I could see Dean’s thoughts churning like the water below. “Yes,” he said. We definitely didn’t want Sammy on anchor. Too jumpy.
So after stepping into a clearing and sending up a flare, I wrapped myself around a Douglas fir. Frank grabbed my waist, then Lawford, then Dean, then finally Sammy, who was able to unhook little Martin from the salal and hand him up to Dean, then Lawford, then Frank, then me. As soon as we were all up top, Frank laid him flat on the ground and checked him over for broken bones and hypothermia, both of which he had.
But he was alive.
Alive enough to spread the word in the papers the next day that he’d been saved by a race of giants and one very wet princess.
Princess?
Princess?
Should we have talked poop? Should we have talked about smelly dogs? I wasn’t exactly sitting at home spinning straw into gold while my brothers got out and rescued him. How long was it going to take me to live that “princess” comment down?
If I could’ve prayed without Mom’s noticing, I would’ve prayed for a different superpower. It was bad enough being the Girl. Now I was the princess, too. I didn’t see how it could get any worse.
No, that’s not right. Martin Goodman could’ve been dead. That’s how it could’ve been worse.
? ? ?
After that first rescue, my brothers and I got more calls, and we got better at finding what was lost.
Sometimes it was okay. I found hikers or paddle-boarders who were cold and wet and didn’t know where they were, or some adrenaline junkie who’d broken a bone, required a splint, and couldn’t get cell reception to ask for it. Stupid I could handle. Injured I could handle. Scared I could handle.
It was carrying the weight of things broken beyond repair that I hated. Adult or child, it didn’t matter. They were always so heavy. And even though my brothers were quick to help, I somehow felt I carried that weight alone.
No matter what configuration my brothers and I took, I was the one with the scent hound—now the best in the state, according to some—so I was the one who took the lead. I was the one who handed these broken things to inconsolable families who, if they noticed me at all, would forever associate me with the senseless death of someone they loved.
If I was a princess, I was a princess of muddy, overex-posed death.
All this went through my mind as Henry and I followed Patience on the path through the lagoon to Yuri’s guard shack.
Beyond the guard shack was what I thought of as the “Shepherd compound.” It wasn’t just a McMansion—it was the main house, a guest house they called “The Breakers,” a garage where they kept their car and rowboat, and a sports court.
It was a lot of space for Grant to find a place to hide, but I didn’t think he was anywhere inside. Especially not after what had happened between us earlier. And I did not want to carry Grant home.
Especially not to Henry, who was a good guy, one with a cleft in his chin and sprightly eyes and curly hair I always wanted to run my fingers through—even though he may have been acting like a butthead earlier. But hey, if my face was bruised and swollen like that, I might act like a butthead, too.
At least now he seemed to understand the seriousness of the situation.
Me? I understood it hours ago, when Grant had pleaded with me to ferry him across the great waters.
As we approached the Shepherd property, I heard something on the wind. Stay . . . Good girl . . . and the gnashing of teeth. Even though so far he’d visited me only in my nightmares and I was now wide awake, it sounded like the troll was abroad, creeping his way up from the depths.
I really hoped Grant hadn’t tried to cross the sound in the rowboat on his own. Not only because some cruise ship might smash him to smithereens in the shipping lanes but also because something might chew him up before he even got that far.
While I was listening to voices on the wind, Henry noticed that something on the Shepherd property was wrong.
“The gate wasn’t up when we left a few minutes ago,” he said.
It was getting dark out. Henry waved the flashlight at the gate, and sure enough, he was right.
The Shepherds had a red-and-white gate arm that separated their manicured land from the lagoon behind them. The gate arm was useless since, if you wanted to trespass, all you needed to do was climb over or under or go around. The family relied mostly on CCTV for security and, when they weren’t here, some rent-a-cop to patrol the main house and outbuildings, including the garage and the Breakers, and make sure no one was squatting in one of them.
We checked on things, too, but we had other things to do, like homework and basketball practice. People as wealthy as the Shepherds needed more protection than the five of us could provide.
And we didn’t really understand the gate. It may have been useless, but it was almost always down.
Not now.
Patience was sitting in front of the shack, which meant Yuri hadn’t given her three tasks yet.