“What was that?” she said, searching for the source of the noise.
“Just a seagull,” Tyler said, leaning against the side of the raft. “He’s been circling us for ten minutes.”
“Like a buzzard.”
“No, but I do think he’s hoping we’ll give him some food.”
“No chance. If I had any food, I’d wolf it down.” Salt crystals clung to her still-damp jeans, and her mouth felt like the inside of a cotton ball. At least she was no longer shaking like a seizure victim. “How long have I been out?”
“My watch isn’t working because of the EMP, but I’d say an hour and a half. Almost getting blown up can be tiring. Believe me, I know.”
“Probably. Plus I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Me neither.”
She scanned the horizon for sign of a rescue boat or plane. Nothing. Easter Island beckoned in the distance, tantalizingly close, but if they tried to swim for it, they’d be exhausted before they got halfway there.
“Do we have any supplies?”
“A flare gun. One shell. But we shouldn’t use it until we’re sure someone is looking this way.”
“You seem pretty confident that’s going to happen.”
“It will,” Tyler said. “I just don’t know when.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I sent out a distress call before we jumped. As long as we don’t get a storm, we should be fine.”
“Great. You just jinxed us.”
“I don’t believe in jinxes.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“If it happens, it’ll happen whether we talk about it or not.”
“Very logical of you.”
“And your boyfriend isn’t?”
Jess brushed away some of the salt from her pants. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Well, not at that moment.”
“Who is he?”
“His name’s Andy. He’s a doctor.”
“In New Zealand? How come I didn’t meet him?”
“He’s volunteering for Doctors Without Borders. He’s in the middle of the Congo right now.”
“Does he know anything about what’s going on?”
“I left him a message, but phone service out there is unreliable.”
“Is it serious?”
“He asked me to marry him before he left. I told him I’d give him an answer when he got back.”
“You? Settle down? I thought you found out it wasn’t your thing after the surfer dude. It sure wasn’t what you wanted at MIT.”
“Tyler, we were young, all right? In college I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. You caught me at a bad time.”
Tyler looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Looks like I did it again.”
She chuckled. “You know the ironic thing?”
“What?”
“He’s a lot like you. Dashing, smart, funny, kind, reliable.”
Tyler cleared his throat. “So what’s the answer?”
“To what?”
“To the question he asked.”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“What’s stopping you from saying yes?”
She smiled. “He’s a lot like you. Stubborn, arrogant, workaholic, impatient, logical.”
He returned the grin. “So what you’re saying is, he’s flawless.”
She shook her head. “He’s a pain in the ass.”
“Sounds like my kind of guy.”
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
Tyler paused, then said, “Jess, I was blissful with Karen, but I never stopped loving you, either.”
Jess started shivering again, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or something else. She put her head against Tyler’s shoulder.
“Why couldn’t all this have happened a year ago?” she said.
Tyler didn’t answer, but he put his arm around her. She looked up at him and felt his eyes pulling her toward him.
They kissed. Lightly at first, then ravenously. She forgot all about the cold, the dampness, the hunger, the discomfort.
It would have become more but for the drone of an engine in the distance. They drew apart, checking with each other to see if they’d heard the same thing.
The sound disappeared in the wind and then came back stronger. They both shot up and looked toward the island.
A small boat cut through the ocean, distant but approaching quickly. They got up on their knees and waved frantically. The boat’s two occupants waved back.
“Looks like someone on the island had an old diesel,” Tyler said.
“We’re being rescued. You were right again.”
He looked at her with a serious expression. “You need to make up your mind.”
“I know.”
“But for now we need to get Fay back and stop Colchev.”
“I know,” Jess said again, but she felt like she didn’t know anything.
NAZCA
FORTY-TWO
The drone of the six-seat plane’s engine was so monotonous that the coffee in Tyler’s hand had been the only thing keeping him awake on the early morning flight. There wasn’t much to see as they flew over the mountainous terrain from Lima toward southern Peru, but now that the aircraft was in its final descent, he perked up, and Jess’s tension was palpable. In a few minutes they would be flying directly over the Nazca lines.
Yesterday when the scuba company owner who rescued Tyler and Jess took them straight to the island, Tyler found that all communications were out except for an old battery-powered short-wave radio. While Jess gathered their belongings from the hotel, including Fay’s medication and cash, he helped get the antique radio working by the time the LAN flight from Lima arrived just ahead of sunset. Unable to make contact with the airport, the airliner pilot had nearly turned around before they were able to reach him and convince him to land.
If there was one small piece of luck, it was that the jet didn’t need to gas up to return to the mainland. Rapa Nui had no refueling equipment to be rendered inoperable by the EMP blast. All airliners to the island had to load enough fuel to make the round trip on one tank.
Though it was the low season of winter, the tourists who were there swarmed to the airport when they realized that the power outage wasn’t going to be a short-term inconvenience. The plane had been only half-full, but none of the arriving passengers were getting off, so seats were at a premium. It was only through Jess’s fast talking and Fay’s bankroll that she and Tyler secured two of the spots on the return flight to Lima. The local police were too busy with the sudden chaos to question them about the downed cargo jet, and Tyler wasn’t going to volunteer any information that would get them confined to the island for an extended period.
By the time they arrived in Peru, they were too tired to do anything but crash for the remainder of the night in a hotel. Tyler had tried reaching Grant and Morgan, but he’d been told by Morgan’s supervisor that they were en route from Sydney to Los Angeles. He also informed her supervisor about the men killed by Colchev, the detonation of one of the two Killswitches, and the crashed C-17, though he left out the part about him being the one who destroyed it. Tyler didn’t have time for the complications that admission would bring. He’d come clean when the entire situation was resolved.
Without Morgan’s help, he and Jess were on their own in contacting the Peruvian authorities. Tyler spoke with a policeman in Nazca who could understand English and told them about Fay’s abduction and the connection to the incident at Easter Island, but he said nothing of the Killswitch or xenobium. The policeman agreed to accompany them to Cahuachi in the hopes that they could intercept Colchev there and liberate Fay. Once Morgan was available, Tyler would consult with her on how to work with the Peruvian government to secure the xenobium.