They all took the money.
Yet they gave nothing in return.
They either all lied spectacularly or…Sully had locked down his name, businesses, and address with military precision.
What am I going to do?
I didn’t even know where I was.
I’d caught so many taxis, zipping north, south, east, and west, that I had no idea how to get back. I couldn’t remember the name of the hotel I’d been staying at. I had no belongings apart from the small bag I’d bought to keep my cash and passport inside and the pair of white sandals I’d grabbed from a local stall.
I was homeless and frazzled, running on worry and adrenaline.
I couldn’t keep up this level of franticness. But I also couldn’t stop because if Sully was hurt…
He can’t be hurt.
I’d rather he be a bastard who turned his back on me than hurt.
A bastard, I could reason with. I could convince him that what we had was special and worth fighting for. A dead man, I could not.
God, please, Sully!
The sun slowly sank behind skyscrapers and shacks, painting the sky crimson and tangerine. The humidity was different here. Stickier and polluted. My hair was limp and stuck to my shoulders. My feet throbbed from walking so much. And my body needed liquid and nourishment.
Plodding onward, stores shut for the day and workers conversed in happy Indonesian. A man bumped into me as he skipped from a convenience store, his hand holding a dewy, icy cola.
My mouth instantly craved wetness.
Stepping into the blast of air-conditioning, I beelined for the fridge, selected a sugary raspberry drink—desperate for one of Sully’s nourishing thick smoothies—and grabbed a stale chocolate croissant from the shelf.
I hated eating these days.
I hated how everything tasted packaged and plastic-y. I missed nuts straight off the tree and berries right off the vine.
I didn’t just miss Sully.
I missed his way of life, his ideology, his paradise.
More tears sprang to my eyes, and I angrily swiped them away as I handed over money for my pathetic dinner. The shopkeeper gave me a sympathetic smile.
I attempted to smile back, my gaze snagging on a prepaid smartphone.
New hope sprang ridiculously savage.
“I’ll buy one of those too, please.” Snatching the box, I asked, “Does it have internet?”
“Yes.” The girl nodded. “Four gigabytes for one month, included in the price.”
Shoving more money her way, I took my food and my phone and stumbled back into the muggy evening.
I needed a bench. A park. Somewhere to sit.
Ducking across a busy road, I followed the scent of salt.
The sea that’d once been my prison cell but now became the guard refusing entry back to its islands.
I’d already been down to the port this morning.
I’d walked the massive piers and padded over the litter-covered docks, catching the eyes of fishermen and exporters, attempting to ask them if they knew of Goddess Isles. I’d struggled with the local tongue, using Sully’s name as a talisman that could somehow teleport me back to him.
It’d been utterly pointless.
But at least I felt closer to Sully sitting by the ocean, even if it was polluted and brown.
Finding a spot on a stack of shipping crates, accompanied by the pungent whiff of dead fish, I ripped at the phone box while eating my dried pastry. I followed the set-up instructions and then did something I probably should’ve done days ago.
The guy at the hangar had said no one could find Sully without an invitation.
Yet Drake had found him, and I doubted Sully willingly gave out his address.
Therefore…there must be a way.
If no one will tell me…I’ll find it myself.
Loading Google Earth, I typed in Jakarta. From there, I zoomed out, I panned over the sea, and I began the tedious search for forty-four islands all hidden far from me.
* * * * *
I rubbed my tired and stinging eyes from staring at a bright screen in the dark.
Night had fallen.
My phone’s battery had reached critical.
I’d tracked my way across the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Java Sea. I’d squinted at land masses from some satellite that Google Earth used to spy on mankind, and suffered hope and disappointment, hope and disappointment, over and over again as one island was discounted, followed by another and another and another.
No archipelagos appeared.
No hints of coral reefs and utopian atolls.
Just endless water, blobs of fishing boats and cruise liners, and the never-ending blockade preventing me from returning to Sully.
Had he paid off Google Earth to hide his islands?
Was I blind and not looking hard enough?
Had I dreamed it all and been reduced to an insane girl sitting in the dark at a commercial port in Jakarta, reckless with her safety, stupid with her longevity, utterly obsessed with a man who’d sent her away…permanently.
God.
I dropped my phone into my lap and buried my face in my hands.
This can’t be happening.
How had my life derailed so spectacularly without my permission, and now that I wanted what I’d been given, I couldn’t damn well find it?