Alice was already injured; Joseph kept her from working not only out of tenderness, but because her body simply couldn’t take it.“I’m fine,” Alice said through a tight jaw. “I didn’t expect to be this useless—to botch something so simple.”Frustration burned on her face.She thought about grabbing the shovel again, but the sharp pain in her arms made her flinch.“Alice, be good and rest,” Joseph said, relief softening his tone. “Once you’re healed, you can help for real. If you hurt yourself again, I’ll be worried sick—and then I won’t get anything done.”“I—”“Please,” he said gently.She opened her mouth to argue, then faltered under the calm resolve in his eyes. In his hands, she felt the breadth of his shoulders—the steady strength she’d never known before.She’d only been proving a point.“Okay,” Alice whispered, nodding like a sleepwalker, her mind gone quiet.But it wasn’t empty. It replayed the image of him rushing to catch her—just like in the cave, when he’d dragged her fro

The island’s humid air gave the trees a perfect excuse to thrive. Among so much green, finding a few pines wasn’t hard—pines like to grow in clusters; spot one, and the rest show themselves.While the search was underway, Joseph hadn’t been idle. Using the dry branches they’d gathered earlier, he lit a fire in the pit. Flames roared up at once, coughing out thick, black smoke.The heat and the fuel were certainly insufficient for the final task, but for now, they would do.Earlier, to strengthen the pit walls, Joseph had doused them with generous buckets of seawater. The whole interior was damp and unusable yet. The dry wood’s first job wasn’t to fire anything—it was to bake the moisture out of the walls.He had already compacted the soil, squeezing out air and gaps; once the clay dried, it would harden further, and the set stones would lock everything in place. This little cavern would be tough to destroy.The shovel they’d fashioned from cruise-ship scrap had found a new purpose. Jo

For Joseph, the night was fated to be sleepless.Once he’d seen Alice settled, he didn’t rest. There was too much to do, too many contingencies to set in motion.The island air was heavy with damp. He brought in all the drying jerky and stored it in a single room.Bruce Lee stood guard himself.That meat was the artery of their survival. Beyond trusting Bruce’s character, Joseph had another reason: of those who remained with him, Bruce was the only true fighter. If anything happened, he wouldn’t go down without a swing. It was Joseph’s first line of insurance.They still had coils of vine rope they’d braided earlier, along with other tools. Joseph turned them into traps, staking them around the perimeter of camp. His second safeguard.In the kiln he’d prepared for the porcelain, the wood had burned to nothing. The blaze was out; only embers winked in the pit.The walls had hardened completely. Joseph could stand on them without the slightest give—just as he’d hoped.He didn’t hurry to

They’d been on the island a week—long enough for bats to claim a cave.Archie Turner set his jaw. Heather Martin wouldn’t lie to them.He could only hope he was overthinking it.“Inside.”Mustering their nerve, they pushed deeper. Nothing looked touched. The cave was pitch-black, the kind of dark that made you wonder if you’d left the world of the living and stepped straight into hell.If Joseph had really stashed supplies here, he had to be mad.Snap.They’d gone only a few paces when a sharp crack burst from beneath the lead man’s foot. He froze, shaking.“What happened?” Archie demanded, striding forward.The man glanced back, quivering. A mousetrap clamped hard to his boot. Pain tore through him; his face drained, his body shuddering uncontrollably.“Aaagh—”His scream ricocheted through the cave, flushing birds from the trees outside. The pain was blinding, a white-hot drill. He couldn’t even open his eyes, let alone stay upright.“Don’t move!” Archie barked, a bad feeling bloomi

The answer was beyond question.“You can go.”Joseph let out a weary sigh.These people were only following Charles’s orders. Joseph was capable of killing them, but he had no desire to slaughter them in cold blood.They had survived a shipwreck by sheer luck and endured untold hardships together on this island. That alone had been difficult enough.More importantly, they had not harmed Alice. Joseph could not bring himself to kill them. If he did, what would make him any different from Charles?“You’re really letting us leave?”Archie Turner stared at Joseph in disbelief, hardly trusting his own ears.Joseph was simply going to let them walk away?“What else would you have me do?”Joseph glanced over his shoulder, an inscrutable smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t manage to take anything from me. Why should I waste my time making things difficult for you?”“Charles is the one you should be worried about.” Joseph gave a cold laugh. “If I’m right, he and his men have