Despite his annoyance with her, Jack couldn’t help admiring the sway of her hips as she glided toward him with mesmerizing grace. It was as if she floated across the ground when she walked.
Stopping beside him, she removed the rope and small grappling hook free of her canvas shoulder bag. When she first started wearing the bag, she’d felt like Indiana Jones. Now, she just felt tired. She rarely used the hook, but it was something Mal insisted they carry with them when patrolling the tunnels and something they would regret not having if the needed it, like now.
Jack shoved aside his frustration with the woman when she didn’t reply to him. She was more distrustful than he was. “Are you a purebred?” he inquired. “If so, you can smell I’m not a Savage, and you can trust me.”
“I’m not a purebred,” she said as she unraveled the rope. “And even if you’re not a Savage that doesn’t mean you’re trustworthy. I knew plenty of humans who were giant pieces of shit too.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Charlie didn’t trust him, but at this point, it didn’t matter if he knew her name or not. Plus, she planned to learn more about him before bringing him to the others, and she couldn’t do that without at least talking to him a little.
“Charlie,” she said.
“Charlie,” he repeated. “And what’s that short for?”
“It’s short for Charlie,” she replied crisply.
It wasn’t, but she stopped using the name her parents gave her the day they threw her out of their house. She’d been terrified and all alone, and she’d vowed never to be that girl again.
“How did you end up on this island, Jack?” she asked.
Her words knocked some of his annoyance with her away. “This is anisland?”
Charlie lowered the rope when she saw the full horror of what she revealed sink into him. He definitely couldn’t be one of them. No one could fake that reaction; she’d seen it on a few other faces when they learned the awful truth. She probably had the same flabbergasted look on her face when Mal dropped the island bomb on her too.
“Yes,” she said with more kindness than before.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been here for three years; I’m sure.”
“Threeyears?”
“That’s what I said,” she replied as she returned her attention to the grapple and started swinging the rope.
“We have to find a way off this island.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she muttered sarcastically.
She would give anything to get off this Godforsaken chunk of land with Dylan and return to their lives. Well, return to her life as much as she could, given she wasn’t human anymore. Okay, her old life was over, but she would love to be somewhere vampires didn’t hunt them for sport.
“You’ll be shocked to learn escaping an island isn’t as easy as you would think, considering I’m not a boat,” she said as she threw the hook out of the hole.
Jack found himself glowering at her again as she tugged on the rope. The woman could push a saint to murder. “Where is this island located?”
“As far as I know, off the coast of Canada.”
“As far as you know?”
Satisfied the hook had caught on something that would support them, she turned her attention back to Jack. “Are you hard of hearing? Is that why you keep repeating everything I tell you?”
Jack ground his teeth together. “No.”
“Okay then, let’s get out of here; after you.”
Jack grasped the rope and pulled himself up. Kneeling outside the hole, he scented the air while he listened for anyone who might be a threat to them, but he didn’t hear or smell anyone out there.
