“You alright?” I ask, joining her, looking around aimlessly as Kai and the other guys discuss something at a distance.
“I thought I just heard something,” she says.
“Like what?”
“Like motors.”
I frown.
“Hey!” she calls out to the guys and walks toward them, me behind her. “If there was a boat out there, behind the cliff on the south side, would you hear it?”
The guys fall into silence. Bo swipes his palm over his dreads. “Maybe. Why?”
Katura stops as she reaches the group and, hands on her waist, stares at the darkness.
I don’t like this—this silence, her words.
“I swear I heard it,” she says.
“No one comes here,” Ty replies in a hesitant voice.
“Well, they come on foot, don’t they?” Katura snaps, looking around.
Bo stirs. “Kai, Owen, Ty, grab the guns, let’s take a hike.”
They hesitate, but Bo is already moving. “Now!” he snaps.
His voice sends my heart pounding.
They are on the move, running too fast, too abrupt.
“Kat?” I ask quietly, suddenly trembling. It’s just a drill, I’m sure. A precaution.
But a nasty feeling starts in my stomach.
Katura cocks her head like a nocturnal animal that just came out for a hunt. “Go get Maddy, babe,” she says. “Tell her to stay put.”
“Kat, it’s nothing, yeah?”
“Go. Get. Maddy,” she says, her voice low but suddenly harsh.
And I know that if anyone is ever right, it’s Katura.
I walk, then trot toward the bungalows, my heart pounding.
I hear it before I see it.
A loud pop and the sound of broken glass. Then another one.
And then I see it.
A blaze, like a rocket, shoots out from the Common Lounge.
“Fire!” someone screams.
There are echoing shouts across the village, and I stare, hypnotized, at the orange blaze that, in seconds, illuminates the night.
“Get Maddy!” I hear behind me, and I stumble on the sand and run, then sprint as fast as I can toward her bungalow, the wind swishing in my ears.