Page 49 of Here for a Good Time
Leila’s head pops up, and her gaze drifts toward the ocean. “Unless there’s a quicker way for us to get help.” There’s a glimmer of hope in her voice. “Hey, what day is it today?”
“Um—” I press on a random key to turn my laptop screen on. “Friday.”
Leila and Antonio share a wordless look, and he punches the air. “Supply day!” he shouts.
“What?” I ask.
“Supply day,” he says with a new burst of energy. “Every Friday morning, our food suppliers make their delivery from the mainland. They’ll be at the pier in a few hours.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Leila confirms. She sounds like she already has a plan. “When I was a kid, you know what my parents taught me would always be a constant if I ever got lost?”
“What?” Zwe asks.
“The sea,” she says, pointing across at the horizon. “In case I ever got lost in the jungle, they told me to head down to the water, and that they’d meet me there. You can get lost in the jungle, but not on the shore of an island.”
Zwe peers over even though from where we are, we can’t actuallysee the sand. “Won’t we be sitting ducks out in the open?” he asks. “At least here, we can hide.”
“Not if we hide out close to the water until the boat arrives,” Antonio says.
“And they’re not going to know about the supply boat,” Leila points out. “So it’s not like there’ll be a group of them waiting at the pier. My guess is one,maybetwo, and that’s mainly to guard the boattheyarrived in. Assuming they’ve moved their boat to the pier. We just have to take them out before they can alert anyone that there are people approaching.”
Right then, I feel a small drop of water on my forearm. Then another. We all look up. Small, feathery raindrops brush our skin.
“Does the supply boat come even if it’s raining?” Zwe asks. “Leila, weren’t you saying when we first arrived that there’s bad weather on the mainland?”
“Fuck.” Antonio’s whole face scrunches up on the word.
“I forgot,” Leila groans.
“Forgot what?” I ask.
“Storm’s arriving tonight,” Antonio mumbles.
My stomach flips. “A storm? Like with… rain and wind?” Already, I feel like I need to sit down. “Great. If this were a novel, I’d say that it’s a bit in the face to foreshadow gloom and doom with an approaching storm.”
“It wasn’t a problem yesterday because I thought we’d be safe by nighttime,” Leila says. “But now it does put a timer on everything.”
“But it’s okay,” Zwe says. When I meet his eyes, he gives me a nod. AnI know you’re spiraling, but I promise you it’ll be okaynod. “Because by the time it gets here, we’ll have already left on the supply boat.”
“But what if it arrives sooner?” I ask, panic jacking my voice up several octaves. “The storm, I mean. Or what if the supply boat decides not to come because there’s a storm on the way? Or what if the bad guystoldthe supply boat not to come?”
“My grandfather is the only one who talks to the suppliers,” Antonio cuts in. “There’s no record in the computers or anything. He writes it all down in a notebook. Old-fashioned like that.”
“And the supplies always come,” Leila reassures us. “The storm won’t land until the evening. Trust me, it’s part of my job.” When I look at her quizzically, she explains, “I need to know what the weather’s going to be so I can advise guests on which activities they can book. Can’t exactly arrange a parasailing session for the weekend a storm blows in. And some guests get real pissy if, god forbid, their parasailing afternoon gets canceled.”
“Those guests sound like real assholes,” Zwe says.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “But this—” She stretches out an open palm, and a couple of small drops land on her skin. “—is just light rain. It’ll stop in a bit.”
Stretching, Zwe twists his waist to one side, then the other. “Okay, then, all the more reason to hurry back down. Should be a quicker trip since it’s downhill.”
“Everyone ready?” Antonio asks.
I clear my throat. “I… I think we should still try to free everyone first,” I say quickly. I can’t stop worrying about Sandra and Antonio’s grandfather and everyone else. I can’t leave them behind here when we don’t know what this group’s motive is. “Strength in numbers, right? We know where they are, so we’re not going in blind, and we have the two knives from the emergency kits that Leila kept. On the other hand, we don’t know what they’ll do to everyone else if they catch us escaping on the supply boat.Thatmight cause them topanic. This new supply boat plan has too many variables.” I look at Zwe as I say “variables” because if there’s one thing Zwe Aung Win hates, it’s variables.
He chews the inside of his cheeks, running through all the scenarios in his head, and even though I want to reiterate my point, I know that the best thing to do right now is to let him come to the safest, most logical conclusion himself.
“Do you really think they’ll hurt my grandpa?” Antonio asks.
