Chapter Nineteen

Never venture outside after a storm until local authorities have deemed it safe. Hidden hazards such as damaged electrical equipment can cause life-threatening injuries.

Ed Hartwell threw back the door to his toolshed—the one next to which he’d built the rabbit hutch—and revealed he’d filled almost the entire thing with red plastic canisters of gasoline.

“Wow,” I said, eyeing them. “I’m really glad I didn’t know about this during the storm.”

He didn’t understand why I found the idea of one hundred gallons of fuel sitting in a wood shed during hundred-mile wind gusts upsetting.

“Why?” He grabbed one of the five-gallon canisters. “It’s totally safe. Unless somebody came out here and smoked.”

The problem was, people had been out there smoking during the hurricane party. The canisters had to have been there then, and Ed had never said a word.

I thought it better not to mention this. What was done was done.

After cleaning the leaves and mud off my motorbike, then topping it off with fuel, Ed had a few pieces of parting advice for me.

“Anyone waves to you, don’t stop,” he said. “No matter how desperate they look for help. They’re probably only after your bike.”

“Jeez, Ed,” I said. “This is Little Bridge, not The Walking Dead. Do you really think that’s going to happen?”

“It might,” he said. “That’s why, just in case, you might want to bring this along.”

He rolled up a pants leg and revealed that he wore an ankle holster. Tucked inside was a snub-nosed .22.

I recoiled at the sight of it.

“Ed. No. No way.”

Of course I’d heard the rumors that Ed Hartwell walked around armed. For what other reason, Angela often argued, would a sixty-five-year-old man in reasonably good health wear a fanny pack, if not to hold a small pistol? His wallet, keys, and cell phone weren’t in it. We could clearly see the outlines of those things in the back pockets of his jeans.

We knew that ever since Wilhelmina, when the Mermaid’s cash register and meat slicer had been looted, Ed had begun keeping a pistol strapped beneath the counter, near the pie window display.

I’d been told, however, that he’d never had occasion to use it, due to the frequency with which members of law enforcement dined at the Mermaid.

But now I had incontrovertible proof that Angela was right: Ed was packing heat, only not in his “bum bag,” as the British tourists we frequently served referred to fanny packs, but in an ankle holster.

“Ed,” I said. “I’m literally only going across town. I do not need a gun.”

“Do you know how to fire one?” he asked, ignoring me.

The funny thing was, I did. You did not grow up the daughter of Judge Justine and a Manhattan defense attorney without, at some point, being taken to a gun range and offered target lessons by one of their well-meaning if dodgy clients. My dad, in particular, had defended some fairly reprehensible individuals—old-school mafiosos, dirty politicians, Russian mobsters, hired killers.

But that didn’t mean I hadn’t enjoyed the lessons. Especially the part where everyone had praised me for turning out to be an excellent shot. Something about my hand-eye coordination.

“Of course I do,” I said. “But, Ed, who’s going to try to steal my scooter? The bridge is out. The only people on the island right now are locals. And you can’t honestly tell me that you think someone who lives here would—”

“Just take it with you.” Ed shoved the pistol at me. “You never know. Someone could come here on a boat or a plane to—”

“—steal my used, ten-year-old scooter?”

“Just take it. You’re a pretty young woman. It’d make me feel a lot better about letting you do this if you had a way to defend yourself. The piece is already loaded. Safety’s here—”

“I know where the safety is, Ed.”

I took the gun from him before he could flash it around some more. There were plenty of people walking around on the street, happy not to be cooped up in their homes now that the storm was over.

I shoved the gun into my backpack, into which I’d also packed a few bottles of water and a warm, foil-wrapped Cuban breakfast sandwich that Mrs. Hartwell had insisted on making for Drew when she’d heard where I was headed.

“Please bring him back to me,” she’d whispered, tears in her eyes—the whisper was because Katie was on the landline, talking to her dad, and Mrs. Hartwell didn’t want to disturb her. The tears were because she was so moved by my offer to go find Drew.

“Don’t worry, I will,” I’d assured her. I hadn’t wanted to voice my fears about what I was really going to find once I got out to Sandy Point, which was nothing but rubble.

Katie came in just at that moment, looking perturbed.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Mrs. H asked. “Is your dad all right?”

“Oh, he’s fine.” Katie lifted a piece of toast and nibbled on it absently. “Everyone over at the high school made it through the storm okay. The jail, too. But I guess things are pretty bad over by the bridge. There’s already a traffic jam on the other side, locals trying to get back to their homes. Only they can’t because there’s no safe way through. Dad’s there now, dealing with them. He wants me to call my mom in Miami and let her know I’m okay.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hartwell, “you should. I’m sure she’s worried sick about you. You know they’re saying on the news that Little Bridge was destroyed in the storm.”

“I know,” Katie said. “It’s just that I don’t feel like talking to my mom. She’s such a—”

Mrs. Hartwell gasped. “Katie!”

I knew how Katie felt, though. I probably should have used the Hartwells’ landline to call my own mother and let her know I was all right. But like Katie, I didn’t want to, either. There was something weirdly restful and almost comforting about being cut off from the rest of the world, without cell service, Internet, and television . . .

Well, except the part about not knowing whether Drew Hartwell was dead or alive.

But I intended to remedy that.

I was familiar with the drive out to Sandy Point because it was one of the prettiest beaches on the island, so I often visited it on my days off from work, sometimes even going there to paint. A state park, there weren’t any hotels or commercial businesses out there, only a few private homes on land that had been purchased before the government had stepped in and declared the beach a national treasure, so the shoreline still had a pristine quality to it. There weren’t any tiki huts or trucks selling snow cones or renting Jet Skis or sun umbrellas, so tourists generally avoided the area.

Although who knew what that mile of white, palm tree–dotted sand looked like now? The closer I got to the shore, the more difficult the roads leading to it became to navigate. What was normally a fifteen-minute scooter ride took over an hour, because I kept having to back down a street once I’d started up it, due to fallen trees or power lines I couldn’t get by, even on a motorbike.

But one thing I did not encounter were any hostile predators, despite Ed’s predictions. In fact, I met the opposite. Thoughtful locals who lived in the area had already generously marked places where electric lines were down or hanging low, tying brightly colored bandannas or even plastic bags around the wires so anyone passing by wouldn’t run over or into them.