"What is it?" Lucy asked anxiously. "Are they following us?"
"I don't know," Eren said, although he was increasingly sure of it. "Just in case, I'm not going to head for Dane's island. I don't want to lead anyone there." He looked over his shoulder to check on both Lucy—who looked tense, but not terrified—and the speedboat, which had now crossed their stern wake and was coming up on the inside. "Do you recognize that boat?"
"No," Lucy said. "I don't—They not—" She swallowed, and then said, "The people who are after me were in an airplane. They probably have a car. But I don't know about a boat."
Eren let out a quick little breath. At last they were talking about it. "They could have rented a boat in St. John's easily. How many of them are there?"
"Four, at least," she said without hesitation. It seemed as if talking about it was relieving some of her tension; he could all but sense the pent-up words spilling out now that she was no longer holding them inside. "There might be more now. There were just four on the plane with me."
"When did you see them last?" Eren asked.
"The morning you met me. I hid on your boat because I was trying to get away from them."
She gave another little gasp as the boat slapped a wave especially hard. They were really booking now, given the limitations of the fishing boat's un-aerodynamic hull. Still, the speedboat was steadily closing ground. The only reason why it hadn't caught them yet was because it was still going at an angle, cutting them off from the land.
"Lucy, if they catch you, what are they going to do?"
Lucy swallowed. "I don't know for sure. They're trying to get me to sign some documents, but I wouldn't cooperate so they tied me up and put me on a plane. I don't remember much of that part because I was drugged."
Eren clenched his teeth to fight back his bear's surge of incoherent rage. He didn't need to be an animal now; he needed to think. "Do you know who they're working for?"
Now, for the first time, she hesitated. "My uncle Rodric," she said in a small voice.
Eren shot her a quick, disbelieving glance. "Are you ashamed of that? What on earth for? He's to blame, not you.Heshould be ashamed."
"But I—he's my last living relative, and I—"
"You don't owe someone anything at all, if they lock you up and drug you and chase you all over the island."
Lucy let out a little breath. Amazingly, she was smiling. "I kept telling myself that, but then Uncle Rodric would yell at me and tell me how ungrateful I was.Iknew I was right, but you don't know how good it feels to hear it from someone else."
By now they were almost having to shout over the engines and the smacking of the hull on the waves. The boat couldn't go much faster without actually pushing it to dangerous levels. It was a good, solid boat, but it really wasn't made for speed.
Eren hoped her uncle was on that speedboat. He would love very much to introduce the jerk to his bear.
"Can we outrun them?" Lucy asked.
"Not a chance. Their boat is a lot faster. But they're still going to find that a forced boarding isn't as much fun as they think." He tilted his head toward the steps down to the cabin. "I think you should go below. If you strap yourself into the berth—"
"No," Lucy said fiercely. "I'm not running away anymore."
Eren thought about arguing the point, but it occurred to him that having her in the cabin wasn't likely to improve things much, and might even make it harder for her to get away if it came to a fight.
"All right," he said. "But if I tell you to do something, do it immediately—all right?"
"All right," Lucy agreed.
She was so unthinkingly trusting. But no, he thought—it wasn't that. She didn't trust her uncle's men any farther than she could throw them. It washimshe trusted. Him she trusted to keep her safe.
Eren hoped he could live up to that trust.
By now the speedboat had angled to match their course and was simply keeping pace. It was close enough that Eren could see there were three men on board. The boat wasn't large enough for anyone else to be belowdecks, which meant that Lucy's fourth man, and anyone else they had brought in by now, must be elsewhere. They might be sending out multiple search parties, he thought, or simply hadn't expected that their patrol would turn up anything.
Or else they thought that three men should easily be enough to deal with a runaway young woman and anyone who might be with her, in which case they were about to find themselves in a world of hurt.
"Are they likely to have weapons?" he asked.
Lucy thought about this. "I don't know. They didn't use weapons against me on the plane, but they didn't have to, because they know I can't fight them. I think I've seen some of my uncle's men carrying guns before."