The Missing by Kiersten Modglin (essential books to read txt) 📕

“How long will it take?” one of the other passengers asked, a thin man with a clean-cut pompadour and glasses.

“It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours,” he said. “Maybe even less. We won’t know for sure until we’re able to assess the damage. Worse case, we’ll call for another boat to pick you all up once we’re there. We’ll have you home before long, don’t worry. For now, we ask that everyone stay away from the railings, come down to the lower deck, and take a seat. We want to keep you safe, first and foremost.”

He nodded slowly, waiting for us to move toward him, and as we did, I saw the relief in his eyes. He was worried. They all were. Each of the crew members had the same sickly look on their face.

As they led us to the lower deck and we each took a seat on the padded benches around the edge, I pressed my back to the plastic wall behind me, taking deep breaths. Was this really all of us? It had seemed like so many people before, but I realized now that most of the passengers had been crew, caterers, and waiters. As it turned out, there were only five of us who were actually guests on the boat. Me and the Black woman with short, curly hair, the cocky Southeast Asian man who’d talked to me earlier, the skinny, glasses-wearing man who held a book tightly in his hands, and another young man with large biceps and wild and curly blond hair, who’d been joking around with the bartender for most of the ride, downing drinks quicker than even I had been. That man was staring at me then, apparently aware that I’d been studying him, and I looked away too quickly.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the time. We’d been on the boat for more than four hours, though it felt simultaneously much longer and much shorter.

I glanced at the top corner, checking and confirming that I still had no service. Had he noticed I was gone yet? Did he even care?

I shoved the phone back into the pocket of my bathing suit cover and closed my eyes just as the engine fired up again. When I opened my eyes again, the crew had disappeared, and we were left alone.

They hadn’t turned the music back on after it had been cut off with the engine dying, so we sat in agonizing silence, watching the waves as we rode over them carefully. What had once seemed beautiful and peaceful now carried an ominous tone.

Half an hour later, I saw the outline of a landmass forming in the distance and stood without thought. I lifted a hand to my eyes, trying to shield them from the bright sun directly behind the land as I tried to make it out.

I heard footsteps and glanced beside me just as the woman approached me. She gave a halfhearted smile and nodded her head toward the port. “Is that it?”

“I’m guessing so,” I said. Up close, I realized she was even younger than I’d initially thought. If she was twenty-one, it’d be a shock to me. How had she ended up on the boat? Which one of the men was she traveling with?

Though it must’ve been longer, it seemed like only minutes had gone by when I could finally make out the shoreline and the lack of a port. The island, green with vast wilderness and untouched mountains, had a large stretch of beach, but no sign of civilization anywhere.

“That doesn’t look like a port, does it?” the thin man with glasses said as he made his way to stand beside me. He squinted his eyes, staring out over the water as he voiced what I knew we were all thinking.

“No,” I said simply. “It really doesn’t.”

“What’s going on here?” the cocky man who’d been talking to me earlier asked loudly. We turned around to see him confronting one of the crew members as he walked out across the deck.

The man stared at him, not speaking, and so the one who was a passenger went on, growing angrier. “Where are you taking us? What’s going on?” He gestured toward the island as we grew closer.

“Land,” the man said, with a strong accent, as he wagged a finger toward land. “We make land.”

“But where the fuck is that land? They said we were going to a port! There’s no port here. Where are we even at?”

“I…” the man’s face contorted as he tried to understand what he was being asked. “I…sorry. Little English.” He smiled politely but shook his head. He used one hand to sail through the air, as if it were the boat, docking carefully next to the other hand. “You be safe.”

“How do we know that? We need to speak to the captain. This isn’t what I signed up for,” he demanded, growing more agitated.

The crewman looked terrified as he forced a smile and took a step back. “I…sorry…Captain very busy.”

“Like hell he is!” the man screamed, taking an aggressive step toward the trembling crewman.

Without thinking, I rushed forward, grabbing the passenger’s arm to stop whatever was about to happen.

“Ease up, will you?” I demanded harshly. “He obviously doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”

Taken out of the moment, he stared down at me, confusion weighing heavily on his expression before he jerked his arm from my grasp.

“Little Miss Terrified suddenly got some nerve, didn’t she?” he snarled, the warmness from our earlier conversation gone.

“Just let him get back to work.”

Without another word, he grumbled under his breath and walked away. The crewman scurried away from us just as quickly, and I turned back to the rest of the group. They’d been watching with intensity, and I couldn’t help noticing a hint of shock and worry in their eyes.

A few minutes later, the engine had been shut off again, and we were floating on the tide to get near