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AGATHA
“There are three possibilities.” Hawk ticked them off on his fingers. “One, someone took Chastity’s phone. Two, she ran off to hide and stowed away in a vehicle. Three…” I knew what he was going to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. “Three, an unknown subject deliberately took her off the island.”
From what I’d seen of Chas, she was careful. She never left her phone lying around. And if she made a habit of losing it, you could be sure Clarice would have complained long and loud. Yes, there was a chance a thief could have stolen it, but if that had happened, Chas would have gone straight to her mom, probably in tears.
“I don’t think someone took the phone.”
“Fuck.”
“Maybe we should call the FBI?”
Hawk glanced at his watch. “There are only three minutes before the ferry leaves.”
We looked at each other for a beat.
I shoved my laptop into the backpack I used as a purse.
And then we ran.
We ran as far as the parking lot, where we found Hawk’s truck blocked in by a limousine with white ribbons decorating the hood. Why did Odette need a wedding car, you ask? When she was getting married in the hotel? Because she wanted to have photos taken by the lighthouse, and she didn’t want to walk there.
Even though he’d been in the Army and then the CIA, Hawk cursed like a sailor. There was no driver in sight. In fact, the whole parking lot was deserted, probably because Buckley had summoned the staff inside to join the search for Chas.
Then I heard an engine. Not a car, but a bike, and the young guy from the café pulled up beside us.
“Where is everyone? Did the dragon lady make them trim the grass with scissors?” He gave me a knowing look. “I heard stories.”
“No, there’s—”
“Can we borrow your bike, buddy?” Hawk asked. “There’s an urgent issue we need to deal with.”
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
Wait, wait, wait…we?
Hawk took the guy’s helmet and squashed it onto my head. “Let’s go.”
“On that thing? Are you crazy?”
“That’s what the rumours say.” He swung a leg over the seat. “They’re all true.”
“I’ve… Uh, I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”
“Just hold on, and don’t forget to breathe. Two minutes, babe.”
Was I really doing this? I didn’t have a choice, did I? Someone needed to track Chas’s phone in real time, and Hawk couldn’t do that and watch the road. What it came down to was trust. Did I trust Hawk to keep me safe?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
I climbed onto the seat behind him and closed my eyes.
We roared off, and did people honestly do this for fun? The whole bike tilted alarmingly as we zoomed around a corner, and I let out a squeak that Hawk thankfully couldn’t hear over the sound of the rushing wind. How far away was Chastity? If she’d taken the ferry that left before this one, then based on an average speed of, say, forty miles per hour, she could be twenty miles away by now. Okay, that helped, distracting myself with math problems to take my mind off imminent death. If we travelled at twice the speed of our quarry, we could catch her in thirty minutes, no, more like forty because we needed to allow time for the ferry crossing. Although if we ended up on a rural freeway or the interstate, then we’d have to travel at a hundred and fifty miles per hour, and did the bike even go that fast? I quickly came to the conclusion that we were going to either run out of gas or take a one-way trip to the morgue.
Hawk had been alarmingly relaxed until that point, but when I felt him tense, I opened my eyes again.
Oh, no, no, no.
