“I’ve been ready for a long time.” She rises on her toes and gives me a quick kiss. “Thank you.”
“Any time, Sugar.”
“Ah, see, there’s some player in you, Sam. Let’s get go find the rest of your guys, Sassy.” Dante takes the leash from the counter and snaps it onto Penny’s collar without so much as a whimper from my so-called best friend. He snags his pack from a stump-chair and walks a few feet down the trail, then turns back to the three of us. “Well, are we going or not?”
Zane, Haley, and I are frozen.
“Let’s go, girl. They’ll figure out what they’re doing and catch up, eventually.” Penny trots next to him, her focus on his face like she understands every last thing Dante says.
I take the pack Haley has next to her legs and throw it on my back.
“Oh, Sam. I’ve got that.”
“It’s fine. I can take both.” I pick mine up, and it weighs a lot less than hers.
She cocks her head at me, her hand on her hip.
“Fine, take mine. It’s lighter.” I hand her mine.
She puts it on. Her eyebrows rise.
“I’ve got everything I need for Penny,” I answer her unasked question.
Zane has the best length of rope we have at camp for climbing wrapped diagonally across his body. The path to the waterfall doesn’t seem as long as it did the night the boar chased me all those weeks ago.
I reach back and offer a hand to Haley as we head up the side of the mountain near the waterfall. Dante has Penny, who hasn’t moaned or stopped and complained about the leash at all.
Zane brings up the rear. I see him looking around, searching the area behind us. I’m doing the same thing. All my senses are on high alert. If the pirates were to come to the middle of the island, we’d only have a few minutes’ head start on them. The sooner we know, the better.
Dante and Penny pull ahead. Penny will alert us if she hears someone else. The times I’ve taken her hiking on isolated trails, she always barks before I see the approaching hiker. I’m just hoping that goes for yacht-stealing pirates as well.
The climb isn’t too bad. The rocks here act like stairs.
“This is the trail to the cave that let us find you to begin with.” Dante points to a rocky scramble to the south of us. Up ahead between the trail we’re on and where the ocean will be, to the left side of the trail, a tall bluff rises. Our path curves away from the ocean to the right and continues up in spots. It’s almost flat, and then it surges upward. The rocks grow larger with the rise in elevation.
“This is as far as I’ve ever come,” Zane says behind me. “It gets steeper up ahead.”
And Zane’s right.
Haley stops and sits on one of the larger boulders. I slide her pack off my back and hand it to her. She takes out a bottle of water and offers it to me.
“You first.” Once she’s had a long drink, I have some. “Thank you.” I hand it back and replace her pack on my back. Dante shares some of his water with Penny, and she’s resting her head on his lap.
Dante pets her ears. “The boulders are getting too tall for Penny. We might need to carry her.”
“That’s why my pack is so empty. She can make it a while longer, with some help. But when the time comes, I have a way of putting her in my pack. I’ll cut some holes in the bottom of it and sling her through it like a baby. I don’t want to cut the holes until I have to.”
It’s been forty minutes since we left camp. The trees are thinning, and the sun’s heating up. There’s a sheen of sweat on my skin.
“You doing okay?” I run my fingers down the side of Haley’s arm.
“Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally?” She shrugs. “Not so much. I’m really worried. The knots were a sign that Calvin got off the ship. But what if Easton’s not with him? What if...”
“Hey, none of that.” I wrap my arms around her and kiss the top of her head. “We don’t know what’s going on with them. So let’s assume the best.”
Haley laughs, and her blue eyes glisten up at me. “You sound like Easton when I was worried about you.”
“See, Easton’s a smart guy. I turned out just fine. There’s no reason that Easton and Calvin won’t both be fine.”
