Trouble in Paradise (18 page)

“I think this is the path up,” Jack said as he came to a stop.

“You don’t know?”

“Everything looks different in the dark. I’m pretty sure it’s this path.”

We started up and had gone only a few feet when Jack tripped and fell. I rushed forward to see if he was okay but stopped dead in my tracks when I realized what he had tripped over. It was a rubber raft, pulled to the side but still protruding onto the footpath.

Jack looked up at me. Even in the dim light I could see the look of fear in his eyes. We both knew this could mean only one thing.

“Is there only one raft?” I asked, breaking the silence.

He got to his feet. “I don’t see any others.”

“That means there aren’t any more than four.”

“There are three other rafts?” Jack asked.

“No, not rafts, people. This raft wouldn’t hold more than four people. There can’t be more than four of them who came ashore in this raft.”

“That makes sense. Four came ashore. I’m going to make sure that none leave the shore.”

Jack pulled something out of his pocket and I saw a glint of light—he was holding his knife. He plunged it into the raft and it started deflating with a loud hissing—way too loud! How far would the sound travel? He plunged the knife into the raft again and again, and with each thrust, the noise was less. The entire raft collapsed into a flat, black shadow on the ground.

Jack rolled it into a thick bundle and lifted it. “I’m going to toss it into the woods so they’ll waste time looking for it.”

“Wait!” I said, grabbing him by the arm. “
We’re
wasting time. We have to go and get help.”

“The hotel is at least thirty minutes from here no matter how fast you run. What if we don’t have thirty minutes? What if they’re coming back right now? Why would they wait around? They’d get in and out.”

That thought sent a shudder up my spine because it made perfect sense. They could be coming back down right now.

“Let’s get off the path,” Jack said.

I followed him into the thick brush. As we pushed our way through some bushes, the thorns dug into my legs. Jack threw the corpse of the raft underneath a bush. It was practically invisible even though I was looking right at it.

“We’ll go up to the house,” Jack said.

“I think one of us should go to the hotel right away and—”

“The fastest, most direct way to the hotel is right up this path. We’ll pass by and have a look so we know more, and then we’ll make a decision.”

I was pretty sure I knew what decision was right, but I wasn’t going to argue with Jack. That was useless and would just waste whatever time we had. He went back
down to the path and I followed right behind, almost tripping over him.

He stopped. “I want you to hang back—at least fifty feet.”

“I think we should stay together.”

“And I don’t think we should. If they’ve left somebody on the path as a sentry, we wouldn’t want him to get us both. Better if it’s only one—that way the other can still go for help.”

“Okay … sure … that makes sense,” I agreed. There was also something else that made sense, but I didn’t really like where the logic led. “If one of us should hang back, it should be you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. If somebody stops me, they’ll be less worried because I’m just a kid. Maybe I can bluff my way out of it. Besides, if I get caught, I’m going to need somebody to rescue me, and you’re the one with the gun.”

I almost hoped Jack would argue and insist on going first. He didn’t.

“Okay, you lead. Her house is straight ahead about two hundred feet. There’s a stand of bush at the end of the trail. Stop right there and wait for me. And if you see something, yell … if you can.”

“Believe me, if I stumble into somebody, I’m going to yell so loud that they’ll be able to hear me at the hotel.”

I started up the path. I held the flashlight but I no longer had any desire to turn it on. The dark was my best defence. I felt the flashlight’s weight, wondering what would happen if I brought it down on the side of somebody’s head. It had a good heft to it. It could certainly dent a skull. I felt a surge of confidence as I wielded it like a club. Anybody who got in my way would get a good one right in the head. They’d think I was unarmed, and then
smack
—which made me feel better, until I realized that the people at the end of the path would be armed with Lugers and rifles. Somehow using a flashlight as a weapon wasn’t so confidence inspiring any more.

I came to the top of the path and ducked behind the bushes. Louise’s house was a short ways off, sitting on its own. The nearest neighbour wasn’t within sight or sound … well, within the sound of a gunshot but not close enough to hear a muffled scream or a door being bashed in. I looked at the front door. It seemed to be intact. The blackout curtains were down, although I could see a thin line of light at the side of one window. It all seemed so peaceful. Maybe nothing was wrong and they were just sitting inside playing cards or a board game. But what about the rubber raft? Maybe it belonged to somebody on the island—boy, would we be in trouble if we’d destroyed some innocent person’s raft.

I looked back down the path and beyond—I could see, and hear, the ocean. I knew that this side of the island was
protected by a set of reefs and that I was hearing waves hitting against the rocks. I caught sight of movement and made out Jack’s silhouette closing in on me—I
hoped
it was Jack’s silhouette.

“Jack!” I hissed.

He reacted instantly and dropped right beside me.

“Do you see anything?”

“Nothing unusual.”

“We have to get a closer look.”

Jack started to get up. I grabbed his shirt and kept him from rising.

“Unless you’re going to knock on the front door, what do you expect to see?”

“I don’t know. If we got closer, maybe I could listen at the window or try to peek in, or maybe I could go in through the door at the back that leads into the basement.”

“You’re not going into the house!” I snapped. “Look, how about if I take off and get help, and you stay here and watch, and if you need to, well, do whatever you have to.”

Jack nodded. “Okay.”

He’d agreed too easily. That made me nervous.

“Jack, you have to promise you’re not going to go into the house, that you’re not even going to go
up
to the house. Promise?”

He didn’t answer.

“Look, unless you promise, I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

“Like you could stop me if I wanted to go in there,” he snorted.

“Maybe I couldn’t, but I’d try. You really want to get in a wrestling match here in the dark, outside this house, right now?”

“George, just go and get—”

He stopped in mid-sentence. A light had appeared in the window overlooking the veranda. It was a red light, and it flashed on and then off and on and—

“It’s Morse code,” Jack said.

“I figured that,” I said. “But do you know what it’s saying?”

“I studied it in Boy Scouts … you did, too. There are two dashes and two dots … and another dot … and dot, dot … and I think that’s a dash.”

“Yeah, I saw that, but what does it mean?” I asked. “Look, it’s repeating the same pattern.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Two dashes and a couple of dots … that’s the letter … um …”

“Z,” I said.

“Yeah, right, and then the one dot is
e
.”

“Okay, z-e and then two more dots. That’s an
i
.”

“And the final dash, I know that’s a t. So they’re spelling ‘
z-e-i-t
.’”

“‘Z-e-i-t’?” I questioned. “That’s not even a word. Maybe we got one of the letters wrong, or we have them in the wrong order.”

“Or you’re thinking the wrong language.
Zeit
is German for time.”

If there was a shred of doubt about what was going on, it had been destroyed.

“But why would they want to know the time?” I asked. “Don’t they have a watch or—?”

I spun around to look out at the ocean. There, faint but unmistakable, were little dot-and-dash answers coming from a boat, telling them not the current time, but the time of the pickup.

“Do you see them?” I asked Jack.

“I see them. I’m trying to read them.”

The light was faint and far away, and the dots and dashes sort of blurred together. I stared and then they stopped completely. They couldn’t risk sending a long message— somebody on shore might detect them.

“I think they used the code for three and zero, in numerals,” Jack said.

“Thirty. Does that mean they’re leaving in thirty minutes for the pickup? Or that they’ll be at the rendezvous spot in thirty minutes or—”

“I only saw the last part of the message, and they might have used any number before the thirty—which could
be twelve-thirty or two-thirty in the morning. But that wouldn’t make any sense. Why would they wait that long?”

“Maybe the tide is low and they can’t get over the reefs until the middle of the night. If that’s the case, then we have time to get help,” I said.

“Is the tide low?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Because if they were saying thirty minutes, then there’s no time,” Jack said. “I need you to stay here. I can’t do it by myself. We need to work together.”

I was afraid of that—and almost as afraid of the next possibility: that the two of us together
couldn’t
do it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JACK CAME BACK
up the path.

“Did you do it?” I asked.

“It’s done. Let’s go.”

We travelled through the underbrush, circling the house so we could come at it from the back. While Jack had been down below on the path, I’d been watching the front of the house like my life depended on it. Which I guess it did. There had been no more signals, no more anything. The house sat in darkness, except for the little hints of light around the edges of the screens, and no sound came from within. Only the croaking of the tree frogs and the rumble of the ocean broke the silence. I often found the sound of the waves very calm and restful. Tonight it was unnerving, knowing the ocean was so close and what was lurking out there, but not knowing what role it was eventually going to play in the night’s adventures.

We arrived at the very back of the house. It was completely dark—not even a sliver of light came from behind the blackout screens.

“Do you see the door?” Jack asked.

“I can’t see anything. Are you sure there’s even a door there?”

“I know it’s there. Louise uses it when she sneaks out at night to meet me.”

I looked at Jack and he smiled.

“After Mom and Dad have gone to bed and her guardian’s asleep, we meet sometimes. I wait for her right by the door.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“It’s not like we meet all the time,” he said. “It was five or six times.”

Five
or
six?

“Okay, six times.”

“It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d lose count of.”

Jack led the way out of the underbrush and across a short open space. If anybody was looking out one of those darkened windows, we’d be seen. We pressed close to the house and I could now see the door. Jack took the handle and—

“It’s locked,” he hissed.

“Move,” I said.

I reached into my pocket. There—as always—was my pick. It had almost become my good luck charm.

I held on to the handle with one hand and inserted the pick into the lock.

“Do you need light?” Jack whispered.

“Nope.”

What I wanted to say—but didn’t want to risk making noise or wasting time—was that you didn’t use your eyes to pick a lock. It was all in your fingertips. In some ways it was actually easier to pick a lock in the dark. That was why Ray had told me to close my eyes if I was having trouble.

There was a click—it was unlocked. I turned the handle and swung the door open.

Jack stepped forward. He was holding the pistol. “Follow … use the railing … there are four steps down.”

How would he know that? I thought Louise came out the door, so when did he ever go through it?

I held on to the railing and eased down, feeling each step with my toe before committing my foot.

“Close the door,” Jack whispered.

I knew it was the right thing to do, but it meant closing off our escape route. Reluctantly I reached back and pushed the door until it silently kissed shut, sealing us in. Our plan was for Jack to go up the stairway to the main floor door and listen, maybe peek through the keyhole. If we could find out for sure if there were four of them, we’d at least know what we were facing.

“Stay here,” Jack said.

I didn’t need to be told twice. He started forward—a shadow silently moving in the darkness—and then he fell with a muffled thud. He got up and—

“George,” he hissed.

Slowly I moved toward him and froze as a flashlight beam came on and— It was aimed at what Jack had tripped over. It was a woman, her eyes wide open and wild, all tied up and with a gag in her mouth and a bright, blood-red gash on her head! I recognized her. It was Louise’s guardian, Mrs. Farrow!

The woman made a muffled sound through her gag as though she was trying to talk. Jack put a finger up to his lips to silence her. He handed me the flashlight, and I made sure the beam stayed down and close to her face but didn’t shine directly into her eyes. Jack undid her gag.

“They have—”

Jack put his hand over her mouth. “Quietly,” he whispered.

She nodded her head and he moved his hand. “They have—”

Again she was too loud and again he silenced her. “We know they have Louise,” Jack whispered. “And they’re still here … right above our heads. You have to be quiet. Do you understand?”

She nodded and he removed his hand.

She took a deep breath. “Thank goodness you’re here, Jack. I thought if anybody would come and find me here it would be you!”

“Me?”

“Who else would be sneaking in to see Louise?”

“You know about that?” he gasped.

“I know lots of things, but that’s not important. You have to go and get help.”

“There isn’t time,” Jack said. “We think they’re going to leave soon. How many of them are there?”