“What?” I finally asked.
“He said that the helicopter company served him well with a last-minute charter, but neither of us heard a helicopter. He wasn’t talking about himself. Someone else made that charter, which means that someone else is coming.”
“Of course, they are. Because you’re not really stranded on an island until two separate entities are coming after you.”
Just then we heard the sound of the two men and Virgil crashing through the trees toward the beach. Hunter grabbed my hand and we ran down the beach toward the rocks where we had spent the night before. We scrambled up them and Hunter pulled me across the plateau toward the boulder where he had hidden the supply box and the basket of fruit. I thought that we were going to crouch down behind the rocks, but he pulled me around a corner and I saw a small, low gap. Hunter put his hand to my back and pushed me toward it. I didn’t pause to question him but let him guide me through the gap into a tight, low-ceilinged cavern. He came in after me and we huddled together on the cool rock floor.
“I found this when I was up here by myself,” he said to me in a low whisper. “I didn’t explore any further than this, but I can only assume that it is part of a network of caverns that connects to the one that we stayed in during the storm.”
“You are really smart,” I said, feeling like I needed to validate him.
“Not really,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you are. I never would have been able to design the shelter that you did. It never would have occurred to me that there could be caverns here.”
“You really have to stop being so hard on yourself,” he said. “You are an incredible woman.” I looked away, but he caught my face gently in his hand and turned it back toward him. “Listen to me. You are exceptional. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“Hunter,” I started.
I couldn’t keep going like this. I needed to tell him the truth. Before it had been only lust that had brought me into his arms and compelled me to find satisfaction and deliverance in his touch. Now, though, there was so much more at stake. I knew that it wasn’t just desire or even the sexual bond that we had formed that made me want to draw closer to him in the cavern and feel him hold me close.
“Wait,” he said, then made a hushing sound to quiet me. He looked toward the patch of sunlight we could see through the entrance to the cavern. “Do you hear that?”
I listened and in the distance heard a faint sound. It grew louder and I realized that it was the sound of helicopter blades chopping through the air. Hunter and I exchanged glances and I felt fear swelling inside me.
Who was that? Who else could possibly want me?
“What do we do?” I asked.
As the sound of the blades grew louder, Hunter looked around the small space.
“You stay here,” he said. “I’m going to check for tunnels. Don’t move until I get back.”
He gave me another kiss and disappeared into the darkness behind me. I curled up around myself, pulling my knees close to my chest and wrapping my arms around them so I could bury my face. I could feel myself rocking, reverting to the coping mechanisms I had used for years to deal with everything that was happening around me during my marriage to Virgil. This was it. After everything that I had gone through with him, all of the pain and anxiety and fear. All of the questions and concerns. All of the nights that I just knew were going to be my last. Virgil was finally going to have what he wanted and I was never going to leave the island. I was going to spend the rest of eternity a missing person headline.
Hunter still hadn’t come back by the time that the helicopter was so loud that I knew it had gotten to the island. I squeezed closer in on myself, bracing myself for whatever was coming. The harder that I had tried to prepare myself, to protect myself, however, the more that I thought of all that I had gone through, all that I had suffered, and all that I had overcome. Virgil didn’t deserve my fear. He had had control over my life for long enough and he wasn’t worth even another breath of it.
I uncoiled myself and got to my feet, starting in the crouched over way that I had to move through the cavern toward the entrance. I was only a few steps away when a silhouette darkened the bright entrance.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hunter
The cavern grew narrower as it moved toward the back and I briefly thought that I wasn’t going to be able to get through even if there was a tunnel. I had moved beyond the area that was touched by the sunlight from outside and had to put my hands out to either side to feel along the walls to guide me. My arms were getting shorter and shorter, my elbows bending to accommodate the smaller section and I was about to give up when I felt the wall dip slightly and the space began to get larger. The tunnel turned and suddenly I was in another chamber. The ground beneath my feet was heading downward and I could feel the air getting cooler. Somewhere in the distance there was the sound of trickling water. I must have found the spring that fed into the small creeks that meandered through the jungle above. I walked cautiously, knowing that at any minute I could wander into a subterranean pool or fall off a ledge into a deeper section of the cavern.
As I traveled through I tried to orient myself. I tuned my mind into the image of the island that I had been gradually forming during our time there, using it like a map to try to figure out where I was in relation to the rocks and the beach so that I could then determine which direction I should go in order to find the cave that we had made our temporary home during the storm. Not for the first time since we had crashed on the island I wished that I had my phone. The flashlight feature would have been a lifesaver. Of course, that would have required charging and if I had the capability of charging an electronic device it was likely that we wouldn’t be in anywhere near the predicament that we currently found ourselves.
Fire.
The thought popped into my mind as quickly as I had dismissed the idea of my phone. If I could start a fire, I could use that as light to get me through the rest of the cavern.
Didn’t I emphasize to Eleanor that I couldn’t ever be a Cub Scout because I wasn’t able to make a fire?
I didn’t really have a choice. Well, I did. The choice was either bumble my way through the cavern blind and hope that I didn’t kill myself, or channel my inner survivalist and figure out how to start a fire. In the dark. Without sticks.
Awesome.
I knew that Eleanor needed me, which meant that I had to figure this out. I thought as quickly as I could, trying to come up with anything that would help me accomplish this. An idea came to me and I touched my pocket. Feeling the object inside gave me the first glimmer of hope that I had had since Virgil had shown up. I reached in and withdrew the small knife. Sitting down as carefully as I could, I grabbed onto the leg of my pants and pulled the fabric away from my skin. I pierced through it with the tip of the blade and took a breath before slicing through with one fast motion. The cave gods seemed to be with me at that moment because I was able to cut through the fabric without performing a self-amputation, and I repeated the process twice more until I held a square of my pants in my hand. I rolled the fabric up and tucked it in between my teeth for safekeeping.
First step done.
Feeling around me, I searched for rocks that I thought might be suitable. Since I couldn’t see them, I really couldn’t accurately determine if any of the rocks that were around me had the silica content that I knew was necessary to spark. I just had to guess and hope. I set the fabric from my pants on the ground in front of me. I wrapped my hand around a rock, felt its shape and texture, and then struck it against the blade of my knife. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing.
Discarding the rock, I tried another. No success.