to fly back in the nighttime. Did small planes fly at night? What about the wind and the rain? Would they fly in bad weather? She thought they probably did, but she was worried anyway. She’d be worried until she was far away from here.
There was no plane at the airfield when they got there, and Chip got out of the Land Rover to go into the hangar and check on its status.
The two of them alone in the car, Bruce turned around and faced Abigail. “You happy now? You’re getting what you wanted.” His voice had the same hushed tone she’d heard earlier when he’d called her a “spoiled bitch.”
“I’m not happy, actually, Bruce, but I am relieved to be leaving here.”
Chip came out of the hangar looking concerned, and a feeling of despair coursed through Abigail. The plane wasn’t coming. It was too windy, or too rainy, he’d say. They were playing with her, and the plane would never come.
But then Chip was swinging open the passenger door next to Abigail and saying, “Your winged chariot is well on its way. In fact, I think I hear it.”
Abigail got out of the car and looked up toward the sky. She could hear something, too, a low thrum, and then she could see the plane, cresting the tree line, growing larger, coming to take her away from here.
CHAPTER 24
It was the same pilot who’d flown them to Heart Pond Island just four days earlier. She’d barely noticed him during that flight, but now she looked at him the way she’d look at someone selling ice-cold water in a desert. It was all she could do to stop herself from hugging him.
“This it?” he said, coming down the short steps from the plane to the landing strip and glancing from Bruce to her and back. He was young, with shoulder-length blond hair, and he wore a puka-shell necklace tight against his muscular neck.
Chip said, “This is it. Thanks for coming out here on short notice.”
“No problem. Let me just use your commode and then I’ll be ready to roll.” He hurried off toward the hangar, just as the walkie-talkie on Chip’s hip squawked. He plucked it off his belt, turned his back on Bruce and Abigail, and had a brief conversation that was obscured by a gust of wind, the second big gust that Abigail had felt since they’d walked out onto the landing strip. Abigail looked toward the horizon, where clouds were building.
“We got one more passenger coming,” Chip said to them, reattaching his walkie-talkie to his hip. “My guests are dropping like flies.” He smiled at them, Abigail noticing his weird flat eyes again, then turned toward Bruce. They shook hands, then embraced. “Take care, my brother,” Chip said, and Bruce patted him twice, hard, on the back.
Abigail stood and watched their goodbye, hoping Chip wouldn’t try to hug her, too. He didn’t, but he did extend a hand her way and she took it, surprised by the softness and warmth of his palm. Like uncooked dough, she thought.
“Who’s coming?” she asked, even though she already knew that it had to be Eric Newman. He was following them, or maybe he was simply taking the opportunity of the plane’s arrival to escape this island as well.
“Scott Baumgart,” Chip said.
“She knows his real name,” Bruce said. “I told her all about him.”
“I’m sorry if he came here and bothered you, Abigail,” Chip said. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen at Quoddy. At least it shouldn’t. And I hope you won’t mind flying back to the mainland with him. It’s a short flight, as you know.”
“It’s fine,” Abigail said, although she wasn’t sure if it was. Still, it was far preferable to not getting on the plane.
Bruce looked at her, an expression on his face that she couldn’t read. “I can tell him not to come,” he said after a moment.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The pilot was hustling back from the hangar just as a jeep pulled up alongside Chip’s Land Rover. Abigail watched as Eric got out of the passenger side, slung a backpack over his shoulder, and made his way toward them. Even at a distance his face looked grim and determined. Abigail wasn’t happy to see him, worried that somehow his presence was going to stop her from getting on the plane, from getting off the island. He strode up just as the pilot arrived, and just as the jeep was making a U-turn and heading back to the