Page 49
FIND THE EYE.
Ben taps the lighthouse symbol drawn beside them. “That isn’t decoration.”
“No,” Keating agrees. “It was drawn deliberately.”
“The eye could mean someone watching us,” Storm says.
“Or a camera,” Ward adds.
Mom shakes her head slowly. “Dad used to call the lantern room at the top of a lighthouse its eye.”
Everyone turns toward her.
“What did you say?” I ask.
She looks at the rough drawing. “James told the girls that when they were young. He said a lighthouse was like a guardian standing at the edge of the sea. Its eye searched the darkness and guided people home.”
A memory brushes against me.
Grandpa standing on the deck of Sea Whisper, one hand wrapped around the railing while the other points toward a beam sweeping across the water.
Never stare only at the light, little captain. Look at what the light reveals.
My heart begins to beat faster.
“Blackwater has a lighthouse,” I say.
Keating nods. “It had one. The Coast Guard decommissioned it decades ago.”
“But the tower is still there,” Ben says.
“Yes.”
Ward studies the photograph showing the lighthouse symbol. “Was the lantern room removed?”
“I don’t know.” Keating reaches for his phone. “But I can find out.”
He makes two calls. The first sends someone searching through Coast Guard property records. The second goes to a federal agent whose name I don’t recognize.
That call reminds me that this is no longer Grandpa’s mystery for our family to solve alone.
The Coast Guard is involved.
The sheriff’s department is protecting the homes.
Federal agents are tracing Pacific Beacon Recovery and Simon Vail.
For the first time since the pirates boarded Sea Whisper, it feels as though the danger is being pulled into the light.
But I can’t forget that someone has been sleeping near Blackwater.
Someone with fuel, a radio and photographs of my family.
Someone who may have left before the authorities arrived.
Ben leans toward me. “You’re thinking too loudly.”
I look up at him. “How can you tell?”
