"Well, I don't think that we are going to be hailing a cab out of here anytime soon, so the cash is probably useless. The knives could be helpful, though."
Hunter hoisted the trunk off of his shoulder and handed it over to me. I took it and carried it over to the side of the boat so I could toss it down into the water. The boat had created enough of a temporary tide pool near the sandbar that I wasn't concerned that the trunk would float away, and I knew that the water wasn’t going to seep through. I returned to the cabin and we spent the next several minutes tossing the cases and trunks that we could salvage down into the water. When we were finished, we both jumped down and started dragging the cargo up onto the sand. I was getting strangely accustomed to flinging myself off of the boat and I figured that could be just one more skill I would be able to add to the “special talents” section of my resume if I survived getting off this damn island.
The first crate that we opened was from the galley, and I spread the supplies out on the sand to evaluate them. Unfortunately, the crate that these had been stored in wasn’t watertight and many of the containers weren’t designed with an afternoon swim in mind, either. The food inside had been ruined, but we had basic cooking tools. Suddenly I was reminded of the fact that I hadn't eaten anything since well before I pulled up beside the cruise ship the night before and my stomach rumbled angrily.
"We should try to find some food," I said as Hunter came up beside me and pulled the first trunk up to open it. "It might take a while to prepare anything worth eating." I pulled my kit out of the crate and spread it out, pulling out my flint and feeling a shimmer of hope as I realized it was still intact. "I can get the fire started if you and Eleanor can go see what you can find in the jungle. I saw some fruit trees back there."
I could see Hunter bristle slightly, but then he nodded and stalked off toward where Eleanor stood in the sand, staring out over the water. She turned to him as Hunter approached and I saw them start off toward the trees together. I contemplated them as I watched them, wondering what had led up to them running along the deck of the boat together and tossing themselves down into the water. They didn’t seem like the type of people who would have any real reason to know each other, yet there was a somewhat tenuous connection between them that told me that they hadn’t just met when they were on the ship.
Could he be one of her little boy toys?
That didn’t strike me as being likely. Hunter didn’t seem exactly like boy toy material. Even with the anger and aggression that he had shown, there was still an aura of awkward, nerdy shyness around him that made him seem like the opposite of what I would imagine an exorbitantly wealthy divorcee would look for in a younger man she wanted to string along purely for entertainment purposes. And now that I thought about it, I hadn’t ever heard mention of her having any such relationships. They might be common among women of her age and means, and Eleanor was definitely beautiful enough to have plenty of willing participants, but it seemed that she hadn’t gone that direction since her divorce.
Could they actually have a relationship going?
That seemed pretty unlikely as well. While Eleanor and Hunter seemed to know each other on some level, there wasn’t enough between them to suggest that they had that level of connection. I thought that I had seen a spark of attraction between them, and there was definitely concern in Eleanor’s eyes when she thought that the younger man had been killed in the storm, but I wouldn’t jump so far as to say that she looked like she was in love with him. Besides, I was fairly certain that if there was such a relationship happening, I would have been told about it when I got my instructions for this job. Having a man around always made things like this more difficult, and I would think that I would have been told so that I could prepare my approach differently.
They had disappeared into the jungle and I turned back to the flint in my hand. It wasn’t going to just create a fire spontaneously. I got up and started gathering rocks from the edge of the beach. I formed a circle in the sand and filled it with dried palm fronds and wood. It took only one try for me to use the flint to spark the pit into a blazing fire.
Good to know that some of my skills are still intact.
The thought brought uncomfortable feelings into the back of my mind. It had been awhile since I had done a job. After the last one had gone the way that it did, I had taken some time off, sinking back into anonymity for a bit so that I could shake off of the heat and the guilt. Anonymity had its perks, but it also had its drawbacks, a very distinct one of which was a distinct lack of income coming in, which is what had brought me to this boat and the water just off the cruise ship. There was money to be had, but I had to finish the job first, and that was going to be decidedly more difficult from an island in the middle of nowhere with a witness who now had the fairly intimate knowledge of me that came with staring a watery death in the face.
This left me in an uncomfortable position. I needed to finish what I came here to do in order to get paid and be able to keep on surviving for the next few months, which I had become rather fond of doing, but I had also just helped these two get through the storm and was now stuck on an island with them. They had both seen my face and I had been stupid enough in the moments of fearing for my life to actually tell them my real name. I was definitely a bit rusty, but that wasn’t going to excuse me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but I was going to need to make a decision quickly, because this situation was only going to get more complicated the longer that we were here, and from the looks of the empty horizon, beached and completely destroyed boat, and untouched sand, that just might prove to be far longer than I would have liked to think about.
Chapter Seven
Hunter
I reached down toward Eleanor and helped her up the steep path. I looked down at her feet as she climbed up and took her place beside me on the more level ground. Dark, damp dirt was already streaked across her pale skin and stood in stark contrast to her pristine, bright red pedicure. Something about the color was both surprising and a bit exciting to me. Despite the way that she had acted toward me during and after the reception, I had expected something tamer. There was something about her that seemed delicate and feminine, like someone who would paint her toenails pink, not fire engine red. That was a main motivating factor in rejecting her at the wedding. It wasn’t that I wasn’t attracted to her. It was more that behind all of the forwardness and seduction, I could see that that wasn’t really her. She was looking for something that night, and I didn’t feel like I was the person who was going to be able to give it to her.