“He’s right, Captain. There’s no amount of smoothing down the sand that’s going to make someone think there isn’t a herd of zebras living in the jungle.” Only he said it the fucked up British way.
Sam blows out his breath and shakes his head. “Fine. We’ll need to prepare in other ways, then.”
“That’s a jolly good idea.”
I have to bite my tongue not to say,“Why don’t you just suck his cock then, too?”Instead, I just nod and head into the jungle. I’m not sure what I expect Sassy to be doing when I get to camp, but brushing Penny isn’t it.
The dog hates being brushed, but she’s looking up at Haley like she knows she’s in pain.
“Hey, Sassy.” I loop my arm around her waist, and she glances up at me. Her eyes are more than red now. There are tears on the edges of her lashes. “Tell me everything.” I’m pretty sure that I know everything, but I know her telling me will help her work through it.
“It was just gone.”
Zane and Sam are behind us now. The way Sam has his shoulders arched, he wants to say something. I put my hand up to keep him from cutting her off. If need be, I’ll go Viking on him. But he’s smart enough to stop.
“We swam around, looking for anything that might tell us... well, anything. But we didn’t see anything. Then I swam to the cave. Where I found the extra life vest. But no WaveRunner.”
“Oh, right. Little Bird, you were going to show me what type of knots the vest was tied up with.”
“Yes, I’m not great at knots. But I can try.” Sassy grabs a piece of rope from the edge of the basket next to the ladder. “This should work.” She tries for a few minutes. “Or not. I don’t know my knots. This is so frustrating.” She pulls on both ends of the strand, pulling it into a perfect square knot. “Wait, this is one of them. The third one. There’s no way I’ll be able to remember the others.”
“Here, Sassy, why don’t they make knots and you tell us if they look like the right ones?”
“Sure, that would be good.” She hands me the rope. Sam and Zane find other strands.
I make a bowline. The hardest part is keeping Pepper from eating the ends as I wind it around. “How about this one?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sassy says.
“How about this one?” Sam hands her one. His hand rests on her knee. She rubs her fingers over his.
“Maybe that might be the last one. It was a little more complex to take off.”
“This is a sheet bend.”
“This is good, Little Bird. There’s no way Calvin put the WaveRider away at night. Not when Easton was there. And there’s no way that Easton could know a sheet bend knot. Which means Calvin was in the cave after the pirates took the yacht.”
Fuck me. I don’t want to bring it up, but Sam’s right, we shouldn’t treat Haley like a child. “Easton did grow up on the water in Maine, and then they did have a small motor boat off the dock in Miami.” And the second the words come out of my mouth, I want to pull them back in. Her shoulders slump. “Let’s figure out the last knot.”
My fingers are cramping when I give her a fourth knot. Sam and Zane are trying all kinds of knots as well. And we’re all getting, “No, that’s not it.”
Finally, Sam hands her a knot that I’ve never seen.
“That’s it!” Haley stands up, and Pepper dashes under the kitchen counter.
“That’s a Zeppelin Bend. No way in the world Easton would know it,” Sam says.
“Agreed.” Zane tosses his rope into the basket and heads up the ladder to the sleeping platform.
“This is fantastic!” Haley’s blue eyes light up. “We should go looking for them, like now. What if they’re hurt?”
Sam flicks his eyes at me. Fucking coward. “I know you want to charge off, Sassy, but we need to be smart. They didn’t come back here with the WaveRunner, which means either the pirates are after them or they think that the pirates might come after them.” I put my hand on her knee. “Either way, we need a plan.”
“We know this island better than the pirates. We can move around faster than they can,” Zane says. He has the gun box under his arm as he comes down the ladder.
“We think we know this island better than them. But there were paths here when we got here. At first, we thought they were boar and goat paths, but we’ve only seen two boars. The paths could have been made by people.” Haley’s playing with a rope.
Zane nods. “Maybe, Little Bird. But I trust Calvin’s tracking abilities. He said there hadn’t been anyone on the island, not fora long time. Whoever wrecked the derelict might have started the paths, and the boars kept them up.”
