There’s a loud chunking and more shouting. “Fuck” in a thick accent that echoes off the side of the boat. And I’m wondering if we need to duck under the water, but then the engines of the pirate ship groan. Their thrusters are going full force. And the light changes. Bouncing off the night waves. We can’t see the ship, either.
I look over at Easton. He’s gone silent. We’re both holding our breath, feeling the vibrations of the Rock Candy squeaking out of her hold in the reef. It’s like a scratch of fingernails clawing at my skin. The excitement of finding the components. I fucking installed them. With the right tools, they’re going to have the yacht up and running with not that much effort.
Lights flicker near the opening of the cave, but not close enough to give us away. Still, I’m clenching my sides, ready to ease into the water if I need to. But then the light’s gone. The chugging of the pirate ship’s misaligned motor isn’t nearly as loud as it was ten minutes ago.
I’m next to the WaveRunner, but not on it. I crouch on one leg. There’s no way they could hear us, but I’m still not going to yell. “I think they’re gone, but we need to wait.”
“Agreed. I’ll swim out and see what’s going on.”
“No, there’s no need for that. We wait. And when we get out, we go away from camp.”
“Away?”
“Yes. If they see us, we don’t want to lead them right back to the others, to Haley.”
Easton nods. And that fucker, even in the dark I can pick out the glint in his eye that says,I’m going to go do exactly what I want. He can’t listen to anyone.
He slinks over the side of the WaveRunner and into the water. “Part of the way,” he says before slipping under the water.
I can’t see him. It’s too dark. I stare directly at the mouth of the cave where the moonlight and possibly the residue of the pirate’s lights shine on the water. There’s nothing, until I see his dark blond hair on the surface near the wall. He’s treading water so that only the top of his head and eyes are above water like a wayward crocodile. I want to push him the rest of the way under. The fact that he can’t ever listen to me at all is beyond frustrating.
After a few minutes, I lose him in the waves. And I’m starting to know what my mother felt like when my brother and I played dead man at the bottom of the farm pond. My eyes dart around the top of the water, waiting for any sort of movement, so I don’t notice it when he pops up right next to me until he touches my shoulder.
“Fuck, I thought you drowned.”
“Stop it with the wishful thinking, Green. I can hold my breath a long time. It’s useful for lots of things.”
Honestly, it’s more frustrating that I don’t want to hurt him anymore. “What did you see?”
“They’ve got her towed beyond the breakers, but they’re not moving away. How long do we have in the cave before high tide fills it?”
“An hour. We’ll be pruned, but we should be fine.” Easton hops onto the water-covered ledge and I take a turn sitting on the WaveRunner. The most important thing is for the damn scavengers to have the boat hauled far enough away they can’t see us. Far enough that when our crew comes back in the morning, they’re not spotted by the damn pirates.
Easton eases back into the water and swims to the end of the cave. The thing with high tide is that there’s room for the WaveRunner in the cave, but not someone on top of it. We’ll have to tow it out of the cave and hop on. We’re not far from that point now.
Easton swims back and his head pops up, but I’m expecting it this time. “I can’t see anything out there now. We can take the chance and make our way out of here.”
I tap the handlebars. “I don’t want to have to pull this damn thing out.”
“I don’t either.” Easton climbs onto the back of it.
There’s no way to start the WaveRunner quietly. It’s just not possible. I turn over the motor and ease us into the mouth of the cave. Easton’s right; I don’t see them right outside of the breakers, but that doesn’t mean much.
He leans up and shouts into my ear over the waves and motor. “Can you stay close to the shore and then we can zip down to camp?”
“No,” I toss over my shoulder.
“What do you mean, no?”
We’ve already been over this, so there’s no reason to go into it again. I’m not leading the pirates back to camp. We left one of the two good pairs of binoculars on the back deck. Not the ones with night vision, but it’s still dusk. They can see us if they want to. “No.”
“Fucking Green,” he hisses.
But that’s how I feel about him now too. So yeah. If I’d listened to him, we would have been on the top of the boat when the pirates came barreling in, not tucked away in the secret connector between the crew area and the toy hauler room. We wouldn’t have been able to sink quietly into the water and swim for the cave. We’d have been taken or shot. So no, I’m notexplaining myself to him again. If I see so much as a pinprick of light on the horizon, I’m taking us away from camp.
We bounce on the waves, the kind of blows that have guests flying off when they’re not holding on tightly enough. But I’m gripping the saddle tightly with my thighs. And there on the horizon... It’s not a pinprick. It’s two large dots. The pirate ship pulling the Rock Candy. They’re close enough that I can make out the swoosh of the wave on the Rock Candy logo.
“Keep your head down.” I turn hard toward Chicken Beach. There’s no point in going back to the cave. We wouldn’t be able to get the WaveRunner all the way in, not without it taking our heads off. There’s a large section of bluff over here, just like on the way back to camp. We’re exposed, no matter which way we go. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a quarter mile of rock on one side and the ocean on the other.
