I narrowed the list to eight islands with vegetation, fresh water potential, and enough shoreline to land a raft. We’d hit as many as we could before dark and pick up the rest tomorrow.
We pushed off from the marina at seven and headed north.
Bryce’s phone rang about forty minutes into the ride. He looked at the screen and his entire body language changed. His shoulders tightened, jaw clenched, the same look a man gets when he knows the next five minutes of his life are about to be unpleasant.
“Yo,” he answered.
I could hear Samaya from where I was standing. Not the words exactly, but the energy. That bitch’s voice was loud, sharp, and escalating. Bryce pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it like it had bitten him, then put it back.
“Samaya, listen to me for a second.”
More volume. Something about his weekend with Skai. Something about how this was the third time he’d flaked. Something about how she was tired of his disappearing acts.
“I’m trying to find my sister, Samaya. Some shit went down and I can’t explain it right now but I need to be here.”
“She’s missing?! Fuck her! It’s her fault my brother…”
That one was loud enough for all of us to hear. Bryce’s face tightened and I could see him losing the battle with his temper in real time.
“Man, bitch, I said…”
I took the phone out of his hand before he finished the word. Just reached over and took it the same way I’d take a sharp object from one of my daughters. Bryce looked at me and I looked at him.
“Samaya, this is Justice. He’s busy and as soon as he gets home, he’ll make it right with you and Skai,” I said, hanging up on her before she even got a chance to respond.
“Stay focused. We’re on a mission,” I said to him.
“She is driving me crazy. Ever since that shit went down at the casino. I wasn’t even there. I told them niggas that?—”
• • •
The first island was wrong before we even got off the boat. Rocky, steep, barely any vegetation. The shoreline was jagged coral with no beach to land a raft on. We circled it twice and I could see from the water that nobody had set foot on this island in years.
The second one looked better from a distance. Green canopy, a sandy stretch on the western side, palm trees leaning over the water. We anchored offshore and took a smaller boat in and spent an hour walking the beach and pushing into the tree line. I found coconut shells and animal tracks and a freshwater stream running down from higher ground. Everything a person would need to survive. But no evidence of any humans. The island was perfect and empty and I stood on that beach looking at everything Quest could have used and felt the frustration building behind my eyes.
The third island was the smallest. A cay, really, barely a quarter mile across. White sand, low brush, a few clusters of palms. We walked the entire perimeter in twenty minutes and found nothing. No debris. No signs of human presence. Just crabs and driftwood and the ocean stretching out in every direction.
Three islands. Three dead ends. Five more on the list for tomorrow.
By the time the sun started dropping, we were anchored in the lee of an uninhabited islet waiting for the light to die. Tomás cooked fish on a small grill mounted to the back of the boat and we ate in silence because there wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been said. The optimism from the plane, the raftsighting, the conviction that Quest was alive and waiting, all of it was still there but it was quieter now. Muted by a full day of empty beaches and unanswered silence.
Prime was sitting on the bow with his feet hanging over the edge, staring at the water. The sun was almost gone, just a thin line of orange sitting on the horizon, and his face was half lit and half shadow. When he spoke, his voice was low and flat and stripped of everything except the truth.
“If my brother is dead,” he said, “not one Rios will have a quick death. I want them to feel every second of it. I want them to know exactly who’s doing it and exactly why. And I want it to be slow enough that they have time to regret every decision that led them to this moment.”
I looked at Bryce. Bryce looked at me. Neither of us disagreed.
“Slow,” Bryce said quietly. “Real slow.”
I nodded. That was all that needed to be said.
The sun disappeared. The sky turned dark and the stars came out, thick and bright and indifferent to what was happening on the water below them. The boat rocked gently. The engine was off. Somewhere in the Grenadines, on an island we hadn’t reached yet, my brother was either alive or he wasn’t. Tomorrow we’d find out. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. However long it took.
I lay on the deck and stared at the stars and didn’t sleep.
21
Mehar
