June kept her voice level. “Have they made any other contact with the group on the island?” She swallowed. “Have they…” She cleared her throat. “Have they got any news about Willa or Ace?”
“Grace got a call through to Zane.” Holt was already moving with June toward the door, picking up his jacket and reaching for the keys with the contained, purposeful movement of a man who processed fear by immediately converting it into action. “Grace’s call said they were moving to the secondary shelter,” he said carefully. “There’s a cave on the eastern side. That’s all Zane got before the signal dropped.”
June nodded once. She picked up her jacket from the back of the chair and put it on, her hands perfectly steady as she did, which she noted with a distant, clinical sort of awareness. The steadiness was not calm. It was the body’s emergency response to something that was too large to process all at once, like a circuit breaker, shutting down certain things so that others could keep functioning.
She wasn’t going to be useful to anyone if she came apart now. June didn’t even realize they’d move to the car until she found herself pulling on the seat belt.
The coast guard station sat at the harbor’s northern edge. It was a low, functional building that smelled of salt and machinery and the particular institutional quiet of a place that was always waiting for something to happen. By the time June and Holt arrived, Carmen and Zane were already there, and Dean Parker was standing near the operations board with his arms folded and the expression of a man who’d been told something he refused to accept.
Carmen turned when they came through the door.
She crossed the room in four steps and took June by both arms, not gently, the way Carmen had always held her when something was serious, firmly, as if she were making sure June understood she was not alone in the room.
“The younger group is safe, and Becky is with Mina,” Carmen told her, and June at least felt relieved that her one grandchild was safe.
June let out a breath she had not fully realized she was holding.
“And Willa’s group?” She kept her eyes on Carmen’s.
Carmen’s grip on her arms didn’t change. “Their last confirmed contact was Grace’s call to Zane. They were heading for the cave. That’s all we know right now.” She glanced at where Zane was, and Holt had walked over to join that group.
“No contact since?” June’s eyes searched her sisters, looking for a glimmer of hope. “Has anyone heard if Willa and Ace are… are safe?”
“No,” Carmen said it plainly, which June appreciated. Her sister had always understood that the kindest thing she could do in a crisis was to tell the truth cleanly rather than dress it up. “The satellite signal is down across the affected area. That’s the storm, not necessarily anything else.”
June nodded, and Carmen released her arms.
They crossed to where Zane and Holt were already bent over the operations board with one of the Coast Guard officers, a compact, efficient woman named Lieutenant Reyes, who spoke in the clipped, information-dense sentences of someone who dealt in facts and had no patience for anything else.
“The current conditions over the Sandy Shore area are making a launch inadvisable,” Lieutenant Reyes was saying. “Wind gusts are sitting between fifty and sixty knots, with sets coming in at irregular intervals. Visibility is under a quarter mile.”
“How long until conditions ease enough for a launch?” Holt asked.
“The earliest estimate is two to three hours,” Lieutenant Reyes said. “Possibly longer depending on how the system moves. The storm is tracking northeast, which means it should clear the island zone, but the timing is not precise.”
“There are children on that island,” Dean said, “Teenagers and two adults.” He glanced at the Lieutenant. “My daughter-in-law and grandkids are included in that group.”
“I understand that, Mr. Parker,” Lieutenant Reyes said, not unkindly. “Which is why we have two crews standing by and ready to go the moment conditions allow.” She didn’t flinch or avert her eyes. “Going out in this won’t get anyone safely home. It will just give us more people in the water.”
Dean looked at the operations board. His jaw worked once.
June understood exactly what was moving behind his eyes. Dean had lost his son in a fire ten years ago. He had spent a decade learning to live alongside that loss, and now his grandchildren were on an island he could not reach, and there was nothing he could do except stand in a room and wait. June knew that particular helplessness. She knew its exact weight and moved to stand beside him.
June didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say that would make it smaller. She simply stood close enough that her shoulder was near his arm, and Dean looked sideways at her, and whatever passed between them in that look was enough.
“They’re going to be alright,” June said at last, quietly, only for him.
Dean’s throat moved. “I know.”
“They’re very capable,” June said.
He nodded slowly. “I know.”
They stood together and watched the operations board.
Carmen had found coffee from somewhere and pressed a cup into June’s hands twenty minutes later without asking whether she wanted it. June drank it because Carmen was right, as Carmen usually was about practical things, and because having something to hold gave her hands a purpose.
Zane was on the phone in the corner, his voice low, coordinating with the search-and-rescue team. He caught June’s eye once across the room and gave her a brief, clear nod, which she read as confirmation that everything on that side was under control. Carmen was beside him, one hand resting on the back of his chair, listening.
