Mason heard the engines rev and realized quickly that something was wrong. He ducked off the outcrop and back into the forest, hurried up the pass to the entrance rocks, where the waves from Kirby Harwood’s wash were just hitting the shore. The boat itself was just curling out of sight south, tracing the edge of the island on a plane, pounding into the swell. Within thirty seconds, it would be gone.

Mason counted the bodies aboard. Four of them. Too far away to figure out who, but by Mason’s count, there were five working against them—six if you counted the helicopter pilot. That meant at least one man was missing, and the other four were deviating from Jess’s expectations.

Mason didn’t like it.

He worked his way back through the forest to the rocky outcrop where he’d planned to back Jess up with the shotgun. Stood tall and waved the shotgun over his head toward the cliff down the pass, hoping to get Jess’s attention. But nothing moved on the top of the cliff. If Jess was up there, she wasn’t letting him know it.

Damn it, Mason thought. Just what are those boys up to now?

*  *  *

Down the pass, Jess was thinking Kirby Harwood was either crazy or he was dumber than she’d thought.

She was gone from the top of the cliff before the sound of the engines had stopped reverberating against the rock walls around her. Someone aboard Kirby’s pride and joy must have pointed out to him that idling up that long, narrow pass was probably going to end badly. And there was only one other place on the island even remotely worth trying to land.

Now he’d be headed for the little beach on the west side of the island. And judging from the noise of those engines as he’d taken off, he was aiming to get there fast.

Jess slung the carbine over her shoulder and hurried off the back end of the cliff and into the forest, beating her way down the rocky declination toward the isthmus, picking her path more confidently now, knowing the best route. She was thinking they might have to rename this island after her, or Lucy at least, assuming they made it out alive. There couldn’t be too many people who’d spent this much time marooned on these rocks and lived to talk about it.

She peeled off toward the western shore before she’d fully reached the isthmus, found her way through the trees to where the forest gave up and the sheer rock took over. There wasn’t much margin between flora and a twenty-foot drop into the roiling surf; she picked her way carefully along the edge, looking out at the big, rolling swell coming in, breaking over the offshore shoals. She kept looking for Kirby’s boat and not seeing it.