Lucy got up off her bench and held on to the back of his seat so she could see out the front windshield without being knocked off her feet by the rolling waves. She was braced for anything from an island full of dinosaurs to a secret concrete bunker rising out of the sea, but what she saw coming toward them across the water, growing larger, was a perfectly ordinary little island, rocky and covered with pine trees. They had passed plenty of them along the coast. As Eren slowed the boat and they motored toward it, she saw that there was a house on the highest point of the island—which wasn't very high; the island was little more than a rock sticking out of the sea. And the house was more of a shack. But there was a wisp of smoke curling out of the chimney.
Eren slowed the boat even more and gave the horn two quick taps. Lucy jumped at the sudden loud hoot.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
"Signaling," Eren said.
"Signaling what?"
"If it worked, you'll see in a minute."
Curiosity was murdering her, but she waited patiently as the boat motored slowly up to the island. There was no dock, but they bumped up into a natural inlet in the rocks, with a ridge of gray stone on one side and a loose slope of crumbled rocks covered with scrubby wildflowers on the other. Eren killed the motor, and then they were rolling on the waves in an abrupt, startling hush. The slapping of water on the boat's hull seemed loud in the ringing silence.
"If nobody meets us, I'll need you to jump ashore and make the mooring rope fast," Eren said.
Lucy nervously eyed the space between the railing and the rock, with deep-looking water in between. "Fast?" she said.
"Tie it."
"I don't know how to tie a boat."
"You know how to make knots, right?"
"Like a bow tie, I guess?" He gave her a baffled look, as if unable to fathom anyone who didn't know how to tie a knot, and Lucy threw her hands in the air. "Look, my life hasn't had a lot of boats in it, okay?" On her family's yacht, someone else had done all the tying up and other everyday work.
"Well, you're in luck, because here he comes now."
He?
Lucy whirled around and took a quick step back.
The man who was coming down from the cabin through the trees didn'tlooklike a terrifying smuggler or a fierce pirate. He was rangy and sun-browned, in a plaid shirt much like the borrowed one she was wearing.
"Stay inside," Eren told her. He went out on deck and gathered a loop of thick rope. "Hello the island."
"Hello the boat," the stranger called back in a deeper, rougher voice than Lucy was expecting. He caught the rope Eren tossed to him as if it weighed nothing and made it snug to a post driven into a crack in the rock. "Did you get the coffee maker?"
"No more saucepan coffee," Eren promised. "You know how hard it is to find an old-fashioned percolator anymore, instead of the electric kind? I had to run all over town trying to find one."
The stranger dropped his gaze. Looking at him more carefully, Lucy saw that he was scruffy and unshaven, though his clothes were clean. "You didn't need to go to the trouble."
"Look, if you're gonna be living out here, you need decent coffee," Eren said gruffly. "Let me just get the stuff off the boat."
"Here, I'll give you a hand," the stranger said.
"Wait, no—" Eren began, but the newcomer had already jumped to the deck.
Lucy started to back up and tripped over a cooler.
The man froze like a wild creature scenting danger. So did Lucy.
"Is there someone in there?" he demanded. "Eren, did you bring someone here?"
"No, I—Okay, yes," Eren sighed. "You can come out."
"No!" Lucy protested, backing up to the pilot's chair. She had a crazy urge to start up the boat and get out of there, but first of all she didn't know a thing about running a boat, and second, she would feel bad about stranding Eren.
"Is there a woman in there?" The stranger peered in.