Now I was sitting on the beach among the rest of the casualties of the storm, staring out over the grey ocean as it sloshed around, seeming to still be getting over the drama of the storm. I was trying to remember why I had gotten into this line of work, trying to remind myself why I hadn’t just gone into the meat packing business like the rest of my family, but right at that moment I wasn’t able to remember. It seemed like I had been doing this for my entire existence. As long as I could remember, this is what I had done, this is what had defined me as a person and had influenced not only my position in the world around me, but also how I perceived everything and everyone I encountered. It was difficult to form any type of relationships with the people I met when in the back of my mind there was always the possibility that the next week I could get assigned to snatching one of them and serving them up to people they had wronged. I made it a point to never seek out details about what happened to those people after I had given them over and cashed my check. It wasn’t like there was anything that I could do about it. What was done would have already been done and there was nothing that could fix it. Especially considering alerting any authorities to what had happened would have just sacrificed myself.
This meant that I went about my life fairly isolated. I had gotten to the point that I eschewed using the internet because I didn’t want to stumble on news stories about one of the people I had been assigned by a client. This kept me from much of the communication and social interaction that everyone else had, only pushing me further into the lone wolf lifestyle. While this served my purposes and I was not one to long for a large passel of friends, and most definitely not a wife, there were times like this when I did wish that I had someone in my life who might notice that I had left on my boat and just not come back. At least then I could have a little glimmer of confidence that there might be someone looking for me.
As soon as that thought went through my mind, it occurred to me that there was someone who was going to notice my seeming disappearance, if it hadn’t already been noticed. My client. Though there was a little bit of wiggle room when it came to when I was supposed to deliver Eleanor, considering it had been pretty difficult to pinpoint exactly when I would be able to connect with the cruise ship and how long it would take me to get ahold of her and get her back to the mainland and the meeting point, the days were drifting by and soon my client was going to notice that I hadn’t shown up with my human cargo.
This was a client that had been hard for me to really wrap my head around. It wasn’t that I always knew why my clients wanted me to kidnap a particular person. In fact, I rarely got the whole story unless I was working for one of those particular type of wealthy man who got most of his personal joy from sitting around in his study sipping scotch older than my parents and waxing philosophical about how the person had unforgivably damaged their perfect lives. I usually had the opportunity to get a few little details about them, however, and could use those details to mask whatever personal feelings did manage to bubble up through the hard shell that I had formed over the years. When it came to Eleanor, I didn’t have that.
This was my first job since coming back after the long months that I hadn’t been able to work and I was eager to take whatever came to me. When I met with this client, though, I immediately felt like something was a little off. I couldn’t identify a reason why Eleanor would be a target to this person. Just like any wealthy woman, I knew that she had to have some jewel-encrusted skeletons dangling in her walk-in closet, and that those were probably enough to piss someone off enough to justify hiring me, but not understanding the background had a strange effect on me. It prevented me from being able to give myself an out when thinking about what might happen to her, but rather than making me sympathize with her or have any level of concern for her, it seemed to have the opposite effect. When I looked at her, I felt irrational disdain. The fact that it wasn’t immediately clear why she had a bullseye on her back meant that she was one of the slimy, reprehensible human beings who were able to hide their misdeeds behind calm, beautiful exteriors, allowing them to move through their lives and weave through the people they encountered without anyone ever knowing what they had done.
Soon enough the fact that I hadn’t shown up would become troublesome and I didn’t know what the reaction would be. I couldn’t imagine that someone willing to hire a person to capture an enemy by whatever means necessary would have a tremendous amount of patience or goodwill when disappointed.
Feeling as though I had spent enough time wallowing in my own misery, I stood and headed toward the tree line. The pressing need for shelter wasn’t any different here than it had been on the first island. The only difference was that I was the only person who would be working on this shelter and wouldn’t have to listen to anyone else try to convince me that building a big dome was going to be worth the effort that it would take. I roamed slowly along the trees, trying to choose the one that would be best to be the basis for my shelter. I had dragged the life raft up onto the beach with me and intended to use it to create a roof for the shelter, not at all interested in having another drop of rain hit me. That, though, meant that I needed to find a place that would have enough room to fit the raft without the branches being too far apart so the raft either fell down on top of me while I was in the shelter, or flew away the second that any wind hit.
I had made my way all the way to the end of the beach and found a craggy rock formation. I scrambled up it and used the vantage point to look out over the water and what of the island I could see. The trees were too thick to see much, but I could see that the rocks continued along the shore until I couldn’t see any further. This gave me some hope that I would find another waterfall or pool that I could use for fresh water and maybe some fruit trees. Abandoning my plan to build a shelter in the trees, I decided that I would make my way around the island on the rocks, using any caves or dips in the rocks that I found to protect me if the need came. Staying on the rocks would keep me at a distance from the dangers that might be amongst the trees and gave me some hope of being visible if there was a boat or helicopter sweeping past. Hoping for the best, but fully expecting that I was going to end up in the mouth of a volcano because that was just the way that this entire experience was unfolding for me, I started along the jagged rocks, constantly looking back toward the water, hoping that somewhere out there, someone was looking for me, even if that meant not knowing exactly what was going to happen when they found me.
****
Noah
“You what?”
I heard Snow shouting from the living room and I rushed from the shower toward her, wondering what had happened. She was standing in the middle of the room, one hand cupped over her mouth and the other gripping her phone to her ear.
“What is it?” I asked, crossing to her as I tossed the towel I had been using to dry my hair onto a chair.
She turned and looked at me, her bright blue eyes wide, making the bold contrast between them and her shock of silky black hair even more noticeable. She took her hand from her mouth and reached out with it, grasping my shirt.
“You call me back the second that you know anything, do you understand me?” she demanded. She waited a few seconds and rolled her eyes. “Yes, that means that the telephone ban is lifted until further notice.”
She ended the call and dropped her phone to the sofa beside her before turning to me.
“Who was that?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Robin,” she answered, her voice sounding tremulous with fear. “Those people missing from the cruise ship?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding to encourage her to keep going.
“It was Eleanor and Hunter.”
I felt my heart drop into my stomach and something felt like it exploded in my brain. I shook my head, trying to clear my mind enough to speak. I couldn’t possibly have just heard what I thought I did. That couldn’t be what she said.
“What?” I asked.
“Eleanor and Hunter,” Snow repeated. “They haven’t been seen in several days. They didn’t attend any of the activities that Eleanor had planned and she missed her night at the Captain’s table. Finally, Robin started to worry and he went to the crew. They tried to get in touch with both of them, but their phones went directly to voicemail, so they eventually accessed their cabins and realized that neither of them had been used in days.”
“It took that fucking long for them to realize that?” I shouted. “When did that happen?”
“Three days ago.”
“Three days?” I exploded, knowing that my voice was far too loud but not caring. “He’s known that my aunt had disappeared off of a cruise ship for three days and he didn’t bother to call you? The news outlets know that people are missing, but we didn’t get informed?”
“He didn’t want to disturb us.”