He found the cave by accident. Nearly walked past it. It was a dark opening in a rocky hillside, partially covered by hanging vines, wide enough for both of us and tall enough to stand in. He ducked inside and set me down on the stone floor. I scrambled backward until my back hit the wall because I couldn’t see what was in here and the darkness could’ve held anything.
“Stay here.” He disappeared back toward the entrance and I heard him pulling vines across the opening, weaving them together to create a barrier against the wind. Then he was back, soaking wet, breathing hard, sitting next to me on the cold stone floor of a cave on an island we couldn’t name in a storm that sounded like it wanted to pull the whole place apart.
The hurricane, because that’s what this was and we both knew it, hit full force about twenty minutes later. The wind outside screamed at a pitch that didn’t sound natural, didn’t sound like weather, sounded like something alive and furious trying to tear through rock to get to us. Rain pounded the hillside above the cave. Water seeped through cracks in the stone, running down the walls in thin streams that pooled around our feet. The temperature dropped so fast I started shivering before I realized I was cold, and once the shivering started it didn’t stop.
Quest pulled me into his chest, wrapped both arms around me, held me tight enough that his body heat was all I had. I pressed my face into his neck and cried because I was done pretending I was strong enough for this. I was cold and terrified and seven months pregnant in a cave and everything we’d built on that beach, the fire, the shelter, the food, the raft, all of it was gone. The island had given it to us. The storm took it back. We were starting over from nothing for the second time.
“I got you,” Quest said against my hair. “I got you, I got you, I got you.”
He said it over and over, rocking me slowly, his hands moving up and down my back generating heat through friction while the storm raged outside like it was angry at the island for existing. I could feel his heartbeat against my cheek, fast but steady, and I focused on the rhythm of it because it was the only thing that made sense right now.
Then I felt it.
It started low and deep, a tightening across my belly that started in my back and wrapped around to the front like a belt being cinched by invisible hands. It wasn’t a kick. I knew what kicks felt like and this wasn’t that. This was my entire uterus contracting into a fist and holding for five seconds, ten seconds, long enough for me to stop breathing and grab Quest’s arm with both hands and squeeze until my nails broke his skin.
“Mehar?” His voice changed instantly. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”
The tightening released. I exhaled, hands going to my belly. The baby was moving, squirming, pressing against my palms like she was trying to tell me something and I couldn’t understand the language yet.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I think… Quest, I think I just had a contraction.”
The storm screamed outside. The water ran down the cave walls. And Quest’s arms tightened around me and he didn’t say a single word because for the first time since we crashed on this island, there was nothing left to say.
15
Justice
The FAA called at nine in the morning with nothing.
That’s what it amounted to, even though the woman on the phone used forty-five seconds of words to deliver it. No wreckage. No debris field. No emergency locator signal. The expanded search grid covering the southern Caribbean corridor had yielded zero physical evidence of my brother. They were still checking. They were coordinating with regional authorities. They appreciated my patience.
I didn’t have patience. Patience was for people whose bros weren’t missing over open water with a pregnant fiancé. What I had was a desk full of work I couldn’t focus on, a phone full of calls I didn’t want to make, and the slow, grinding realization that the government was going to run out of interest in finding Quest long before I ran out of money to keep looking.
I left the office at noon and drove to the casino to link up with Bryce. The building was quiet in the early afternoon, just the cleaning crew and a few staff members prepping for the evening shift. I walked through the gaming floor, past the empty tables and silent slot machines, and headed toward the security office in the back corridor.
Bryce was at the desk reviewing camera feeds from the night before. He’d settled into the security role with a discipline that surprised me, considering where he’d been six months ago. This was the same kid that tried to sabotage us. Granted, that was before he knew that Mehar and Zainab were intertwined with the family. The Banks family had a habit of absorbing people into our orbit whether they planned on it or not. Bryce had been absorbed, and he’d earned his place.
He looked up when I walked in and I could tell he hadn’t been sleeping either. The circles under his eyes were dark enough to look like bruises and his jaw had that permanent clenched look that hadn’t relaxed since we told him about the plane. Bryce had been showing up to every shift on time, doing his job, keeping the casino secure, but underneath the professionalism was a man barely keeping it together because his sister was somewhere in the ocean and nobody could tell him if she was breathing.
“Any updates?” he asked. Same question he asked me every time I walked into this building. Same desperate hope sitting behind it.
“FAA called this morning. Still nothing. No wreckage, no debris, no signal.” I pulled a chair next to his desk and sat down. “But I found something at Quest’s property that changes this whole thing.” I pulled out my phone and swiped to the screenshot from the Middleburg security footage. The motorcycle, far right of the frame, dark rider hugging the tree line. “This was on Quest’s estate two nights before they flew out. Someone on a motorcycle, no headlights, moving through the trees toward the hangar where he kept the plane. The hangar had no camera coverage. Whoever this was knew exactly where the blind spots were.”
Bryce took the phone and studied the image with a focus that told me he wasn’t just looking at it, he was reading it. His eyesmoved across the frame the way someone reads a page, left to right, top to bottom, pulling details I might have missed.
“That’s a Ducati,” he said after about ten seconds. “Monster 1200, maybe the 821. See the tank profile and the frame geometry? That’s not a street bike you pick up at a pawn shop. That’s twenty, twenty-five thousand new.” He handed the phone back and shook his head. “Vipers rode Hondas and Yamahas, stripped down, loud as hell. This ain’t that. Whoever was on this bike has money.”
“That’s what I figured. This wasn’t a random hit. This was professional and premeditated and it came from somebody who knew Quest’s schedule, his property layout, and his security gaps.”
Bryce’s jaw tightened. I could see the math working behind his eyes, the same calculation I’d already run a dozen times. Who had that kind of access? Who had the resources to hire professionals and supply a Ducati and sabotage an aircraft without leaving a trace?
“You gotta find my sister, Justice.” His voice was low and steady but I could hear the fracture underneath it. Bryce wasn’t a man who showed fear easily. He’d survived things that would have broken most people twice his age. But this was Mehar. This was the only family he had left who loved him without conditions, and she was somewhere in the ocean and nobody could tell him if she was breathing.
“That’s why I’m here. I chartered a search vessel last week but I’m not waiting on a boat to cover hundreds of miles of open water. I’m chartering a plane tomorrow morning. Small aircraft, low altitude, visual sweep of the islands south of the original search grid. If the GPS was compromised, they could be a hundred miles from where the Coast Guard has been looking. I’m going to cover every square mile myself if I have to.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. Be at Manassas Regional by five AM. I’ll have the charter ready.”
