Survival Instinct Read online

  “What if he had prior knowledge my parents were coming out?” Scott challenged.

  As Abby looked into Scott’s face, his I-dare-you-to-deny-it expression made her wonder whose side he was on. But then his eyes crinkled into a smile and she dismissed her fear. “Would he have any way of knowing that?” she asked.

  “Who knows? Mitch has always liked to run off at the mouth. He could have been blabbering about their plans all over town yesterday. Anyone could have overheard him and noticed how much jewelry my mom was wearing. I doubt it was some grand conspiracy.” He shrugged. “We don’t know why we’ve been left here. But it seems to me we’re going to have to do something if we want to get off this island.”

  Abby agreed. “You’re right. And we need to get back to your folks and let them know what’s happening.”

  “No, Abby, wait.” Scott’s hand caught her shoulder, pulling her gently back toward him.

  She looked up into his eyes, and for a second, she was a lovestruck freshman again, sitting in a desk next to the coolest guy in school, all too aware of how close she was to him.

  “Please don’t let on to my mother that anything is wrong. She’s been through some tough times lately, and I don’t think she can handle all the complexities of our current situation right now, at least not until we have a plan to get us out of here.”

  The moment he spoke the words, Abby realized Scott was exactly right. She’d seen how shaken Marilyn had been earlier, and the situation hadn’t been nearly as frightening then. “I’m sorry.” She bowed her head penitently. “I should have thought of that. We don’t even know what we’re up against, and it’s not as though she’s in any position to help. We need to examine our options.”

  “Right. What are our options?” He gave her a sheepish look. “You’re the expert here. I’ve never even been to this island before.”

  Abby was tempted to ask why he’d come, but there wasn’t time for chitchat. “Well, as far as I can see.” She led him into the front room, where a huge mural of the islands covered one large wall. She reached up and put a finger on Devil’s Island, the farthest north of the twenty-two Apostle Islands. “We’ve got three main options. One, we can get off this island by ourselves. Two, we could be rescued, either by contacting someone on the outside, or if we get really lucky, drawing the attention of a passing boat.”

  Scott looked impressed. “What are the chances we could draw the attention of a passing boat?”

  Abby took a deep breath. “Have you seen any passing boats?”

  “No.”

  “There are shipping channels six and twelve miles north of here, where the big ore ships travel. But they can hardly see the island from there. I mean, we could write help in driftwood on the beach, but there’s no way they’d see it.”

  “What about airplanes?”

  “Ditto. The only thing likely to come close would be a small sightseeing plane, but they’re rare enough in the summer months. The tourist season is over for the winter, and most local pilots are just as wary as the boaters about going out this late in the season, anyway. Storms blow up quickly around here, often with very little warning, and getting caught in one out here tends to be deadly.”

  “What about a signal fire?”

  Abby had to smile at Scott’s creativity and persistence. “That would be a great idea, if it hadn’t rained last night. Most of the wood around here is probably too soaked to burn. Besides, people burn campfires out on these islands all the time. Unless the fire was enormous, most people would just think it was a campfire, if they could see the smoke at all.”

  “So, you said we had three options. What was our third?”

  Lowering her hand slowly from the map, Abby tried to remember. What had she been thinking? “Pray,” she said finally in a soft voice.

  “I guess we should be doing that anyway.” Scott took both of her hands in his.

  It took Abby a moment to grasp what he was doing.

  By the time she’d realized he was serious, he’d closed his blue eyes and tipped his face up imploringly. “Dear Lord,” he began, and only then did Abby come to her senses enough to snap her eyes shut and pray with him.

  “We’re in over our heads here, and we don’t understand what’s going on,” Scott continued in a confessional tone. “This is way more than we can even begin to deal with, but we trust that You are watching over us, and providing whatever we will need. We need Your help. We need You to protect us throughout this ordeal that’s before us, so we can live lives that are glorifying to You. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”

  Abby kept her eyes shut a minute longer, her heart filled with wonder. In spite of the damp chill of the house, she felt oddly warm. She couldn’t recall when she’d last prayed with another person, unless she counted the corporate prayers at church. For her, praying had always been a private thing, so private she rarely prayed aloud. When her eyes popped open, she realized a stray tear had escaped down her cheek.

  “I’m sorry.” Scott brushed it away with his thumb. “I guess I didn’t even ask you if that was okay. I seemed to recall from college days that you were a Christian.”

  “Yes, I was. I am,” Abby assured him, clearing her throat to raise her voice above a whisper. “I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed with everything.” Like the ring in her pocket, and how Trevor would react if she didn’t get it back to him. She straightened and pulled her hands free of his, the contact too lasting, too intimate, especially after the prayer. “You’re used to praying with others, aren’t you?”

  “I do it all the time in my job as a Christian counselor, usually at the beginning and end of each session, and sometimes right in the middle, too.”

  “Ah.” Abby had known he was some kind of psychologist. The Christian kind, apparently.

  “I usually make sure my clients are comfortable with prayer before we pray together. I suppose I forgot my standard protocol, perhaps due to the strange setting, or because you still seem so familiar to me, even after all these years.”

  Abby felt herself blush. Scott remembered her. He remembered things about her. She found herself wishing they had more than just that morning to spend together before he went back to the Twin Cities. Then she remembered they were stuck on Devil’s Island, and if they didn’t figure out an escape plan soon, they might have far more time together than they’d planned on. But it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  She pointed at the island on the map again. “Here we are,” she said, mostly to reorient herself. “The closest island is Rocky, two miles to the southeast. This time of year, both the wind and the waves tend to come from the west, so they’d be more or less in our favor if we headed that way, though we might have trouble keeping a southerly course.” Reciting the facts long-ingrained in her mind helped her keep her thoughts off the way being around Scott made her feel.

  “Are we thinking of heading out across the water?”

  “Well, if we can’t get someone to come to us, we’ve got to go to them.” She looked at him for just a moment, decided he was still too distractingly attractive, and turned her attention back to the map. “The other choice would be to go with the waves due east to North Twin Island, but that’s a good six miles or more. Depending on what we can round up for transportation, it might work in a pinch. Or we could end up there if we’re unable to stay far enough south to make it to Rocky Island.”

  “But Devil’s is the farthest island north. If we drift farther north, we’ll miss landing anywhere.”

  Abby swallowed back a lump of fear and stuck to the comfort of physical facts. “The north shore of Lake Superior is about thirty miles from here. If we were able to man a seaworthy craft, and if we weren’t intercepted by a vessel first, we’d end up there.”

  “In Canada?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you suppose are the odds of us coming up with a craft seaworthy enough to carry us all the way to Canada?”

  “I can’t say until we look.”

  Scott took a step clos
er, so close Abby could feel the warmth radiating off him as he stood behind her and reverently touched the mural on the wall. His fingers moved just below hers, to the goose-necked shape of Rocky Island. “So this is our goal, hmm. Rocky Island? And what happens if we make it there? We hope the power hasn’t been cut? We go island-hopping on to South Twin?”

  Once again, the teasing-yet-practical tone of Scott’s words caused Abby to smile, in spite of the seriousness of the situation in which they found themselves. “Unless something’s changed recently, Rocky was always one of the few islands with a Park Ranger on duty year-round. There’s a house on the far east side, on the low-lying flats on the other side of the forest-covered bluffs.” She moved her hand to show which part of the island she was referring to, and brushed his fingers. “You can’t see Devil’s Island from that vantage point, so the Ranger’s not likely to see any messages we try to write on the beach, or even spot any fires we make.”

  “But if we can get to the island,” Scott said, his hand nestled close to her fingers.

  “He’ll be able to help us,” she finished for him, trying to ignore the way the close contact of his fingertips made her thoughts skitter like so many leaves in the wind. She tried not to think about how close behind her he stood, though she knew if she so much as leaned back she’d be in his arms.

  “All right.” Scott’s voice broke the spell as he nodded his head with an air of certainty and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Now where are we going to find a seaworthy craft?”

  Abby headed toward the door, retreating from the feelings she’d felt. “There are several outbuildings we can check. Who knows what might have been stashed out here over the years?” She fell back on words and action to keep herself from even considering what the emotions stirring in her heart might mean.

  Abby locked the door behind them and returned the key to its hiding place before starting off toward the nearest outbuilding, a large shed not far from the house.

  They couldn’t find a key to the shed. Abby even ran back to the keeper’s quarters and tried the key from under the rock, but the hole in the lock was too small. Finally she put her hands on her hips and stared at the building, trying to remember what had been inside when she’d worked on the island six years before. The insides of so many sheds and outbuildings ran together in her mind, and she couldn’t sort it out. Somewhere, though, she had a vague recollection of having seen, here and there, aging rowboats, old fiberglass dinghies and all manner of historical marine artifacts that had been kept around for educational displays for the tourists who visited the islands in the summer months.

  “We could try that little window,” Scott suggested, pointing to the small wooden-shuttered opening above the main door.

  Abby looked at Scott’s broad shoulders and then looked back at the window. “It’s ten feet in the air, and I don’t think you’ll fit through.”

  “But you can. Come on, I’ll hoist you up.”

  A riot of protests filled Abby’s mind, most of them involving the width of her hips, but Scott looked determined. Abby sighed. They had wasted plenty of time already looking for a key, and she felt desperation rising inside her. She had less than thirty-six hours to get the ring back to Trevor. Every minute counted.

  “Come on.” Scott crouched low, his back braced against the door. “Stand on my shoulders.”

  “My hiking boots are going to hurt you,” Abby warned him as she moved forward and pulled off her purse, tossing it to the ground before placing a tentative hand on his ball cap.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m made of pretty tough stuff,” Scott assured her.

  She hadn’t been too worried about how tough he was-she’d been more embarrassed by the idea of such close contact with the man she’d always mooned after. Still, she realized his suggestion was a shrewd one, and relented. Stepping up on his knees, Abby somehow got both of her feet steady on Scott’s shoulders. He held tight to her ankles as he stood, and then she cautiously straightened, crawling upward with her hands against the side of the building until she stood on eye level with the window. Grabbing tight to the sill with one hand, she lifted the old wooden lever-style latch and pulled the window open.

  “Good news,” she called down to Scott. “There’s no glass.”

  “Great. Can you make it in?”

  Though his words sounded steady, Abby was aware of how much pressure her shoes must be exerting on his shoulders. She tried to hurry.

  “I think so.” She dipped her head and shoulders inside, but most of her body still hung outside. “Mind if I step on your head?”

  “Do what you’ve got to do.”

  Abby put most of her weight on her arms and pulled herself up, stepping on Scott’s cap mostly for balance. She felt his hands change position on her ankles as he lifted her higher, supporting much of her weight with the sheer strength of his arms. She scrambled to pull herself through the window and was glad to find rafters within reach of the window sill so she wouldn’t be forced to fall the entire ten feet to the floor.

  Her hips wedged in the window, but she barely had time to consider the embarrassment of getting stuck there before she shifted sideways and pulled herself through. Then it was simply a matter of dropping to the floor and letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.

  She tried the light switch. It was dead. Probably on the same line as the house, she reasoned. With the window open above her, enough overcast sunlight spilled in for her to identify a large lawn tractor, a workshop area, rusting old snow blower, sawhorses and gas cans.

  “Are you all right in there?” Scott called.

  “Yes,” she answered back. Much as she wished she could tell him she’d found something, there was nothing in the shed that looked like it would float. As she stood there, she realized all the items were for the maintenance of the area around the keeper’s quarters. Boats were more likely to be housed closer to the lake. Thanking God for at least providing her with a way out of the shed, she turned the dead bolt and stepped back out into the light.

  Scott did what he could to help Abby with her quick search of the outbuildings, but his enthusiasm for the search began to wane quickly. As Abby scrambled around, peeking in windows when she couldn’t find a key, he felt time and again the contrasting emotions of hope and disappointment as, in building after building, they came up with nothing.

  “I don’t want to sound pessimistic,” he offered after Abby shut the door on the last building in the area of the keeper’s quarters, “but wouldn’t someone who’d gone to all the trouble of cutting off our electricity and cutting the line on our radio probably check to make sure they hadn’t left us a boat?”

  “I suppose so. But they may have overlooked something. This is still a pretty big island,” Abby told him as they headed back down the road toward the dock. They’d both found decent walking sticks over the course of their searching, and with the extra limbs, were able to move a little faster down the slippery trail.

  Scott was glad Abby was keeping a positive attitude. He only wished his mother could be so resilient. He’d hoped they’d at least be able to find a boat so she wouldn’t be utterly crushed by the news they were unable to get in touch with the Coast Guard.

  Apparently Abby was thinking along the same lines. “You know,” she offered after they’d gone a couple hundred yards, “we’ll have to tell your mother that we might not get rescued today. I know she’s not going to like hearing it, but she’ll probably take the news a lot better if we tell her while it’s still daylight instead of waiting until it’s cold and dark.”

  “You’re right,” Scott agreed morosely. He sighed, unsure how much of his mother’s story Abby needed to hear in order to understand how to deal with his mom. “It’s not that she’s a flighty person by nature. For most of my life I considered her to be pretty hardy, actually. But four years ago, my dad went out hunting and didn’t come back by suppertime. Mom knew something must be wrong, and she called me. I was living in Saint Paul, a good four-h
our drive from home, so I couldn’t be there. She went out, alone, and found him on some land my family owns. He was dead.”

  “Heart attack?” Abby asked, her voice concerned.

  Scott shook his head. “Hunting accident.” He paused on the trail.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Abby came to a stop beside him, her face knit with empathy.

  “His death was really hard for Mom to take. She’s had a difficult time ever since.”

  “Financially?” Abby’s voice sounded sympathetic.

  “No.” Scott thought her question seemed odd, especially given how many diamonds his mother had been wearing that morning. She didn’t look like a woman down on her luck, by his estimation. “Why would you think that?”

  Abby blushed bright red. “I’m sorry. That’s horrible of me to ask. I just thought, well, since she and Mitch didn’t seem to get along so well…” She put one hand up and covered her face in an embarrassed gesture.

  Trying not to smile at Abby’s embarrassment, Scott filled in the gaps. “You thought perhaps she’d married Mitch for his money.”

  At his words, Abby hid behind both her hands. “It sounds terrible when you say it that way. I shouldn’t have even thought it, let alone said anything.”

  “No, I understand. It makes sense, and given all the trouble we’ve found ourselves in on account of my mother’s diamonds, I’d say you have every right to ask about them. But those diamonds are about the only thing Mitch has ever given her, to my knowledge. He gave her several pieces of jewelry during their courtship, but since they married last summer he’s been living off her wealth. The truth is, my father left my mother very well taken care of. Father had a large life insurance policy, besides his investments and our family home. And then there’s always the family land.”

  “Land?”

  “Our family owns a few square miles of virgin forest, which to my understanding is worth several million dollars, and could be vastly more valuable if properly developed.”

  Abby scrunched her face up. “Several million dollars, hmm? That sounds like a much better incentive than a vehicle and some diamonds.”