Rachelle McCalla - Survival Instinct

“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 closer, 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.