Before she can finish, the boat slams into a sandbar, and everything goes sideways. Tech and I are thrown forward. I crash into the metal railing with a jolt that knocks the breath right out of me. My shoulder explodes with white-hot pain as I bounce backward and hit the deck, hard.
I lie here a moment, staring at the blue sky as I assess my condition. I don’t think anything is broken, but my shoulder throbs.
Tech moans from beside me, rolling over on the deck. “Fuck,” he mutters.
Shawn rushes toward us, her hand pressed to her chest where the steering wheel has left a bright red mark, her baseball hat gone and floating away in the water behind her.
“You okay?” she asks worriedly. She offers to help me up, and I wince as I do. Tech is a bit slower, but otherwise there’s no blood or crooked bones.
“I think I’m good,” I tell them, testing the range of my shoulder. “But even if I weren’t, I’d have you put me back together with fishing line and duct tape. Actual hospitals are out of our network.”
I try to make a joke of it, but the words are flat. It doesn’t matter, though. We all know the dire straits our families are in financially. None of us could afford a hospital bill right now. Hard to make that funny.
Shawn hops out of the boat, splashing through the water as she searches for her hat until she finds it floating a few feet away. I rub my shoulder, feeling the dull ache settle in, and Tech and I get out to survey the damage to the boat.
I wince when I notice the dent in the hull. Well… that’s not good. But at least it didn’t crack. It’s still seaworthy, for now, which is awesome because the idea of the coast guard needing to rescue us would be pure fuckedness. This boat is stolen. Don’t think they’d let that slide.
“I’ll be able to fix this,” Tech says, slapping the side of the hull with confidence. “Chances are, this early in the season, the guy might not even be in Cape Hope yet.”
I nod, but it doesn’t feel reassuring. “That would be ideal,” I say.
Shawn comes over to us, splashing through the water as her eyes scan the shoreline. The sound of water slapping against our legs cuts through the still air, the noise too loud for this secluded spot. As I turntoward the island, the potential of everything hits me harder. It looks real now, as if before it was just a mirage.
Did we seriously just find Rum Runner Island? That would… that would change everything for us. I fight back my laugh, my nerves and excitement, and turn to Tech, expecting to see the same.
But instead, he’s doubtful. Tentative. I feel myself sink, and turn back toward the island, trying to see it from his point of view.
It’s then that I realize how small the buildings truly are. Most are even smaller than the Surf Shack. That doesn’t mean it’s not Rum Runner, though. At least, I don’t think it means that. Either way, we found something completely random and cool. And we risked a lot to get here.
“Well?” I ask, hoping to bring up the excitement level. Hoping to make it all mean something. “Are we going to check this place out or wait for the sharks?”
Tech nods and starts walking. Shawn and I exchange a worried look and follow behind him. I know how much this means to him, to me too—I want to stop this war with the Collective. But for Tech, it’s more than that. He’s trying to clear his family’s name.
He wants so badly for this to be true. He needs it.
Shells crunch under our feet as we make our way onto the beach, the sand dark swirls of mud and debris—not the pristine white of Paradise Beach that we carefully comb for tourists each morning. This is raw, jagged, and beautiful in its own right. It makes me feel connected somehow, connected to nature in a way I can’t explain.
The first building we come to is barely standing. Just a few beams of wood and a shadow of what was once a roof. Less than three feet of the structure is still visible, the rest buried in the sand. It was a shanty, a crudely built home, perhaps. But even in its prime, I doubt it was much.
A couple of yards away is another, just as broken down, and thenfarther back toward the trees are more, their exposed walls only holding the shape from the way they’re buried in the sand. Nothing here leads me to think it’s connected to Rum Runner. And I’m trying really hard to make a connection.
“Check this out,” Tech calls from down the beach. His voice is high, and I hear a spark of hope there, the same one I’m still clinging to, despite the doubt that’s been gnawing at me since we arrived. That sound means he’s found something.
I jog through the sand, Shawn’s footsteps pounding behind me, and when I reach Tech, I see what he’s found. At first, it’s just a glimpse of a building tucked behind the mangroves. But compared to the others, it’s a palace.
Tech looks back at us, smiling. “This is brick,” he says, tapping the wall. “That has to be important, right? Otherwise it would be wood like the rest of them.”
I nod, still not letting myself fully believe it. “You would think.” I survey the brick structure, the walls filthy with algae and moss. The lower level is buried in sand, but there’s still enough here to show the true size. Now, this is promising.
Shawn crouches beside one of the windows, wiping away grime from the glass still set in the frame. As she cups her hands to peer inside, I wait nervously. Tech fidgets beside me, wringing his hands.
“Does it look like a hotel in there?” I ask, wanting this to be it.
Shawn pulls back to clean the glass again, takes another look, but then shakes her head. “I can’t tell,” she says. “It’s too dark inside.”
That’s not the answer I was hoping for, but I try not to show my disappointment.
Tech waves us along, and we walk around the side of the building, searching for a way in. Then we see it. A door, mostly buried beneath the sand.
