The hostels that the trawlermen used during the fishing season were two double-storey buildings on the north coast. They were miles apart, as if they couldn’t bear to be with one another, one facing out to the ocean, the other towards the centre of the island, where the highest point, Nuyáhshá, was.
‘Highest point’ made it sound grander than it was: for the most part, as far as Rebekah could tell, the island was virtually flat. There were a few solitary buildings scattered on the side of Nuyáhshá, but the highest point was more a mound than a peak, and almost all of the buildings were rubble.
She pulled the Cherokee alongside the first of the hostels and got out. The rain had turned to a fine drizzle, but it was still cold, and when she passed from the warmth of the car to the rawness of the morning, a thought hit her: If it’s already this cold and it’s only November, how cold will it be in January?
She pushed the idea away.
I’m not going to be here in January.
Even as the words came to her, she wasn’t sure she believed them, doubt clinging on, flickering images of still being here as the snow fell, the winds roused and winter gripped. But, again, she suppressed them, concentrating on the hostel instead. As she walked from front to back, her breath clouding in front of her face, she could see there were doors on both sides: the one at the rear was padlocked, the one at the front secured with a key.
She returned to the front and stared at the simplicity of the keyhole. It looked like a simpler task than breaking open a padlock, but she knew it wouldn’t be. She’d seen people kick doors down with ease in movies and on TV, but that had always been one of her dad’s pet hates – whenever some actor cracked open a door with a single kick, he’d say, You can’t just walk up and kick open a locked door. If it’s an exterior door, it might be reinforced, so all you’re doing is busting your ankle. You’ve got to listen to the sound it makes when you kick. If you can hear wood crack, it’s game on. If it’s a dull thud, you’ve got a problem. If it’s a dull thud and the door has a steel frame, or there’s bolts on it, you’ve got an even bigger problem. Rebekah looked at the door.
It didn’t have bolts, but it had a steel frame.
That made it likely to be reinforced but she took a step back anyway, then focused her attention on the area just below the keyhole. I always aimed for the deadbolt or the knob, her father would tell them. And I kept my foot flat to the door on impact. That’s important, unless you want to be going to the ER. Flat foot, deadbolt. She took a breath and kicked out.
Nothing happened.
You’ve got to kick the door in the direction it swings.
She looked at the door. No way did it swing out, not with the steel frame built around it. She readied herself and kicked again.
Pain speared up her leg.
‘Shit,’ she muttered, rubbing her calf.
She thought about shoulder-barging it.
But then she remembered, Never shoulder-barge. Never try to breach a door with anything other than your foot. There was a cop I knew who tried to use the side of his body to bust open a door and he couldn’t move his neck for four weeks. There’s a reason we used a Stinger. Her dad had told them that the Stinger was a thirty-five-pound, thirty-inch battering ram.
Rebekah returned to the car and got the jack.
She grabbed the wrench too.
It was time to switch her attention to the door at the back of the hostel. Neither the jack nor the wrench was ideal – she guessed a crowbar would have been the easiest way to lever off a padlock – but she’d have to make do.
There’s no skill in this, she thought. It’s just brute force.
She smashed the jack down as hard as she could against the padlock. It rattled for a moment, then came to rest, unimpressed.
She gripped the jack even tighter, fingers blanched with the effort, and crashed it down a second time. This time, the padlock pinged, swinging inside the ring of the metal plate to which it was secured, and then – like a metronome slowing – it was still again.
Rebekah looked at the metal plate. It was hinged: once the padlock had been removed, the half of the plate that was on the door just folded back against the wall. As simple as that, she thought bitterly.
Unless she could smash a window.
On the ground floor, there were three windows, then a set of rusting metal stairs that went up to a fire exit on the first floor, where there were three more. All of the windows had thin metal bars. Rebekah wondered why – they were miles from anywhere, and even when the hostel was open, hardly anyone was on the island – but then, from the ocean, came a huge boom. She glanced out at the water as a wave crashed onto the shore. It looked tormented already, and while the wind was only light, discarded junk was being whipped up and scattered: nets, fishing lines, plywood, styrofoam cups. In a bad storm, that would be replaced by masonry, roof tiles and chunks of rock, and the glass would be as effective as paper at shielding the hostel’s interior. The bars were just damage control.
Again, Rebekah’s thoughts spiralled back to what it might be like here in the winter. What if another hurricane hit?
What if she was still on the island when it did?
She clasped the jack with both hands, refocusing her attention on the padlock.
Come on, you can do it.
She crashed the jack against it. When it didn’t break, she did it again, and again, and again. She paused, shoulders heaving like a piston, her heart stomping beneath her ribs, out of breath, hot. She started to forget why she was even trying to get inside the hostel. She wasn’t going to sleep here because, when a rescue came, it would be from the mainland, and that meant she needed to be at the store, close to Helena. She needed to see the boats when they arrived at the harbour. So why was she here?
I need supplies. I need clothes. I need blankets. She tightened her grip on the jack again.
I need to get this door open.
She started again, the pain in her hands worse than ever. It was all along her arms too. Her jaw was clenched so tightly that her teeth throbbed. She kept going, even as she slowed and the blows became less forceful, even as the jack started to slip from her grasp, and her hair was blown across her face by the wind.
But, just as she was about to give up, her luck changed.
The padlock made another soft ping.
This time, it dropped to the ground.