"Take care, lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe."

~Peter Pan, J. Barry.

How did I get here? How the hell? Pan lef-

FUCK.

Lindsay was broken out of her mental solo number by a bullet grazing a tree to her left.

Her tune quickly changed to a song with the lyrics vaguely translated as:

"FUUUUUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUCK."

She knew it was pointless looking backwards; she heard their shouts and she definitely heard their shots, which was enough for her to continue booking it forward at top speed. And while she was no candy-ass fitness bitch skipping off to the gym each week with a towel and water bottle, she was still able to outrun them, if only for now.

If she could only hold out till night, she thought, exasperated, where she could lose them near the docks. Then she would be home-free to find out what the hell was going on.

And just as in every popular chase scene that begins a movie slash fictional work, this thought was the last one in her head before she tripped.

...

Time for a soprano solo!

She screamed as a rough hand grabbed her ankle.

Shit fuck. Shit shitty fuck. I'm dead.

I'm dead.

"Dad, I swear to sweet Jesus," Lindsay cut in, her mouth drawn in a line tighter than a bowstring, "You're doing a good job of making it seem like this job is no big deal when it is Rook. Fucking. Island."

Her father instantly began waving his hands as he often did when pleading to her mother not to go shopping; Lindsay found her eyes rolling into the back of her head, a mix of annoyance and pity churning in her stomach. It wasn't the fact that her father was asking something outrageous of her, it was the simple fucking fact of him acting like it was a field trip that she would learn from, where instead of drug-addled assholes there would be responsible adults who teach you how to make fire and shit.

"Lins, I need you for this, please," and now he was begging, she thought, revulsion coursing through her throat, "and I can't ask anyone else. I don't trust them as much as I do you, and if I just show up there by myself I'll be fucked, so fucked."

Sighing, she pushed herself off the stool that sat up against the island in the kitchen. "How much will it get us?" she asked skeptically, walking over to look him square in the eye.

Her dad's worried face softened with hope. "Enough to get us by for another six months, I'm guessing. And that's a lot, Lins, a lot. And you'll be able to afford driving up to Stace's every weekend, too."

"You'll front the gas?" Lindsay didn't believe this for a second.

Her father smiled. "Sure."

It was the fact that he lied that sold her. This must be really, really big. She nodded yes.

And now she stood, perched on the side of a shit ship, drinking a grape Kool-Aid Jammer like it was the best alcohol a rich kid could buy (and frankly, in her own opinion, Jammers would always be better than alcohol anyways) and watching her father's "friends" jump around trying to act like sailor boys. She wondered how her father managed to run such a covert business across the ocean with this bunch of idiots driving the goods around, but her guess was as good as anyone's; as far as she knew, they had never had a problem with any of their customers or the dreaded whoever-it-was-that-caught-drug-traffickers-here-anyway (Police? Navy? Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy?)

A key plot point was presented here, by the way. As far as she knew.

But anyways. Back to her story.

Lindsay finished off the last purple droplet by squishing the plastic bottle as flat as it could go, then threw it overboard. She hoped it killed a dolphin or something.

She heard heavy boots thumping in her direction, so she turned away from the water and faced the man who was walking toward her. His name happened to be Tim.

Tim, Linsday would like you to know, was in the same idiot category as the rest of them. But somewhere in her heart, she had developed a softer spot for him; while many of the men around her were stupid by nature, Tim at least tried to get with the times every now and then. He often hung around her house, being the only member of her dad's team that was even remotely close to her age (four year gap, she realized then, and it seemed a lot larger than it really was). Plus he listened to a few good bands, too. At least she hoped he did after she lent him that shitton of CD's. Her thoughts digress.

"Be there in an hour or two tops, we're hoping, miss," Tim said, his slick blonde hair pressed up against his face, matted like dog fur in the rain. Unlike most girls her age who thought it gross, Lindsay thought most men (even Tim, she admitted) looked better sweaty. It made them seem tougher than they really were.

"That's not too bad," she replied, walking over to get a better look at what might be his slightly-forming abs, which were more or less vacuum-packed underneath a bright white T-shirt. After a second or two of blatant staring (that is, with no fear of being caught), she had a thought that vaguely said: ...Nope. I can't see past the time he was high and tried to kiss my pet turtle, met his eyes, and smiled. Platonically.

This would be a good time to step back and take a good look at Lindsay herself, possibly through what Tim's eyes as they raked up and down her frame.

She had C-cup boobs. This was the first thing Tim looked at, and it will not be changed for the purpose of being polite.

Her hair was a similar blonde to his, only hers was obviously the product of a carefully executed dye-job that her best friend gave her once a month. It was piled on top of her head in some fancy girly bun that kept it out of her face, which was currently suffering from a horrible syndrome known as makeup-under-hot-sun-for-too-long-itis. Tim didn't quite notice this, but to her, it was more or less the equivalent of being buttass fugly, which is why (when she noticed his eyes boring into her face for the reader's sake) she began wiping it all off on her sleeve.

"Got a mirror?" she asked him. When he shrugged no, she walked over to the far end of the ship, where her knapsack lay sprawled over some unlabeled boxes.

Tim watched her as she walked away. Her ass was kinda nice, too. Not big enough for a career as a porn-star actress. But still really, really nice.

Upon her return (makeup now fully removed via a washcloth), Tim was now thinking of all possible ways to convince her into the storage room right then and there. And before the reader gets a chance to think that this is going to be one of those stories where the Mary Sue has every man fall in love with her, the authoress asks you to bear in mind that Tim hasn't seen a solid pair of non-taken tits or ass for about two months on this boat. So put that in your cereal and swallow it whole, please and thank you.

Lindsay returned to her spot on the railing. The ship dipped over the waves. She let her head bounce up and down with it like a bobblehead doll.

She would remain this fucking bored for the rest of the ride.

"Why does your dad want you to do this, you think?" Tim asked, swinging his tanned legs over the railing beside her.

Lindsay turned her eyes away from the approaching shore and looked at him, hard. "Because he's too lazy to do it himself?"

Tim shook his head. "Nah, Lins. That wouldn't make sense. He's never skipped on a job like this with us in a long time. I mean, the last time he did was when your mom got hit by that deer in her car or something."

Lindsay remembered that. She had hated deer every day after that, and even took up hunting to gain some twisted sort of revenge. The boys at her school made fun of her for it for the longest time, but eventually, she learned to tune them out. And by tune them out she meant threaten them by bringing a (purposely unloaded) rifle to first period.

Her father had not, however, skipped THAT day at work for her. Her mother was the one to pick her up from school after she was suspended.

She snapped out of her thoughts to meet Tim's worried eyes. "Calm down," she murmured, and grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly. "I've dropped off stuff for dad a million times before. As long as they get what they want, they won't hurt any of us. Dad always said we're too important for them to hurt."

"I THOUGHT YOU SAID WE WERE TOO IMPORTANT FOR THEM TO-"

"I KNOW, TIM, I KNOW!" Lindsay shouted back, huddling behind a box. Gunfire was ripping through the ship no more than four seconds after it touched the sand; they had been expected, they had been ambushed, and she was now praying for the first time in years.

A gap in the shots; she peeked out from behind. She saw what looked like a small crowd on the shore, and-

Holy fuck they were climbing up the boat. Fuck shit. Fuck shitty fuck.

She felt the entire weight of the ship shift towards the island as they clambered up, their shoes scraping against the windows as they tried to gain footing up the steep side. Lindsay shrunk up against the box, hoping that if she pressed hard enough, she would just morph into it and disappear inside.

Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, or more specifically, pray for me because I'm not really sinning at the moment but I might as well be.

She heard the voices of her shipmates being dragged over the railing, one by one, whoops, there went Tim, until finally, she felt something cold press up against the top of her head (pistol, she thought, not a big gun but still), and a voice say:

"C'mon, princess, we ain't got all day."

She raised her hands as she stood up; the man, a tall, dark, unknown if handsome because he wore a kerchief around his face, grabbed onto her hair and shoved her roughly towards the edge of the boat. Before she had a chance to straighten up, he was pulling her over his shoulder and jumpi-

Fuck.

The water was cold.

These people were really rude, Lindsay decided.

She was soaking wet and quite tired of kneeling in the same gritty place in the sand for what seems to have been at least twenty minutes. They could at least have had some dry clothes and coffee at the ready.

Her off-white shirt emblazoned with her second-favorite band's logo (we shall spare you the plugging and just insist that Lindsay has very good taste in music) clung to her in the sticky heat, and she found herself regretting that she had cursed the freezing ocean a few moments before. Her shorts felt okay; made of denim, they really didn't cling to the point where she couldn't run, and if they had, she probably would've taken them off at the first chance she could.
Running, she realized, was a dangerous option, but one she had to be prepared for just in case.

A voice calling from farther down the beach caught her ear; without turning her head to alert the man behind her (who still had that fucking pistol jammed against her crown), she forced her eyes into the far corners of their sockets to try and catch a glimpse.

"The fuck is the daughter?" She heard the yell, covered with a thick accent that made her spine stiffen. She saw the blurry figure of who had shouted it go over to another girl (Miranda, Lindsay realized, the awkward girl who drank way too much rum for her own good and was constantly vomiting on anything in a ten-foot radius. She had been married to one of Lindsey's father's men for a few months and had often snuck on the boat so they could... eugh.) And she realized this was her one chance to form a five-minute plan on how to solve this situation herself.

I'm the daughter, she thought, obviously. Don't know why they need me, but that's not important right now. So if I bolt for it…they're going to follow me, right? If they really do need me. And that'll give a chance for the others to make a clean getaway.

Gambit, her mother's voice whispered to her.

Lindsay almost shook her head to rid the voice entirely.

The sacrifice play was stupid, but it was the only thing she had going for her. Taking a deep breath, she began coughing violently, letting herself bend over and put her face near the sand.

"What's wrong with you?" the man behind her asked, pulling her shoulder roughly; Lindsay coughed harder, mouthing words but nothing coming out. She felt the press of the gun lessen just slightly on the back of her head and-

DUCK

STRATEGIC ELBOW TO GROIN

Time for a soprano solo, motherfuckers! she thought.

He screamed, a glorious, high-pitched, attracting-all-attention-to-her scream. Shit.

She took one look behind as she began running at full speed towards the trees, and watched as a pair of knowing eyes (attached to a face attached to the man whose voice had called for her) met her own. The man smiled.

And then she was gone.