Page 8 of Stranded

“Shit, we don’t have much time left before it’s here,” King says right as a couple drops of rain land on my head.

A loud thump makes us jump and we whip our heads around, looking for what made the noise. “What was that?” I whisper.

“I have no idea,” he whispers back. We slowly walk side by side towards where we think the noise came from.

“Hey, look, these are perfect!” I exclaim, bending down to grab two thick branches.

“They’re just lying on the ground right here? I swear I checked this area,” he says, scratching his chin as he frowns at them.

“Just help me, it’s already starting to rain.” I pass him a branch and we’re able to make quick work of weaving them through the rope on either side of the raft to help anchor it. They’re decently heavy enough, only a really strong wind would flip it now. We shove a pile of small branches we gathered under the side facing the ocean and climb underneath, laying on our stomachs as we stare out at the sea.

The sun finally sets and the heavens open up, the rain pouring down around us. Thankfully, the raft seems to be keeping us completely dry and there are no heavy winds. I let out a deep breath as we silently watch the rain.

“Do you think he knows yet?” I ask, staring out at the ocean.

“Yeah. I bet he knew before we even made it to shore. You know what he’s like,” King says, sounding worried. He had a right to be concerned. I wasn’t sure Reece could survive losing us, not with his past. “It’s gonna be okay, Bower. You know he’ll never stop looking. He’ll find us. We just have to stay alive.”

“What about Weston?” I ask, a knot forming in my chest at the thought of our pilot. “I—Did we make the wrong call?” I ask,remembering how we shoved the only parachute onto him and basically tossed him from the plane. In our defense, the plane was going down and we didn’t think we’d survive.

Luckily, King’s quick thinking had the two of us strapping into the back row, and we survived the crash with only a few minor cuts and bruises.

“We didn’t know. We’re lucky to have survived that.”

“Where do you think he is?” I ask, knowing we were nowhere near any other land mass. Hell, even this island shouldn’t be here according to the maps we’d looked at before taking off. It was a weird habit, but something Reece always forced us to do. He said we needed to know exactly where we were going and our path there.

“West? I dunno, but I’m sure he’s alive.”

“He would have landed in the ocean, where would he go? There’s nothing around,” I say, worry for him making my gut clench. We didn’t know him well, but he’d flown us a bunch of times and was always busting our chops about flying in his plane instead of some fancy first class jet.

“His pack had an inflatable raft in it. Maybe he’ll end up here, too.”

“That means he’s out there in this storm,” I say, watching the rain pour down outside our dry little cave.

“I know, Bower. I know. There’s nothing we can do for him now. We did what we thought would give him the best chance of survival, so try to get some sleep while we can.” He rolls to his side, using his bag as a pillow.

I do the same, but can’t stop from thinking about what happened today. It was no accident we crashed, but it seemed King didn’t want to talk about it anymore than I did.

Chapter five

Kingsley

Iwake up slowly to the sounds of ocean waves and birds chirping. Is this a new playlist? I roll onto my back and open my eyes. The sight of the yellow raft brings me crashing back to reality. The crash, the island.

“Fuck,” I whisper as the memories flood back in.

Someone had tried to kill us.

About five hours into our flight from Perth, the controls started to go haywire, making it almost impossible for West to control the plane. After about ten minutes of that, a small explosion came from the empty co-pilot seat, taking out half the dashboard. The plane started going down quickly after that.

Bower and I rushed to the storage closet for the parachutes, and when we opened it and saw only one there, we looked at each other and swallowed heavily before our gazes turned to the pilot, West. It was obvious someone had placed an explosive on the plane, something small enough that it would make us crash, but would be hidden from us. I’m not sure why they bothered leaving one parachute, though. Maybe to torment us with the choice of who gets to use it?

But I knew who would be wearing it. So did Bower. We had made some enemies in life. We weren’t bad people, but when you have money, you make enemies everywhere just by existing. So we grabbed West and man-handled him into the parachute. He fought us the whole time, but we didn’t give him a choice. I anchored Bower and I with tight rope before he opened the door and we shoved West out. I can still hear him cursing us, even now. I really hoped he survived, he didn’t deserve to die just because he had the bad luck of being our pilot that day.

At least Bower and I saw eye to eye on that. Reece, Bower and I were closer than brothers. We’d all been through a lot over the years. Bower and I grew up together, and when he was twelve, his parents died, so my parents took him in, adopting him into our family. We met Reece in prep school. He was this angry teenager, ready to fight anyone just for looking at him. He didn’t want anything to do with us. But I could see he was in pain. Bower had lost his parents, and I had lost my own father only a year earlier, so we were no strangers to grief.

When Reece finally opened up, it changed everything between us. The three of us became inseparable and eventually went into business together.

Many people had tried to push us apart, especially any girlfriends Bower or I had over the years. But as soon as they realized we’d choose our friendship over them, they’d bail. They were all after us for our money, anyway. That was if they got that far, most of the time Reece scared them off. He had zero tolerance for women, thanks to his first girlfriend leaving him in such a brutal fashion.

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