Deception Island. Brynn Kelly

me and step where I step. Stomping should scare away snakes and scorpions—and watch for spiderwebs. You’re no use to me dead.”

      Dude, I’m no use to you alive, either.

      She followed him, stamping until her feet throbbed. The roar of the ocean receded. Something touched her bare neck. She gasped and froze.

      He turned. “What is it?” Concern flecked his tone.

      She slapped at her skin. It was wet. She exhaled. “Nothing.” Spooked by a drop of rain. More drops rattled on the broad leaves around them.

      He grabbed her shoulder and coaxed her around. “Give me the light.”

      He eased his fingers under the collar of her jumpsuit, brushing her nape, then scooped his palm around her upper back. She shivered. Light spilled over her shoulder as he searched. He circled his hand to her upper chest, brushing the tops of her breasts, and released her. She stumbled to reclaim her balance.

      “All clear.”

      “What should I be scared of? What’s the most dangerous thing out here?”

      “Humans.” He returned the flashlight and turned back to the jungle. “Me, in particular.”

      “That’s a given.” Humans she could deal with. “I mean, what animals, what insects?”

      “Snakes, mostly,” he shouted, walking again. “Only half a dozen species will kill you, most of them in the water—cobras, kraits, sea snakes, coral snakes, vipers... If a krait gets you, you have about a fifty-fifty chance—but by the time you get the first symptoms you’re dead. And there’s scorpion fish and stone fish. The sharks you’ve already met. In these jungles a bunch of spiders will give you a painful bite but probably won’t kill you. Same with the scorpions—the sting hurts, but you’ll live.” He looked up into the canopy. “And the slow loris can give you a poisonous nip.”

      “The what?” She followed his gaze. “You’re making that one up.”

      “Looks like a sloth, but smaller. It probably won’t kill you, unless the bite gets infected.”

      “Good to know.”

      “The biggest killer’s the mosquito. They kill more people than the others combined.” He held out a hand to help her navigate a boggy patch. She ignored it. “Malaria, dengue fever, Japanese Encephalitis... Don’t worry, princess, we have spray.”

      Lightning strobed. Thunder snapped through the sky and shook the ground. Rain pelted her through the thinning canopy. Jack moved faster, crashing through the undergrowth like an elephant, ducking under branches, stopping occasionally to hold them back for her. A large hulk loomed ahead—a rusty tin shed, rain shelling its roof. Their accommodation? Jack charged into a thicket of scrub, and she tumbled through behind him, into air. A path. That was an improvement.

      “Nearly there, princess.”

      After another hundred feet the path widened into a grassy clearing. Lightning illuminated a wooden cabin with a thatched roof. Jack crossed the lawn and took the steps to the veranda in a single stride. A lizard the size of her arm scampered out of his path and disappeared into the darkness. She shuddered.

      “Stay here,” he said as she reached the veranda. He dropped the bags on the doorstep and jogged out into the rain.

      She wiped her face with her sleeve, though it was just as wet. They were beside the sea again, but the waves on this side of the island lapped rather than crashed. Two arms of dark land circled a patch of still blackness. A lagoon. She inhaled the fresh, fertile scent of jungle and sea. Rain splattered all around. She’d been in worse prisons, and this one had a guard who was a step up from the correctional officers she was used to—in so many ways.

      A motor shuddered to life, a hundred feet away or more. An outboard engine? But he said there’d be no escape until the ransom was paid. A light flickered on above her head, and a yellow glow spilled from a window. A generator. Not a boat. Her shoulders slumped.

      Jack returned, walking as calmly as if it were a sunny day. Rain slicked his buzz cut and flowed down his face. He opened an insect screen, unlocked the door and held it open. “Your suite, your highness.”

      Low lamps lit a bed scattered with pink frangipani petals and draped in a mosquito net. A window seat was stacked with red and turquoise cushions. On a glass coffee table, a bottle of champagne nested in a bucket. “Good grief.”

      “Did I mention we’re on honeymoon?”

      She froze. One bed. Her gaze darted to meet his, her stomach flip-flopping.

      “Bed’s yours,” he said, quickly, lowering the bags to the floor. “I’ll take the hammock outside.”

      She exhaled, switching off the flashlight and dropping it on the window seat. She wouldn’t put it past him to carry out his threat to relieve her of a finger or two—he was evidently a professional—but there was honor in him, too. He wouldn’t take advantage of the situation in that way.

      So he’d booked a honeymoon suite—a honeymoon island. Good cover for a woman in her late twenties and a good-looking man not much older. Would someone come to service the suite, replenish their supplies? Could she get a message away—or steal their boat?

      He crossed the glossy floorboards, leaving a trail of water, and unlocked another door. “Bathroom is out here.”

      A covered deck held a vanity and mirror, but otherwise the “bathroom” was a tropical garden enclosed by a brushwood fence. In the center, a miniature thatched roof covered a shower. Garden lights lit spears of falling rain.

      “Check for snakes and bugs before you use the toilet,” he said, indicating a door off the deck. “Hungry?” He brushed past her on his way back inside. She inhaled sharply, to make herself concave.

      “Starving.” All that flipping and clenching in her belly must have burned her calories since dinner. Her meal of fish and rice seemed a lifetime ago.

      She grabbed a white towel so thick it could have been a quilt, and blotted her hair.

      Inside, the capitaine opened a cooler chest on a bench in a tiny kitchen. A rectangular scar nearly the size of a dollar bill dominated his right forearm, a patch of rough, paler skin gouged out of the brown. Hell of a burn.

      “Pastrami, blue cheese, gruyere, olives, mussels, lobster...” He stacked several plastic boxes on the bench and carried them to the coffee table, balancing a baguette on top.

      Her mouth watered. She didn’t even remember what half those things tasted like. She sat on the window seat, opened the nearest box and stuffed a strip of prosciutto in her mouth. They wouldn’t go to all this effort only to poison her, so what the hell. “This is not what I’d expected,” she mumbled, her mouth lighting up at the salty hit.

      “I imagine it’s not. Look, I have nothing against you, this is not personal, so we might as well just...” He frowned.

      “You were going to say, ‘Enjoy it.’”

      “...eat up. And get drunk, if you like.” He waved a hand over the champagne. “All yours. The ice has melted, I’m afraid.”

      “Where did all this stuff come from?”

      “It’s part of the deal when you book this island. They supply everything, drop you off and leave you alone. No one will be coming to check on us, if that’s what you’re hoping. All we can do is sit tight.”

      Dang. “You’d better pour me a glass, then.”

      He swiftly uncorked the champagne, filled a flute and returned the bottle to the bucket.

      “You’re not joining me? Are you Muslim?”

      “No, just sensible.”

      She sipped, and her mouth buzzed with apple and vanilla. She tabled the glass with a clatter. Last time she’d drunk champagne she’d been arrested.