Us, as in everyone on the Island, or as in Julian and Daniel? I thought of the pail of paper scraps, so arduously rescued. Make it quick, she’d said. Was it a family exodus? I felt that possibility like an unfamiliar hollow in my chest, but no way was I letting this woman see it mattered more to me than I’d understood myself.

Seemed like we didn’t have much to say to each other after that. In the lengthening silence, we both came alert to a distant hum.

Boat motor. Approaching with speed.

“Get the light!” Hannah was up and at the cabin door before I saw her move.

“Why?” I switched off the bedside lamp, and the cabin went dark. “What is it?”

“Quiet!”

A faint clink of the blinds out in the bookstore sent me stumbling after her. Predawn glow between lifted slats at the nearest window outlined her taut shape. She’d known I’d do what she said, and why not? Same as I’d have done on my own, only she made me do it faster. Maybe not my golden ninja girl, but certainly a ninja woman. Didn’t have to like her to allow her points for skill and daring.

“Your sentries are getting all exercised,” she murmured as the hum approached. She pushed up a second slat to peer out sideways. “Wait. Sounds like . . . Crap! I think it’s Julie.”

Julie. She must really be their sister.

I nosed in beside her. “They’re back so soon?”

The perimeter watch, thinned out to one or two voices, whooped their alarm codes to the boat launch guards: Emergency! Let this one in! Still night out there, but early light enough to see the oval shape of Sea Sprite tossing up wake as it swept into the Lagoon.

“He’s got a load on,” Hannah noted.

“What? He’s drunk?” I pushed closer.

“Julie? Never. Even when he looks it. But he’s got . . . looks like a bunch of kids! Fuck! Now what?” She pulled away, cutting through the darkness toward the stern door.

I lingered long enough to see Julian throttle down and head for Unca Joe’s dock. Out in the stern, Hannah whistled sharply, a four-note sequence. Julian glanced up in surprise, then turned Sprite’s nose toward the sound. He could barely steer for the small bodies pressed around him, crammed into the passenger and cargo spaces, a few flattened on the rear deck, clinging to the rails. No sign of Daniel. I plunged after Hannah.

Julian drew up alongside a dark canoe tied up behind my kayak. Hannah’s, no doubt. I counted seven bruised, half-naked children in the boat, some as young as three or four, all of them numb-eyed, confused, too terrified even to cry.

Julian glared at Hannah. “Where’ve you been?”

“Where’ve you been? Where’s Dan?”