had been enraged when the owners of a large coffee plantation had donated the land to the sanctuary. Her father had hinted that there had been a rise in tension over precious turtle eggs. Precious to Axl Cruz because they meant money on the black market. Precious to her father because the sea creatures were endangered.
Instinct set her in motion.
Flashes of gunfire lit up the inky black sky. An illustration, if she needed one, of why the so-called gang called themselves White Night.
Her nostrils stung with the sour scent of spent gunpowder.
A volley of Spanish came at her from all directions as yet another round of gunfire broke through the night. When the moon reappeared she saw her father.
“Daddy!”
Why were they dragging him away?
“I’m all right, love.” Her father’s scratchy brogue carried across the cove. “Just stay calm. You’ll be fine. They only want the eggs. They won’t hurt you if you do what they say. All right, laddies. ¡Suéltame!”
She strained to hear her father’s calm, ever-scientific voice rising and falling, explaining something in Spanish as calmly as if the gun-wielding pandilleros had come along for one of her father’s nocturnal sea turtle tours.
Ever since her mum had died the man had lived on another planet. How else could one unbelievably intelligent human think he could talk down a criminal gang intent on illegal turtle egg sales?
It was why her grandmother had raised her to be the sensible one. The reliable one.
The boring one.
She pushed aside her ex’s cruel words and tried to follow her father’s directions. As bonkers as he was, there wasn’t a chance on earth she was going to lose him too. Not after the week she’d had. So she did what she was good at: following protocol.
There was a gunshot victim and he needed help. Now.
She astonished herself by offering a polite smile to one of the burlier men closing in on her. His pitch-black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. If he loosened his hair and put on a smile she could imagine him as a father or son.
He grunted and looked away.
Apparently smiles weren’t going to help tonight.
Her father had told her that in a good year on the black market a family could live for a year on the proceeds of a single night’s haul of the precious eggs. Little wonder some of the men had turned to crime when the land had become protected.
Not protected well enough.
Her father’s project was meant to put an end to the need for violence. Create a viable means of making a living on the island. Bring an end to the destruction of the endangered animals. An end to the violence. A way to legitimately support a family. But it would take time. Time these men didn’t seem willing to give.
A tall, lanky man stepped forward and grabbed her arm as yet another unhooked a skein of rope from his shoulder.
Her vision blurred as reality dawned.
She was going to be held hostage.
She turned and caught a final glimpse of her father being manhandled toward the smattering of seaside bungalows where the sanctuary staff lived. Before he disappeared she heard him shouting something about calling for help.
An ice-cold flash of fear prickled along her spine.
Help? Which one of them was in any position to call for help? She’d only been on the island a few days, and those had largely been spent sobbing her eyes out over her broken engagement. The little girl in her wanted to scream with frustration. He was the one who was tapped into the local support network. He was the grown-up!
The male who’d been shot uttered a low groan as he dropped to his knees in pain.
And just like that she remembered she was an adult too. One with the power to help.
It felt as if hours had passed since she’d heard the first gunshots, but Isla knew better than most that only a few precious seconds had passed. Life-changing seconds.
The pony-tailed man shouldered an automatic weapon. She followed the trajectory of his gun as it swung to the far side of the cove.
He raised it to the starlit sky and fired. The sharp rat-a-tat-tats sounded more like a signal than an attempt to get the turtle sanctuary’s ragtag protection detail to run for the hills.
Her heart ached for the sanctuary security team. They were gentle men—cooks, farmers, bricklayers, fathers—whose sole desire was to see an end to the violence that threatened to taint their lives so cruelly.
Ire burnt and stung in her chest, then reformed as a white-hot rod of indignation. They shouldn’t have to live like this. Fearing for their lives while trying to do the right thing by their families and their community.
“Everybody stop!”
Much to her astonishment, they did.
The moment’s reprieve in the shooting and shouting gave her a chance to listen for anyone approaching or more instructions from her father.
Nope.
Not a living soul.
Just a chance to realize that her heart had stopped hammering against her rib cage as if it too were trying to escape.
Two weeks ago she would’ve been hiding under something right now. Most likely the big bed in her little stone cottage on Craggen. Not standing between two gun-toting groups of men with her arms out like some sort of bonkers traffic controller.
Was being dumped more character-building than soul-destroying? Or was the truth a bit more simple.
After the week she’d had Isla really didn’t have time for this sort of ridiculous machismo.
She pushed her own issues to the wayside. Her father was here to help the community—not hinder. Nor had she faced up to a lifelong fear of flying only to get killed when she got here.
She was here to lick her emotional wounds, sulk a little. Wallow. Something she never did. And she was not best pleased to have to patch together gun-wielding turtle egg poachers just because they didn’t see the sense in her father’s big plan.
The same father, she reminded herself, who probably should’ve mentioned the fact that El Valderon was more akin to the Wild West of yesteryear than a restorative Caribbean spa.
Maybe he simply didn’t want to see the dark side.
Her heart softened. For once, her father had been trying to do right by her. To give her a place to hide away from the prying eyes of Loch Craggen. Regroup after being deemed “the most boring girlfriend on earth.”
Well, Kyle would’ve been boring too, if his mother had been killed and his father had lost the plot. Someone needed to be practical. Someone needed to look after Grannie. Someone had to be there.
Ponytail Man retrained his gun on her. She stared him straight in the eye. Here was her chance to show Kyle Strout just what boring looked like.
She looked down at the pure white sand currently soaking up the splatterings of very real blood, courtesy of the egg poachers and guards shooting at each other.
A swift shot of resolve crackled through her like a flash of unexpected lightning.
She wasn’t boring.
Nor was she going to engage in all this mopey, weepy, victim of an ill-fated romance palaver.
She was going to save this man’s life, then find her father and help him make his dream of saving the sea turtle come true.
She squared off to Ponytail Man and fixed him with