by Alice Reeds
“Natasha Ivanova?” I asked. She was the only Russian girl I could remember ever having been in our class. Miles nodded, his expression turning ever so slightly sad. “What does it say, the Russian part, I mean?”
“Каждый кузнец своего счастья—every person is the blacksmith of their own destiny, or happiness, however you prefer,” he said, his pronunciation of the actual Russian sounding butchered even to me, and I didn’t speak the language. “She wrote that like three weeks before her suicide. I’d told her about how I was worried I could never live up to what people thought and expected of me, that I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life, so she took my notebook and wrote that. Unlike you, she didn’t ask.”
It’d been so long since I even last thought about Natasha. I’d never been friends with her, and we only shared one class across two years, but I remembered the day the news of her death made all the local papers—she did belong to one of the wealthiest families in our town, her mother the owner of some European luxury car dealership and her father some business mogul—and reached our school. My heart felt heavy thinking back to it. I’d seen her brother a few days before we left, and he still looked just as awful as he did months ago, not that I was surprised. How do you even recover from something like that?
On the other hand, I heard that their younger sister, Anastasia, won another medal at some competition. She probably already had more of them than I did and would possibly ever get, depending on how the entire island situation would end.
“Well, her words still apply,” I said, trying to sound positive. “We might be royally fucked, but we can still try our best to not end up dead. To remain in control of our own destiny.”
“Considering we’ve made it this far, I’d say we’re doing a mighty fine job of that.”
In the end, the notebook turned out to be just another dead end. It held no answers for us, just that single entry that we couldn’t explain, and that held no clues at all. It’d been worth a try, and if I was honest with myself, I’d known it wouldn’t really be able to help us even before I asked for permission to look through it. What had I expected, that someone wrote down the answers to all our problems on the last few pages and magically we’d know how to get home? It wouldn’t be that easy, but I knew we were strong enough to somehow get through this.
Putting the notebook aside, I leaned over to Miles and kissed him.
We stayed in that clearing for a while, tried to forget everything that happened around us for just a little while, forget that we were in danger and trapped on an island. It was just the two of us in that moment, in that clearing, and nothing else mattered. Not our past, our future, our current reality.
Over time, our kisses turned more passionate, feverish, desperate almost, like we were running out of time but still wanted to cherish every second somehow. I’d never expected this trip to lead us here, for us to realize that we did like each other and could have a chance with the other. It was as though my body melted to his touch, my hands trembling ever so slightly as I caressed the bare expanses of his skin across his arms, shoulders, and chest, warm and smooth, flawless almost, a contrast so impossible to mine. His gentleness almost stole my breath, his fingers lightly tracing all my scars, his kisses seeming to show his awe at each and every one of them, of what I’d done to get where I was, to accomplish the things I had.
It wasn’t anything like I expected this would go, not that I’d ever spent much time dwelling upon it in general, yet no setting I’d ever envisioned was quite like this. On an island in the middle of nowhere surrounded by an unexplored jungle, just the two of us and no one else. At least the one reassuring fact was that there was no one there to tell us not to, or to catch us, or walk in on the entire thing. We could do as we pleased, take our time and not worry about anything at all besides each other.
It was a beautiful moment, and if I could’ve, I might have chosen that one to live in forever, hold on to it for as long as I could.
“Fiona, I think I might be losing my mind, but I swear I can see a ship on the horizon,” Miles said after we’d emerged from the jungle sometime later. We were about a mile away from where the beach and the cliffs met, but we could see out to the ocean far and clear.
“What?” I asked, surprised, looking at him and then the horizon.
He raised his arm and pointed toward where he thought the ship was. I tried to find it but I could only see the open ocean in its entire turquoise glory and the rocks farther out in the water. But then I saw it, a white and gray speck floating atop the water, rising and sinking on the incoming waves. Immediately panic shot through me, even more as I noticed a black ship, a smaller one, departing from the white one and moving toward the island. A sinking feeling took over my body and mind.
“Miles, you’re not losing your mind. I see it, too.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The Island
I turned my head toward him. Our eyes met, mirroring each other’s expressions with a mix of panic, horror, and hope, though I was trying to squash the hope because there was no hope on this island. “Do you think this is the boat Ji mentioned? The people he was supposed to meet after getting rid of us?”
“I’m pretty sure they gave up on Ji the second he killed that radio of his or whatever.”
“Maybe, but what if they didn’t and that’s them?”
“What are we supposed to do?” he asked instead of answering my question.
“We can’t go back into our cave. They might see us climb down, and then we’ll be easy prey.”
Miles looked at me again and, just at that moment, I saw his expression change. Fear turned into determination, hate, and bravery. He reached into our backpack and pulled out Ji’s shiny black gun. I didn’t even notice that he’d taken it along.
“You said we can’t make it easy for them, that we can’t just give up, that we need to fight,” he began while looking down at the gun in his hands, mesmerized. “Now is our chance to show them they decided to take the wrong pair of teens.”
I looked into his eyes. He really wanted to fight. He didn’t want to hide any more, and neither did I.
“Let’s hunt those who want to hunt us,” I said, determined, and cracked the fingers of my right balled up fist. I was born a fighter, and I was determined to die a fighter.
We left our things and then slipped into the jungle, deep enough so they wouldn’t see us but we could still check where they were, check how much time was left until they landed on our island. The birds were singing loudly, their songs happy and cheerful. I almost felt the need to punch at least one to make them stop. This wasn’t the right time for cheerful chirping, but rather for battle music, heavy drums and music filled with anger.
As the black ship came closer, I realized it wasn’t a proper ship but more of a small boat the size of a lifeboat or something, though I still didn’t know how many were inside. It looked like they planned on landing at our beach near our burned-out plane, not more than two miles away from us if I had to guess. Led by fury and adrenaline, we dove farther into the jungle, past trees and vines, jumping over bushes and dips in the ground.
Only a couple of minutes later, we were close to the beach. We watched as a single man dressed all in black pulled his boat onto the shore. A plan formed in my mind.
I didn’t know if he was one of the bad guys, one of the people Ji mentioned, or maybe part of the rescue party we’d hoped for so long. All I knew was that we couldn’t risk it. Treating him as part of the bad guys was easier, a defense against hope, and also a way to be prepared for a fight instead of thinking he was a good guy and potentially getting killed by letting our guards down. Just from looking at him, there was no indicator of anything, nothing that could’ve told us if he was good or bad, but we’d been through that with Ji before.
“We have to split up,” I whispered toward Miles.
“Why? What are you thinking?” Miles asked without taking his eyes off of our maybe killer.
>
“You distract him, and I’ll knock him down so we can force him to tell us everything. Before reinforcements from the bigger ship can reach the beach, he might tell us why we’re here, why us, and what might have been in those implants.”
“Good plan,” he agreed and pulled out the gun again. He hesitated for a brief moment before he looked up from the gun in his hand to my eyes. “See you on the other side.”
Quickly Miles leaned in for a kiss, nothing but the faintest brush of his lips against mine before he turned around and walked off.
My heart was still beating all over the place while the feeling of his lips on mine still lingered. I shook my head to clear my mind, willing my feet to move. There was a reason why we were here, why we had a plan, needed to act. I remembered my assignment and the man on the beach still occupied with his boat.
Miles emerged from the jungle and onto the beach with the gun raised in front of him, pointing it at the stranger. He seemed oblivious until Miles was close and said something to him. The stranger’s head whipped around. A moment later he raised his hands while Miles kept the gun pointed at him from a few feet away.
Now it was my turn.
After taking a deep breath, calming and centering myself, I broke into a run like a bullet racing toward its target. The world around me blurred; only the stranger was clear and focused, sharp like the edge of a knife. I wanted to roar a mighty battle cry.
Just as I reached him, I kicked the back of his knees. His legs gave in, and I jumped on his back. Together we went down like a toppled tower.
“Surprise, asshole,” I said, my mouth close to the stranger’s ear.
I grabbed his arms and twisted them up on his back, and then, after I got up, I turned him around to look into the eyes of the man who came to kill us. But just as he landed on his back, his face toward me, eyes looking straight into mine, my heart stopped, and my stomach dropped.
“Joe?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Island
After saying his name, I was rendered completely speechless. It couldn’t be Joe, there was no way. But as I stared into his eyes, their color so brown they almost seemed black, there was no doubting it. It was his face, the laugh lines around his eyes and wrinkles around his mouth and across his forehead like maps giving away his age, his skin only a few shades lighter than his eyes. His bald head he once told me he’d inherited from his father, who’d also lost his hair at a very young age, and the same small scar I’d seen on his jaw so many times while I watched him play chess, which he claimed was a battle scar from a cat that simply didn’t like him.
It was him. Joe the homeless man, Joe who shouldn’t be here.
How the fuck did he fit into all of this? What was he doing here? No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t understand the situation. Part of me yelled, He’s a traitor! He’s part of this! But the other refused to believe it. Confusion mixed with anger inside my blood, my mind buzzing, my thoughts racing, but none of them giving me any answers.
I staggered back a few steps, wanting to put a little bit of space between Joe and me. In a blink of an eye Miles walked over to me. He put one arm around my waist and held my arm with the other like he wanted to steady me, feared I might faint or something. Who knew, maybe I would because this moment felt like overkill, like too much for my mind to process.
“He can’t be here,” I whispered more to myself than anyone else.
“You know him?” Miles asked, his voice low, his mouth close to my ear. I leaned into him a little more, though my eyes never left Joe. He slowly sat up and then just looked back at us.
“He’s a homeless guy I know from back home. I sometimes gave him my books, and we played chess.” I closed my eyes to hold back another wave of emotion.
“My name is Joseph Carver,” he said suddenly. The name, the dark, raspy voice that made him sound like a smoker even though he wasn’t one, all of it fit. “And I’m not actually homeless, I just pretended to be to keep an eye on you.”
“That’s called stalking and is illegal,” Miles said drily.
“Why are you here? And how? Who are you really if you’re not the man I thought you were?” I asked, my voice shaky, making me feel embarrassed. My father would give me an earful for sounding and behaving so weak.
“I am not your enemy, Fiona. I’m not here to harm either of you, I swear.” I wanted to believe him so badly, but how was I supposed to do that if everything I’d known about him apparently was just lies? “I used to work for the FBI.” Nonsense. “I worked as an agent for over two decades, to be exact. I met my wife there, we got married and had a daughter called Ivy. But then my wife passed away, and it was only the two of us, until Ivy disappeared.”
Joe an FBI agent? A father who lost his daughter? Right, sure, cool story, bro. But was it possibly true? Was he telling the truth this time, for the first time, or was it just another trick? As fake as the bear? I watched his eyes as he spoke and noticed that there was a subtle shakiness in his voice as his daughter came up. Maybe he was telling the truth. I feared believing him and regretting it the moment he shot Miles and me.
“After Ivy disappeared, I tried everything to find her,” Joe said. “I tried to get my boss and my coworkers to help me. I was going insane, made mistakes at work. I was a mess but how could I not have been one? It wasn’t like my dog ran away and I could just get over it. It was my daughter for fuck’s sake, but they didn’t care.”
There was hurt in his voice, the hurt of a man who’d lost everything.
“Finally, one day, my boss called me into his office, and I was sure he would tell me he’d help me, but instead he told me to pack my things because I was fired,” Joe said with a heavy sigh. “At first I didn’t know what to do, until I woke up one morning and decided to continue looking for her on my own. I hadn’t been an agent for so many years for nothing, hadn’t acquired skills and contacts for nothing. I couldn’t rely on official channels anymore, but there are always ways to bypass the system.”
“And that’s how you found Fiona?” Miles asked.
“I got a hold on different documents and communications from unknown sources that indicated that two American teenagers were supposed to be taken under false pretenses and flown out of the country,” Joe said. “At first, I didn’t know which teenagers, since no names were mentioned in any of the documents, but then I found some more. I followed paths and found a few more details, though most of it was coded and restricted, impossible to crack, though I tried everything I could. It talked about a boy and a girl, who both would be age seventeen when everything happened. I found the boy’s initials, M.E., and then I found the girl’s initials, F.W., and part of a picture. There was no way in hell I could find out what name M.E. stood for, so I went with the picture, and soon enough, there you were, Fiona.”
I felt sicker the longer I listened to him. Everything we feared about Briola having chosen us, having placed us in their little game against our will, it was all true. Even though we’d known that already, hearing it all again from another person, being told the size of this entire operation, the secrecy around it, it made it seem so much heavier, so much realer.
“You okay?” Miles asked quietly, almost in a whisper. I didn’t notice how much I was leaning on him. I blinked and tried to straighten up a bit, lean on him less, but it was harder than I wanted to admit.
Pull yourself together, coward!
I couldn’t show how much of an effect Joe’s words had on me. Your enemy can use your moments of weakness against you. For years I learned how to appear strong and composed even during moments of weakness and fear, and I had to do just that right now once more.
I took a deep breath and stood up straight again, let go of Miles’s arm and crossed mine in front of my chest.
“One day you finally mentioned the school trip to Berlin,” Joe continued, “mentioned the company name, and that’s when I knew that I’d definitely found the right girl. I’d worried that I’d been wrong a
ll along, even though all details pointed to you, so once I knew it was definitely you, I had to do something.”
“Guess that didn’t work out too well, since she still ended up here,” Miles said, his tone tainted by anger. He didn’t argue both our fates, just mine, as though I was the only one who mattered. Like he hadn’t been screwed over just as badly.
“The bracelet I gave you, and the book,” Joe said, ignoring Miles’s remark. Just as he mentioned it, I looked down at my wrist where the bracelet still rested. I’d never taken it off, and the book was buried among my things inside our cave. “Both have tiny trackers built into them that can send GPS signals. They connected themselves to an antenna somewhere on the island, and that’s how I knew you were here.”
“So, to recap, you’re a former FBI agent whose daughter disappeared so he stalked a teenage girl whom he knew would be abducted, along with another teen, and you decided to wait until she was gone to actually do something about it?” I said, the story sounding impossibly absurd as I said it. “Let’s pretend for a second that you’re telling the truth—”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Why did you care if I was the girl? Why do you care if I’m alive? Why did any of this matter to you? You didn’t know me, and we’re not related in any way.”
“I know this sounds crazy, but I cared. Still do,” Joe said, slowly moving in an attempt to get up. In the corner of my eye, I saw Miles tense up in response.
“Why?”
“Because I think the same thing that happened to the two of you might have happened to my daughter.” His words were heavy, loaded with emotions, and laced with infinite pain.
There was no way in hell he could be a good enough actor to deliver those words in such a manner, say them in a way that almost felt like a knife cutting across my skin. He was telling us the truth, I was sure of it. His words didn’t sound rehearsed, didn’t seem scripted, but like those of a man who lost everything and was just trying to make it up to his daughter, and surely his wife.
