Placing his knife back into the loop on his faded jeans, he comes back to me. I stare at him, watching the muscles on his body ripple under rays of sunlight that filter through the leaves. He’s slightly burnt around the shoulders from fishing yesterday, but he’s been working his body hard, and it shows.
I loop a hand around his neck when he reaches me. “You’re looking good, there,” I say to him. “What workouts have you been doing?”
He bends down and kisses my forehead, but he’s distracted now. “There’s a lot you can do with body weight alone,” he says. “We’re getting off this island, and I’ll be damned if I let myself go to pot while we’re here. Been alternating upper body, cardio, and lower body.”
“You sure have, and you’ve most certainly not atrophied in any way.” I say appreciatively, as we head back inside. “Now, where were we?”
But he doesn’t appear to be in the mood anymore. He gives me a chaste kiss on the cheek.
“We need to think harder,” he says. “Why have we only found one camera?”
“Honestly, I was wondering that myself,” I say thoughtfully. “I guess I took it for granted it’d be easier than it actually is. I mean, the other guy found a bunch of them.”
“Where, though? Where did he find them?”
I shake my head. “No idea.” I sit in one of the rustic chairs Cy made out of carved wood. Thinking.
“You know,” I say thoughtfully after some time, “maybe we need to think strategically. First of all, who do we think is responsible for the cameras?”
“Whoever got us on this fucking island,” he says, as if that’s the most obvious answer in the world.
“Yes, of course,” I respond. “But I mean, which group might target us?” I shake my head. I have no idea myself.
“Whoever it was had military involvement,” he says. “Obviously, if the men kidnapped were all military.”
“Right,” I muse. “Although how would you explain me?” Why was I the one lone woman chosen and sent?
“Easy.” he says with a shrug. “You’re my opposite. Your interests and desires are so wildly different from mine.”
The way he says it makes a little pang hit my chest.
He’s right. Everything about me is the direct opposite of him. I’m a woman, and he’s a man. I came from a strong, close-knit family, and he was in foster care his whole life. I’m scholarly and educated, and he barely squeaked by getting his degree before he enlisted. Before I came here, I wrote articles championing women’s rights and the plight of the modern-day female. And now…
Now what?
What if right here, right this very moment, someone arrived here with a magical contraption that would bring us right back to life as we knew it before the island?
Would I still be his?
Would he still be mine?
He’s talking, and I realize I haven’t heard a word he said.
“What was that?” I ask.
“I was just saying, that whoever it was would have to have a shit ton of money to be able to orchestrate what they did.”
“Damn right,” I agree. I think about it. The island itself. The abduction of six men. The cruise ship… “would have to be someone deranged too.”
I nod slowly. Thinking. Why would they even need hidden cameras? What purpose would they serve? Do they want to watch us when we’re starving? Poke fun at the plights they’ve managed to orchestrate with their own hands?
Or is there another purpose?
“Where have we looked so far?” Cy asks, stroking his chin, asking himself as much as he’s asking me.
I sigh. “Everywhere.”
“Not everywhere. There are still two cameras missing.”
“We found the other one by the cave,” I tell him. “And they know that we used that as a shelter. We’ve combed this shelter inside and out, and we know for a fact that it’s clear. However…” my voice trails off. I’m thinking.
“Yeah, baby?” he asks. “I know you’re onto something. You get that look in your eyes just before you have a stroke of genius.”
My heart thumps a little harder at his praise, and the revelation I just had.
“We need to re-think where they’d want to video us. Clearly, in places where we’re most likely to go. I mean, they’re not going to be hidden under some random leaf on the other side of the island.”
“We’ve already looked in every major place—”
“Not the waterfall,” I say pointedly. “We haven’t looked there.”
“I did,” he says. “I looked when I went hunting there.”
I shake my head. “We haven’t looked together,” I tell him. “And remember… I see things differently than you. You just said it yourself, didn’t you?”
A corner of his lips quirks up, and he reaches for the small of my back, drawing me closer to him. “We do indeed.” He nods. “Okay, let’s go. It’s worth another look.”