Page 44 of Totally Shipped
“Hmm?”
Killian passes me a cooked egg. I grab it and it’s gone in two bites, then look at him. “Break is over.”
Leander and Killian are with me. No real rest until we get her.
After another hour or so, Leander points out where he found her beads.
“I marked a trail after I found it, so it’s just straight-forward to get to the beach. Probably another two hours.”
Killian clears his throat. “That leaves us enough time to swim before the sun goes down, but only if we hustle.”
So we hustle.
Leander loses his trail markings a couple of times, but he always manages to find them again. I’m trying to be patient with him, but it’s not easy. When he calls to a halt again, I can’t contain myself.
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Dude! It’s difficult to follow a jungle trail at the best of times, and last night there was a storm.”
“Yeah, but come on. This is taking too long.”
“I know,” Leander replies, distraught.
Oh my God. I’m a fucking asshole.I shake my head, and take a breath. “It’s OK. You’re doing fine.”
“Nothing is fine,” Leander replies, turning his back on me, his eyes looking back down at the undergrowth.
I feel like such a piece of shit right now. None of this is Leander’s fault. And he’s the only one of us who actually found signs of Daisy. My anger isn’t with him. Who am I to criticize him when I couldn’t keep her safe?
A tiny piece of my brain says maybe we are wrong about Harvey. Maybe we’ll get to this beach and find her waiting for us.
But I know that is not very likely.
???
Pristine white sand, no heaps of trash, hardly any seaweed. This little beach looks straight out of a vacation ad.
It’s fucking disappointing.
No traces.
“So her panties were just over there.”
If you turn one hundred and eighty degrees from where Leander is pointing, you're directly facing the smaller island. Harvey’s island. That just has to be where she is now.
“Ready to swim?” I ask, taking off my shoes. Ironically, they are actually Harvey’s shoes. At least the fucker doesn’t have decent footwear.
Killian and Leander are already stripping down. We are so much more adept than when we first made this swim. Now we neatly parcel everything up and lash it together with strong vines. Then we scout around and find some lengths of bamboo, and quickly put together a flotation device, with the poles between the two life rings. We can hold onto the ‘raft’ and just kick our way across the channel.
The end scene fromJawsflashes through my mind.
Smile you son of a bitch, we’re coming for you…
DAISY
Ican’t go on.
We’ve been walking forever, and I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.
