CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Allison shaded her eyes with one hand, her face a picture of anxiety as she scanned the water ahead. They should have been back. Why hadn't they come back. Her worries only increased as Ricky slowed his fishing boat as they neared the cay; there was no sign of The Sandpiper.

It had crossed her mind- in hope more than based on hard fact or a gut feeling- that the group might have run into a delay and simply neglected to tell her that they'd be running late, a scenario that definitely had 'typical Charlie' scribbled all over it. But the boat wasn't on the cay, wasn't even within sight of the cay, and they hadn't passed it on their way out. So where the hell was it?

Ricky, a long suffering friend of Charlie and Allison's, had immediately volunteered himself and his boat to head out and take a look, and- not keen on losing any more of her charges, or her recently retrieved wayward nephew- she'd loaded up Justin, Ruby and Toby. They were providing another three pairs of keen, peeled eyes, scouring the water ahead and to the sides. Well, Justin and Ruby were. Toby, meanwhile, was sitting on his backside with his head in one of his bloody handheld games.

A seething wave of anger suddenly overwhelmed Allison, and before she even could process what she was doing, she'd marched down the boat and snatched the game out of her nephew's hands.

"Hey!" the indignant twelve year old protested. He saw the look on Allison's face and immediately scowled. "This isn't my fault. Don't take it out on me."

"No," she snapped. "I will, because it is. If you hadn't been so busy playing juvenile delinquent, and just been where you were supposed to be, none of this would be happening."

"You can't tell me off like that," he bit back, then followed it immediately with his standard response of, "You're not my mum."

Normally Allison would give him some swinging room. He'd had a shocking six months, after all, and wasn't coping well despite what he said, but she had a business partner, six teenagers and a new boat missing, and her patience had run out somewhere back in the marina.

"No," she agreed, "I'm not, but I'm as close you have to one right now. I can see why your mum walked out on you, you ungrateful little shit."

He recoiled, suddenly seeming very small and very young, and Allison instantly regretted what she'd said. Her face fell, and she meekly handed Toby his game back as a consolation prize for her behaviour. He took it without a murmur, the console limp in his grip.

"Toby-"

"I'll take the starboard side," he said in a small voice, and slunk away like a dog avoiding a kick.

Allison palmed her forehead, furious with herself, but her nephew's new serve of emotional trauma would have to be addressed later. At least it would give her time to think about how the hell she could start to fix the damage she'd just done. And they'd made so much progress… She shook her head, banishing the unhelpful chastising and berating at herself running rampant in her head. Later, she scolded. Right now, they had to find the missing kids and Charlie.

Justin was up at the bow, peering through a massive pair of binoculars Allison usually used for bird watching. He was cutting a regular visual path across the water ahead when suddenly-

"Body in the water!"

Allison's heart sank. "Oh no," she breathed. Steadying herself- nerves solid, voice even- she called out to him, "Movement?"

Justin hesitated. "Ah…"

The last shred of hope Allison had been holding onto flickered and died, along with the common sense she'd thought she had in bringing Justin, Ruby and Toby with her, but then-

"Movement!" Justin swung around to look at Allison, only his grin visible thanks to the binoculars still consuming his face, but she shook her head.

"Eyes on, Justin," she said. "Don't lose position."

"Right." He swung around and picked the limply floating body out of the blue. "He's dead ahead."

"Dead ahead," Allison said, relaying the message to Ricky behind the wheel. She couldn't help but wince at Justin's unfortunate choice of phrasing, but the discomfort was shoved to one side as she picked out another word. "'He's'?" she echoed.

"Looks like Charlie."

Relief mixed with just a hint of annoyance coursed through Allison. She was, of course, grateful her friend was in one piece- or seemed to be, at least; fishing him out of the water would be the true test of that- but that didn't stop her wanting to grab him and shake him and demand to know where the kids were and why he'd lost them. And the boat. That bloody, stupid boat. How he'd afforded it in the first place was beyond her, and now it was… Well, hopefully Charlie knew the answers to all of her questions. If it wasn't for Toby; if it wasn't for the boat- She stopped herself. Took some deep breaths. Calm, she told herself firmly. This isn't helping.

They drew level with Charlie's barely floating body, and Allison armed herself with Ricky's gaff, hooking the end through Charlie's collar and hauling his dead weight around to the stern. Ricky left the wheel and came back to help her drag him on board.

Despite Justin's emphatic assurance that he'd spotted movement, as Allison stared down at her friend's still, soaked body, a bit of her doubted the teen. Ricky had two fingers pressed to Charlie's neck, feeling for a pulse, and with a relieved smile he nodded and straightened up.

"He's alive," he said. He winced, nodding at Charlie's head and the nasty wound striking down the side of his skull. Dried blood caked the man's brown dreadlocks. "That looks nasty."

"Mmm." She didn't dare say what she was really thinking: if this was the state of Charlie, and they'd managed to find him, what the hell had happened to the kids?

Charlie stirred. It was a feeble twitching of limbs to begin with that suddenly turned into a lurch to the side as he vomited up an alarming amount of sea water. He stayed like that, just managing to prop himself up, retching, before he collapsed back onto the deck with a groan. One hand probed gingerly at the wound on his head, snapping back like he'd received an electric shock as his fingers grazed the gash.

"What happened?" Allison demanded, crouching down in front of him, searching his face for answers. He had been in the water for god knows how long, how he was still floating and conscious was beyond her; he wasn't in shape for her assault of questions, but there wasn't time to give her friend allowances. "Charlie! What happened? Where are the kids?"

He blinked like he wasn't quite seeing her, then an indecipherable mumble escaped his cracked lips.

"What?" She was one more incomprehensible answer away from shaking him, head wound be damned.

"Pirates," Charlie croaked, then his eyes rolled back in his head as unconsciousness claimed him.

Ricky and Allison exchanged a look over Charlie.

"Did he say pirates?" she asked.

"Yep."

"In these waters?"

Ricky shrugged. Allison didn't know what else to say.

Exhaustion must have won, because the next thing Paulo knew, he was being shaken awake by Li. She pointed somewhere behind him, above his head, and croaked out something that he didn't catch.

"What is it?" he asked, slowly wallowing around in a circle to see what had caught her attention.

"Plane."

His addled brain refused to make sense of it. "Huh?"

"It's a plane, Paulo. Guys?" Li sent a hand skimming across the surface, sending a wave of water over the dozing Amber, Hex and Alex. "Guys, wake up. There's a plane."

Paulo could finally see it, off in the distance and flying a line nowhere near them. It would pass parallel, but close enough to pick their tiny, bobbing figures out of all the water? That seemed like an unlikely possibility. The wreck of The Sandpiper had broken up, most sinking to the ocean floor and the detritus remaining had spread out and been carried by the currents. There was nothing to pull the plane's focus, unless they were specifically looking for the teens. Although…

Alex seemed to have his thoughts running the same line as Paulo's because as one they turned to Amber and said, "The flare!"

She blinked at them, blank for a moment, the sun and salt reeking havoc on her senses, but then realisation lit her face. "The flare!" she cried, and immediately reached for where she'd tucked it into her jacket. Her hand came up empty.

"You have the flare, right?" Hex said. "Right?"

"Does it look like I have it?" she snapped. Her hands patted all over her life jacket and roamed the surrounding water, searching desperately but coming up blank.

The plane was drawing closer. It'd be passing them in a matter of moments and, with it, maybe their only slight chance of rescue.

"It must have floated off," Amber wailed. "I had it just… I had it."

"When?" Alex asked, already scanning the surface of the water immediately around them.

"I don't know. I…"

"It can't have gone far. Spread out," Alex added, already kicking his way out of the circle. "We've got to find it."

The plane was parallel. It made no attempt to change direction towards them. It hadn't spotted them.

Li started a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to draw the attention of the plane, hollering and waving her hands, spinning the water into a frenzy until common sense got the better of her. The risks of such an energy sapping, predator attracting display far out weighed the potential benefits. She instead moved to join the others in their desperate hunt for the flare, but then-

"Got it!" Amber wasted no time, and as Li spun to find the American in the water, the flare shot up into the air, a red streak in the otherwise cloudless blue sky.

As one, the teens turned to track the plane's path, and a collective sob of despair escaped them as one. The plane was as good as gone, and the faint ray of hope that their distress signal would be noticed faded like the flare as the plane's course away from them continued, uninterrupted.

Amber dropped the flare casing into the water, her face saying just how much she regretted setting their only chance off, given how ineffective it had been. Now, if a better opportunity presented itself, they had nothing.

"We'll be fine," Alex said, sensing the already dwindling reeves of morale running dangerously close to the bottom of the barrel. He ushered them all back into the circle. "We're low in the water," he said.

"We're in the water," Li reminded him.

He gave her a tight, 'yes, thank you for that' smile and pressed on. "There might be help closer than we think and we just can't see it. Yet."

Four pairs of eyes roamed the horizon and came up blank.

"They might have seen the flare and are coming to investigate."

It sounded naive and laden with false hope in his own head and he crossed his fingers that hadn't come across in the delivery. Judging by the rather unimpressed looks he got pincered in from Amber and Hex, that hadn't happened. Alex didn't think Li or Paulo were any more convinced, but they at least sensed what he was doing- or trying to do- and went along with it. He gave the pair a weak smile in thanks.

With just the three life jackets between the five of them- and all of them being more the cosmetic variety than the ones you'd really want and could depend on in an actual buoyancy crisis, good one Charlie- they'd taken it in turns to wear them, sharing them about the tight circle as the sun continued to sink lower and the last of the day began to fade. Thankfully, given they had not had a chance to include stinger suits in their evacuation packing, they had not come across any of the painful and potentially lethal jellyfish thus far, and hopefully that would continue. It was well past time for Amber to give up her turn with one of the jackets, but Alex opted instead to remove his and pass it to Paulo, as Li did the same with Hex.

Amber didn't look well, and judging by the expression the others had on their faces, he wasn't the only one to notice the worrying grey sheen her dark face had taken on. Her limbs moved weakly in the water, and if it weren't for the jacket there was no doubt that, despite her strength as a swimmer, she'd have been really having to fight to stay above the surface for any length of time.

Paulo, directly across from her, watched her closely as he secured the jacket around his torso. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Amber wasn't feeling so bad that she didn't have enough in her to deliver a terse, "I'll be fine when I'm out of this stinking water."

"Join the club. We've got life jackets," Hex said, surprisingly in a light, almost joking tone. It made a pleasant change to the scathing digs he'd thrown at Amber at every available opportunity thus far.

Gee. Amber definitely mustn't look good if Hex was being delicate- and she didn't have something snappy to say back.

They slipped back into silence and it continued until Li, once again, started staring past someone's head. This time, though, it was Hex she was looking around, and he didn't even ask what she had spotted. He spun a one-eighty and there, just visible in the distance, was the outline of a boat.

Unlike the plane, it was heading straight for them, and their last reserves of energy were all used up to make sure, as the boat slipped closer and closer, that they wouldn't be missed for the second time.