We quickly pack my camera case inside the cooler bag because it’s fairly water resistant, and then we make a run for it, jogging down the muddying path through a gentle but steady rain. It’s light enough to see, but not as well as I’d prefer. I spy the lighthouse up ahead, and Lucky says that’s a promising sign that it wasn’t hit by the strike—especially when we jog out of the woods and spot the little dock house with the fabulously weird Rapture Island sign and the fragrant beach roses.

Lightning flashes again.

I jump, startled. Lucky, pulls me toward the dock house, under the modest cover that the door’s overhang provides. “We need to stay here until the lightning passes,” he says, pointing to a metal stick jutting at an angle from the top of the dock house’s utility pole. “Nice, fat lightning rod. Better to let it strike that than us.”

“Yes, please,” I say as the rain comes down harder.

He pulls me closer and looks behind us. “In fact, maybe we should go inside.”

“Is that legal?”

“Do you see a sign, Miss Sign Lady?”

I … do not. The island will probably curse us, but what do I care? I’m already cursed.

The windows are dark, and the door’s barred, but it’s just a latch on the outside—no lock. I lift it, and the door pushes open easily. No light switch inside, but the utility light shines through the window in a slant, and it’s enough illumination to see one big, empty room. Wood floors. Wood ceiling. Wood walls with a few shelves and a built-in desk that looks as if it was once a ticket-window, maybe for a ferry that ran here at one time or another. A dinosaur landline telephone sits there, the rotary kind with a dial, but it’s not even plugged in; its cord is wrapped around it like a noose, and the panel where it fits into the wall is missing. The only other things in the small room are a wooden chair, a few old manuals, some mooring rope, and a multipack of lightbulbs—presumably for the utility light outside.

Most important: It’s dry, and there’s no lightning.

All the winning.

“Hey, sort of reminds me of the North Star,” I say.

He makes an amused noise. “Sort of does … only, there are four walls and no gnarly tree growing through the roof.”

“True. More like North Star’s luxury annex, then.”

“And look at us, breaking and entering it,” Lucky says, pushing wet hair that’s gone wildly curly out of his eyes as he throws our cooler on the floor to keep the door propped open.

“Oh dear … What will people say?”

“There go those darn vandals again, being wicked.”

“Better call the cops.”