34

“Pirates!” shouted Chloe. “Pirates ahoy!”

“Where?” said Connor, looking to the horizon, his pulse immediately racing. The glassy sea was a mirror to the blue sky, the line between heaven and earth lost in the distant haze. Aside from the Orchid, there were five other yachts anchored around the picturesque bay in Bel Ombre on the island’s northwest coast. Beyond those, a few fishing boats bobbed out at sea. But Connor couldn’t see any skiffs armed with RPGs powering toward them.

“Shiver me timbers, Connor, I was only joking!” said Chloe, giggling at his overreaction. “But you never know, we might find some pirate treasure in here.”

She ducked inside a large dark hole in the cliff face. Taking a break from yesterday’s sunbathing, the four of them were exploring the headland of the bay. Clambering over granite boulders and through warm barnacled rock pools, they’d managed to reach the outermost tip.

“Hold up,” cried Ling, who’d also been fooled by Chloe’s pirate prank. “It could be dangerous in there.”

“You two really need to lighten up,” said Chloe, her reply echoing out of the cave mouth.

Ling disappeared after her Principal, but Emily hesitated at the entrance, eyeing the dark opening with mistrust.

“Are you all right with this?” asked Connor.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” she replied, but a nervous swallow betrayed her true feelings.

Connor tried to make eye contact. “You don’t have to go in—”

“Come on, Emily!” Chloe called, her voice now eerily distant. “You have to see this.”

Taking a deep breath, Emily plunged into the darkness.

Connor kept close on her heels. After the inflatable mattress incident the previous day, he wasn’t allowing himself to become complacent on the assignment again. He had to be ready for anything, danger lying in the most innocent of activities.

The hole narrowed to a passageway that burrowed deep into the headland. At first there was just blackness, but as Connor’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he could make out the multitude of mollusks clinging to the hard, moist rock. After a dozen or so paces, the passageway opened out into a large cavern, a crack in the overhead rock letting in a feeble shaft of sunlight. The air within was as cool and damp as a tomb, and he felt his skin goose bump at the sudden drop in temperature.

“Over here,” said Chloe, beckoning them to the far wall. Ling stood beside her, both their faces in shadow, as they inspected the faintly gleaming surface.

Connor followed Emily across the cavern, their feet crunching through the coarse sand and broken shells on the uneven floor.

“Check these out,” said Chloe excitedly, pointing to some symbols on the wall. Into the rock had been carved a dog, a snake, two joined hearts, a keyhole, a staring eye, a figure of a woman’s body and the head of a man.

“Creepy,” said Ling.

The boom of a crashing wave rebounded and amplified inside the cavern space. Connor glanced across at Emily, who’d become strangely quiet and withdrawn. In the feeble light, he could see that she was trembling and that a sheen of sweat had broken out on her forehead.

“Emily?” asked Connor. But she didn’t reply.

Chloe ran her finger over the staring eye. “I read in a guidebook that some pirate supposedly buried his treasure on this island. On his death at the gallows, he left a cryptic map to its location,” she explained. “This must be one of the clues . . .”

Emily now appeared to be struggling for breath.

“I think it’s time to make a move,” Connor suggested, taking Emily by the arm and guiding her back toward the tunnel.

“In a minute,” said Chloe, too engrossed in studying the symbols to notice her sister’s distress. “Maybe we can figure out what this says . . .”

Emily let out a doglike whimper.

Chloe turned to her sister. “Are you all right, Em?”

Her eyes had gone white with fear, and she stared in blind panic at the cave entrance. A huge shadow slipped along the mollusk-encrusted wall, threatening in both its size and silence.

“I’ll do what you say . . .” she whispered in a breath almost too quiet to hear. “I’ll do what you say . . . I’ll do what you say . . .”

Connor drew Emily closer as she repeated the words like a mantra. A muscle-bound man now blocked their only exit.

“Hope I didn’t scare you,” said Brad. “But the tide’s coming in, and these caves are prone to flooding.”