She blinked. “Watch? Oh, you mean…” She’d gotten so caught up with the discovery of the trapdoor and the subsequent scorpion sting she’d completely forgotten about the potential killer on the island. “You need partner,” she added. “I will keep watch with you.”

Jack shook his head. “Pita will.”

Elizaveta frowned. “Why her?” she said, feeling a bump of irrational jealousy.

“Because if we let her go to sleep, she won’t want to wake up again for a subsequent shift.”

Elizaveta glanced at Pita. She stood by the table with Jesus and Nitro, the three of them still talking softly in Spanish. She couldn’t hear what they were saying—and she sensed that was the point.

“I’ll keep second watch then,” she said.

Jack shook his head again. “I don’t want you alone with Nitro.”

“So I keep watch with Jesus.”

“That leaves Nitro and me on the last watch, and I know he won’t be cool with that.”

“So who keeps second watch?”

“Nitro and Jesus. Then, if you’re feeling up to it, you can join me on the last one. Two hours each. That should get us to dawn. Hopefully the storm will have died down, and we can head to the pier to wait for the boatman.”

“And hopefully,” she said solemnly, “I will not die a painful, poisonous death.”

10

They went over to the others and explained to them the watch schedule.

“Does anyone have any problems with this?” Jack concluded.

“Do we get the gun?” Pita asked.

Everyone looked at Nitro.

“Fuck no,” he said.

“But whoever’s on watch should have the gun.”

“She has a point, Muscles,” Jack said.

“You’d just end up blowing your own balls off, chavo.”

“I’ve fired a gun before,” he said.

“There’s no way in hell anyone’s touching my piece, and that’s that.”

“If I’m sitting out there on the porch,” Pita said, “I want a weapon.”

“Help yourself,” Nitro said, gesturing to the wall of farm equipment.

Resigned to the fact Nitro wasn’t giving up his pistol, they scrounged through Solano’s wall of farming instruments for something to defend themselves with. Pita selected a sickle, Jesus a hatchet with a broken half and rusty patina, Elizaveta a long-handled garden claw scabrous with corrosion. Jack considered an antique post-hole digger but apparently deemed it too unwieldly and instead settled on an eleven-inch iron hay hook.

Standing there examining their weapons of choice, they resembled a motley band of peasants about to march on Doctor Frankenstein’s castle. Nevertheless, they were armed.

Jack opened the cabin’s front door for Pita. Wet air blew inside, accompanied by a blast of angry wind.

“Scream if you see someone, Jack Goff,” Nitro said.

Ignoring him, Jack followed Pita into the voracious night.

1957

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