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I couldn’t help it—in spite of our dire situation, I laughed. It was good to see her back to her usual self, at least somewhat. I had been worried that the crash had rattled her so badly that she would be quiet and cooperative from now on.
Interesting. If you had asked me twenty-four hours ago, I’d have told you Iwantedher to be quiet and cooperative.
Smoke began to rise from the wood. I spun the stick more quickly in my hands, and then I saw a spark. I grabbed some of the smallest tinder pieces she had given me, caught them, lowered them into my fire pit, and began to build.
After a few minutes, I was confident I had a flame I wasn’t going to lose. “You can go and get some more wood now,” I told Olivia. “We’re going to need more big pieces.”
She hesitated. “Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Where are we supposed to sleep?”
It was one of many questions that I didn’t have an answer to yet. “We’ll have to take things one at a time,” I told her.
Would now be the moment she got upset?
Apparently not. She nodded grimly, shucked off the jacket she’d been wearing, and tossed it on the sand beside me. She headed up the beach in her pencil skirt and tank top, looking for more wood.
I watched her go for a minute, then returned my attention to the fire.
In addition to sleeping arrangements, we were going to have to figure out what to eat. There wasn’t much on the plane. There were bottles of water, so that wasn’t going to be an issue. Other than that, there were only a few packets of peanuts, and I had eaten most of those on the flight. It wouldn’t be enough to get us through even the next twenty-four hours without serious discomfort.
I could handle hunger. That had been an aspect of my SEAL training—tolerating deprivation. But I didn’t know how Olivia would handle it.
And also, no matter how good anyone was at handling the discomfort of hunger, there would be a moment when the body would start to break down.
I didn’t know how long we were going to be stuck here. That was the problem.
Olivia was coming back up the beach now, a huge bundle of supplies in her hands. I sat back and watched her approach. It looked like she’d found plenty of firewood.
But as she got closer, I realized that that wasn’t all she had found. “Can we eat these?” she asked, dropping several coconuts at my feet.
I let out a whistle. “We definitely can. Where did you find them?”
She pointed back at the way she’d come from. “There’s a tree over there that’s dropping them. The beach is littered with them.”
“So there are more where these came from, then?”
“A lot more.”
“That’s excellent. This is great, Olivia.”
She sat down beside me, picked up one of the coconuts, and turned it over in her hands. “How do we get them open? I think there was a butter knife on the plane.”
I snorted and picked up one of the coconuts, bringing it down hard on a flat rock beside me. It cracked open. I worked my fingers into the crack and split it down the middle.
“Damn,” Olivia said. “Okay.”
I handed her half the coconut. “Keep your energy up,” I said. “If there are plenty of coconuts, then we don’t need to worry about rationing.”
She nodded and scooped out some of the insides. “Do you think the pilot is okay?”
“You’re worried about the pilot?”
“Well, he jumped out over the water. I mean, he’s probably bobbing around out there.”
“He made his choice,” I said darkly. “He didn’t know I had any idea how to land that plane, Olivia. When he jumped out, he was leaving us for dead.”
