‘We’ll see,’ said Iris again, smiling at Anders.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. ‘Message from Siggi,’ she said.
‘Ah, he is on his way.’
‘This is weird. He’s messaged me in Icelandic.’
‘Want me to look?’
Iris nodded, hoping she wouldn’t live to regret it.
Anders frowned. ‘It is saying he needs help and that you know where he is.’
‘What? How would he think I know where he is?’
‘The message is in Icelandic. Perhaps it is meant for someone else?’
‘If he’s asking for help, it’ll be Olafur or Jonas. They knew where he was going.’
Before Anders could say anything else. Iris had run out of the hotel, heading to the Icelandic Adventures office.
She burst in, finding Jonas at the desk.
‘I think Siggi’s in trouble,’ she said, thrusting her phone at him.
He scanned the message. ‘I think he meant to send this to me. I have a message from him saying he’d taken a wrong turn and had to leave his jeep. He was heading for the main road to get a lift back to town, but with everything that is going on in Hraunvik, he wanted me to know where he was.’
‘We need to find him,’ she said desperately. ‘If he’s had an accident, he might be hurt.’
Jonas nodded. ‘Let me call Olafur. We will go to the location he told me and start from there. I will also let the civil defence know because he was inside the cordon around Hraunvik.’
‘Why? I didn’t think he had to go that way to the beach?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jonas said calmly. He made a brief call to Olafur. ‘Gudrun is coming to the office to cancel the Northern Lights tour for tonight. You should wait here with her.’
‘No, I want to come with you.’
Jonas shook his head. ‘No. Stay with Gudrun. Please. If he calls or messages you again, there is a better chance for you to receive it here than out with us where there is no signal.’
He said it gently but firmly, and Iris nodded. It made sense.
The few minutes they waited for Olafur and Gudrun to arrive were interminable. Iris was imagining all kinds of things.
‘Siggi is smart.’ Jonas said. ‘Try not to worry.’
But Jonas looked worried, which told Iris everything. At least the fissures weren’t due to erupt for another twenty-four hours,according to the data she’d pored over that afternoon with Kári. If she thought that was about to happen, it would be so much worse.
When Olafur and Gudrun arrived, Jonas was ready to leave, crossing Gudrun in the doorway.
‘Takk,Gudrun. You know what to do. We’ll use the sat phone to call if anything happens.’
She nodded. ‘You go.’
Olafur and Jonas set off, jogging along the street to wherever the vehicle they were taking was parked.
‘They will find him,’ Gudrun said, with such certainty it was comforting.
‘Jonas knows where he is.’ Although whether the place Siggi had told him was where he was now, none of them would know until they looked. Iris needed to believe that he was right where he’d said he was because what else was there to cling to?
