“You want to break off a piece of the boat and bring it with us?”
“Exactly.”
Mariana opened her mouth to reply, then shut it, thinking. “Okay, I need a rock.”
Reyva, who was on guard duty, located a sledgehammer-head-size rock and passed it to Claire, who handed it to Mariana. Mariana began whacking at the damaged fiberglass. “We don’t ever need the boat itself, right?”
“Be as destructive as you want to be,” Claire told her. “Butalso as quiet as you can be.” She glanced up and down the beach and hoped that the noise wasn’t traveling far. Luckily, it was a muffled thwack. “Any sign of him?”
“Not yet,” Reyva said.
“Do we have a plan if we see him?” Mariana asked.
“Hide,” Claire said immediately. It was the most sensible option. Very unlikely they could fight and win against a man who was already deceased. She didn’t even know if he could be hurt, but it was safest to assume he couldn’t be. At least then they wouldn’t be disappointed.
“And if he suspects what we’re doing?” Reyva asked.
“He’ll think we want to use the boat to escape,” Claire said. “It’s the logical thing for us to try. He won’t suspect this.” Frankly, she didn’t think anyone would—not because it was so brilliant but because the odds of success were so low. So many, many things could go wrong, and she could envision them all, unspooling in her mind like a movie that couldn’t be paused. “All we’ll have to do is wait for him to notice the state of the hull, and we can continue as soon as he leaves.”
Mariana ducked back out to smile at Claire. “Look at you! Being positive! I’m proud of you. Also, what do we do when the engine does break free?”
“Catch it and lower it down.” Joining Mariana beneath the boat, Claire positioned herself beneath the engine so she could catch it when it broke free. She spread her legs to brace herself and readied her hands. “How heavy is it?”
“A hundred pounds. Maybe a hundred fifty.”
Okay, nope. She’d be squashed. Claire quickly scooted outfrom under the engine. “Maybe we shouldn’t drop one hundred fifty pounds on my head.”
Mariana quit pounding on the boat. “Yeah, bad idea there.”
“How about we just let it fall to the ground?”
“If he’s close enough, he’ll hear it crash,” Reyva warned. “He’ll definitely come then.”
“Then we hide as soon as it thuds,” Claire said. “Wait for him to come, and then wait for him to leave.” She wasn’t going to let anything ruin this plan. Sure, it wasn’t the perfect plan, but it was the only one they had. Plus it had a symmetry to it: close the cave that their parents had opened. Shedidwish it didn’t involve her climbing back down into the cave and acting as bait. But that part wasn’t until later. She wasn’t going to think about it right now.One problem at a time, she reminded herself.Got to get the engine.
Mariana continued trying to break the boat. Keeping an eye on the stern, Claire cleared the sharpest rocks so that the engine wouldn’t be impaled when it fell.
A few more thuds of the hammer-rock, and the fiberglass began to creak.
“Almost there,” Mariana huffed.
“No sign of him yet,” Reyva reported.
Claire grabbed a loose branch from one of the pine trees and, using it like a broom, began obscuring their footprints. She wasn’t going to be able to erase every trace that they’d been here—the beach was mashed with their tracks, and she was likely to miss a few—but she didn’t want it to be obvious that they’d spent significant time here.
Getting an idea, she marched to the opposite side of the boat, deliberately leaving footprints that led away from it for about five yards before reaching a stretch of rocks. She then carefully walked backward through her prints to the boat. She hoped that was enough to confuse the dead man, if he came to investigate. At least it might distract him long enough for them to slip away into the forest and hide. Hide, and hope he didn’t guess their plan.
At last, the chunk of the stern that surrounded the motor began to bow.
“It’s about to go,” Mariana said as she darted out from under the boat. Together, the three of them scooted into the forest and crouched down amid the thick bushes.
The hull groaned as the weight of the engine pulled.
And then the engine ripped away from the back of the boat with a loud crack, taking a chunk of the stern with it, and crashed onto the pebbled shore. They waited, hidden. A bird circled above the boat and then flew away. The waves lapped calmly at the shore. Claire listened for the telltale silence.
“Maybe he didn’t hear?” Mariana whispered.
“Give it a little longer,” Claire said.
