Chapter 11

Scarlet wiped the sweat from her brow, surveying the HELP sign she'd spent the better part of the day constructing out of driftwood on the beach close to them. It was partially obscured by the overhanging jungle, and she couldn't put it any further away or it'd get washed out by the tide, but it was something and she felt better having made it.

Over the past few days, the group had really pulled together, and Scarlet felt closer to Robin than ever too. Maybe it was just the circumstances, and the adrenaline of survival, but she couldn't imagine being anything but miserable here if Robin wasn't by her side.

And yet, somehow, Robin found ways to make her smile even in their lowest moments.

As the sun began to set, Scarlet made her way back to the camp. Gillian's Island. The name made her smile, a little bit of levity amid their grim circumstances, and she was enjoying the way the sun warmed her back and her toes sank into the soft sand while she walked. If she closed her eyes, she could forget that her clothes were filthy and ripped, her sandals had broken, and their food stores were nothing to brag about.

For just a moment, she was just a girl walking along a beach at sunset, looking forward to seeing her partner.

Scarlet came across Raven and Kit before she found Robin. They were sitting on a big, flat rock a little away from the camp, a water-damaged ring binder spread across their laps. They were both bent over it, deep in concentration.

"Hey," Scarlet called. "What's that?"

Raven clutched the binder tighter, and a new sense of unease washed over Scarlet. Now what?

"Have you seen Evie?" Kit asked.

Scarlet shook her head. "I was working on my help signal all day."

"Come here," Raven waved her over. "Look at this."

They showed her the binder, which was full of water-logged pages all stuck together. The few they'd managed to pry apart appeared to be reports with things like engine two and emergency rations and navigational system printed on them. "What is it?"

"We think it's the ship's maintenance records," Raven explained. "And they don't look good. We're going to confront Evie about them."

"Wait," Scarlet said, but now that they felt like they had one more person on their side, Raven and Kit jumped off the rock and started marching toward camp. Shit, and just when everyone had been getting along! Scarlet chased after them, trying to keep her voice low. "That binder's wrecked, and none of us are engineers. We can't understand what it means."

"No, but we can ask her to explain it," Raven pointed out.

"If she knew the ship wasn't up to par, she had a responsibility to do something about it before we wound up here," Kit said.

"What wasn't up to par?" Amelia asked when they got closer to the camp and people started to notice the commotion. Robin was one of them, coming over to join them, and Scarlet sent her a silent, pleading message in her gaze. Help me fix this.

"Look what washed ashore," Kit said, thrusting the binder into Amelia's hands and pointing at the report in question. "This says the ship failed multiple safety inspections before the cruise. The life boat maintenance, emergency equipment, and even the crew training were all flagged as inadequate."

Evie wasn't at camp, and a few people glanced over at Marnie and Alicia because they were the most obvious crew members, still wearing their polos. They'd been stirring a pot of canned beans for dinner.

"Hey, we passed all the trainings we were given," Marnie defended herself.

"There's Evie," Kit pointed to the captain coming out of the jungle from the area they'd designated as the restroom.

"Is it true?" Lex demanded.

"Is what true?" Evie blinked. Ambushed coming out of the toilet, poor woman.

Amelia showed the binder to her. "Did you know about these issues before we set sail?"

Evie recognized the binder, hardly looking at it before she answered. "I... No, not before we left. I found these records shortly after and I confronted Zoe about it, but there was nothing I could do at that point."

"And you didn't, I don't know, turn the ship around? Fix the problems when we docked on one of the islands?" Raven demanded. "You were the captain, for God"s sake. It"s your responsibility to ensure the safety of your passengers and crew."

"The first aid kits that were in the life boats are a joke," Krys pointed out, bringing out one of them. "A few bandages, a small amount of mefloquine that's not even enough to start taking a preventative dose, and a handful of water purification tablets. There's no way we could handle a serious injury or illness with this."

"Thank God we found that stock pot and we have fire," Darcy added. "There"s barely enough water purification tablets here to last us a week if we couldn't boil water."

Marnie and Alicia had abandoned the beans and came over, along with a few other crew members. They seemed to sense their opportunity to displace blame because Alicia said, "Zoe was always ‘delegating' so she could lounge by the pool, and she paid us all salary instead of hourly just so she could work us to death."

Another crew member sneered, "I overheard her talking on the phone once, bragging about how much money she was going to make on this cruise. She didn"t seem to care about anything else."

"And what was your cut going to be?" Raven rounded on Evie again.

"I was just an employee like everybody else," Evie said. "I had no idea she was doing all that, I swear. I didn't know her before this trip but she seemed fine when she hired me."

"Fine," Lex huffed. "Lot of good that does us now."

Scarlet stepped forward, desperate to find a way past this argument. "That didn't have anything to do with the wreck though, right, Evie?"

She was cheating a little – she already knew the answer. But she had to get everyone back on the same team again.

"No," the captain said, and explained how the storm had reduced visibility until the ship collided with a rocky outcropping in the sea. "The rest of it, you can hate Zoe for –the life boat sinking, the lack of supplies, the damn broken radio. But I'm the one who steered us into those rocks, and I'm the one who has to take responsibility for our being here."

She marched off down the beach. Everyone else seemed perfectly content to see her backside, but Scarlet watched in horror. That wasn't how this was supposed to go.

They weren't supposed to blame each other, and be constantly at each other's throats.

She just wanted to scream, but it was only going to make things worse.