were empty hope.
“I don’t know, but there has to be a way.” He fingered the raw edge of the power cord. “Maybe we could splice this back together again.” He tipped the machine over and looked at the back. “I’m sure whoever cut the cord took the backup battery, too.”
“Wait.” Abby headed to the far wall. “I thought of this just before you showed me the cord.” She flipped the light switch into an upright position. Nothing happened. She flipped it back and forth a couple more times just to be sure, then headed to the refrigerator. The light didn’t come on when she opened the fridge. She checked the freezer anyway, and found two full ice trays, which she pulled out and showed to Scott.
“Look,” she said, staring down at the little rectangles of ice that floated in thawed puddles in each compartment. “This freezer had to have been running until recently. I wonder how long it would take the ice to thaw this much.”
“In this weather, maybe a couple of days, maybe less, who knows? Either way, it looks like Captain Sal went to a lot of trouble to make sure we wouldn’t be able to get that radio up and working.” Scott took the ice trays from her and put them back in the freezer. He was apparently optimistic about getting the power back on.
That thought would have been enough to make Abby smile if it weren’t for the cold dread she felt. She tried to shake the feeling. “Do you think it’s just a weird coincidence?” she posited. “Captain Sal would have had to know somebody wanted to come out to this island, and that he’d be able to steal enough from them to make it worth his trouble. What are the odds of that?”
“What if he had prior knowledge my parents were coming out?” Scott challenged.
As Abby looked into Scott’s face, his I-dare-you-to-deny-it expression made her wonder whose side he was on. But then his eyes crinkled into a smile and she dismissed her fear. “Would he have any way of knowing that?” she asked.
“Who knows? Mitch has always liked to run off at the mouth. He could have been blabbering about their plans all over town yesterday. Anyone could have overheard him and noticed how much jewelry my mom was wearing. I doubt it was some grand conspiracy.” He shrugged. “We don’t know why we’ve been left here. But it seems to me we’re going to have to do something if we want to get off this island.”
Abby agreed. “You’re right. And we need to get back to your folks and let them know what’s happening.”
“No, Abby, wait.” Scott’s hand caught her shoulder, pulling her gently back toward him.
She looked up into his eyes, and for a second, she was a lovestruck freshman again, sitting in a desk next to the coolest guy in school, all too aware of how close she was to him.
“Please don’t let on to my mother that anything is wrong. She’s been through some tough times lately, and I don’t think she can handle all the complexities of our current situation right now, at least not until we have a plan to get us out of here.”
The moment he spoke the words, Abby realized Scott was exactly right. She’d seen how shaken Marilyn had been earlier, and the situation hadn’t been nearly as frightening then. “I’m sorry.” She bowed her head penitently. “I should have thought of that. We don’t even know what we’re up against, and it’s not as though she’s in any position to help. We need to examine our options.”
“Right. What are our options?” He gave her a sheepish look. “You’re the expert here. I’ve never even been to this island before.”
Abby was tempted to ask why he’d come, but there wasn’t time for chitchat. “Well, as far as I can see.” She led him into the front room, where a huge mural of the islands covered one large wall. She reached up and put a finger on Devil’s Island, the farthest north of the twenty-two Apostle Islands. “We’ve got three main options. One, we can get off this island by ourselves. Two, we could be rescued, either by contacting someone on the outside, or if we get really lucky, drawing the attention of a passing boat.”
Scott looked impressed. “What are the chances we could draw the attention of a passing boat?”
Abby took a deep breath. “Have you seen any passing boats?”
“No.”
“There are shipping channels six and twelve miles north of here, where the big ore ships travel. But they can hardly see the island from there. I mean, we could write help in driftwood on the beach, but there’s no way they’d see it.”
“What about airplanes?”
“Ditto. The only thing likely to come close would be a small sightseeing plane, but they’re rare enough in the summer months. The tourist season is over for the winter, and most local pilots are just as wary as the boaters about going out this late in the season, anyway. Storms blow up quickly around here, often with very little warning, and getting caught in one out here tends to be deadly.”
“What about a signal fire?”
Abby had to smile at Scott’s creativity and persistence. “That would be a great idea, if it hadn’t rained last night. Most of the wood around here is probably too soaked to burn. Besides, people burn campfires out on these islands all the time. Unless the fire was enormous, most people would just think it was a campfire, if they could see the smoke at all.”
“So, you said we had three options. What was our third?”
Lowering her hand slowly from the map, Abby tried to remember. What had she been thinking? “Pray,” she said finally in a soft voice.
“I guess we should be doing that anyway.” Scott took both of her hands in his.
It took Abby a moment to grasp what he was doing.
By the time she’d realized he was serious, he’d closed his blue eyes and tipped his face up imploringly. “Dear Lord,” he began, and only then did Abby come to her senses enough to snap her eyes shut and pray with him.
“We’re in over our heads here, and we don’t understand what’s going on,” Scott continued in a confessional tone. “This is way more than we can even begin to deal with, but we trust that You are watching over us, and providing whatever we will need. We need Your help. We need You to protect us throughout this ordeal that’s before us, so we can live lives that are glorifying to You. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”
Abby kept her eyes shut a minute longer, her heart filled with wonder. In spite of the damp chill of the house, she felt oddly warm. She couldn’t recall when she’d last prayed with another person, unless she counted the corporate prayers at church. For her, praying had always been a private thing, so private she rarely prayed aloud. When her eyes popped open, she realized a stray tear had escaped down her cheek.
“I’m sorry.” Scott brushed it away with his thumb. “I guess I didn’t even ask you if that was okay. I seemed to recall from college days that you were a Christian.”
“Yes, I was. I am,” Abby assured him, clearing her throat to raise her voice above a whisper. “I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed with everything.” Like the ring in her pocket, and how Trevor would react if she didn’t get it back to him. She straightened and pulled her hands free of his, the contact too lasting, too intimate, especially after the prayer. “You’re used to praying with others, aren’t you?”
“I
