Chapter 4

The inflatable raft bobbed precariously on the choppy waves.

Mom was a huddled, shivering wreck, her eyes fixed on the *Serenity*, now receding in the distance.

My arms ached, burning with every stroke of the flimsy plastic paddle.

Uncle Ben's private island, a green smudge on the horizon, seemed impossibly far.

"He's gone, isn't he?" Mom whispered, her voice hollow.

I couldn't answer. The sounds from the tool room... I couldn't block them out.

Mike. My brave, stupid brother.

Hours seemed to pass. The sun beat down mercilessly. My throat was parched.

Finally, the green smudge grew larger, resolving into a palm-fringed beach, a sprawling white villa nestled in the trees.

As we neared the shore, I saw a figure emerge from the villa, tall and broad-shouldered. Uncle Ben.

I waved frantically, shouting, my voice hoarse. "Uncle Ben! Help us!"

He saw us. He started running towards the small private dock.

I practically fell out of the raft when we reached it, dragging Mom with me.

"Ben! Thank God!" Mom sobbed, collapsing into his arms.

Uncle Ben, a retired Marine, usually unflappable, looked shocked. His eyes scanned our disheveled state, the cheap inflatable raft.

"Emily? Sarah? What in God's name happened? Where's Mike? Where's David?"

"Pirates," I gasped, leaning against a piling for support. "They took the yacht. Mike... Mike tried to fight them." I couldn't say the words.

Uncle Ben's face hardened. "David called me an hour ago."

My blood ran cold.

"He said you and Mike had a fight with him, Sarah. That you were jealous of Chloe's birthday attention. He said you took off in the tender, made up some crazy story about pirates to scare Emily."

I stared at him, disbelief choking me. "What? No! That's a lie!"

"He said Chloe was with him, perfectly fine. He even put her on the phone. She sounded... upset, said you were always trying to cause trouble."

Chloe. Of course. The master manipulator.

"Uncle Ben, he's lying! They left us! Dad took all the crew! We were alone!" I held out my hand, showing him the heavy diamond necklace. "Mom gave this to me. You know what that means."

The necklace. Our family's emergency signal. Mom had told him, years ago, after a particularly nasty argument with David about finances, that if she ever gave it to me before my wedding, it meant she was in dire straits.

His eyes, which had been filled with a skeptical anger, flickered. He looked at Mom, truly looked at her terror, her soaked clothes, her vacant stare.

"He said... he said Chloe is so sweet, so unassuming. Not like you, Sarah. You've always had everything, he said." David's words, dripping with Ben's remembered disdain.

My own uncle. Believing David. Believing Chloe.

The NASA internship flashed in my mind. The one I'd worked my ass off for. The one David and Uncle Ben had pressured me to give to Chloe because she'd "had a harder life."

"The internship, Uncle Ben," I said, my voice trembling with a fresh wave of fury and despair. "The one you wanted me to give Chloe. Would I trade that, trade everything, for a lie?"

He looked at the necklace in my hand, then at my face. Doubt warred with the ingrained loyalty to his old friend, David, and the memory of Chloe's mother, the woman both he and David had loved.

"Get in the boat," he said gruffly, turning towards his own powerful speedboat moored at the dock. "We'll check it out."

A sliver of hope. But it felt as fragile as glass.