Page 68 of Reckless Girls
“He’s dead, Lux. He’ll deal,” he replies, and then he makes a noise, a kind of grunt as he pulls something out of the bag.
It’s a knife, a truly terrifying blade like something out of a slasher movie. It’s curved with a jagged edge, the handle made of something that looks like bone, and when it hits the ground just a few feet in front of me, I fight the urge to kick it away.
But then he pulls out something else.
“His passport?” I ask, recognizing the small navy folder.
“No,” he says, flipping through it, then rising to his feet. “Yours.”
I blink, my skin suddenly cold despite the heat.
“What?”
“Yours,” Jake says, opening the cover and slapping it against his palm. “He must’ve taken it when he broke the radios.”
It had never occurred to me to check my things when we discovered the broken radios—it seemed so obvious that Robbie had come aboard for one reason and one reason only. Now I’m realizing that I haven’t opened my purse, which I’d shoved under a cabinet on theSusannah, since we got here. All it held was my cell phone, my passport, and some cash—not exactly things I’d needed the past two weeks. I hadn’t even opened it up when I’d brought it on board theAzure Sky,just tucked it away underneath my berth mattress for safekeeping.
“Why?” I ask now, folding my arms tightly around me. “Why would he have taken just mine?”
Jake shrugs. “You said you had a weird moment with him. Maybe he wanted to punish you? Would’ve made sailing back into Hawaii a real pain, let me tell you that.”
Maybe. Or maybe…
I look again at that knife, thinking of Robbie out here in the jungle with it.
The knife, and my picture.
Waiting.
Plotting?
Jake is probably right—it was probably just to fuck with me, just to make my life a little more difficult after our confrontation on the boat, but I think about all the times I felt like someone was watching from the jungle, and I shiver.
Scanning the clearing, it’s obvious Robbie had been staying here. There’s a shirt draped over a branch, the remnants of a little fire, and when I approach it, I notice tiny bones strewn across the ground.
“The fish,” I say, and Jake walks over, kicking at the ash and bones.
“Oh, that stupid fucker.” He sighs. “We told him, didn’t we? Bloody well told him.”
It seems clear now. Robbie was always trying to catch fish, and he finally had, but the wrong ones. It’s easy to imagine him, sick, poisoned, crawling over to that pool, drinking the brackish water in desperation—so weak he’d fallen facedown into the water, unable to lift his head.
An accident. A stupid, shitty accident.
But a reminder of how quickly this place turns on people.
How it eats them up.
“We have to tell someone,” I say, and Jake nods.
“Right, we’ll let the others know we found him.”
“Not just them,” I reply, frowning. “Like. We have to let… I don’t know, the coast guard or something know? People might be looking for him.”
“Lux, no one is looking for this sad bastard, I promise you that. Not our problem.”
The words are so cold that I almost take a step back. “We can’t just leave him here.” Jake sighs, reaching up to rub the back of his neck as he looks around. “Well, I’m not carrying him back to our beach, are you?”
“Don’t be a dick,” I snap, and he holds both hands out, walking toward me.
