Rebel Island by Rick Riordan Page B

his eyes made him look nonthreatening. Almost cuddly.
    I decided not to share that observation with him.
    I scanned the list of calls from the hotel’s land line. Most were to Port Aransas or Aransas Pass. Some to Corpus, Kingsville, San Antonio, Brownsville. All the closest metropolitan areas. The places you might expect.
    “Can you tell which room dialed which number?” I asked.
    Jose looked at the phone bill. “No, señor.”
    “How about cell phones? Does Chris have one?”
    “I think, yes. But mobile phones do not work on the island.”
    “Don’t suppose you have any idea where his might be?”
    Jose shook his head. “
Lo siento,
señor.”
    I stared at the dark computer screen. No way to access the thing. I found some printed-out emails, but nothing interesting. Confirmed bookings. Catering invoices. Responses to creditors and guests. It looked like Chris had written most of the hotel’s correspondence. There was nothing that matched the printout from U.S. Marshal Berry.
    “Jose, how long have you worked here?”
    “Two years, señor, in July.”
    “You like it?”
    “The work is good. I enjoy preparing the brunches on Sunday. Usually, I make better than Vienna sausages.”
    I went back to the phone numbers. Something about them nagged me but I couldn’t pinpoint what.
    “Did Chris hire you?” I asked.
    “No, señor.” A hint of distaste in his voice. “Mr. Huff hired me. Mr. Stowall came later.”
    It seemed weird for Jose to be calling a young twerp like Chris “Mr. Stowall.”
    “They treat you okay?” I asked. “Chris and Alex?”
    “Yes, señor. They have been most kind to me and Imelda.”
    Something in his voice—as if it were difficult to say Imelda’s name. “You
are
married, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    I noted the shift from
señor
to
sir.
His tone had become guarded, maybe a little obstinate.
    I decided not to press him further. For one thing, I wasn’t sure it would do any good. Also, I wasn’t sure it would be wise. Despite the smile, there was an undercurrent to Jose that I didn’t quite understand.
    I looked back at the phone numbers. Corpus Christi, Kingsville, San Antonio.
    “Jose, do you have the registration cards for this weekend’s guests?”
    “At the front desk, sir.” He looked relieved to have an excuse to go. “I will get them.”

    While I waited, I stared at one of the photos on the bulletin board: Alex Huff as a teen, squatting at the dock with a rope curled in his hands. The boat in the photo wasn’t anything like the forty-thousand-dollar one I’d just scuttled. It was a simple twenty-footer—the same boat Alex had once taken me fishing in. Despite all the time that had passed, the sight of it still unsettled me.
    That afternoon, twenty-five years ago, the sky had been clear and bright. We took the boat out so far Rebel Island seemed to sink into the sea. The water was green as chlorophyll, hot with the smell of salt and fish. In the distance, a shrimp boat trailed its nets, a mob of seagulls circling above the wake.
    “Bait your hook,” Alex told me.
    He’d brought a bucket of live shrimp—translucent gray things that snapped and jumped in the lukewarm water.
    I hated the way they felt—like slimy fingernails. My twelve-year-old mind couldn’t comprehend why adults would ever want to eat these things. I pinched one between my fingers and proceeded, grimly, to impale it on the hook, its crescent body just the right shape.
    Put the point through the brain,
my father would’ve advised me.
That little black dot. Don’t worry. It can’t feel anything.
    I had trained myself to bait a hook without flinching. But whenever I did so, I felt like I was deadening my own brain—forcing myself not to feel. It was just a stupid shrimp. Its entire nervous system consisted of a gray line and a black dot in a colorless body. Why should I care?
    Alex cast his line. “Old man giving you a hard time?”
    He sounded almost sympathetic, but I didn’t