the mainstream brands had dropped them. Only places like Quench were still on board.

“Where’s Alex?” asked Angeline.

He was the only one she could rely on to give her an accurate cost analysis.

“I think he’s still at the hotel,” said Hector, offering a shrug. He had raccoon rings of fatigue around his eyes. His black curls were wild, and there was a stain on his shirt. She had the urge to put him in clean pajamas and tuck him in somewhere.

No one said anything for a moment.

“He left,” said Maverick. He looked down at his feet, shuffled them like a kid.

“What does that mean?” she asked, trying not to panic. “Heleft?”

“He, uh—he quit,” said Mav, bowing his head and stepping back.

“What? No.”

This was not happening. She thought back to Alex waiting in the dark of the suite for her.

Ange… We have to talk.

Then, too, the echo of another conversation with Alex before they’d left for the islands. “I found something in the books. Something I don’t understand.”

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