She hadn’t been able to imagine ever wanting to hide out, needing to hide out, not back then. She was in love; she was happy; she was going to be a marine—a combat marine, not some pretender behind the lines. She’d imagined she and Ty would come back to Dixie, not to hide out from the world but to celebrate. She had imagined they would grow older and it would always be their spot.

She had never come back, not after that first day. And as she’d grown older, the island and those memories had disappeared from her mind.

They were approaching the bay, and Jess could see Dixie Island now, distinguished from the deep-green, featureless shore behind. It was a quarter to eight in the morning, the sun getting higher in the sky, and by the time she maneuvered the boat to the head of the pass, she wouldn’t have much grace before slack water.

“You awake?” she asked Burke, who was leaning on the edge of the captain’s chair where it met the front of the settee. Burke looked alert; he looked ready. Clearly, the sun was having a different impact on him.

“I’m awake,” he said, straightening. “What’s the plan?”

She pointed forward through the windows. Dixie lay dead ahead, though she couldn’t see the pass yet, just a wall of rock and trees.

“We’re going in there,” she said, “and we don’t have time to mess around. I need you up on the bow watching where we’re going. If you see any rocks, you holler, and loud, understand?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“We only get one shot at this. There’s no road over there on the mainland, not close, and the current’s too strong to swim or paddle. We wreck, we’re stuck out here until someone comes out and finds us, and with our luck, it’ll probably be Kirby.”

“So we won’t wreck,” he said, and squared his shoulders, started back toward the door. “C’mon, Lucy,” he said, and as he whistled, the dog sat up, stretched and yawned, and followed him out to the deck.

Jess watched them circle up the side of the wheelhouse to the bow, where they stood among the anchor winch and the tie-up lines, the stay wires leading up to the mast. Lucy peered over the bow, peered down to the water, her ears perked and curious. Burke gripped a stay wire like an old-time pirate, one foot on the anchor winch, his eyes searching the shore.

It would have been a charming picture under any other circumstance.

As it was, Jess didn’t have time to be charmed. They motored toward Dixie, the pass slowly coming into view, just a break in the rocks, impossibly narrow, invisible unless you knew what you were looking for.