Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath (The Pulse Series Book 4) (24 page)

“Man! Am I ever glad to see you! I didn’t expect another sailboat to come along way out here anytime soon, much less today.”

“What happen, mon? How you end up on dis island wid no boat?”

“
That’s
my boat out there! And my daughter is alone on board! We were sailing past this island late yesterday when the boat jibed and I got hit in the head with the boom.” The man pointed to a large knot on the side of his head. “I’m lucky to be alive, I tell you that. If I hadn’t been wearing this automatic PFD I’m sure I would have drowned. It was a nice bit of luck this island happened to be here too. My daughter was down below when it happened, and I guess she didn’t even know at first. When I finally made it to the beach I saw that she had run aground way down there,” the man pointed at the boat again. “She’s only 14. There’s no way she could get it off herself and no telling how bad it’s stuck. We lost our dinghy too, a long time ago, so she has no way off the boat to come get me. Man, I was just thinking about trying to swim for it today until I saw your sail out there this morning. I doubt I would have made it between the currents and the sharks, but I know I wouldn’t last long here on this rock either and I can’t leave her out there alone.”
 

Scully considered what the man was telling him. He didn’t really look old enough to have a 14-year-old daughter, but perhaps he married really young. No matter about that, his story seemed to add up. The boat was there all right, in plain sight, and here he was on the island with an inflatable PFD. Scully could see that his legs and feet were badly slashed and scraped from being swept across the reef, which was why he was limping and grimacing in pain. It would be a simple matter to take him back to his vessel and reunite him with his daughter, but Scully doubted they could do much for him when it came to freeing his boat. If it was truly hard aground then that’s where it would stay, but at least the two of them would be together and would have food and water until whatever provisions they had aboard ran out.
 

“Okay mon, I take you back.” Scully pointed to the front seat in the tandem kayak. “Push it out some, an’ hop inside mon.”

“Dude, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it! Today is my lucky day, even if yesterday was my unluckiest!”
 

Scully slipped the kayak back through the cut in the reef and aimed for
Intrepida
, where Thomas and Mindy were anxiously waiting in the cockpit.
 

“Whoa, that’s a
little
boat, man! Three of you are sailing in that? Where did you come from man?”

“De boat little, but she a good one, mon. We sailin’ from Florida.”
 

Scully knew it would seem even smaller with a forth person on board, even for the short sail to the grounded boat. But he also thought this man should keep his mouth shut and be grateful for the ride, no matter how small the boat.
 

When they pulled alongside, Thomas and Mindy welcomed him aboard and Scully introduced them as the man climbed out, repeating the story he’d told Scully.

“Russell,” he said. “My name’s Russell. You guys are braver than I am, sailing all the way from Florida in a boat like this.”
 

“It was better than the alternative,” Thomas said. “Florida is not a place you want to be right now.”

“Tell me about it. I was just trying to convince some friends of that recently. I wouldn’t go there for anything! So what brings you guys all the way out here to the Jumentos Cays? This place sure isn’t on the way to anywhere else. Are you just looking for a good refuge, or what?”

“Yes, and our friend Scully here is looking for his friends. They were all headed here to these islands on two different boats, but they got separated and delayed and now he’s trying to find them. Have you seen any other boats here?”

“No, but my daughter and I just arrived the morning before this happened. What kind of boats are your friends sailing?” Russell asked, turning to Scully.

“One, she a 37-foot monohull. Built by de company dem call Tartan. De otha one she a Wharram catamaran—36 feet. My friend Larry an’ I we build dat one on the de beach in Culebra.”
 

Russell had a strange look on his face for a second as he took this in, but then he just looked back in the direction of his boat before replying. “I’d guess there must be plenty of monohulls that size around the islands, but Wharram catamarans are kind of rare. I know of them. I’ve seen a few over the years. Funky boats and not my style, but I haven’t seen one since the collapse. Maybe you’ll run across them somewhere out here, though.”

Thirty

E
VERYONE
ABOARD
THE
C
ASEY
Nicole
was awake and ready when the tide peaked at around 3:00 a.m. This time Artie was at the big winch while Grant, Casey and Tara were all in the water at the bows, pushing as hard as they could while Artie cranked up tension on the rode. At first it seemed nothing was going to happen, but then it moved a little, and then a little more. There was just enough water to lift the knifelike keels out of the deep sand and once it started going, the catamaran slid backwards until she was completely afloat once again.

“ALL RIGHT!” Artie shouted. “Let’s get that anchor up and get out of here!”
 

Tara climbed back on board first, and Artie saw Grant lift Casey up before coming aboard himself. Tara had been a nervous wreck all night, pacing back and forth and trying the windlass to no avail, too impatient to wait on the tide. Artie had been holding it together himself, though he was just as worried for Larry and Jessica as he was for Rebecca. Actually, he was more worried for them. Seeing the two Bahamian men in the dinghy did not bode well for his brother’s well being. Artie knew Larry wouldn’t give that boat up without a fight. Rebecca was in the hands of an idiot, but he didn’t have any real reason to kill her and probably didn’t want to, if he could avoid it. But Artie had to face the reality that his brother and poor Jessica may already be dead. If those men had wanted her, she would have been in the dinghy with them. Since she wasn’t, she may have met the same fate as Larry.
 

“It’s still nearly three hours until daylight,” Grant said.

“I know. We can’t really sail into the harbor at Staniel Cay in the dark. There’ll be too many boats, if it’s anything like Larry said it would be. No one is going to want to talk to us at this hour and they may see us as a threat if we go sailing in there at night.”

“We can’t just sit around doing nothing for three hours,” Tara said.
 

“No. We can sail closer to the harbor. Maybe look around some of the outlying areas, but it’s going to be hard to see anything in the dark anyway. It’s not worth the risk to run aground again and next time it may not be soft sand we hit. You know as well as I do there are reefs everywhere around here. Believe me, I want answers just like you do. I want to find out as soon as possible if anyone around here saw Larry and Jessica and might know where they ran into those two guys.”
 

“I hope they just went ashore and the boat got stolen then,” Casey said. “If so, maybe they are waiting on us to come pick them up. Like you said, maybe they found that house Russell was talking about and went to check it out.”
 

“I hope you’re right, Casey. And I hope we find the
Sarah J.
and Rebecca there as well.”

It was just a short sail to Staniel Cay and they dropped the anchor again to wait on the daylight before entering. The wind was light when morning came and with full sails up they were barely ghosting along as they cruised into the crowded anchorage. Many of the occupants of the boats there were awake and on deck, watching them and unsure what to make of the strange catamaran arriving so early in the morning.
 

“We’re looking for a Tartan 37 named the
Sarah J.,”
Artie shouted, as they slowly sailed past the first two boats that were rafted together near the entrance to the harbor. “And also a man and a woman who sailed this way yesterday afternoon in a wooden sailing dinghy. They were from our crew.”

“Haven’t seen the
Sarah J.,”
a heavily bearded man yelled back, “but we saw the two in the dinghy. They said they were looking for the
Sarah J.
too.”

“Did you see which way they went?” Casey asked.

“Saw ‘em sail right through the middle of the harbor, heading east, but I don’t know after that. They didn’t come back this way or I would have noticed. They could have taken the cut to the outside, but I wouldn’t have in a little boat like that.”
 

Several more passing conversations as they worked through the anchorage verified what the first man said. Larry and Jessica had definitely sailed through here, but no one had seen them come back this way. And no one had seen a Tartan sailboat named the
Sarah J.
Hearing this, Tara was devastated. She had thought they were getting close to finding Rebecca, but now they had no more knowledge of her whereabouts than when they’d left Green Cay. Actually, they had less because at least then they thought they knew where to look. Now, it was anyone’s guess as to which way Russell had really gone.
 

“What do we do now?” Casey wondered.

“I say we sail on through that cut that fellow told us about,” Grant said. “If they went that way, maybe that’s where they lost the dinghy. We can at least keep a sharp eye on the shoreline for any sign of them.”

“I agree,” Artie said. “No point in going back the way we came. We already know we won’t find them there. We’ll sail around Staniel hopefully along the path we saw those guys coming from.”

Artie was as devastated as Tara, but he was trying to keep an air of confidence and hope despite the sinking feeling of doom that fell over him. If the
Sarah J.
had not been spotted here, then Larry and Jessica’s loss of the dinghy was unrelated to Russell. That meant almost anything could have happened. The men they’d seen in the dinghy could have simply shot them as they sailed near the shore somewhere. If they were then dumped in the sea or had fallen overboard, Artie knew he might never learn what happened. And even if their bodies were ashore somewhere, they might or might not be visible from the water and it would be impossible to search the entire island and all the other little cays near it. All he knew to do was to sail on around Staniel Cay. The dinghy had come from that direction, from the northeast, so the encounter must have taken place not too far from where they were originally anchored at Bitter Guana Cay. Larry would try to get back there if he and Jessica were alive, and if they were, they had to know that he and the rest of the crew would be looking for them by now.
 

Casey and Grant were both perched on the starboard cabin top, the one nearest the island as Artie steered the catamaran as close to shore as he dared. Tara was slumped in the cockpit, fighting back her tears as she had been since they found out for sure they were not going to find her daughter here.

“We’re going to find Rebecca, Tara, if we have to sail to every island, cay and rock in the Bahamas. I promise you we will never give up. But it will be so much easier with Larry’s help. I’ve got to do what I can to find him and Jessica. But we will find Rebecca, no matter what.”
 

“I’m scared that it’s already too late,” Tara said. “Anything could have happened. That guy may have been trying to come here and didn’t make it. We have no idea if he knew anything about sailing or not. All he did was lie. Every word out of his mouth was a lie. And now Rebecca has to pay the price for our stupidity in trusting him.”
 

“It’s not stupidity, Tara. We were just all trying to be decent human beings. And I hope we’ll always try. Too many people have lost their humanity in the aftermath of this mess. Is it even
worth
surviving if one has to live like that?”

“No, and it’s not worth surviving if I have to live knowing I failed to protect my daughter. There’s nothing left for me if I don’t find her.”

“I understand. But until you’ve exhausted every possibility of finding her, you’ve got to stay strong, or you will fail her. I’m here to help you, Tara. I know what it’s like. I have my daughter after all the worry and fear when I didn’t. I have nothing else to do but help you find yours. But I’m really worried for Jessica and my brother. I can’t imagine facing this situation we’re in without his help, and Jessica has been through enough herself. I just want us to all be together and find some refuge where we can somehow put all this behinds us and start over.”
 

“We would all be better off if Rebecca and I had stayed at Cat Island. The boats would have never gotten separated and all of you would still be together. Rebecca and I would have probably been fine there after those killers were dead. You said yourself when Larry first suggested it that it was a mistake to separate the crew on two separate boats. You didn’t want to do it, and neither did Jessica. You were right all along.”

“That was just my first reaction because I was so surprised when Larry suggested it. I don’t think it was a mistake at all, because I don’t believe you and Rebecca would have been safe there. I know you can’t imagine anything worse than what has happened, but I think she is okay and we are going to find her and get her back unharmed. That’s better than what could have happened if you had stayed at that place. And whatever has happened to Larry and Jessica is not your fault. Larry would not have had it any other way. There’s no way he was going to leave you two at the mercy of whoever might have come to that island next. And yes, he found you attractive and that might have been a factor in his motivation, but my brother is a good guy, and he would have done it whether he thought he had a chance of something more with you or not. And now I know he was right to do so.”
 

“I hope he’s okay. I really do. I do hope we can find him and Jessica, but do you really think we will?”

Artie didn’t answer. He didn’t want to say because he was afraid to contemplate the truth. And though he’d tried to assure Tara that they would find Rebecca as well, the truth was that he wondered how they ever would. Every hour and every day that went by expanded the possible distance between them and the
Sarah J.,
as well as the range of destinations the lunatic could be sailing with her to. The truth was that the more time they spent here searching for Larry and Jessica, the lesser the odds of finding Rebecca before it was too late—if they ever did.