Survival Instinct (4 page)

“Nobody knows I’m here,” she admitted in a tiny
whisper. “No one will miss me for several days, and even when they do, they won’t know where to look.” She stared at his face as she spoke, hoping for some sign of whether he felt relieved or worried by her admission.

Scott’s brow scrunched ever so slightly under the brim of his ball cap. Whether that was a good sign or bad, Abby wasn’t sure. She looked at the orange-brown wood of the boat, and then to the gray-blue sea. “What do you think? Should we risk it, or wait for help to come to us? We could always wait a few days and then try the canoe.”

“If we wait for help, we’ll only become weaker. We don’t have any food, we don’t have any source of heat, one of us could be injured at any time, and as you said yourself, storms blow up here with little warning. If we wait too long, we might not be
able
to try the canoe. Our best shot with this thing is to try it right now, before we get any more tired and hungry, before the weather changes and before it gets too close to sundown. After all, once we make it to Rocky Island, we still have to find the Ranger Station on the other side of the island. We don’t want to be wandering around in the woods in the dark.”

His arguments made sense, but Abby still felt so uncertain. She closed her eyes and began to pray silently again. But before she’d hardly started, Scott spoke.

“Do you want to pray about it?” He reached for her hand.

She nodded. It almost felt natural holding Scott’s hand, hearing him praying to God for wisdom and protection. Scott concluded the prayer, and Abby jumped up and brushed dust from the floor off of the back of her pants. “Thank you for praying. I think you’re right. We should try the canoe.”

“You really think so?”

“I do.”

“Okay. Let me find something to bail with.” Scott scavenged around until he found an old plastic bucket that had clearly been a child’s sand toy, but was now faded and cracked. “This probably washed up on shore here, or someone left it behind, but it should work for what we need.”

“Perfect,” Abby agreed. “Now, let’s get his canoe down to the dock and see if she holds water.”

They hoisted up the canoe and found it to be more cumbersome than heavy. After walking a couple of minutes and making little progress with the canoe impeding each step, they lowered it to the ground and Scott suggested, “Why don’t I just carry it over my head?”

“Can I help you?”

“I think it would be easier if I just did it myself.”

Abby stood back as he hoisted the boat up over his shoulders and above his head.

“Have you got it? Are you sure you don’t want me to help?”

“I’m fine.” Scott took a few awkward steps toward the dock, then quickly found his rhythm and increased his pace. “It’s much easier this way,” he explained, his voice only slightly strained from effort, “and I’m afraid you’re enough shorter than I am that it would make it more difficult if we both carried it than if I just do it by myself. Besides, you’ll need to save your arm strength for paddling.”

Abby understood his reasoning, but she couldn’t help thinking he was carrying a heavier burden than he needed to. Still, she had to admit he was moving much faster with the canoe on his own than when she’d been trying to help him carry it.

Marilyn and Mitch pulled in their poles as Scott and Abby approached.

“You found a boat?” Marilyn asked with excitement.

Mitch looked wary. “Will that thing even float? It looks like it’s a hundred years old.”

“Look at it this way, Mitch,” Scott huffed once he’d lowered the canoe onto the soft sand. “If the canoe doesn’t get us to the next island, then I can try your idea of swimming for it.”

At the incredulous expression on Mitch’s face, Abby couldn’t resist chiming in. “Really, the canoe only has to get us halfway there,” she explained in a mock-serious voice. “Once we get within a mile of the island, we can swim for it.”

“Oh, I think the water is awfully cold for that.” Marilyn shuddered.

Abby knew she was right, but she didn’t amend her statement. If anything happened to them in the water, Marilyn would be less concerned if she thought Abby and Scott had been prepared to swim for it.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere in that thing,” Mitch insisted.

“I don’t expect you to,” Scott explained. “Abby and I are just going to take it over to Rocky Island. There’s a Park Ranger stationed there, and he can call for help to come and get you two. This canoe is really only meant to hold two people, and I’d rather not have Mom out on the lake if we have to swim for it after all.” He announced their plans with an air of finality, and then scooted the canoe into the water next to the dock.

“Abby, do you have any more of that floss to tie our bucket to the canoe?” he asked. “I don’t want to lose it once we get out on the lake.”

“I used it all on the fishing poles,” Abby called after
him. The floss had been a small sample from her dentist she hadn’t bothered to take out of her purse after her last appointment.

Marilyn handed Abby the two fishing poles. “Here. We won’t need these anymore.”

The waxed floss had already started unraveling from the knots she’d used to tie the earring lures in place. Abby quickly slid the slick string back and pulled the earrings free. “You’ll want these back,” she said, handing them over.

“No, really.” Marilyn crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her shoulders as though to comfort herself. “I’d rather not.”

Unsure whether the woman’s impulse had to do with regret at leaving the other gems aboard the
Helene,
or if Marilyn simply didn’t want part of her jewelry without the rest, Abby decided not to push her, given her emotionally fragile state. She shoved the earrings deep into her back pocket for safekeeping, and realized at the same time she was acquiring quite a bit of jewelry in her pockets. After all, she still had the ring in the pocket at her hip, its tiny prick a sharp reminder of all that still lay before her.

Scott stepped over and gave his mother a hug goodbye before tying the bucket to a cross brace near the rear of the canoe. “Okay, let’s see if she’ll hold us.”

Abby relented to being lowered in with Scott’s help. He’d pulled the canoe to the end of the dock where the water was deepest, and she felt the boat dip precariously with her weight. But as she crouched at her place toward the front of the canoe, the mad rocking eased quickly. “Your turn,” she called back to Scott.

There were no seats, so she sat on her knees and grabbed the sides while Scott lowered himself gingerly into place
at the rear of the boat. Then he tossed a paddle to her. “Let’s see what she can do.”

They paddled free of the dock, gliding along easily as they moved into open water. Abby breathed deeply of the sea-scented air and tried to tell herself to enjoy their excursion. After all, when would she have an opportunity like this again? She was canoeing with Scott Frasier, something she’d have only dreamed about doing years before. But when she let out a shaky breath and dipped her paddle in the water again, she found she couldn’t fight back her fear over the great risk they were taking.

“What do you think?” she asked, looking back and seeing no water in the bottom of the boat. “Does she look seaworthy?”

“I’d say so. And it occurred to me that we should probably make tracks before she changes her mind, don’t you think? No point paddling around in the shallows and waiting for her to spring a leak.”

Abby took a deep breath, her silent prayer little more than a mantra.
I will not fear, for Thou art with me.
She repeated the lines from the twenty-third Psalm over and over in her head and tried her best to believe them. “Okay,” she agreed, digging deep with her paddle and feeling the canoe glide forward smoothly as a result. “Let’s aim for the south end of Rocky. These waves are going to try to push us out to sea, and I’d like to do whatever I can to avoid that.”

“Agreed. Pull hard on the left,” Scott instructed, then shouted a goodbye to his mother, who waved before crossing her arms and hugging herself again.

For the next several minutes they paddled in relative silence, breaking the stillness only with the occasional, “keep her steady,” or “harder on the left, I think we’re
drifting.” But as they moved farther out from the protection of Devil’s Island, the wind picked up and the waves began to get higher, lapping ever closer to the rim of the boat. At the same time, the lake seemed intent on moving them straight north, out into the open sea, and Abby found herself exerting more effort in keeping them steered in the right direction than she did in moving them forward at all.

“How are we doing?” she called back, glancing over her shoulder just long enough to see the autumn-clad form of Devil’s Island looming behind them much closer than she’d have liked.

“We’re making headway. Slow but steady. How are your arms holding up?”

“I’m doing fine. I’ll probably be sore tomorrow, though. How are your arms? You already carried this canoe down the hill—you’ve got to be getting tired.”

“I’m fine. I haven’t gone as soft as Mitch would like you to believe.”

Abby heard the strain behind his lighthearted words, and she dug a little deeper with her paddle, wincing as the seasoned wood moved against the skin of her palms where blisters had already begun to form. She tried to adjust her grip to ease the pain, but with the next dig, she still felt it. Rather than focus on her pain, she resolved to keep her eyes on their elusively distant goal.

“Harder on the left if you can,” Scott called from behind her. His voice rose in pitch, his tension more obvious now. The waves splashed higher, jolting their boat and limiting their progress, sending the fragile craft rocking unsteadily. Abby wished she could find the rhythm of the waves and move with the water, but she feared the only way to do that would be to go with the direction of the waves and head
out to sea. And there was no way she was going to intentionally head out to sea.

“Steady now. If you can, I want you to paddle with smaller, faster motions for a minute here while I try to bail out some of this water.”

Water? Abby looked behind her and saw five or six inches of water pooled just beyond the toes of her boots, hampering their progress and holding them lower, inviting more water to slosh in. She could feel the rush of adrenaline hit her veins as she did her best to follow Scott’s instructions.

Without the second paddler, the boat nearly stilled on the lake. Abby wondered if they were even moving forward at all. “How far do you think we’ve gone?” she called behind her. “Are we halfway yet?”

She could hear Scott dumping water into the lake—either that, or it was the splash of water coming in over the side of the canoe. Since they were headed nearly straight south, the westward-moving waves slapped them square on the side, spilling into the boat as often as not. Abby bent her head around and looked behind her.

Scott’s face grimaced with pain as he plucked up his paddle and dug deep, propelling the little boat forward—by feet now instead of inches. “We’re moving forward,” he grunted, “we’re not turning back now.”

But Devil’s Island still loomed closer than Rocky. Abby set her jaw and paddled harder. Scott was right. They weren’t going to turn back. There was nothing for them back there, and they were just as likely to run into trouble on their way back as forward. They might not be any closer to Rocky than Devil’s, but somewhere along the line, they’d passed the point of no return.

The wind and waves mounted higher against them.
When Abby looked to the sky, she realized the gray clouds had grown dark and threatening, and the brisk breeze they’d been experiencing all day had blown up a gale that threatened to propel them into the open sea. As the boat lurched in the raucous waves, Abby’s stomach somersaulted up her throat.

Water splashed into the boat in waves instead of rivulets. The puddle in their vessel grew and the tiny craft settled deeper into the lake, its sides lower, an easier target for the surf that seemed intent on swamping them. Abby paddled in near-frantic terror, but still she felt the boat stall whenever Scott paused to bail out the water.

Slowly they crept forward. As they drew closer to Rocky Island, Abby could see the waves sending up spray as they smacked against the huge boulders that gave Rocky Island its name. The thought hit her like a slap of cold lake water. Somehow, they’d have to navigate through the dangerous rocks in order to get to the island.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
Abby recited the words in her head, finding a rhythm with them, digging deep with her paddle and forcing herself to ignore the blisters growing on her palms. She wished she’d thought to tie her paddle to the boat, but it was too late now, and she wasn’t about to shift her hands too much for fear of losing her oar to the lake.

The wind ripped the hood from her head and tore her hair free from the braid where she’d bound it, sending long strands of her dark locks flinging to her face, covering her eyes. She shook them free, only to have them flung at her again.

“I’m going to bail again,” Scott called, and Abby switched her paddling pattern, feeling the muscles in her shoulders tighten into knots with the quicker, shallow movements.

It seemed like an eternity later when he shouted to her again. “Okay, dig deep now. We’re getting closer. We’re really getting closer.”

And they were. Already Abby could see massive red stones hiding under the surface of the clear water, and had felt the thin underside of the boat bump against them more than once as the waves peeled back, revealing the menacing boulders lying in wait to tip them, or to smash their tiny boat to bits.

“Paddle harder. Paddle harder,” Scott called, as Abby’s strength sagged and fat tears rolled down her cheeks from the pain in her shoulders and hands. She
had
to paddle harder. She didn’t have a choice. They were still several hundred yards from shore.

The bumps came more frequently now. At any time, they could hit a rock hard enough to crack a massive hole in their boat. Abby kept praying, kept digging, and nearly screamed when she felt the numbing water slosh against her legs.