CHAPTER 280: CHAPTER 280 WRECKAGE

The sharp tone made me freeze.

‘Hold onto my neck. Unless you want to fall.’

I hesitated, then frowned up at him. ‘Do you think I can’t cross on my own?’

But Ashton only shook his head and looked straight at me. His voice was steady, almost solemn. ‘I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.’

Even with me in his arms, he crossed the stream without effort. In less than a minute, we were on the far bank.

He set me down gently. My feet touched the cool ground, and the heat of my frustration ebbed.

Then Ashton took my hand again. We walked in silence. The only sounds were the rustle of leaves in the wind, the occasional chirp of birds, and the crunch of our steps on the forest floor.

Suddenly, we both stopped.

I saw the yacht.

To be precise, the wreck of the yacht.

Before us lay broken pieces, twisted and scattered, half buried under a tangle of branches.

For the first time since reaching the shore, excitement surged through me. I was so overwhelmed I froze, not daring to blink in case the sight before me dissolved into a mirage.

Ashton walked towards the wreckage.

I snapped out of it and hurried after him, almost running in my eagerness, overtaking him in my haste.

The yacht was incomplete, but a good portion of it remained. That meant there was a high chance of finding the luggage.

My eyes lit up. ‘How did you know the yacht was this way?’

Ashton was already shifting aside a thick plank of wood. ‘When you came into the forest, you didn’t notice how many of the trees here were snapped compared to elsewhere?’

I shook my head. My spirits had been too low earlier to notice anything, and even if I had, I doubt I would have spotted what he did.

‘If it had only been the tsunami, the trees would have snapped once near the base, or been uprooted entirely and carried off. But these ones are broken in three or four places. That means they were struck by something heavy in addition to the waves. Apart from our yacht, there was nothing nearby large enough to cause that kind of damage.’

I stared at him.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Were you some kind of scout before?’

Ashton shook his head. ‘No. I just learnt a little, once.’

I had a hundred more questions: why did he learn such things, and when?

Then I thought of his parents, who had shipped him abroad when he was a boy, not out of care but to wash their hands of him.

Maybe his life had been harder than I realised.

Lea’s words at the ball came back to me. She had said she and Ashton had known each other a long time, that they were the same kind of people.

Did he learn these skills with her? Had they survived something like this together before?

I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and forced the thoughts away. Right now, survival mattered more than digging into the past.

Something glinted on the ground. I dropped to one knee, brushing soil aside with one hand and probing with the other.

Ashton came over to see. Beneath the dirt, a white surface emerged, smooth and rectangular. A cabin door. My fingers were already on the handle.

I looked up at him, eyes bright with hope. ‘You still have the key, right?’

Yesterday, before we dived, I’d locked the cabin door. Ashton had been carrying the key.

I could have smacked myself for that bit of brilliance.

What had I been thinking, locking the cabin door on a deserted stretch of sea where you hardly even saw an animal, let alone a stranger?

The cabin itself was oddly positioned, half its bulk sunk deep into the soil so it could not be shifted. The only way in was through this door.

Through the glass in the frame, I had glimpsed two familiar wheels. My suitcase. My very own little suitcase. All I had to do was get this door open.

‘No,’ Ashton said quietly, and for once, there was regret in his voice. ‘I lost it underwater last night.’

He admitted it like a soldier taking punishment, stiff-backed and without excuses.

Anyone else would have been furious with him. That key could mean the difference between surviving comfortably and barely scraping by. But I was still rational enough to think clearly.

If Ashton had lost the key, it was surely when he was fighting to keep me alive under the waves. He would never say so, but I knew it.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Let’s just work out how to open this door.’ I eyed the lock. ‘How do we break in?’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Ashton said.

He left me waiting while he went off. When he finally came back, he was holding a massive rock.

I craned my neck and squinted to be sure. Yes, a boulder-sized stone.

I stepped back to clear him a space to strike.

He positioned the rock with precision, not just swinging wildly but aiming with care. Clearly, he had been trained. The glass shattered quickly.

My heart leapt. Even Ashton’s lips curved in the faintest smile.

I rushed forward, but he stopped me with a hand around my waist. ‘Wait.’

He reached through the broken glass. The edges were still razor sharp, and a careless move could have left a scar. But he was quick, and with a twist, the lock gave way.

He ducked inside first, and a moment later, came out carrying a suitcase.

Relief washed over me. I rushed to check mine.

The most important thing was...

Damn it. The sat phone was broken.

Just as useless as my other phone.

‘At least we’ve got a change of clothes now,’ I said, trying to sound optimistic.

But now that we had the luggage, the question was what to do next.