J.M.J.

Author's note: Thanks for reading! Thank you especially to everyone leaving reviews! Next chapter will be August 13. God bless!

August 11 – Friday

By Friday, Phil was completely well, other than a few lingering minor symptoms. Tony was still feeling pretty bad, but he thought he was getting better. The fever, at least, was gone. So far, none of the other boys had caught the cold, but that was where the good news ended. The mysterious girl's fever had gotten worse after Biff and Joe had brought her back, and she had spent all of Thursday in a feverish stupor. Friday morning, she seemed no better.

After lunch, Joe and Chet were doing the dishes while Frank was sitting nearby. Biff and Phil had gone down to the beach to catch some fish for supper. Tony was in the cabin, but given how resolute the girl seemed to be against going inside, the boys thought it best not to carry her in without her permission. She was still outside on the sandy ground.

The girl sighed in her sleep, and the boys glanced toward her. However, she wasn't showing any sign of waking up, and the boys went back to their work.

"I don't get it," Chet said. "Phil's fine, and Tony looks like he's going to be okay, and none of the rest of us got it, so why does she seem so sick?"

"If it's something we brought with us, then we probably have some level of immunity to it," Joe replied with a shrug. "She wouldn't, since she's been isolated on this island for who knows how long."

"Except we couldn't have brought it with us," Frank replied. "We've been here too long. It's been seven weeks already. There's hardly anything that has that long an incubation period. Besides, if she had gotten it from Phil or Tony, she wouldn't be sick at the same time as them. She'd be sick a month from now."

"Then where did it come from?" Joe asked. "If it's some kind of tropical thing, she should have had better immunity than any of us."

"Maybe, maybe not." Frank paused, as another thought occurred to him. It brought up more questions than it answered, but it would be an answer to this puzzle. If it was true, it was alarming, and Frank didn't want to panic anybody without more than a simple suspicion.

He noticed Joe looking at him. He could tell by his brother's intent expression that he had already picked up the fact that Frank wasn't saying everything he guessed. Joe didn't ask about it, though. Not now, anyway. Even if they were still getting on one another's nerves lately, they could still act as a team, and Joe could see that Frank didn't want to mention it yet. Moreover, he was willing to trust that Frank had a good reason for it.

The dishes were finished a few minutes later—each meal didn't use very many. Chet stood up to take them into the cabin, as they had decided the day before that their quarantine attempts were both unnecessary and too much of an inconvenience. Joe turned a questioning glance on his brother, but he didn't say anything, letting Frank decide whether he wanted to say anything or not.

"It's just a hunch," Frank began and then stopped again.

"Okay," Joe replied, waiting for the rest of the explanation.

Frank shook his head. "It doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm probably wrong. The only problem is that I can't think of any other explanation for how a virus would have gotten here."

"You think someone else has been here?" Joe asked.

"Like I said, it doesn't make a lot of sense," Frank replied. "If anyone had been here, we would have seen them."

"Not necessarily," Joe countered. "We can't see the shore in three directions from here. If someone didn't want to be seen and they had a little luck, they could have avoided it."

"But we would have heard their motor."

"Maybe not. If the wind was just right or if they went to the farthest end of the island, we might not have heard them. And if they didn't want to be seen, they might have used a small boat without a motor to land."

Frank made a skeptical face. "Nobody knows we're on this island. Who did they not want to see them so badly?"

"Her, maybe." Joe nodded toward the sleeping girl. "Or…There is someone who might suspect we're here, and they would probably not want us to see them."

Frank let out a long breath. "You mean, the guys who tried to kill us?"

Joe nodded. "They might have remembered this island and come back to check whether they needed to finish the job."

"Then why didn't they?"

"Who knows?"

"That sounds like a stretch."

"No more of a stretch than that there was anyone on the island in the first place."

Frank frowned as he considered the problem. "We don't have any proof that this is what happened," he said finally. "The other guys take us too seriously when we're just guessing about a thing like this, so I don't think we should say anything yet. But I do think we should look around and see if we can find any signs of anyone landing on the island. We also need to make absolutely sure no one is wandering off by themselves."

"Biff's snake is coming in handy there," Joe replied. "Whoever came is probably gone by now, though. It must have been two weeks ago that they would have been here."

"They could come back," Frank pointed out. "That's another thing, though. Phil and Tony and the girl would have had to come in contact with them to catch this virus from them. The girl might not be able to tell us about it, but Phil and Tony would realize."

"It could be spread on surfaces. They could have come in the cabin while we were all out and snooped around."

Frank nodded slowly. "That could be. It's hot and damp in there, too—a perfect breeding ground for viruses. Of course, that doesn't explain the girl, but she could have come in contact with them or something they touched somewhere else on the island."

"So how do we take a look around without the other guys getting suspicious?" Joe asked. "It's probably going to take several full days."

"True." Frank frowned thoughtfully. "We'll have to figure out something."

HBNDHBNDHB

It would have been impossible not to be in a much better mood, now that Phil was feeling so much better. Even fishing, which had been such a constant activity in the last couple of months, was fun for a change. Biff also seemed more relaxed than he had of late, although Phil realized that his tenseness might have had something to do with everyone else being in such bad moods.

"You'd think on a deserted island, you'd at least not have to worry about getting colds," Biff was saying. "Although I'm really glad it wasn't anything worse. As long as we can avoid any tropical diseases, I'm good with that."

"Honestly, once the fever part of it was over, it wasn't the worst cold I've ever had." Phil paused to cough several times.

"Uh-huh, sure," Biff replied. "Hey, cough the other direction. I don't want to get this thing!"

"As I was saying," Phil resumed, "it was mostly just boring. I did get to do quite a bit of reading, though. It's kind of nice to have some new things to think about."

"Were any of Eli's books any good?" Biff asked.

Phil shrugged. "The Westerns were just kind of average."

"Well, you like reading books about computer programming, so I'm not sure I trust your opinion on books, anyway."

"Oh, come on. Computer programming is cool. It's about the closest to magic you can get."

"Mm-hmm. It has to be magic to have a bunch of zeros and ones be able to make computers do all the things they can do." Biff grimaced. "You know, I told that computer programming teacher that I'd never use anything from that class, and he said I would, but now here I am on this island with no electricity, let alone electronics. To think, I wasted all that misery. You didn't think it was miserable, though. Do you ever miss it?"

Phil paused thoughtfully. "Yes and no. It's kind of nice to have the chance to think about things without a lot of distractions. You actually have time to figure out what you think about things, and why. Of course, if you don't have all the information you need, there's no way to get it."

"It's not all bad," Biff agreed. "I hope we get to go home soon, but in the meantime, there's worse places we could be stuck."

HBNDHBNDHB

Fenton paused in the doorway of his home office, watching the scene within with astonishment. Iola was standing in front of his file cabinet, doggedly attempting to pick the lock with a bobby pin. He watched her for a couple of minutes until he was sure she had had no luck in breaking into anything. Then he cleared his throat.

Iola jumped and spun around, her eyes wide in panic. "Uh, Mr. Hardy," she stammered, but she didn't manage to make any excuses.

"What are you doing?" Fenton asked.

Iola bit her lip. "I wasn't doing anything wrong, exactly."

Fenton folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Just tell me what you were doing."

"I was…" Iola paused and took in a deep breath. "I was trying to look in your files to find out about that case you were working on. You know, when all this started."

"Why?"

Iola shifted and looked at the floor. "Nancy told me that there was a theory that maybe the boys' disappearance was tied into that."

"But we know who was behind it," Fenton reminded her.

"I know, and I know we have a reasonable motive, but what if there was some connection?" Iola asked. She sighed. "I know. It's a long shot. I just want to help somehow. All the better leads are already getting investigated by someone else."

Fenton watched her face for a few seconds. She still had that guilty look, like a kid who'd gotten her hand caught in the cookie jar, but she also looked determined. She wasn't going to give this up.

"Let's sit down and talk about this," he suggested.

Iola sat stiffly in one of the chairs, being careful to stay on the edge and not settle back into it. She was nervous, Fenton thought, but that was just as well. She needed to understand just what she had been doing.

"How did you get in here?" Fenton asked.

Iola shrugged slightly. "I just came in. The door wasn't locked."

"I don't appreciate you coming in this office, whether the door was locked or not, and I especially don't appreciate you trying to break into my files. Do you have any idea what you could have done?"

"I wasn't going to steal anything or even look at anything that didn't have to do with that one case."

"No, I didn't think you were. But if you would have found anything and acted on it, you would have been putting yourself and a lot of other people in danger, as well as jeopardizing the entire investigation."

"I wouldn't have done anything like that."

"If you would have done anything at all, you would have been doing exactly that," Fenton insisted. "You should have talked to me first."

"Would have you let me do anything?"

"No," Fenton admitted bluntly, "but you should have asked."

"It wouldn't have done me any good."

"That's where you're wrong. If you would have asked and you would have listened when I told you no, then the next time you came to me, I'd know I could trust you."

A flicker of doubt crossed Iola's face. "What do you mean?"

"I don't have anything that you can do right now," Fenton explained, "but I might in the future. However, I can't let someone try to help me if they've gone behind my back and wouldn't listen to what I told them."

Iola looked down at her hands. "I'm sorry. Really. I just want to do something, and you wouldn't let me do very much, would you? You know that I don't believe the boys are really dead. If I'm right, we can't waste any time. Whatever they're going through must be terrible."

Fenton sighed and settled back in his chair, hoping that if he took a more relaxed position, Iola would begin to relax as well. "There's no reason to believe that. It's only making it harder on yourself to keep denying it."

"If…If the boys really are dead, I'll have to accept it sooner or later," Iola admitted, still not making eye contact. "Why can't it be later, when we know for sure?"

"Two things. It's hurting two things. First, we're never going to be more sure than we are now. We have a dying declaration from a man who said that he killed them. The Hawaiian police and the FBI have rounded up several other men that they already have evidence that they were the ones who abducted the boys. We have motive for the murder; the suspects have killed others. I don't want it to be true, either, but we have the evidence. There is hardly any more possible evidence that we can find. So how long will it be before you have to simply admit it to yourself? A year? Two years? Ten years? And in all that time, instead of letting that wound heal, you'll only be picking at it and making it worse. The other thing it's hurting is that you say you want to help. You want evidence. You want the truth. You can't get to the truth while you're simultaneously denying the truth."

"But I thought detectives weren't supposed to jump to conclusions."

"It's not jumping to conclusions to believe what all the evidence points toward."

"But if there's even the smallest chance, how can you leave the boys in a situation like this? If it turns out I'm right, won't you regret not even considering it sooner."

"If I knew without any doubt that they were alive, there's nothing different that I could do. We have the leads that we have. Wishing won't get us any more. If the boys were still alive, we would find them. So there's no point in trying to convince me that I'm not doing everything I can. I don't want to hear it again."

"I'm sorry. It' s just that we don't know for sure," Iola insisted.

"We'll never know for certain. I wish it wasn't that way. I wish we could have gotten a more complete confession from the men who actually killed them." Fenton paused.

"That's just it," Iola jumped in. "It was such an unclear confession. That guy could have been lying or delirious…"

"It's not unheard of but it's uncommon for a dying confession to be a lie," Fenton told her. "It's an innate part of human nature to want to clear your conscience when you know you're dying. Besides that, it doesn't make sense for him to confess to committing a crime he hadn't. If he was trying to protect the real killer, maybe, but I don't think that possibility would be much of a comfort to you. There's nothing else he could have gained from it. As for him being delirious, no. He wasn't delirious. He was in shock, no doubt, but that wouldn't have confused him so that he'd be making a plausible confession to a crime he didn't commit. Besides that, we're not just relying on his confession. Some of the men who were captured confirmed that they helped to kidnap the boys and they delivered them to that boat. The boat left the dock and it returned without the boys, so they were out in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go."

Iola's eyes were becoming teary. "You mean, even if they did get away, they probably drowned?"

Fenton nodded. "If they hadn't, they would have contacted us by now."

Iola swallowed hard. "That's still not definite." She looked up at him. "Can't you understand? I have to have something to hold onto."

"I know," Fenton agreed, "but it's hard to hold onto a shadow."