“You want to go after them?” Zane whispers next to me.
“I do. You’re right, Zane, they’re capable guys. But the pirates Sam saw had guns. And there’s bound to be a lot of them. They were able to tow the Rock Candy off the reef. That’s not something one or two guys could do. So yeah. If there’s even the slightest possibility that they might be on the other side of the mountain, I want to go after them.”
There’s noise coming from the top of the tree. We all crane our necks up.
“Yo, Sam. Everything okay up there?” Dante’s deep voice fills the camp.
“Yeah, I’m coming down.”
I wipe my eyes with the edge of my jacket.
“You look amazing,” Zane says and kisses the top of my head.
“I don’t need a mirror to know that’s a lie.” I huff out a half-laugh.
“What’s going on? Did you find something out?” Sam’s forehead furrows.
“I think Haley did. But that’s something she can talk to you about later.” Dante has his smirk on. Shit. I love Sam, but I’m not telling him that, not yet. I think it would scare him so far back into his shell we might never see him again. “She wants to go after them.”
Sam winces. “You might be right. I really thought they would be back by now.” He moves around to the far tree that supports the treehouse, where we’ve got a rudimentary map of the island. Camp, the cove where the Rock Candy landed, the derelict, the waterfall, and the pomelos. “You two know Chicken Beach better than me. I’ve never even gone over there. How does it fit in with what Green has drawn here?”
Zane nods and takes the black marker. “It’s hard. I’ve never gone all the way to the pomelos from here or from Chicken Beach. No one but Green has. But the beach curves in. There’s a lot of ferns, and I found another stream, but I didn’t follow it too far. Just far enough to find another nest before we came back. But from the top of the platform, you can make out how the island bulges out and then narrows back in. It’s like a bulb. This area up here, the top of the bluff, is above the cave on top of the mountain. It wasn’t possible to climb. Not without ropes and belaying equipment.” Zane draws in more of what he knows, adding the ocean cave and spots where Chicken Beach curves. A small squiggle for the part of the shore they found.
“So the question is, can you get from Chicken Beach to the pomelos and back over the mountain like Calvin did? Or is this whole section of the island inaccessible without ropes?” Sam pokes at the newly drawn section of the map.
“It’s really steep. That’s one of the reasons we were in the cave instead of yelling down to you from the top of the mountain. The rocks were loose, and the climbing was not easy.”
“Right.” Sam uses the marker to point to the other side. “But this is where Calvin climbed up over the mountain?”
“Yes, down here is where the trees are. But we haven’t taken the time to explore this part thoroughly, or even the area on the side of the mountain between the pomelos and the derelict,” Zane says.
“We have rope. Granted, it’s not rock-climbing rope, but we’ve got a line from the Rock Candy. And rock-scrambling was one of the things I did with my dad on the weekends. There are lots of little mountains between Maryland and the Pennsylvanian border.” I hated those weekends more and more the older I got. Now I can see my dad was trying to do the best he could. He never really knew how to communicate. My mom never badmouthed him. She’d shrug and say it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation if you’re the only one talking. I’ve got more of my dad in me than I’d like to admit.
Sam shakes his head. “I don’t know, Haley.”
“Any of you rock-climbed before?” I ask.
“I was on a seventy-five-footer that had a rock wall on the back. We had to change out the foot grips every day for the owner to make it challenging for them. But real rocks? No,” Zane says.
“So then I climb down and look around. I can do it.” I set my jaw.
“Down’s the easy part,” Dante says.
“Now I know none of you have experience climbing. Down’s easy if you’re being belayed on a rope. But climbing? No way. It’s a lot easier to see your handholds on the way up. On the way down, things disappear until you get used to what to look for.”
“It’s too bad we don’t have one of those harnesses we use for washing the sides of the boat. If you think you can do it, Little Bird, I don’t doubt you.”
“So we all go. Staying together is always a good idea.”
Chapter 6
Dead Weight
Calvin
“I’m not leaving you here. That’s fucking stupid.” I glance at Easton’s limp arm. And he angles it away from me.
He said it earlier, and he’s right—there’s no way we’re going to get over the mountain like this. The handholds are too important, and he’s barely got one arm, let alone two. He’s sitting on the ledge, knees under his chin, shoulders rounded. His head hangs, his focus on his feet or the bottom of the cliff we climbed up.
