“What the hell?”
Brian has spent most of the day resting by the campfire, carried by the others to a nest of clothes and towels they’ve made by the fire to keep him warm. But now he’s struggling to prop himself up on one elbow, his voice alight with fury.
As they crowd around him, he extends his hand, something wet and congealed hanging limply from it.
“What is that?” May wrinkles her nose. “And why does it smell like it’s dead?”
“Because it is!” Brian storms. “It’s a handful of the fish guts we’ve been using for bait. And I just found it in the pocket of my swim shorts.”
The others look at him blankly, not understanding. “Does someone want to tell me why they sent me out into deep water with literal shark chum in my pockets?”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” Elliot urges. “Couldn’t you have left it in your pocket when you were fishing and forgotten about it?”
Brian is breathing heavily. He looks like a tethered bull about to rip the ring out of its own nose and go on a rampage. “No, I couldn’t. I always bait the hook before I go in the water to fish, and I leave the spare bait on the beach. Besides, I wasn’t even wearing these shorts then. I’ve only been wearing them for swimming. Which anybody who has been paying attention knows.” He glares around furiously, his scowl etched deep into his forehead.
“Enough. Whatever the hell is going on here, it ends now. I could have freaking died.” His voice is shaking with fury. “I still might, if we don’t get out of here soon.”
There’s dead silence.
“Whoever you are, this needs to stop. Now. Before anyone else gets badly hurt.”
“We need to know what she wants!” Jason sounds hysterical, his eyes skittering from one face to the next. “Whoever’s doing this. And don’t look at me like that, May, because it’s obviously a girl. Everyone who’s been seriously injured is male.”
“Jason,” May deadpans, “you weren’t injured at all. My leech bites hurt worse than your sore feelings after you got scared by a few shards of broken glass.”
And before Jason can argue, Jessa steps between them, hands raised for calm.
“Jason’s right. We can’t stop it unless we know who’s doing it and why.”
“What do you want?” Jason shouts, half laughing, gesturing wildly around the circle. The silence is total. A log hisses and falls in the center of the fire, and Hayley feels her pulse jump in her throat.
“We don’t know for sure it’s a girl,” May says stubbornly. “We all had our blood sucked, too, remember? And I was almost given alcohol poisoning.”
“Yeah, I see your leeches and your cocktail afternoon and raise you almost being killed by a damn shark,” Brian yells furiously, white flecks of spit flying out of the corner of his mouth.
“We don’t know what species of shark it was,” Elliot says in a conciliatory tone. “It probably bit you by accident, Brian, because it thought you were a seal or something. If it had really wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. There are actually very few species of sharks that are dangerous to humans in these waters; it might have been a lemon shark or a sand tiger—”
“Or a hammerhead or a blacktip,” Jason breaks in angrily. “We grew up in Florida too, Elliot. You might know more than most about little fire-starting tricks, but you’re not the sole authority on sharks. So we’re not doing this anymore, okay?” Jason sounds commanding, but Hayley can hear the frustration in his voice. It’s fine making angry threats into thin air, but they fall flat when there isn’t any response.
Hayley closes her eyes and tries to put herself in the shoes of whoever might be doing all this. And even though she isn’t certain, she has a nagging feeling that whoever it is wants something.
Most of the attacks have had worse psychological effects than physical ones. If the attacker wanted Elliot dead, they could have finished him off while he was unconscious the night he fell.
If they really wanted to hurt Jason, they could’ve used the glass shards to stab him, not to scare and confuse him. The leeches were more shocking and disgusting than actually harmful. Following the pattern, Hayley decides that the shark bait was meant to create exactly the kind of terror she saw on Brian’s face in the sea, not to cause an actual attack. It’s like somebody is trying to make them understand something, to send them a message.
If only they had the chance to communicate, Hayley muses as she wanders up the beach. If the person doing all this somehow got what they wanted, the attacks might stop. Suddenly, she is seized by an idea.
“Write it down!” Her voice comes out breathy and high-pitched, her cheeks flushed. She’s digging frantically in a pile of stuff that’s just inside the hollow tube of the plane, reemerging triumphantly with a ballpoint pen and Elliot’s dog-eared sketchbook. She races back to the group.
“Write. It. Down,” she repeats urgently, her eyes shining at the expectant faces. “I’ll leave the sketchbook out tonight, away from the camp. Whoever is doing this can tell us anything they want. We’ll check the book in the morning. And no tricks. Nobody keeps watch. No handwriting analysis—use block letters if you like, whatever. Just tell us what you want. Or what you want us to know. What we need to do to end this. Okay? Please. We’ll do whatever it takes—just tell us what you want.”
There’s no answer except the incoming tide, which sounds like a mother soothing her baby. Shush. Shush. Shush.
***
Of course, Hayley keeps watch. She places the sketchbook far down the beach, away from their sleeping places, a good distance from the small glowing circle of sand lit by the dying campfire. Like the others, she pretends to go to bed, but she waits, lying in the silence of sticks and leaves for what feels like hours, her whole body tingling with excitement and anxiety, until the sky is black as soft velvet. She creeps out quietly, leaving some clothes bundled up inside in case anybody checks her shelter, then sets off, sneaking along the beach, seeing nobody. In spite of the danger, there’s a small, irrepressible part of her that can’t help bristling with excitement: her first stakeout.
The sleeping shelters are dotted along the tree line; anybody who wants to reach the sketchbook covertly could melt into the trees, make their way through the forest in the darkness, and emerge onto the beach farther along, unseen and unheard. Hayley continues through the dark gloom of the trees until she is beyond the book, which lies innocently on the sand, just visible in the soft moonlight. She finally emerges when she is level with a big rock about twenty yards farther along the beach, and she rushes to crouch in its shadow. She peeks around the seaward side so she has a good view of the book but can’t be seen by anyone walking toward it from the trees.
It takes about half an hour for her electric excitement to fade to a buzz. Then another hour for it to descend into stiff, unrelenting boredom. Her butt feels heavy and numb, her arms ache from pressing against the hard rock, and her ankles are being bitten to pieces by sand flies. She shivers, wishing she had brought an extra sweater, and tries to shift her position quietly, lying down uncomfortably on her stomach, sand prickling her elbows.
After a few hours, she feels stupid, freezing, and exhausted. Did she really believe that someone who has managed to avoid detection this cleverly so far was going to just walk up and write down a full explanation of their actions?
Eventually, Hayley feels her eyes closing. She tries to fight it, digging her fingernails into her palms and training her eyes on the shadowy place where she left the sketchbook, but the weight of her tiredness presses gradually and unstoppably down on her until she can’t resist it any longer. With a little sigh, she rests her head in the crook of her elbow and drifts off to sleep.
She wakes at dawn, unused to the thin, early light, her shoulder and hip aching. The beach is deserted. The fire is out, and the trees stand like silent witnesses to a motionless night. Still Hayley races to the sketchbook, grabbing it up and rifling through the pages with trembling fingers, clumsy in their haste. There’s nothing but Elliot’s drawings. A hastily sketched exterior of Oak Ridge with its imposing bell tower and rolling lawns; a few drawings done courtside during practice on tour; one of the squad on the plane just before they crashed. She flicks through it again more carefully to be sure. The pages laugh at her, as smooth and blank as ever. Her heart rate slows to normal. She tucks the dog-eared book under her arm and starts to trudge back toward the camp.
The sky is fizzing orange at the horizon, fresh-dawn waves lapping at the beach. And that’s when she sees it. Letters four-feet long, scraped starkly into the smooth, wet sand.
JUSTICE.