by Lena North
By then it had all started to feel a little bit surreal, and I wondered what the heck Hawker thought I knew about covert operations.
“I don’t know how to figure out if Jamie is the man tricking Allie outside Norton,” I said. “Maybe we can check if any of the dates Jamie was on the Islands are the same as when Allie met the man?”
“That would work,” Mac mumbled.
“Cousin,” Olly suddenly said.
He’d been silent through our discussion but as always, when he said something you stopped to think.
“Say again?” Wilder asked.
“Jamieson’s cousin was tight with his brother. Not a stretch to think that he could be involved.”
Huh. That actually made sense, although it didn’t make my new job as a sleuth any easier.
“I don’t even know the name of that guy,” I protested.
“It’s one of the guys in the list. We don’t have much on the group of kids that were in the research program, though. Jinx didn’t meet any of them, but Jamie has told her some details…”
She trailed off, and we all knew why. If Jamie indeed was the one behind everything that had happened, then we couldn’t trust anything he shared with Jiminella.
“There are some records from the program. Jinx is trying to get them released, without luck so far. They’re blocked for privacy reasons, and she’s arguing that she should be allowed anyway, but it isn’t flying with the University,” Mac stated calmly.
“Okay, so we wait until we have them, and in the meantime, Snow,” Wilder said decisively and pointed at me. “Anything you can find out about the cousin is good, but focus on the drugs.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
Then Olly suddenly announced that he’d take me home and since I was exhausted after the long day I didn’t protest.
I had a hard time falling asleep that night, so I moved to the couch and looked out at the dark sky. It had felt good to be at Double H, included in the camaraderie of the small part of the group I’d met, and I’d enjoyed bantering with Wilder. She was entertaining, but more than that, she had a self-confidence that was comforting to be around. It spread to everyone around her, making us all feel like we could achieve anything, and I’d felt at ease with myself. The feeling still lingered, but something was nagging at the back of my mind, something that I couldn’t put words on and it worried me.
I was also starting to doubt my ability to find anything out at all. The man behind all the strange things that had happened wanted to kill Jiminella, though, and if anything happened to his fiancée, then Dante would be crushed. I couldn’t allow that, so I’d have to try.
When I finally slept, I dreamt about my father. It had been a long time since I did, and seeing his laughing, happy face again hurt, so I woke up crying.
Then I got out of bed and waited for Olly to come and give me a ride to the airport.
Chapter Five
Are you drunk?
I leaned forward and looked down at the small cluster of islands. The water was a blueish green so pure it almost hurt my eyes, and I smiled. I’d seen that color before, and it comforted me to find it welcoming me to my temporary home.
Olly had driven me to the small airport south of Prosper which was the only one who had planes going to the Islands, and a bald, dark-skinned man had been waiting for me next to a tiny aircraft. Apparently, I was the only passenger on the plane, which meant that three of the four passenger seats were empty. I’d never been on a plane before, and when I told the pilot, he chuckled.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
Nervous? About flying? Laughter bubbled up my throat, although the man wouldn’t know about the connection I had with my bird, or how I enjoyed the feeling of floating through the air when I base jumped or dove from high cliffs, so I just replied, “Not at all.”
When I asked if I could sit up front next to him, he grinned and said, “If you promise not to touch anything, I guess I can make an exception.”
I had certainly not planned to touch anything at all, and I told him so as he helped me into my seat. He chuckled, but he was glancing around, looking a little guilty, as if someone would storm out of the low hangar and forcefully strap me into one of the passenger seats.
We spent the flight talking about the Islands. The man was Benito, and he was born in Croxier, which he shared that most Islanders were. The other islands had no permanent residents, but some locals apparently had hunting shacks that they sometimes slept in, or else they stayed on their boats.
“Okay then, almost there. We’re on our way down now,” he said, and I could feel the plane descending slowly.
“Okay,” I echoed and tilted my head to look at the town of Croxier.
It looked small, but it was hard to judge its size from the air.
When a couple of loud clunks suddenly came from the side of the plane, I shifted around slowly. I had no clue what to look for, and couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but it had seemed completely out of place, and very different from how the engine had sounded before. The plane veered off a little to the side, so I turned to look at Benito. His face had lost its smiling, jovial appearance and he had straightened.
“Problems?” I asked.
If there were any issues with the plane, I couldn’t do a thing about it, so I tried to keep my cool, and to my satisfaction, my voice was steady.
“Yup,” he said. “I expect our landing to be a bit wobblier than I would have wanted for your first flight, girl.”
I wanted to understand what was going on but figured it was best to not ask him questions at that very moment.
“Okay,” I said instead, with a calmness that was partially faked.
The plane was swaying a little from side to side as we approached the ground, and I focused on breathing slowly. Every now and then the right wing would tip down, and I could see how Benito struggled to compensate for it. I assumed something was wrong with the steering and hoped that he’d manage to get us down before whatever was broken stopped working entirely.
“Let me know if I can do something to help,” I offered quietly.
“We’ll be down soon,” he said, still completely calm, although he sounded strained and a little hoarse.
It felt like hours until we were approaching the landing strip, and by then the plane was floating around in the air, gliding from side to side in a way that made me wonder if we’d crash one of the wings into the tarmac.
“Hold on, here we go,” Benito ordered.
“Okay,” I said, although what I was supposed to hold on to was beyond me because I didn’t dare to touch anything.
We hit ground wheels first, swayed a little and then he pulled the brakes so hard I moved forward from the force. When the plane had come to a full stop, we turned to look at each other.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said.
He started laughing, loudly and joyfully.
“You sure are cool under pressure, Snow,” he said.
“Yup,” I echoed his earlier comment, grinning back at him.
When he’d turned the plane, and moved us back over the landing strip to the low house that I assumed was the terminal, I could see a tall man standing outside the building, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Nick.
Benito got out first and was on his way around the plane when Nick rounded on him, and I could hear a roar through the door that I had no clue how to open.
“Are you drunk!?”
Benito said something, and Nick was yelling again when I’d finally found the handle to open the door. I looked down, and it wasn’t too far to the ground, so I twisted around and jumped. Then I walked over to the two men who were facing off in front of the plane.
“Hey,” I said calmly, hoping to defuse the situation.
It did not work. Nick turned to look at me, clenched his jaws and turned to Benito again. When he opened his mouth, probably to yell some more, I quickly steppe
d in front of him, put my hands on his chest and repeated my greeting, softly.
“Hey…”
He looked down at me, and I could see that the anger he was taking out on my pilot was coming from worry. I would have been scary to stand there on the ground, watching our shaky descend, unable to do anything about it, but he was taking his frustration out on the wrong person.
“Hey,” I repeated. “Not drunk. Something was wrong with the plane.”
“I keep telling you that, Dee. I’d never drink when I’m flying, you know that.”
Dee? I assumed he meant Nick but didn’t understand the nickname. I also didn’t have time to dig into it, because Nicks arms suddenly came around me and he hugged me tightly to his warm, broad chest.
“I know,” he muttered over my head, presumably to Benito. “I’m sorry, man. Freaked out.”
“It’s okay, boy,” Benito said, and I giggled.
Hearing Nick being called boy like that was hilarious, and I stepped out of his arms to turn toward my pilot.
“Thanks for making my first flight ever into something truly memorable.”
“Next time will be better,” he said, not looking too happy.
“When you get to know her, you’ll get that better than what you just did means doing loops and hammerheads,” Nick muttered in a voice full of fake annoyance.
“You can do that?” I asked with equally fake enthusiasm.
“Don’t answer her,” Nick ordered immediately and started moving me toward the plane.
Benito was still chuckling when he pulled my two huge bags from the storage door.
“Jesus,” Nick muttered, “You’re moving here permanently?”
“A girl needs to have dresses and high heels,” I answered haughtily.
He had only seen me in sports attire, swim wear or jeans, but I was from Marshes and the women around me when I grew up knew how to dress to the nines. I wasn’t going to shame them by showing up inappropriately dressed.
“Yeah, but does she need hundreds of them?” he asked, raising his brows and making a show of grunting and groaning as he shifted my bags around.
Benito promptly burst out in loud laughter. “It was nice meeting you, Snow,” he said. “Unexpected, but nice.”
That was a strange way of describing our flight, I thought, but he looked so happy I just smiled back at him as I shook his hand. Nick gave him a one-armed man-hug complete with chest bump and back thump.
“You’ll get Joao?” Nick muttered so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
“Yup,” Benito replied.
Before I could ask who, or what, Joao was, I was shuffled toward the house, then around it to a pickup truck on the other side.
“Dee?” I asked as we walked, thinking that this was a surprisingly girly nick-name for someone like Nick.
“First letter in my name, everyone here calls me that,” he said.
I realized that I had no clue was his actual name was. I’d always assumed it was Nicholas and was about to ask him when I noticed the side of the pickup.
“d’Izia – fish, plumbing, and nails!”
The text was unexpected, to say the least, and I slowed down to reread it.
“What the –” I started, but Nick cut me off immediately.
“My cousin’s truck. He’s a fisherman. His wife is a plumber, and she does nails for the tourists too.”
I turned slowly to look at him. I got where the D came from, and how calling him Dee would make sense if his last name were d’Izia, but the startling facts he’d shared made me blink again. His cousin was married to a woman who was a plumber… And did nails?
“Not joking,” he said with a crooked grin.
“Fantastic,” I grinned back. “Haven’t had my nails done in ages.”
He snorted something unintelligible, put my bags in the back, and opened the passenger door for me. I stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re opening the door for me?” I asked back.
“Well, yeah,” he said, looking surprised.
“That’s a first,” I snorted as I climbed up in the truck, and it was.
We’d never had the kind of relationship where he treated me like a date.
“Grandmama would likely have me shot if word spread I didn’t treat you right,” he muttered as he got into the driver’s seat.
He looked a little embarrassed confessing this, and I scrunched my nose up at him, although he had his eyes on the gravel road in front of us, so he didn’t see it.
“How cute,” I said sweetly. “Let’s make sure you treat me right every second of my stay here then.”
I’d used my fingers to do air quotes when I mentioned him “treating me right,” whatever that meant.
“Shut up,” he said calmly, and I started laughing.
“Why does everyone call you Dee?” I asked.
He didn’t reply at first. I watched him wave at someone as we moved through the town.
“It seemed appropriate,” he murmured after a while.
Well, that was a non-answer, I thought and was about to ask him more when I noticed that he looked tense. If he didn’t want me to know then he didn’t have to tell me, I decided. It wasn’t as if I had told him everything about me.
“Should I call you that too?” I asked.
“Hell no,” he replied immediately.
Okay. Well, that was clear, at least.
Before I could ask more questions, which I hadn’t planned, he started pointing out things we passed. There was the restaurant someone in his family owned, and the small museum with artifacts divers had found. His old school looked quaint and small, and then we passed the harbor.
There were a number of boats who were clearly commercial fishing vessels, but it was the marina that caught my attention. Sailing boats of all sizes and colors were lined up, and I wondered if I could rent one of them. Then I drew in air audibly.
Pulled up on the beach were three small catamarans. They were just big enough for one, or maybe two persons, and I’d wanted to try a boat like that ever since I read about them several years ago.
“You wanna go on one of the cat’s?” Nick asked with a small smile.
“Do fish shit in the ocean?” I replied.
“Right,” he chuckled. “We’ll borrow one of them.”
“Can we do that?” I squealed, sounding way sillier than I’d planned.
“Sure,” he said. “My cousin owns one of them. Buddy from school another one.”
“Your cousin the fisherman?”
“Nope. Another cousin,” he replied.
“How many cousins do you have,” I asked curiously.
“Feels like a thousand,” he said with a sigh. I kept looking at him, and he sighed again. “Eighteen.”
Wow. That was a lot of cousins.
“I only have two,” I said.
“Lucky you,” he said and turned to park in front of a small house on the outskirts of the bustling town, just by the beach.
It looked lovely, but it was tiny. I’d agreed with Nick's grandmother to rent a room from her, and I wondered how small that room would be. The word “shoe-box” came to my mind, and when we entered, I realized that this hadn’t been entirely incorrect. There was a living room that opened up into a galley style kitchen. On the sides, there were a few doors, and a big wooden porch stretched along the house, facing the beach. It was about the same size as the house I’d shared with Dante back in Marshes, but he was my cousin. Sharing that kind of tight space with someone I didn’t know held no appeal to me at all.
“This is your room,” Nick said and put my bags in a surprisingly big room with a huge bed. “The other is storage, so it’s locked. Bathroom over by the kitchen.”
I looked around in surprise, realizing that I apparently was to have the whole house to myself.
“But I agreed with your grandmother to rent just a room, not a house?” I asked.
“Yeah, no,” was his weird response.
“No?” I asked for clarification.
“She was going to put you in one of the rooms at the back of the restaurant. You’d have every idiot on the island baying at the moon outside your window before the first week was over.”
What?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
“Don’t act coy, Snow. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Coy?” I asked.
I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I also knew that I wasn’t beautiful. My blue eyes and black hair were an unusual combination, and I got some attention due to that, but I was kind of flat-chested, and my body was long limbed and muscular. I would have loved to be soft and curvy like Jiminella, and so many of the other women in Marshes, but that wasn’t likely to ever happen.
“Snow,” he said, sounding almost angry.
I just stared at him. What was he so upset about?
“You’re pretty, and you know it, so don’t act like an idiot,” he growled.
My mouth fell open, and his brows went up.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “How can you not know that? And you coming here with those haunted eyes the color of the ocean just before a storm, and hair like the midnight sky… Trust me, they’ll be sniffing around you sooner rather than later.”
“Uh,” I wheezed, not sure what to say.
“Talked to Grandmama, she agreed, and you’re staying here,” he said, turning to open the big doors leading out to the porch.
He seemed embarrassed about his outburst and walked outside without looking back. A tingly warmth spread in my chest as I watched him, and I felt the tips of my mouth turn upward in a smile. He thought my eyes were the color of the ocean. Nice.
“Who’s house is this?” I asked as I sat down next to Nick on the edge of the porch.
The sound of waves was soothing, and I inhaled the sweet, familiar, scent of salt water, seaweed, and fresh air.
“Belongs to the family,” he said.
“Who in the family?” I insisted, wanting to know which of his relatives he’d kicked out of their home. I didn’t want one of the eighteen cousins to give me the evil eye without knowing why. When he didn’t answer, I added warningly, “I could just ask your grandmother.”
