She sniffed. “In return for what?”

“You don’t take another one of my tasks away from me. That’s my job and mine alone.”

Her shoulders tensed, but finally, she nodded. “Okay.”

Conner appeared in the treeline, frowning at the way we stood huddled together.

Estelle exhaled as tears faded from her eyes. “I agree. As much as I want to keep you resting, I don’t have the strength to deal with a burial.” Her gaze softened. “Thank you for wanting to protect me. I hate the thought of you doing it alone—I don’t even know how you’ll manage—but I promise I won’t try to do it myself.”

A certain kind of relief filled my chest. “Thank you.”

We shared a smile.

My heart coughed.

I wished we’d had a different topic to discuss.

I wished I didn’t have a date tonight with a fuselage-spade and three graves.

I stepped back. “If you’re not back in an hour, I’m coming after you. Broken limb or not.”

Chapter Twenty-One

...............................................

E S T E L L E

......

I’m loneliness personified. I’m without a map or directions.

I want to wallow.

I don’t want to wallow.

I’m breathing exemplified. I’m a girl who’s finally found her path.

Taken from the notepad of E.E.

...

“THIS IS TAKING forever.”

“Quit your moaning.” I stuck my tongue out at Conner, even though it took every last reserve I had to joke. The past few hours had really hit me. The constant hunger switched my common sense to scattered thoughts, strength to weak muscles, and the unbearable desire for food to madness.

I’d never been so hungry.

Never been so eager to eat.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

It’s death.

I’d kept my oath to Galloway and ensured Conner obeyed, too.

We didn’t go around the front of the helicopter where Akin’s corpse lay.

However...just because we couldn’t see him didn’t mean we didn’t know he was there.

Only a few feet away.

There.

Dead.

It didn’t stop the smell.

The gut-wrenching, nose-melting, soul-destroying smell.

We’d retched a few times as the island breeze wafted a particularly strong odour in our direction.

Galloway was right. The bodies needed dealing with.

But for now, we worked in stench and did our best not to focus on the cause.

Taking a deep breath, timing it with fresh air coming from the south, I looked over my shoulder at the two metal sheets we’d managed to hack off. “Keep going. We’re almost done.” It’d been painstaking work and the tips of my fingers were blistered and sore. But we’d achieved more than I thought we would.

The Swiss Army knife screwdriver didn’t fit perfectly into the fixings and the aviation rivets meant our tools were completely inadequate. The axe came in handy to smash some areas but didn’t help with the larger panels. We’d been limited to smaller pieces of the tail where the crash had already done a lot of the breaking apart for us.

“I’m starving,” Conner muttered, licking his lips. “I don’t think I’ll be able to last much longer without food.”

His fear was my fear, poisoning my heart.

My head pounded with dehydration; my mouth no longer had lubrication. We were demanding our bodies to do too much without putting any fuel back in.

We can’t go on like this. Not if we want to survive past a week.

But I couldn’t agree with him. I couldn’t spill my terrors to a thirteen-year-old boy. Not when I was supposed to be his guardian.

I forced a bright smile. “The minute we’re done, we’ll go fishing. How about that? We’ll catch something. Stranded people always do.”

Conner rolled his eyes. “With what? I don’t see any hooks or rods.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll manage.”

“Whatever, Estelle.”

Conversation faded as we turned our attention to the final piece of fuselage. The crash had dented it. The indent would hold a few litres ...when the rain hit.

My mouth tried to water at the thought of quenching my unquenchable thirst. But saliva was non-existent. The thought of drinking tree-created water when we returned to the beach was the only thing keeping me going for the past two hours.

The first thing Conner and I had done was scrounge for any remaining edibles. We’d been stupid with how quickly we’d consumed our rations. And probably even more stupid by wasting the last dregs of energy on stripping a helicopter that wouldn’t replenish the nutrients it took to demolish.

But there was another reason why I was eager to get as many pieces as possible. Yes, we needed the metal to somehow turn into water catchments (if and when a raincloud arrived) but if we arranged the fuselage into S.O.S on the beach, we might attract a plane.

Not that any have been close since we arrived.

“Yes!” With a final yank, the screw I’d been working on popped off. “Got it.”

Conner squatted, picking up the fallen fixing, and adding it to my pile. I’d meticulously kept hold of the ones we’d undone, just in case they could be used for something.

Like what, exactly? You plan on building a home on a deserted island?

I ignored my snide thoughts.

Last week, I would’ve scoffed at the mere mention of saving such things, but now...everything was an asset, even if it didn’t seem that way.