But that was the thing—he was certain that the landing had been smooth. The landing gear had been perfectly sound when they left Guam. The conditions had been perfect. There was no violent crosswind, no drastically uneven ground. But the way all four tires had blown at once . . .
Jim stood up and walked back up the runway, past where he’d gathered all the pieces that had been torn away, to the spot where the plane had first touched down. Though it was dark, the concrete reflected the moonlight enough that he could see the cracks and stones on its surface. There were a few pebbles, but nothing nearly big enough to have caused that much damage. He combed the pavement, stooping at times to run his hand over a crack to see if it might account for the damage.
Then he found it: two long, thin bamboo planks with nails driven through them, laid horizontally across the runway, the wood blending in with the concrete so it was nearly impossible to see.
The skin on his arms and shoulders prickled with goose bumps. This was no accident. Someone had meant for their plane to stay grounded—but who? Had the Corpus guards laid this out after Nandu’s trip, to guard against any future unwanted visitors? He studied the wood that held the nails in place. How long ago had Nandu been here? Six months? A year? The wood wasn’t weathered or dirty, as it should be after a year of exposure. From what he could tell, it had been put down recently. Was it put down to cripple just any planes—or whatever plane was supposed to bring Sophie to the island? If someone had discovered that Sophie’s mom wrote to her, and wanted to prevent her from coming, wouldn’t it have been easier to stop her before she reached the island? Or to just wait with guns ready for her to arrive? Why go to this length?
He swore and went back to the plane. The discovery had fueled his frustration and gave him the extra spurt of energy to push the plane down the beach, though it didn’t slide as smoothly as he’d hoped and he had to keep using the logs to roll it along. Once he was up to his knees in the shallows, the floats finally took over, and all he had to do was tether the plane. He used the cord, looping it through the floats, and tied it around a bent palm that dipped low over the water. The plane bobbed on the surf, glinting in the moonlight. Jim pushed it as far out as he could so the waves wouldn’t toss it onto the shore.
I’ll give her a few more hours. Maybe she got held up. He climbed wearily into the cockpit and settled into the cracked yellow leather of the seat, and in moments, the gentle roll of the waves rocked him into sleep.
SEVEN SOPHIE
Sophie and Nicholas crept through a patch of spiky, palm-like plants, keeping low to the ground. Fifty yards ahead of them, across a swath of open grass, rose a two-story building with four long wings, crouched like a giant spider on the top of the high bluff. The windows all opened onto balconies drenched in morning glory vines, and Sophie remembered what Jim and Nicholas had told her about Skin Island’s former life as a secluded resort. This building must have once been a hotel. Several windows glowed with warm yellow light, and intermittent floodlights lit the grass around the building. She didn’t see anyone inside, but it looked as though all the windows had blinds on them, and some were even boarded up. Off to her left and down a narrow seashell path huddled a series of smaller buildings, and beyond those, she could just barely make out a line of tall, tile-roofed villas that marched away to the east. Faint starlight hung over the scene, staining the leaves around Sophie faint silver.
“Stay down,” Nicholas whispered. “Guards are going by.” A pair of men in dark uniforms wandered by, rifles slung over their shoulders and caps pulled low over their eyes. They chatted in soft tones, their conversation lost to Sophie though she was only yards away. The foliage around her provided more than enough cover, especially in the dark, but she still shrank away from their approach. Her knee came down on a stick, and it snapped in half. The guards paused, glanced around, then continued on. They rounded the building and were out of sight.
“Why are we hiding?” she asked.
“They don’t know you’re here,” he said.
“Obviously.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Why? What are they hiding?”
Now he looked her squarely in the eye, all emotion drained from his face. “Me.”
Before she could ask what that meant, he jumped up and sprinted across the lawn, then pressed himself flat against the building. He looked right and left, then waved for her to join him. Sophie drew a deep breath, went into a runner’s stance, and rocketed out of the bushes. She covered the stretch in a quick sprint. She reached the wall and leaned against it, startling several sphinx moths that had been crawling across the plaster.
“Now what?” she asked, her heart hammering as if she’d sprinted a mile instead of a mere fifty yards. “And what do you mean, they’re hiding you?”
“Well,” he said, “me and others like me. Well. Not really like me—I’m one of a kind.” He smiled.
“There are more of you?”
He began inching along the wall, toward a metal, windowless door.
“Nicholas. Were you . . . born on this island?”
“In here,” he said, opening the door.
“What? All this security and they just leave the door unlocked?”
“I jammed it open earlier. Now come on.”
She followed him inside, and he softly shut the doorbehind her, then flicked the lock. “There,” he said. “They’ll never know.”
“You’ve done this before,” she commented, and again he flashed her a bright grin. She had to admit, this Nicholas had her intrigued with his sneaking around, his secrets, his infectious smile.
They stood in a narrow alcove that opened into a lit hallway. The air here was as moist and warm as it was outside; if the building had air conditioning, it certainly wasn’t on. The floor was apricot-colored tile laid in a swirling mosaic pattern, and pale blue wallpaper patterned with seashells lined the walls. It immediately reminded Sophie of the condos her dad and stepmom rented each summer on the Florida gulf coast, all pastels and shells and beach tones. And yet there was a strong chemical scent to the air—formaldehyde and rubbing alcohol and latex. It smelled like her tenth grade biology class, so much so that she almost expected hunchbacked Mrs. Forbes with her rubbery blue gloves and ancient bifocals to come limping around the corner, demanding to know why Sophie hadn’t finished dissecting her frog yet.“Where’s my mom?” Sophie hissed.
“This way.” He peered around the corner, then waved for her to follow as he slipped down the hallway.
Clam-shaped wall lamps lit their path. Sophie walked on the balls of her feet; the tile seemed to amplify her footsteps. She saw no one except Nicholas ahead of her. They passed door after door, most of them windowless with faded brass numbers tacked on them. 241, 242, 243 . . . Definitely an old hotel, then. It seemed like an odd place to put a research lab.
“Where are we going?” Sophie asked. Her nerves began to twist into knots. What if he wasn’t taking her to her mother at all? What if this was some kind of trap?
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, without looking back. “I’ll take care of you, Sophie Crue.”
She had no reason to trust this Nicholas. For all she knew, he was the one who’d hurt her mother. Sophie began to slow a little, letting him put distance between them. When he turned to glance back, she waved and gave him a little smile, letting him know she was still following. When he turned back around, the smile dropped from her lips and she began looking for a way to lose him. They seemed to be working their way outward from the center hub of the building; from what she’d seen outside, the hotel’s four wings connected in a central atrium. Nicholas was leading her away from that atrium, toward the end of the wing.