Dauntless

LISA HENRY

Dauntless

Lisa Henry

Copyright 2019 Lisa Henry

Cover by J.A. Rock

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About Lisa Henry

Books by Lisa Henry

CHAPTER 1

Joe Nesmith first saw the guy on Wednesday afternoon. Joe was making his way from his cottage into the village—a slow, meandering walk that he took every day with Hiccup the dog—and the guy was walking up the hill as Joe was walking down. He was in his mid-twenties, maybe, with a green beanie pulled down over his dark hair, a red jacket, black pants, and a bright orange backpack on his back. He clashed like a Liquorice Allsort, but it wasn’t just his clothes that made him stand out—it was the fact that he was a stranger.

Dauntless Island didn’t get many tourists—it was a four hour boat ride from the mainland—and the few they did get usually didn’t come in winter. Joe hoped for the guy’s sake that he’d packed some decent weather-resistant gear in that backpack of his.

He’d been prepared to pass by with just a nod of acknowledgement when Hiccup, delighted to see a stranger, bounded up to the guy barking, and then bounced around him in excited circles.

“Hic!” Joe called to the black lab. “Hiccup!”

Like Amy couldn’t have called the dog something that didn’t sound quite as stupid when Joe yelled it? His little sister was the worst.

“Hey,” the guy said to Hiccup, and reached out a hand to pet her.

Hiccup immediately hit the ground like one of those fainting goats, writhing in delight as the guy crouched down to rub her belly.

Joe crossed over to them, an apology for Hiccup’s disgraceful manners on his lips, and then the guy looked up.

He was cute. Cute as hell. He had wide brown eyes framed by black-rimmed glasses, a snub nose, and a generous mouth that was twitching into a grin even as Joe stared down at him. He straightened up again, a flush rising on his cheeks, and Joe wished that he’d picked today to shave instead of putting it off for so long that he looked like he’d been marooned for six months, and also that he’d actually showered and changed out of his work clothes before heading into the village.

“You’re camping?” he blurted out, because apparently he’d lost the ability to start a conversation with an introduction like a normal person on the same day in the distant past that he’d lost his razor.

“Yeah,” the guy said, flashing him a sunny smile that belied the gray clouds rolling in from the ocean. “Up near the lighthouse.”

Joe raised his eyebrows. The guy was going to freeze to death when the temperature dropped with the storm tonight. The views from the lighthouse were magnificent, but that side of the island wasn’t sheltered at all.

The guy looked at him expectantly, as though waiting for Joe’s response, and yes, Joe had completely forgotten how to talk to people. It didn’t help the guy was so pretty and Joe was having difficultly not staring at his mouth.

Hiccup was already bounding on again, eager to get to the village.

“Okay,” the guy said at last, his smile fading into an awkward grimace. “It was nice meeting you.”

Joe nodded.

The guy curled his fingers around the straps of his backpack. “Okay…”

“Joe,” Joe blurted out at last, holding his hand out. “Joe Nesmith.”

The guy’s smile returned, and he shook Joe’s hand. “Eddie,” he said. “Eddie Hawthorne.”

Joe felt his stomach sink.

He should have known the guy would be trouble.

“Did you hear the news?” Mavis Coldwell asked him when he reached the village. She learned over the counter, her large bosom resting on a stack of last month’s Australian Women’s Weekly, and didn’t wait for Joe’s reply. “Young Harry Barnes said the fella he brought over from the mainland today is a Hawthorne. Can you imagine such a thing, Red Joe? A Hawthorne, on Dauntless, after all this time!”

She clicked her tongue.

“Probably just a tourist,” Joe said.

Young Harry Barnes, who was sixty-three this year, was the biggest gossip on Dauntless. He even eclipsed Mavis, whose small general store in the main street, which also doubled as the post office, was the heartbeat of the island.

“Oh, it’s trouble alright,” Mavis said. Her voice held a tone of warning but her eyes shone with delight. “Nothing good can come of it. You mark my words, Red Joe! Mark my words!”

Joe hummed and nodded, and waited for Mavis to pack up his order.

He walked into the village every day, but usually that was just to stretch his legs and give Hiccup a run. Wednesdays were grocery days though when, weather permitting, Young Harry Barnes did a run to the mainland and restocked Mavis’s inventory. Mavis usually didn’t have the new stock out until Thursday morning, but she made an exception for Joe because Amy had worked at the store before going away to the mainland for school, and because Joe was a Nesmith and that meant something on Dauntless Island.

After collecting his order, Joe and Hiccup walked down the main street. The main street was lined with sandstone cottages and ended at the harbour wall in a cluster of heritage buildings that these days housed the church, the local museum, and the joint tourist information centre and souvenir shop.  The tourist information centre was closed and wouldn’t re-open again until the summer. There were a few bed and breakfasts along the main street as well, mostly people’s houses, but there were no tourists staying in them right now. Dauntless was a ghost town in the colder months, and Joe preferred it that way.

He and Hiccup walked down to the statue of Josiah Nesmith that marked the end of the street, and Joe stared out past the harbour wall. The jetty jutted out into the water, pointing south.

Hiccup sniffed around the statue for a while. The statue was made of bronze. Josiah Nesmith stood on a plinth, his face pockmarked with verdigris, and stared imperiously over the water as though he was personally daring the British Navy to come for him. If so, he was facing the wrong way.

The plaque on the plinth was weathered and difficult to read, but Joe knew the words by heart:

Erected in commemoration of Josiah Nesmith, the hero who delivered the people of Dauntless Island from the tyrant George Hawthorne.

Joe nudged Hiccup away with his boot when she looked like she was considering pissing on the plinth, and then they headed back up the street and up the long, winding road towards home.

Joe made baked beans on toast for dinner, and ate them in front of the TV while Hiccup drooled hopefully on his socks. The rain hit halfway through the news and the satellite reception grew choppy. Joe turned the TV off when the picture fractured and froze, and spared a thought for Eddie Hawthorne camping out in this weather.

The lights flickered as the rain picked up, but the power stayed on. One benefit of being the lighthouse keeper was that the cottage was on the same self-contained grid as the lighthouse itself—an industrial solar installation with a diesel backup. Joe had the most reliable electricity on the island, and didn’t have to pay a cent for it.

He did his rounds at nine p.m., tugging on his oilskin coat to traverse the yard between his cottage and the lighthouse. Hiccup, who usually came with him into the yard, very sensibly waited inside. Joe pushed open the door to the lighthouse and climbed the stairs to the lantern room out of habit more than anything else—if the light was out, he would have spotted it the moment he left the cottage—then noted the time on the log and returned to the cottage.

He stayed up for another hour or so, listening to a bit of back and forth on the marine radio in his kitchen, and then went to bed.

He lay awake for a long while, Hiccup a warm weight on his feet, as the storm broke and the lightning flashed all around.

In the morning, Joe saw Eddie Hawthorne again. At first he was just a small red speck on the steep seaward side of the point, but he was clearly making his way up toward the lighthouse. Hiccup took a while to notice him—she was busy being distracted by a grasshopper—but when she did, she let out a bark of delight and bounded down the hill towards him.

Joe snorted at her, and kept working in the garden.

The vegetable garden had been Amy’s pride and joy, and it was in a pretty sorry state. If Joe couldn’t get anything to grow in it before Amy returned for the summer, at least he could dig the weeds out, right? But the internet promised him he could grow carrots and onions and beans in winter, so he was going to try that. Better than paying island prices for frozen supermarket vegetables from the mainland.

“Hi,” said a voice from behind him, just when Joe had almost forgotten he’d been climbing the hill. “So you actually live at the lighthouse? That’s amazing.”

Joe stood up and turned around, brushing his dirty hands on his pants. “Yeah. You go okay in the storm last night?”

He didn’t look like a drowned rat.

“I don’t think I slept a wink,” Eddie said, and Joe noticed the dark smudges under his eyes. They didn’t detract from his smile though, which was as brilliant as Joe remembered from yesterday. “But it turns out my tent is well worth what I paid for it. Not even a leak!”

“That’s good,” Joe said.

Eddie stretched suddenly, his jacket and shirt riding up to reveal a sliver of skin. “Wow. This view is incredible.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, tearing his gaze away from Eddie’s abdomen.

From the lighthouse, the hill fell away sharply toward the rocky beach far below them. And from there, nothing but the ocean. It was gray and choppy this morning, the wind from last night’s storm still lingering, but some days it was as bright and smooth as glass all the way to the distant horizon.

“This isn’t what I was imagining when I thought of a Pacific island,” Eddie said, his nose wrinkling.

Joe smiled at that.

It was a common misconception. People thought of palm trees and white sand beaches when they imagined the Pacific, not pine trees and rocks. Dauntless was no Tahiti. It was something else entirely. It was wilder, older, and its winters were unforgiving.

“So, you’re a Nesmith, you said?” Eddie asked.

“That’s right.”

Eddie’s eyes widened. “Are you a descendant of Josiah Nesmith?”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “But so is half the island.”

The Nesmith name still meant something on Dauntless though, and Joe was one of the few people who carried it. His forefathers had tended to produce entire gaggles of daughters to every son, so the surname wasn’t as prevalent as it might have been. Joe was the only Josiah Nesmith left on the island these days, ever since Old Joe had passed away last winter. He was still stuck with the name Red Joe though, thanks to the colour of his hair. It had distinguished him from his great-uncle while the old man had still been alive.

“It’s a…” Eddie scratched his cheek while Hiccup lolled lovingly at his feet. “It’s a very small population.”

Which was a roundabout way, Joe thought, of saying inbred.

Except that didn’t seem to be where Eddie was going at all.

“So it turns out I have a link to the island as well,” he said, his eyes bright.  “Hawthorne. My great-great-great-whatever-grandfather was George Hawthorne.”

“Ah,” said Joe.

Mavis was going to be all over this. 

“That’s how I got interested in the Dauntless to begin with,” Eddie said. He wrinkled his nose and his glasses shifted. “The wreck, the mutiny, all of it. It’s really fascinating. The museum was closed yesterday, but the lady at the shop said that it should be open today, so I’m going to go and check it out. Have you been?”

Joe wasn’t sure how to answer that. There really wasn’t a lot to do on the island. People on Dauntless would go to the opening of a window. Joe stopped in at the museum any time it was open just to say hello. Not because he was especially sociable even, but because not saying hello to anyone was the sort of slight that was magnified exponentially in a place like this one. Small communities had long memories.

“Quite often,” he said. “Mostly just to catch up with John Coldwell, who runs the place. I don’t think I’ve ever really had a look at the exhibits though.”

“Coldwell,” Eddie said with a smile. “That’s another one of those names that keeps cropping up here.”

“There are a few,” Joe agreed.

“Maybe he’d like to check out my research,” Eddie said. He bent down to rub Hiccup’s belly for a moment and then straightened up again. “I’ll see you later, Joe. Maybe you could give me a tour of your lighthouse?”

“Okay,” Joe said, and it wasn’t until he saw Eddie’s cheeky smile and accompanying flush that he realized that might have been a euphemism.

He went inside and shaved after Eddie left, just in case.

Late in the afternoon, Joe caught a glimpse of Eddie’s bright red jacket again as he climbed the hill from the village, but Eddie didn’t come to the lighthouse. Joe didn’t blame him. The weather was turning bad again, and another storm was coming. Eddie probably wanted to get back to his tent before the rain hit.

Joe did his rounds of the lighthouse, and then checked the weather station in the yard outside. The data was automatically transmitted to the Bureau of Meteorology—another thing that had been automated before Joe’s tenure at the lighthouse—so all he had to do was check everything appeared to be in working order and that none of the warning lights were flashing on the electronics. Hiccup snuffled around his feet for a while and then had an attack of the zooms and ran around the yard like a fat black tornado until she fell to the ground panting, her tongue lolling. She looked inordinately pleased with herself.

“Idiot,” Joe told her fondly, and her tail thumped.

After last night’s beans on toast Joe decided to make something a little more substantial for dinner. He took the beef roast he’d got yesterday out of the fridge, and put it in the oven along with some pumpkin and potato. The leftovers would be good for sandwiches for the rest of the week.

While dinner cooked he checked his emails. There was one from Amy. She was in her third year of university now, studying aquaculture at James Cook University. She’d always said she wanted to study something that would benefit the community, but Joe half-suspected that like so many of the young people who left the island she wouldn’t return. The lure of the outside world was too bright. Joe had felt it once. There had been a time when he’d thought he’d never return to Dauntless.

Joe had only come back to the island because his father had died. So had two other men, when their fishing boat had gone down. It had been a dark day in the island’s history. He’d come back for Amy, who’d been barely fifteen when it happened, and then gotten the job as the lighthouse keeper when Peter Corporal’s old knees could no longer carry him up to the lantern room. Now Joe was twenty-eight years old and this was his life. Joe wouldn’t say he was dissatisfied with it—Dauntless Island was in his blood—but he’d be lying if he said he never missed the bustle and hum of the mainland. And he’d really be lying if he said he never got lonely.

He thought of Eddie Hawthorne. Asking for a tour of Joe’s lighthouse was a euphemism, wasn’t it? Joe was very much out of practice though, and maybe that—combined with a serious case of wishful thinking—had caused him to misread Eddie’s comment. It had been a long time since he’d had to figure out if someone was flirting with him or not. The only living creature who flirted with Joe these days was Hiccup, and she was just whoring herself out for roast pumpkin.

She stared at Joe adoringly as he ate.

After dinner Joe did his final rounds of the lighthouse before returning to his cottage. The TV reception was terrible again because of the storm rolling in, so he scanned his living room bookshelf instead. He found the familiar book and settled down on the couch to read.

It was a history of Dauntless Island. The HMS Dauntless—one of many ships to carry the name—had been sent out into the Pacific to expand the empire, or intimidate the French, or to claim new territories without asking the people who already lived in them, or whatever it was naval ships did back in 1832. Whatever the original orders had been, at some point it had received new instructions—to attempt to locate any survivors from the wreck of the Antigone, a passenger ship that had been lost enroute to New Zealand. The surviving passengers had in fact been located, and were in the process of being transported to New South Wales when the Dauntless had struck rocks and foundered off the island that now bore its name.

The descendants of those soldiers, sailors, and civilians had become the residents of Dauntless Island, but those first few years had been bloody. George Hawthorne, the captain of the Dauntless, had been overthrown by mutineers led by Josiah Nesmith and, rumour had it, hanged on the very spot the lighthouse now stood.

George Hawthorne had been a dictatorial arsehole by all accounts, and by the time another naval ship arrived years later, the islanders had been settled very happily into their new home. Two hundred years later they were still proud of their mutiny, and of the way they’d thumbed their noses at authority ever since. Dauntless Island was technically a territory of Australia these days, but a fierce independent spirit ran through the islanders.

Joe flipped through the well-thumbed pages of the book, picking out details he remembered and relearning those he’d forgotten. Familiar names jumped off the page at him: Nesmith, Coldwell, Corporal, Finch, Barnes, Hooper and Dinsmore. Those names were the backbone of the island. There were also names that weren’t: Hawthorne, who’d been hanged by the mutineers, but also Jessup and Foley and Pritchard, men who’d died of disease or in accidents before they’d had children to continue on their names.

Their names were memorialized on a brass plaque in the small island church.

Outside, the storm picked up. The wind howled, and the rain pelted against the roof of the cottage.

Hiccup whined, standing up and staring at Joe intently.

“What?” he asked her. “You need to go out? In this weather?”

She whined again.

Joe sighed and set his book aside. He stood up and Hiccup darted into the kitchen and barked at the back door, her hackles standing up.

Joe’s skin prickled with unease. “What? What is it?”

He opened the door and peered out into the darkness.

A sudden crack of lightning illuminated the world, and Joe’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the figure looming towards him. And then he saw that red jacket.

“Eddie?” he called out. “Is that you?”

Eddie stumbled toward him. His jacket was unzipped and he was soaked to the skin and holding one hand to his head. Lightning flashed again, and Joe saw the blood streaming down the side of his face.

“Jesus! Eddie!” He darted out into the rain to meet him. He must have left his tent for some reason, and taken a fall. The steep hillside could be treacherous in the rain.

“Joe!” Eddie staggered toward him. “Help me!”

And then he pitched forward, and Joe barely caught him before he hit the ground.

CHAPTER 2

“Oh, Jesus,” Eddie Hawthorne said, sitting on a chair in Joe’s kitchen and dripping all over the floor. “I fainted, didn’t I? I legit fainted?”

“No, it wasn’t a faint,” Joe assured him, pressing a clean tea towel to the cut on the side of Eddie’s head. “It was more of a swoon than anything.”

Eddie winced. “That’s worse. Swoon is definitely worse.”

“It was a very manly swoon though,” Joe said.

Eddie’s mouth twitched, and then he winced again. “Holy hell. That hurts.”

Hiccup sat beside him, her head resting on his thigh as she stared up at him, large-eyed and soulful.

“Can you hold that there?” Joe asked him. “I’ll get the first aid kit. I don’t think it needs stitches, but I need a better look at it first.”

“Stitches?” Eddie let out a pained moan. “I can’t go to the hospital!”

“Good news,” Joe said. “There is no hospital. There’s not even a doctor on the island. But I don’t think it looks that bad.”

Eddie made another small noise, and his cold fingers slid across Joe’s as he took over the task of holding the tea towel to his head. “No doctor? What happens in an emergency?”

“We call for a boat,” Joe said. “Or an airlift. Don’t worry though. You’re not that bad.”

The medical chest sat in a corner of the kitchen. It was a large green metal box, kept locked at all times. Joe kept one key for the chest on the same ring as his lighthouse keys. The spare key hung from a hook on the fridge. He dragged the chest over to where Eddie was sitting, the metal scraping against the stone floor of the kitchen.

“That’s a hell of a first aid kit,” Eddie murmured.

Joe unlocked it. “It’s a medical chest from the Flying Doctors. Everything’s numbered, so if I radio them up and tell them someone’s symptoms, they tell me exactly what number drug to dispense, and how much.” He lifted the first tray out of the chest, looking for the bandages and antiseptic underneath. “But we won’t need any of that. Just the same first aid stuff you have at home.”

“You’re like the island nurse,” Eddie said.

“Nope.” Joe found the sterile wipes and bandages he was after. “I’m just the guy with the keys to the medical chest, who can follow basic instructions.”

He stood in front of Eddie, and put his hand over his. He drew the tea towel away carefully, and Eddie winced. The cut wasn’t as bad as it had first seemed. The bleeding had slowed to a sluggish dribble now that Eddie wasn’t getting soaked in the rain and the wound itself was only shallow. It cut through his hairline and an inch or so down his right temple. He’d have a hell of a bruise, and a headache, in the morning, but it didn’t appear to be anything that would require calling in a medivac.

“This will sting a little,” Joe warned, and dabbed at the wound with antiseptic.

Eddie closed his eyes and wrinkled his nose. “Ouch.”

“What were you doing out of your tent anyway?” Joe asked, careful to wipe Eddie’s hair away from the shallow laceration.

“I…” Eddie opened his eyes again. “I wasn’t out of my tent. I was sleeping, or trying to in the storm, and somebody attacked me!” The colour bled suddenly from his face, and he wrenched his shirt up to reveal a plastic-wrapped package tucked into the waistband of his pants. “Oh, thank God! It’s okay! What if I’d dropped it?”

“What?” Joe asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The diary!” Eddie repeated, drawing the package out and hugging it close. “Henry Jessup’s diary!”

Joe must have been mad to come out in weather like this. Even Hiccup wasn’t dumb enough to join him. She’d elected to stay in the warm, dry kitchen, bum planted on Eddie’s feet. So Joe set out into the night alone, wearing his oilskin coat, his boots, and carrying his Maglite torch. The beam bounced over the steep path in front of him as he picked his way down the hill. He kept his gaze fixed on the path as lightning blazed over the ocean, knowing that to lose his footing would be dangerous. Take a wrong step, and it was a long fall to the rocky beach below.

He’d known where Eddie was camping from the moment they’d first met and Eddie had said he was camping up near the lighthouse. The hill flattened out at one point and formed a sort of a wide lip before dropping off steeply again. Four or five wind-battered pine trees grew there, leaning away from the ocean. It was a beautiful spot to camp in summer, but freezing in the winter.

Joe made his way there now, picking a careful path. When he reached the spot, the storm still crashing around him, he saw what must have been Eddie’s tent. It was a one-man tent, bright yellow, and it was half-collapsed. Joe went closer, shining the beam of the torch over the tent.

His heart skipped a beat.

The tent had taken a beating alright, but not from the weather. The only way it should have been battered like this was if a tree had come down on top of it, but there was no debris around it. Eddie had said that he’d been trying to sleep and someone had attacked him—bashing the tent repeatedly with him inside—and it seemed as though that might be the truth.

The tent was unzipped, evidence of Eddie’s frantic departure from it.

Jesus. He was lucky he’d remembered his way in the night and the storm, and hadn’t stumbled over the edge of the bluff onto the jagged rocks below.

Joe hunkered down and crawled inside.

Eddie’s pack was still there, but the contents had been strewn all around the tent. Everything was wet and muddy, even the camera bag and the laptop case—though there was no laptop to be found—and one or two books lying around. Joe shoved everything into the backpack. He couldn’t do a damn thing about the tent now, but he could at least return the rest of Eddie’s belongings to him.

The lightning split the sky over the ocean as Joe trudged back up the steep hill, his boots sliding on the narrow, wet path. The wind buffeted him, and it was cold. His oilskin, great for the short dash between the cottage and the lighthouse, couldn’t do much when the wind kept trying to whip it off him. Rain slid down the back of Joe’s neck. He was panting for breath by the time he made it back to the top of the point where the lighthouse stood, its beam sure and steady even as the rain pounded against the windows of the lantern room.

The kitchen light was on in Joe’s little sandstone cottage and he hurried across the wet grass, eager to be warm and dry again. Hiccup met him at the back door, her tail swinging, and she had the decency to look at least a little shamefaced for not venturing outside with him in the first place.

“You’re okay,” he told her, his cold fingers brushing the top of her head. “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? You heard Eddie coming, and knew that he needed help.”

Eddie wasn’t in the kitchen, but before he left Joe had given him some dry clothes and told him to feel free to use the shower. Joe couldn’t hear the sound of the shower above the rain hitting the roof, but he peered down the hallway and saw the bathroom door was closed.

Joe set Eddie’s pack down on the kitchen floor, grimacing at the puddle of water that formed instantly underneath it. He shrugged his coat off and hung it on the hook behind the kitchen door, and then sat down to unlace his boots.

Then, in his socked feet, he headed into his bedroom and quickly stripped off his damp shirt and pullover and replaced them with a soft, faded t-shirt and the brown and green Fair Isle jumper that had once belonged to his father.

He returned to the kitchen and put a saucepan of milk on the stove. He was stirring the cocoa in when he heard Eddie’s gasp of dismay.

“My stuff!”

Joe turned around to watch him pulling everything out of his backpack.

“It’s all wet!”

“Sorry,” Joe said. “Everything was strewn over your tent when I got there, and the rain was getting in. And if there was a laptop in that case, it’s gone.”

“Shit.” Eddie sat down heavily on the floor, and dragged a hand through his hair. He winced when he hit his wound. “Wow, he really got me good there, didn’t he?”

Joe felt a mix of guilt and anger stir in his gut. Guilt, because Eddie was a guest on the island, and anger toward whoever had done such a terrible thing.

Eddie stared at him with wide eyes. “If I hadn’t managed to get out and start running, I think they just would have kept hitting me! Like, I legit thought I was going to die!”

“Did you get a look at him?”

Eddie climbed to his feet and sat down at the table heavily. “Not really. It was dark. Like, there was a shape, but when I got out of the tent properly I just started running. I came out on top of the hill somewhere and I saw the lighthouse. It was further away than I thought! I must’ve got turned around somehow.” He drew in a shaking breath. “So I saw the lighthouse, and just ran here.”

Joe’s stomach twisted. It was terrible that someone had attacked Eddie—almost unthinkable—but the proof of it was sitting right in front of him, and the cut on the side of his head was starting to ooze blood again. The heat from the shower must have got the blood flowing again.

Joe picked through the bandages and dressings he’d left on the kitchen table before heading out into the storm. “We need to change that, I think.”

Eddie closed his eyes, his forehead creased, as Joe redressed his wound.

Joe was careful as he worked, watching Eddie’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. A muscle in Eddie’s cheek jumped when Joe put the new dressing on, and Joe fought the urge to follow the movement with the pad of his thumb.

“Okay,” said he said, swallowing and taking a safe step back. “That’s done.”

Eddie opened his eyes and blinked rapidly for a moment, and then caught Joe’s unhappy expression. “It’s not your fault. God, what a mess though. The diary’s okay, at least.”

“Henry Jessup’s diary,” Joe said evenly. He poured some hot cocoa into a mug and set it on the small kitchen table. “Here.”

Eddie groaned. “God. That diary is my whole thesis! I mean, my actual thesis in on the laptop, but everything should be backed up. It’s the diary that’s important.”  He exhaled slowly. “It’s good. It’s okay. It’s good.”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “Henry Jessup the bosun on the Dauntless? He died here, on the island.”

“No! That’s the thing!” Eddie’s eyes widened. “He didn’t die on the island! He took a boat and made it all the way to Sumatra! That’s where he died, and that’s where his diary turned up, in an estate sale six years ago. My history professor bought in on eBay, can you believe that?”

“About as much as I can believe he made it all the way to Sumatra from here,” Joe said wryly.

“No, listen, this would make it one of the world’s most amazing feats of navigation,” Eddie said. “Right up there with Bligh, except Henry Jessup did it alone.”

“He died on the island,” Joe said. He sat down opposite Eddie and curled his fingers around his mug of cocoa. “His name’s in the church.”

“It’s a lie,” Eddie said. “He didn’t die here. He escaped, because he wanted to alert the British and have the men here put on trial for their crimes.”

“Their crimes?” Joe asked. “The mutiny?”

“Not just that. The diary’s full of them. The murder of George Hawthorne, and a bunch of the male passengers from the Antigone. The rape of the female passengers. There was one woman, Betsy Howard, who was already married, so they killed her husband so that John Dinsmore could marry her instead.” Eddie’s voice grew louder, and his expression more animated. “It wasn’t a mutiny against George Hawthorne because he was a bastard. It was a mutiny because he was trying to stop his men from going full on Lord of the Flies. George Hawthorne wasn’t the bad guy. Josiah Nesmith was!”

“That’s not true.” The denial was instinctive, and it was out before Joe could even think of biting it back. It was in his blood, he thought, literally. He took in Eddie’s dismayed expression. “I mean, you’re saying that everything here is built on a lie.”

“I guess,” Eddie said. He shrugged. “But so what? That’s how it works, you know? There are two sides to every story. More, in most cases. Sometimes what we’re all taught turns out to be, well, bullshit. That’s history for you.”

Except it wasn’t history, Joe thought, not really. It was here and it was now. The islanders weren’t divorced from their origins. They celebrated them. They lived them every day.

God. And Eddie had been down in the village earlier, a Hawthorne sitting on a bombshell, and it didn’t even occur to him how much damage it could do, did it? How personally the islanders might take it? Not even when someone had attacked him tonight. 

“I need to report I was assaulted,” Eddie said at last, his fingers wrapped around his mug of hot cocoa. “I need to call the police.”

Joe sighed.

“Oh,” Eddie said, his face falling as the realization hit him. “There’s no police officer on this island either, is there?”

“No.”

“So…how do I report a crime exactly?” Eddie asked slowly.

Joe nodded toward the radio in the corner. “Anything urgent, they’ll send the water police, or the chopper. Otherwise, the copper from the mainland comes over once a fortnight as part of his beat.”

“They’re not going to send a chopper for a stolen laptop, are they?” Eddie asked, chewing his lip.

“No,” Joe said. “They’re not.”

Eddie’s brow wrinkled. “But you must have some sort of government agency on this island, right?”

“Not really,” Joe said. “I mean, there are only two actual government employees on the island. Mavis, who runs the post office, and, well, me. And Short Clarry the mayor, but he’s elected, not employed.”

“Mmm,” said Eddie. He set his mug down again. “Which government department do you work for?”

“Transport,” Joe said.

“Ah. No offence, Joe, but none of those options are exactly filling me with confidence right now.”

“That’s fair,” Joe said with a shrug.

“But you are probably a slightly better option than a mayor or the lady who runs the post office.”

“Also fair,” Joe said.

“Will you help me try to find out who attacked me?” Eddie asked, his worry etched plainly on his face. “Also, I would really like my laptop back.”

Mavis was so right about Eddie. Nothing but trouble. Earnest, tousled, dark-eyed trouble.

“Yeah,” Joe said, because apparently he’d never met trouble he didn’t like. “I can try.”

Eddie’s smile was almost worth it.

“You can sleep on the couch,” Joe said, getting up to put his mug in the sink. “I’ll get you some blankets.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said. “Oh, and Joe?”

Joe turned.

“You look good,” Eddie said, and gestured to his face. “The clean shaven look. It suits you.”

Joe made a sound that he hoped passed as ambivalent, and fled to bed.

The morning dawned bright and cool. The salt air smelled fresh. There was no trace of last night’s storm. Joe lay awake for a moment, wondering what felt different about the day. It him a moment to realize—Hiccup wasn’t pinning his legs down like she usually did. Joe threw off his blankets, and climbed out of bed and dressed.

He walked down the hallway, rolling his shoulders to loosen them, and paused at the door to the small living room. Eddie was curled up on the couch, almost hidden under a nest of blankets. Hiccup was burrowed into the space between his bent knees and the back of the couch. She blinked at Joe guiltily when she saw him, and jumped down onto the floor.

She followed him through to the kitchen, her claws clicking on the stone, and Joe opened the back door so she could go outside for her morning inspection and peeing ritual.

The morning air was cold on Joe’s face, and he thought back to what Eddie had said last night about his clean-shaven look. His flush warmed him soon enough, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and went back inside, leaving the kitchen door propped open for Hiccup.

He checked the fridge for bacon and eggs. He had plenty of bacon thanks to Wednesday’s groceries, but he was down to five eggs. He’d have to visit Katrina Finch and get some more. Amy kept telling him to get some point-of-lay hens sent over from the mainland, and it was a good idea, but Joe hadn’t got around to building a henhouse yet. And, living up on the point, it’d have to be a solid one or the hens would get blown away in a storm. The henhouse was a spring project, probably.

The smell of bacon and eggs brought Eddie shuffling into the kitchen, a pair of Joe’s sweatpants hanging loosely from his slim hips, and one of Joe’s shirts slipping off his shoulder.

“How’s your head?” Joe asked.

“Not too bad,” Eddie said. “But I won’t turn down an aspirin if you’ve got one.”

“I think I can manage that,” Joe said. “Grab a seat.”

The smell of bacon and eggs also brought Hiccup running, and she sat attentively by the stove in the hope that Joe would drop something for her. He did, most mornings, but most mornings he didn’t have a guest to feed as well.

Her mournful gaze followed Joe as he took the plates to the table.

“This view is amazing,” Eddie said, gaze fixed on the kitchen windows.

Joe glanced at them. The lighthouse obscured part of the view from here, its white paint weathered, but then there was nothing but grass and, when that dropped away, bright blue sky.

“Have you always lived here?” Eddie asked, digging his fork into his eggs.

“No, I grew up in the village,” Joe said. “My cousin lives in that house now. I moved here with my sister when the last lighthouse keeper retired and I got the job. I’ve been here about five years now.”

“You have a sister?”

“Amy,” Joe said. “She’s at university on the mainland, in Queensland. What about you? Where are you from?”

“I was born in the UK,” Eddie said, “but I don’t remember it. We moved to the Hunter Valley when I was two, where a very boring childhood led me to compensating with other people’s interesting stories, and now I’m at the University of Sydney doing my thesis for my history honours.”

“Hence your Henry Jessup diary,” Joe said.

Eddie nodded. 

“How many people did you tell about this diary?” Joe asked.

“Um,” Eddie said. He wrinkled his nose and his glasses shifted. “Just you, and the man from the museum. Oh, and I might have mentioned it on the trip over here.” 

“So, the whole island basically,” Joe said. “Young Harry Barnes is the biggest gossip on Dauntless.” He rubbed a hand over his forehead, trying to ease some of the tension there. “And did you tell them you actually had the diary with you?”

“Wait, you seriously think someone attacked me to try to get the diary?” Eddie asked, his jaw dropping.

“Well, we’re not actually in the habit of attacking tourists just for the hell of it.”

“But it’s a diary,” Eddie said. “It’s not even worth that much. A couple of thousand dollars maybe, for people who are super into maritime history. Maybe more than that when my thesis is published, but not much more!”

“Eddie,” Joe said softly. “This is Dauntless. There is nothing more important to people here than the legend of Josiah Nesmith and the mutineers.”

Eddie raised his hand and touched the cut on his temple that extending into his hairline. He frowned, and Joe thought that maybe he’d realized it at last: a Hawthorne on Dauntless was asking for nothing but trouble.

Before they went into the village, Joe took some aspirin out of the medical chest for Eddie. He placed Henry Jessup’s plastic-wrapped diary carefully inside the medical chest before closing the lid and locking it.

Eddie watched him carefully.

Such a small book, but it weighed more than it should.

CHAPTER 3

Their first stop in the village was the statue of Josiah Nesmith. Joe stood and watched while Eddie examined the plaque on the statue’s plinth. A seagull peered at him from the top of Josiah Nesmith’s head.

Erected in commemoration of Josiah Nesmith, the hero who delivered the people of Dauntless Island from the tyrant George Hawthorne.

“The tyrant George Hawthorne,” Eddie said at last, and exhaled slowly. “They didn’t mince words, did they?”

“They really didn’t,” Joe agreed.

Eddie examined the plaque again.

Joe watched the boats in the harbour for a moment, and then turned and looked down the street. He saw Julie Dinsmore coming out of Mavis Coldwell’s general store. She was carrying a tin of milk powder and still wearing her dressing gown, as though she’d been halfway through making breakfast when she remembered she was out of milk. Her house was just across the road from the store—one of the typical sandstone cottages that dotted the island and dated back to the 1880s, when the British government had actually attempted to establish an outpost here. The outpost had only lasted a few decades. Dauntless Island was the centre of the world for the people who lived on it, but it was really just a tiny speck in a very vast ocean and completely insignificant—and forgettable—to an empire. The people of Dauntless Island had always liked it that way.

Julie was a third-cousin, which was about as distant a relative as possible on Dauntless, but Joe smiled and waved when she looked down the street and saw him.

She returned his wave warily, her narrow gaze fixed on Eddie as she walked back inside her cottage.

Joe and Eddie left the statue at last and walked back down the street to the museum, once the old customs house, with Hiccup meandering alongside them.

The museum wasn’t open, but the door was never locked. Joe lifted the latch and pushed the door open “John? You here?”

Eddie wandered over to the display cases and inspected them, Hiccup at his feet. 

Maritime artefacts, mostly. The museum’s prize exhibit was the mutineers’ flag, made from a piece of sailcloth from the HMS Dauntless herself. It was kept behind protective glass. There were a few postcards and pamphlets for sale in a heavy rack by the counter, and a tin in the window with a label on it asking for donations to keep the museum running. 

John Coldwell appeared from out the back, his hair uncombed and a piece of toast in his hand. He was a tall man with wispy blond hair that was thinning at his crown. He was in his forties, with a potbelly that pressed against his knitted sweater, but, like all the islanders, he was of hardy stock. Joe looked at him now, and wondered if he might be the man who’d attacked Eddie last night.

“Red Joe,” John said with a nod, and then his expression hardened. “Mr. Hawthorne.”

“Bit of trouble last night, John,” Joe said, ignoring the ice in John’s tone when he said Eddie’s name. “Eddie was camping out on the point, and someone stole his laptop. Cracked his head open too.”

John squinted at Eddie, and then blinked rapidly. “What? But who would do that?”

“That’s what we’re hoping to find out,” Joe said. “Yesterday Eddie told you about a diary he had, is that right?”

“A fake,” John said, flapping his hand dismissively. “Henry Jessup died on the island.”

“He died in Sumatra,” Eddie said.

John snorted. “What piffle! It’s clearly a faked document!”

Eddie bristled. “These aren’t the Hitler diaries we’re talking about. They’re not going to make the front cover of Stern. Who would fake the diary of an obscure nineteenth century sailor?” 

John bristled right back at him. “Oh, who indeed? What a surprise! Of course you would want to smear the good name of Josiah Nesmith, wouldn’t you? I would expect nothing less of a Hawthorne!”

“It was two hundred years ago!” Eddie exclaimed, looking taken aback.

“Eddie.” Joe put a hand on his chest. “John, whether the diary is fake or not—”

“It’s not,” Eddie muttered.

John glared. “It is!”

“Whether it’s fake or not,” Joe continued firmly, speaking over the both of them, “Eddie was assaulted last night up on the point. He could have been killed. This is a matter for the police, John. It’s not something the community can just ignore. If people on the mainland find out that this is how we treat guests here on Dauntless, what will that do for Short Clarry’s tourism push?”

“I don’t give a damn about Short Clarry’s tourism push,” John said with a snort. “Can you imagine it? Hotels built up along the street? Rental cars? A pub? I don’t care a thing for tourism! I care about the truth, Red Joe.” He shuddered, and glared at Eddie. “You listen to me, young man. There’s no good ever come of a Hawthorne on Dauntless Island, and frankly you’re lucky you just got a knock on the head, and not the treatment we gave your man George back in the day.”

Eddie’s jaw dropped.

“Josiah Nesmith was a hero,” John continued, his expression pinched with anger. “I don’t care what nonsense your book tells you. It’s nothing but damned lies. And you, Red Joe, ought to remember where you come from instead of siding with a bloody Hawthorne.”

Joe sighed.

Eddie opened his mouth, and then closed it. Opened it again. “It was two hundred years ago!”

“Just put the word out that I want to know who did this, John,” Joe said, and grabbed Eddie by the jacket to steer him back outside.

There was clearly nothing else they could learn from John Coldwell.

“I think,” Eddie said, standing in the sunlight and pinching the bridge of his nose, sending his glasses askew, “that I was just threatened with being hanged. That’s a first!”

Joe nodded, and watched Hiccup nosing her way along the edge of the road. “Listen, Eddie, if you want to get anywhere with this, you’ll need to let me do the talking, alright?”

“I mean, they hate me,” Eddie exclaimed, looking outraged. “They actually hate me just because I’m descended from George Hawthorne. This is crazy. I’ve come to a crazy place full of crazy people. It was two hundred years ago. Who cares?”

“Well, you do,” Joe said mildly, “or you wouldn’t be writing a thesis about it.”

“I care because it’s interesting,” Eddie said. “I don’t care enough to smash anyone over the head about it!”

“Well, that’s a fine line for some people.”

Eddie stared, his eyes wide. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a guppy before he could get the words out. “Not for normal people!”

He had a fair point, Joe thought, but that was because he didn’t understand the island or its people. Outsiders never did. They saw the quaint cottages and the sweeping views of the ocean and thought that Dauntless Island’s history was just a little footnote, something to buy on a postcard from the museum and then forget about. But for the islanders it was living history, and it was their identity. It was in their blood.

Eddie was thinking like a historian, when he really needed to think like an anthropologist.

“It’s not just history to us,” Joe said quietly. “It’s who we are. It’s two hundred years ago, but it’s personal.”

Eddie sighed, and shoved his glasses back up onto his nose. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay! I mean, I don’t get it, but okay. I’ll let you do the talking.” He peered narrowly at Joe. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because you asked me to,” Joe said, and it seemed like a safer answer than the truth. Because you’re cute and I think you might be flirting with me. Because you’re someone new, and there’s something about you that’s a breath of fresh air. Because I think I like you.

“Okay,” said Eddie, “but you’re the lighthouse keeper. You work for the Transport Department. But back in there you told that guy to put the word out that you wanted to know who assaulted me. And he looked at you like he was listening to you.” Eddie shook his head. “No offence, but would he listen to you?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Joe asked, a grin tugging at the edge of his mouth. “I’m Red Joe Nesmith, direct descendant of Josiah Nesmith. That means something on Dauntless, Eddie.”

“So you’re like royalty or something?” Eddie asked slowly, like he couldn’t quite believe he was asking the question.

“Or something,” Joe said.

“Holy shit,” Eddie said, blinking rapidly. “You are. You’re like the true king of the island, aren’t you? You’re Aragorn and I’m… I’m your Sauron!”

“My Sauron?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows.

“It’s the bad guy from The Lord of the Rings.”

“I know what it’s from, Eddie. We have books and TV here and everything.” Joe rolled his eyes. “Come on, let’s go and see Mavis. She knows everything that happens on the island.”

“Have you heard, Red Joe?” Mavis exclaimed as Joe pushed the door of the shop open. And then, seeing who he was with, she clamped her mouth shut.

“Heard what?” Joe asked, picking up a packet of Minties on the way to the counter. He set them down and dug in his jeans for his wallet. “About Henry Jessup’s diary, or that someone attacked Eddie last night because of it?”

“Both,” Mavis said, peering around him to get a look at Eddie. “I told you to mark my words, didn’t I?”

“You did, Mavis.”

Mavis peered at him. “You shaved.”

Joe fought the urge to rub his face under her scrutiny. “Yes.”

“Hmm,” said Mavis, and looked at Eddie, and then back to Joe. “Suits you.”

Joe could feel the heat rising in his cheeks. “Thanks. Did you see anyone going up to the point last night?”

Mavis lived above the shop, and it was at the end of the main street. From her living room Mavis had a view of the whole village, and she watched the comings and goings of people more than she watched her television.

“No,” she said. “Well, I saw Emily Barnes going down to Fisher Harry’s house, right when the rain started, but of course she’s seeing Fisher Harry’s eldest, Little Harry, and I did not see her coming back again.” She pressed her lips together disapprovingly, as though teenagers sneaking out to see one another was anything new. “And I saw Short Clarry going to the museum, and Young Harry Barnes came by late to get cigarettes, even though I’ve told him a hundred times I close at seven so that I can watch my stories. But once the storm really hit I closed my windows and went to bed. If anyone was out after that, I didn’t see them, and I didn’t see anyone going up to the point at all.”

Mavis looked down at Joe’s packet of Minties and then back at Joe.

Joe reached for a pack of beef jerky and laid it on the counter.

“But if you want my opinion,” Mavis said, “John Coldwell was very upset yesterday when he came to tell me about the diary. He didn’t even let me tell him first!”

“John Coldwell was very upset this morning too,” Joe said evenly. He added a roll of Fruit Tingles to his stash.

“Yes, well,” Mavis said agreeably. “John’s always had this idea that he’s more a Nesmith than a Coldwell, on his mother’s side.”

Before the mutiny, Josiah Nesmith had been a lieutenant under Captain Hawthorne’s command—an officer and a gentleman. Robert Coldwell had been an ordinary seaman. Such things were remembered on Dauntless Island, and they still mattered. And Mavis was right—John had always enjoyed talking up his connection to the Nesmith name above the Coldwell name. An insult to Josiah Nesmith was exactly the sort of thing John Coldwell would take personally. He’d proven that back at the museum.

“And what’s your opinion on Harry Jessup’s diary?” Joe asked curiously. He couldn’t imagine Mavis climbing up to the point and then halfway down a cliff in the middle of the storm just to attack Eddie to try to steal the diary, but he also knew she was tougher than she looked. He’d seen her unloading pallets of groceries down at the jetty plenty of times before. 

Mavis looked pointedly at his growing collection of junk food, and Joe added another roll of Fruit Tingles.

“I think,” she said, “that sometimes the past is better left undisturbed, and that nothing good ever comes of digging through dead men’s graves.”

Joe nodded at that, paid for his junk food, and ushered Eddie out of the shop.

They’d intended to visit with Short Clarry the mayor next, but on their way to his cottage they were stopped by Little Harry Finch, a gangling seventeen-year-old boy with sandy blond hair and a grin that showed off a crooked incisor.

“Red Joe!” he called, jogging up the street. He tugged his ear buds out of his ears as he reached them. “Dad says can you come down the jetty? He’s found the laptop!”

The Dauntless Island jetty was build into the leeside of the island, in the tight curve of the tiny harbour. It was a relic of the Second World War, built by the US Navy, and jutted far enough out into the ocean for much larger ships to dock than used it these days. Short Clarry had visions of ferries full of tourists coming from the mainland, but the dock was in dire need of repairs before that could happen. The boards creaked and shifted underfoot as Joe and Eddie walked down to Fisher Harry’s boat.

Hiccup bounded in front of them for a moment and then, heedless of the cold, launched herself off the edge of the jetty into the ocean with a splash.

“She’ll be fine,” Joe said in answer to Eddie’s horrified look. “She’s part seal, I think.”

Most of the islanders made a living from the sea, the way they always had. There were six boats that tied up at the jetty every night. There had been seven, once, and Joe still felt a jolt of shock when he saw the empty place where his father’s boat used to tie up.

Fisher Harry, a bear of a man in a bright yellow oilskin, was unloading crates of fish onto the jetty when Joe and Eddie arrived.

“Found your laptop,” he said, and gestured to a battered bucket sitting on the jetty.

Joe grimaced as he looked inside.

The laptop, or at least the screen, was sitting in a couple of inches of salt water. The hinges that would have held it to the body were snapped off, and the screen was smashed.

“Found it over round the point,” Fisher Harry said. “Under the lighthouse.”

Eddie reached into the bucket and drew the screen out. Water dripped out of the casing onto the jetty. “Um, thanks? At least I’ll have something to show my insurance company.”

Joe nodded.

Well, it confirmed what he’d suspected. Whoever had assaulted Eddie hadn’t been after the laptop at all. It was just a diversion. They’d been after the diary, without knowing that Eddie had kept it on his person.

He thanked Fisher Harry as well, and then he and Eddie turned and walked back along the jetty.

“Why wasn’t the diary in your pack?” Joe asked in a low voice.

A seagull hopped along the jetty in front of them, keeping just out of reach but too lazy to actually bother fly away.

Eddie shrugged. “The rain, mostly. I was paranoid it’d get wet somehow, however good the tent was, and however well wrapped it was. So I put it in my shirt before I went to sleep. I figured if the rain came through the tent, it’d wake me up before the diary got wet.” He tucked the laptop screen under his arm. “I probably should have done the same with this.”

They continued along the jetty.

“You know,” Eddie said as they walked, “this really is a beautiful place.”

The sea glittered behind them. Ahead of them, the island rose out of the water, green and vibrant. The white sandstone cottages of the village shone in the sunlight. To the north of the village, on the point, the lighthouse jutted into the sky. To the east, the island’s green meadows vanished underneath a forest of pines.

Maybe dark things had happened here once, but it was peaceful now, and beautiful.

“It really is,” Joe agreed, smiling softly.

“I mean,” Eddie said, returning his smile with a cheeky one of his own, “apart from the assault and the theft. And the death threats.”

“Oh, you could get those anywhere.”

“What, anyone? Or me personally?” Eddie elbowed him, and grimaced. “No, don’t answer that, please. If I can’t leave Dauntless with my laptop in one piece, I’d at least like to keep my dignity intact.”

Joe felt a stab of disappointment that made no sense, because of course Eddie would be leaving the island soon. He’d slip out of Joe’s life with the same easy smile he’d shown when he’d first appeared, and life on the island would go on the way that it always had, and that was fine.

Joe hardly knew Eddie, not really, and that was fine.

Hiccup met them at the end of the jetty, shaking bursts of water from her coat.

“So who are we going to talk to next?” Eddie asked as they followed the harbour wall around to where it met the end of the main street.

“Short Clarry,” Joe said. “Clarence Finch. He’s the mayor. Except…” He checked his watch. “Except it’s almost lunchtime, which means he’ll be down for his nap.”

“You really do know everyone, don’t you?”

“There are a hundred and twenty people on this island, Eddie,” Joe said. “It’s not that much of an accomplishment.”

“Plus, you’re like their king,” Eddie said.

“I’m really not,” Joe said. “Come on, we’ll go home and have some lunch, and come back this afternoon to talk to Clarry.”

“Yeah.” Eddie shook his head. “I should check my stuff is dry too, and go and see the tent. It’s not going to storm again tonight, is it?”

“No, not tonight.”

Eddie exhaled. “Good, because it’s going to be creepy enough staying in that tent after what happened last night.”

“So don’t,” Joe told him, his heart beating a little faster as the words slipped out.

“What?”

“I’ve got a perfectly good couch,” Joe said. “Actually, you could sleep in Amy’s room if you want to stay.”

“Are you serious?” Eddie asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Joe said. “How long are you on the island for?”

“I leave again on Wednesday.”

“You might as well stay until then,” Joe said. He thought he saw Eddie hesitate. “It’s better than a tent.”

Eddie’s expression softened. “It really is. Thanks, Joe. That’d be great.”

Joe’s heart skipped a beat when Eddie flashed him a grateful smile, and he heard Mavis’s voice in the back of his head: “Nothing good can come of it. You mark my words, Red Joe! Mark my words!”

They headed up the hill toward the lighthouse with Hiccup bounding ahead of them.

CHAPTER 4

Back in Joe’s cottage, he and Eddie ate a lunch of roast beef and pickle sandwiches.

“Still want a tour of the lighthouse?” Joe asked over the washing up.

Eddie fumbled with a plate, almost dropping it back into the sink. “Hell yes!”

Joe grabbed his coat off the hook on the back of the kitchen door, and they headed outside into the sharp wind.

“I do tours in the summer sometimes,” Joe said as they crossed the yard to the lighthouse. “But I might be a little bit rusty.”

He unlatched the door at the base of the lighthouse and pushed it open. He rarely kept the lighthouse locked during the day, especially not in winter when there were no tourists wandering around. Well, except for the one with him now. 

“So,” he said as they stepped inside. He reached around and flicked the lights on. “This is it.”

The lighthouse was a narrow tower with a staircase that wound around the inside wall like a helix. There were two rooms off the entry hallway. The stairs were iron, painted white, with a sturdy handrail following them the whole way up. These days the stairs were covered in marine-grade non-slip tread, but they must have been a hazardous climb in wet weather in the old days.

Joe watched as Eddie moved over to the middle of the room, and reached out to touch the massive central mast—also painted white—that reached up through the heart of the lighthouse. Eddie tipped his head back as he looked up, his long fingers splayed against the glossy white paint.

“The lighthouse was built in 1892,” Joe said, falling into his tour patter. “The tower is twenty-seven meters high, and there are ninety-six steps to the top.”

Eddie blinked at him. “Holy shit. You must have thighs like the Hulk!”

Joe was a little thrown. His tourists usually didn’t say anything like that.

“Um,” he said, looking down at his boots briefly. “Anyway. On the left here is the report room, later the radio room, where the keepers filled out their records and reports. The radio is fully operational, but I mostly use the one over in the cottage kitchen. And on the right is the generator and electrical control room.”

Eddie looked at the padlocked door of the control room with no real interest.

Of course not. Everyone always wanted to go up.

Joe nodded to the stairs. “Let’s go.”

Eddie put his hand on the rail at the bottom of the steps and began to climb. He tilted his head back to look up, and tightened his grip on the rail. “Do you ever get claustrophobic?”

“There are windows along the way,” Joe said. “Stop if you need to.”

That feeling of the tower closing in wasn’t entirely imaginary. The tower did get narrower and the stairs did get steeper the higher you got.

They paused on the second floor.

“This is the flag locker room,” Joe said, nodding at the wooden lockers hugging the edge of the wall. “We’ve got over forty flags that were used to communicate between the lighthouse and passing ships, in the days before radio. They’re kept for backup, in case we lose radio contact, but I’ve never had to use them in my time here.”

Eddie ran his fingers over the surface of one of the lockers, his touch almost reverent.

“You can open it,” Joe said.

Eddie opened the locker, blinking down at the folded flags.

Joe came to stand beside him. “Each one represents a letter that you can use in semaphore. But some have specific meanings too.” He took a flag from the top of the pile: blue checks on a white background. “Like this one means ‘Your movements are not understood.’”

“That sounds very mysterious,” Eddie said, his eyes dancing. He reached for a flag and shook it out. It was a blue cross on a yellow background. “What about this one?”

“Breakdown,” Joe said.

“I need this one on a shirt,” Eddie said, his mouth twitching. He grabbed another one. It was two diagonally positioned red squares against a white background. “This one?”

“You are running into danger,” Joe told him.

“Are there any nice ones?” Eddie asked. “Like, what about ‘Hello, I hope you’re having a great day’?”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “That’s not really the point of them at all.”

“And this is why people mutiny at sea,” Eddie said, flashing Joe his cheeky grin. “Everybody’s so tense.”

“You should put that in your thesis,” Joe suggested. “See how it goes.”

Eddie’s bright laugh echoed in the confines of the flag room, and Joe felt warmth flood through him.

“Do you want to see the light?” Joe asked, and nodded at the rest of the stairs.

Joe liked visiting the lantern room during the day. The view of the island, and of the vast Pacific, was beautiful. He also liked the lantern itself, with its prism of over 700 lenses. Sometimes looking at the lantern felt like staring into the eye of a giant glittering insect.

“Oh, wow,” Eddie said, drawn immediately to the lantern.

“It’s a Fresnel lantern,” Joe said. “The design dates back to the late seventeenth century. There are over 700 lenses, and the bivalve lens prism directs the light into a single beam. The lantern was originally powered by a vaporized kerosene burner and could be seen eighteen nautical miles out to sea.”

Eddie turned and looked through the windows at the ocean.

“The horizon is about twenty-four nautical miles away,” Joe said. “Since it was built, the light’s been upgraded a bunch of times. It’s fully automated now, and electric. Most places on the mainland don’t have lighthouse keepers anymore, but I’m still hanging in here.”

Eddie pressed his nose to the window. “This is incredible!”

Joe stepped toward the door that led to the catwalk. “Want to go outside?”

Eddie stared at him, wide-eyed, his face suddenly devoid of all colour. “Outside?”

Joe opened the door, and a blast of wind filled the lantern room.

“I’m not good with heights though,” Eddie said.

“You’re standing on the top floor of a lighthouse right now.”

“Um, inside the tower part,” Eddie said.

“You camped on a cliff.”

Eddie held up a finger. “In some trees!”

Joe tilted his head. “What?”

“It’s psychological,” Eddie said. “I need something solid to hold onto when I’m near heights, just in case.”

Joe looked at the door, then back at Eddie, considering. He held out his hand. “I’m pretty solid.”

Eddie hesitated for a moment and then, a shy smile tugging at the sides of his mouth, he stepped forward and took Joe’s hand. His fingers were a little cold, and Joe resisted the urge to chaff his hands over Eddie’s and warm him up.

“Come on,” he said instead, and stepped out onto the catwalk.

Eddie kept one hand clasped tightly in Joe’s, and the other one on the handrail that surrounded the catwalk.

“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” Joe said.

Eddie took a deep breath and stared out at the horizon. The wind whipped his scruffy dark hair in a thousand different directions at once, and Joe could feel it doing the same to his.

He held Eddie’s hand while Eddie slowly relaxed. His shoulders lost their stiffness, and his death grip on the handrail, and on Joe’s hand, loosened at last.

“Okay,” Eddie said at last, turning to look at Joe. “You’ve convinced me. Heights aren’t so scary as long as I’ve got you to hold onto.”

It happened before Joe even knew what he was doing. He leaned in toward Eddie, lost in his wide, dark gaze, and then they were kissing, and Joe thought for a brief, crazy second that his heart was going to beat right out of his chest. And then the kiss was ending, and Joe felt a stab of panic because what if he’d messed it up? But Eddie was gripping Joe’s hips tightly and laughing softly against his throat, his breath hot against Joe’s prickling skin.

“I’ll bet you show all the boys your lighthouse, huh?”

Joe laughed too and drew Eddie back into the lantern room.

In the afternoon, clouds drew in, but they were white and distant, and brought no promise of another storm. The temperature dropped a few degrees though, and Joe loaned Eddie a scarf as they walked back down the hill into the village.

Hiccup joined them.

Short Clarry Finch lived in a cottage in the main street. He was the mayor, and also the head of the Dauntless Island Tourist board. There were no other members yet, but Short Clarry was nothing if not optimistic.

“Red Joe!” he said, meeting them on his front path. “And you must be Mr. Hawthorne. How fascinating.”

Eddie held out his hand hesitantly. “Nice to meet you.”

Short Clarry shook it enthusiastically. “Come in, come in. I’ve got the kettle on. Tea? Coffee?” He was already leading the way inside. “What would your great-great-great-grandfathers say if they could see you two right now, hmm?”

Probably nothing near to what they’d say if they’d seen them an hour ago on the lighthouse catwalk, Joe thought.

Eddie threw him a quick grin, like he knew exactly what Joe was thinking, and followed him into Short Clarry’s cottage.

Short Clarry’s living room was a riot of clashing floral decor courtesy of his late wife Enid. Enid Finch had never seen a flower pattern—whether on curtains, cushions, carpet or coffee mugs—that she didn’t like. The bookshelf was full of porcelain knickknacks, each sitting on their own lace doily. Short Clarry was a fussy little man with a fussy little house, but he was also endlessly enthusiastic about Dauntless Island and all its residents, and Joe had always liked that about him.

Hiccup sat in the doorway and stared balefully at Short Clarry’s fat longhaired cat, her one true nemesis. The cat didn’t give a fuck, and continued to gaze imperiously out the window.

Clarry brought coffee and sweet biscuits and Joe and Eddie sat on the couch in his chintzy little living room. Clarry sat opposite them in a worn easy chair.

“Oh, it’s a bad business,” Short Clarry said at last, and gestured to Eddie. “Tourism will never take off if the mainlanders learn this is how we treat our visitors.” He flinched. “Not that this is how we treat our visitors! This is quite out of the ordinary. Isn’t it, Red Joe? Quite out of the ordinary.”

Short Clarry, like many of the older islanders, had a distinct accent that many of the younger residents had lost at boarding schools and universities on the mainland. Two hundred years of isolation had preserved a lot of the West Country in the Dauntless accent.

“Very much so,” Joe said, more to calm Short Clarry’s ruffled feathers than Eddie’s. “But listen, Clarry, I told John Coldwell this morning that this isn’t something for the community to handle. This is a police matter.”

“Oh, yes,” Short Clarry said. He shook his head and tutted. “It’s terrible. Just terrible. Of course the police need to be involved, but it’s terrible that it’s even necessary.” He leaned forward, the springs of the easy chair creaking underneath him. “Now, who do you think did such a thing? Was it John Coldwell? Because you know how short his temper is! You remember that time Agnes Barnes threw an egg at Josiah Nesmith’s statue?” He clicked his tongue. “No, that must’ve been before your time, but you know the story.”

That was the island in a nutshell, really, Joe thought. Whether a thing happened five years ago, or fifty, it was never forgotten.

“Well,” Short Clarry continued, “John Coldwell was livid, even though Agnes was just a little girl larking about. He yelled at her up and down the length of the street for an hour, until her brother Big Johnny and your dad came up from the jetty and told him they’d knock his teeth out if he didn’t lay off.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Agnes still won’t sit near him in village meetings, even though it must be thirty years ago now it all happened.”

Joe nodded.

Short Clarry smiled. “Oh, but she carried a torch for Tall Joe after that day!”

Joe had heard that story a million times before too. How little Agnes Barnes had mooned over his dad for ages, with all the intensity only an eight-year-old girl could muster. She’d been a flower girl at his parents’ wedding, scowling jealously at Joe’s mum in all the photographs.

“You didn’t see anyone going up to the point last night?” Joe asked.

Short Clarry’s brow creased. “In that storm? No, I shut my windows and was in bed early.”

And there was the difficulty, Joe thought. People had shut the weather out and pulled their curtains closed. Even if they had been looking out, who would have caught a glimpse of anyone in that storm anyway? The island was as dark as pitch when storms came, apart from the lightning.

“You’ve heard about diary then?” Joe asked him.

Short Clarry snorted, his hairy eyebrows tugging together. “Who hasn’t? It’s a fake, of course. Everyone knows Henry Jessup died on the island.”

Eddie snapped a biscuit in half and pasted on a brittle smile.

“Probably,” Joe agreed. “But even if it was real, it’s just a book. Nobody should hurt somebody over a book.”

“Hmm,” said Short Clarry thoughtfully. “Tell that to John Coldwell.”

Joe thought back to how John Coldwell had suggested Eddie was lucky the islanders hadn’t hanged him like they had his ancestor George Hawthorne.

Short Clarry had a point.

It was cold enough that night that Joe lit a fire. Eddie accompanied him on his rounds of the lighthouse, and then they returned to the cottage and sat on the living room couch. The fire burned, wood cracking, and light danced and made shadows in the cavernous fireplace. Hiccup, who had no sense of self-preservation, lay as close to the screen as she could, slowly roasting herself.

They watched TV for a while in companionable silence, and then Eddie stood up and began to check out Joe’s bookshelf. “Do you mind?”

“Help yourself,” Joe said.

Eddie came back to the couch with a one of the young adult novels Amy must have left.

“Not the book about Dauntless?” Joe asked with a smile.

Eddie grinned. “I’ve read it.”

Of course he had.

Eddie didn’t open the young adult novel. Just ran his fingers down the spine. “What you said today. Do you really think the diary is a fake?”

“I’m not the historian,” Joe said. “But I didn’t want to get Short Clarry offside by saying it wasn’t.”

“Fair enough.” Eddie chewed his lip for a moment. “But are you curious?”

Joe considered that.

He was, in a way, but Mavis was right too. Nothing good could come out of disturbing the dead. So what if the diary was real? What if Harry Jessup had left Dauntless and made it all the way to Sumatra? What if he had survived long enough to write down what had happened on the island, and it turned out that George Hawthorne wasn’t a tyrant, and Josiah Nesmith wasn’t a hero for overthrowing him? What if the island’s history was even darker than Joe had ever been told? Would it change the way he looked at his neighbours?

Maybe it would.

The islanders were proud of their origins. Joe wondered if they would be too proud to just brush it off if everything turned out to be built on a lie. Such fierce pride didn’t turn into indifference if it was destroyed, did it, or into mere academic curiosity? It ran too deep for that. It turned into shame, probably, or anger, and Joe didn’t quite know how to approach that. If what Eddie said about the island’s history was the truth, then Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to look it in the face.

“Maybe I’ll just wait to read all about it in your thesis,” he said at last.

Eddie smiled, and pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

“So, tell me,” Joe said. “How does it feel to be a direct descendant of the tyrant of Dauntless Island?”

Eddie laughed, and stretched his legs out. His feet, like Joe’s, were resting on the coffee table. He wriggled his toes in his striped socks. “Pretty cool, actually. Like, my parents weren’t really into history at all, but my granddad left me a bunch of books and old family stuff, and I got into it that way. I’ve got George Hawthorne’s christening cup at home. It’s this ugly silver thing. I keep pencils in it.”

Joe smiled, and knocked their shoulders together.

Eddie set the young adult novel aside. “Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool to be related to someone kind of famous, right? Or notorious, anyway. But when I looked into it, he didn’t actually seem to be that much of an arsehole.” He snorted. “Well, I mean, he was a nineteenth century white British naval captain, so there’s a certain amount of unavoidable arseholery inherent in that, but he didn’t seem worse than any of his contemporaries, you know?”

“Sure.”

“So I figured something went really wrong on the Dauntless,” Eddie said. He wrinkled his nose. “And I’m pretty sure that was down to Josiah Nesmith.”

“You think he didn’t have a reason to mutiny?”

“Henry Jessup didn’t think he did,” Eddie said. His expression grew serious. “I’m not here to shit on his memory, you know? It’s just there’s another side of the story, and I think it’s the truth, and I want to make sure it gets out there too. The truth doesn’t destroy a legend.” He shrugged. “Look at Ned Kelly.”

“It won’t matter to most people,” Joe said quietly. “But it matters here.”

He raised his hand and touched his fingertips to Eddie’s temple, close to the healing cut.

Eddie held his gaze. “So, what would our great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers think, Joe Nesmith?” His lips quirked. “Do you think George Hawthorne, rope around his neck courtesy of Josiah Nesmith, figured we’d be kissing on a couch one day?”

“We’re not kissing on a couch,” Joe pointed out, and suddenly he had a lapful of Eddie, and they were kissing on a couch, and Joe carded his fingers through Eddie’s hair, mindful of his wound, and Eddie curled one hand around Joe’s shoulder, and cupped his cheek with the other. Eddie’s knees dug into the couch beside Joe’s thighs, and Joe slipped one hand down to Eddie’s back, fingers sliding against skin where his shirt had ridden up.

God.

The sudden rush of pure want made Joe almost giddy. He tightened his grip in Eddie’s hair and groaned as they kissed. He closed his eyes, savouring every moment of this, until at last their urgent, heated kisses trailed off into gentle pecks, soft and feather light. Joe opened his eyes.

Eddie laughed, warm breath and sparking eyes, and lifted himself off Joe to slump beside him.

“There,” he said, sounding breathless and satisfied. He reached for Joe’s hand and twined their fingers together. “What would our great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers think of that?”

Joe pretended to consider if for a moment. “Well,” he said at last. “They were both in the navy, so I’m guessing they wouldn’t be completely shocked.”

Eddie laughed so loud that Hiccup woke up, her tail thumping on the floor.

Eddie didn’t sleep on the couch, or in Amy’s room. He slept in Joe’s bed instead, and he and Joe exchanged kisses, both heated and shy, and low gasps, and broken moans of pleasure. They eventually slept, curled up together comfortably like they’d done this a hundred times before.

Joe drifted off to sleep at last, the big spoon, happier than he’d been in years, and his heart already aching for the day that Eddie left the island.

CHAPTER 5

On Saturday morning, Joe left Eddie sleeping while he did his morning rounds of the lighthouse. He climbed to the lantern room and stepped out onto the catwalk. Today was cold but no worse than yesterday. The bite of winter was in the air, but it was a long way from the bitter cold that would settle over the island in another few weeks. It rarely snowed on Dauntless, but winter often brought frosts that settled over windows and cracked like glass underfoot.

Out on the horizon, a freighter passed. Closer to the island, a fishing boat rounded the point. John Corporal’s boat, Joe thought, recognizing the silhouette against the dawn light.

He climbed down the winding stairs again, whistling for Hiccup when he reached the yard, and they headed back to the cottage.

Porridge for breakfast, Joe thought, rummaging in the pantry for the rolled oats. It was cold enough for porridge.

Hiccup nosed her way out the kitchen door, barking. A few moments later she returned, followed by Young Harry Barnes. Young Harry Barnes, the biggest gossip on the island, was a barrel-shaped man in his sixties, with ruddy cheeks and a bushy white beard that made him look like Santa.

 “Morning, Red Joe,” he said, stepping inside the kitchen and setting a canvas bag down on the table. “Not too early for you, is it?”

“Not at all,” he said.

Young Harry took a carton of eggs from his canvas bag. “I came by Katrina Finch’s house, and she sent me up with these. That’s a dozen this week, since you’ve a guest.”

“Thank you.” Joe tugged the drawer under the bench open. He kept a tin there for his egg money, and pulled out a ten-dollar note.

Young Harry tucked the note into the pocket of his baggy pants. “Well, I’ll see she gets it. I’m no delivery boy though, Red Joe. I’m here for my pills.”

“Right, of course.” Joe took the porridge off the stovetop before it boiled over. “Just a second.”

The medical chest wasn’t just for emergencies. Joe was also the island’s de facto pharmacist. It wasn’t practical for the island’s residents to travel to the mainland every time they needed a regular prescription filled, so their prescriptions were authorized by the doctors at the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Joe was given the authority to dispense them.

Joe thumbed through the keys at his belt and found the one for the medical chest. He opened it, and saw Henry Jessup’s plastic-wrapped diary still sitting on top. He set it aside, and pulled out the logbook. He checked Young Harry’s prescription—antibiotics—and took the pills from the chest. He checked again that the name of the drug and the number on the side matched the entry in the logbook, and had Young Harry sign the logbook with him.

Young Harry tucked the packet into his pants.

“That’s the last repeat,” Joe said. “You’ll need a fresh prescription next time.”

“Aye,” Young Harry said. “I’m seeing the doctor again next week. Hopefully I’ve kicked it, and I won’t need anymore.”

“I hope so too,” Joe said. He wasn’t necessarily privy to the medical information of the people who came to him, but everyone on Dauntless knew everyone else’s business anyway, and the whole island knew Young Harry had a chest infection he couldn’t shake. It didn’t seem to slow him down at all, at least.

Joe set the diary back in the chest, and closed and locked it.

“I imagine I’ll be taking your guest back to the mainland next week too,” Young Harry said, stepping over to the stovetop to inspect Joe’s breakfast.

“You’ll have to ask him that,” Joe said.

“Well, Dauntless is no place for a Hawthorne,” Young Harry said. “Particularly not one poking his nose in. Though he seems a decent bloke apart from all that.”

Joe hummed in agreement.

“Well,” Young Harry said, “ask him if wants that tent of his back, will you? No use letting it flap in the wind down there.”

Young Harry was a born scavenger.

“He’ll probably want it back, Young Harry,” Joe said.

“Well, just ask,” Young Harry said. He stuck his pinky finger in the porridge, and tasted it with a hum. “Your porridge needs some brown sugar.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Joe said. “The tent and the sugar.”

“Righto then,” Young Harry said. He hefted his canvas bag up from the kitchen table. “Have a good one, Red Joe.”

“You too, Young Harry.”

“Will we see you at square tonight?”

Joe thought of Eddie. “Maybe.”

Young Harry hummed thoughtfully and then, without another word, headed on his way.

Hiccup followed him happily, but was back in time for porridge.

Of course she was. 

Eddie was not an early morning person. He stumbled out of bed just before eight, grunted at Joe on his way to the bathroom, and was still blinking himself awake after he’d showered and dressed.

“I’ll put some coffee on,” Joe said. “Do you want porridge for breakfast?”

Eddie mumbled something that sounded like agreement, and sprawled in a chair at the kitchen table.

“Hi,” he said, once he’d had his first sip of coffee. He reached out and caught Joe by the sleeve, and tugged him close. Leaned into him. “Good morning.”

Joe smiled down at him. “Awake at last.”

“Still getting there.” Eddie tugged Joe down for a quick kiss. “That’s better.”

Joe couldn’t stop his smile from spreading. “Yeah, that’s much better.”

Joe had never been one for flings with tourists. Even back on the mainland he’d never been much into hook-ups. He was an introvert, he supposed. He liked his solitude, and conversations with near-strangers often felt forced and awkward. But somehow things weren’t like that with Eddie. Somehow he and Eddie fit just right, even though Joe was terrible at conversation and Eddie babbled like a creek in the spring. They fit. Any maybe that was just because Joe knew this was a short-term thing, and that there was nothing in it to over-think, but he thought that maybe it was more than that as well. Joe could see himself with someone like Eddie. Someone whose idea of a perfect night was sitting in front of the fire, feet on the coffee table, reading a book.

Not that Joe was a monk. Reading books was great, but sex was pretty fucking incredible too. Joe had a series of hickeys across his chest that attested to that, and he was very much looking forward to paying Eddie back in kind.

Eddie dug into his porridge. “So, what’s the plan for today, Red Joe Nesmith?” He snickered. “God, that’s such a pirate name, isn’t it?”

“Not a pirate,” Joe said mildly, pouring himself a mug of coffee and sitting down opposite Eddie.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Not a pirate, not the king of the island. You just want to destroy all my dirtiest role-playing fantasies this morning, don’t you?”

Joe almost choked on his coffee.

Eddie shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to work a taciturn sexy-as-fuck lighthouse keeper into my repertoire, won’t I?”

Joe swallowed with difficulty. “I guess you will.”

“Hmm.” Eddie glanced at the oilskin coat hanging on the back of the kitchen door. “Have you got another one of those?”

Joe tried to look stern even though he could feel his face burning. “That is for work purposes only.”

Eddie laughed at his embarrassment. “So, what is the plan for today? Are we going to Miss Marple our way around the island again?”

“Well,” Joe said, “I thought we might go down into the village square tonight. Everyone comes into the village on Saturday night, so someone there might know who attacked you.”

“Everyone comes into the village?”

“There’s not much else to do on the island,” Joe pointed out. “So we all go down there with a casserole dish each, and we set up in the church and we eat and talk and drink until it’s time to go home again. It’s a tradition.”

“That sounds amazing!” Eddie exclaimed, and then his face fell. “Except, you know, that everyone here hates me.”

“Everyone here hates George Hawthorne, not you.”

“Like there’s a difference,” Eddie said, raising his eyebrows.

“You’re with me,” Joe said firmly. “If you want to come, you’ll be fine. I’ll make sure nobody gives you any trouble. Otherwise we can stay in. It’s up to you.”

“Well, as much fun as staying in with you and exploring my new lighthouse keeper fetish would be, I think we should go,” Eddie said. “I mean, even if we don’t learn anything about who attacked me, it sounds like it could be fun. And safety in numbers, right? It’s not like every single person on the island is going to gang up and murder me.” Then he wrinkled his nose. “Huh. I wonder if that’s what George Hawthorne thought.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “I’m banning all talk of George Hawthorne for the rest of the day.”

“That’s fair,” Eddie said, setting his spoon down. His wiggled his eyebrows, making his glasses dance. “Want to not talk about him in bed?”

“Yes,” Joe said, heat rising in him. “Hell, yes.”

It turned out to be the right decision.

Eddie wore his beanie pulled down as they walked into the village late in the afternoon. It covered the cut on his temple, but not the purple bruise that extended down to the corner of his eye. Eddie carried the casserole dish full of potato bake that Joe had made that afternoon, and Joe carried the two glass flagons of homebrewed beer.

The square outside the church was already full of people when they arrived, and Joe didn’t miss the way that Eddie stuck closer that he had when they’d been walking down from the lighthouse. He couldn’t blame him.

They went into the church first.

The church hadn’t had a priest attached to it in Joe’s lifetime, so the community used it as an all-purpose hall. They held weddings and funerals there too, which Short Clarry officiated. He was not only the mayor, but also the marriage celebrant and Justice of the Peace. Everyone on Dauntless wore at least a few different hats. Nothing would ever get done otherwise.

The pews of the church were full of casserole dishes and baking trays, and Eddie set the potato bake down alongside Katrina Finch’s quiche, and Joe added his flagons to the collection on the altar.

He nodded at a brass plaque screwed into the wall under one of the windows, and Eddie went over to inspect it.

It was dedicated to the memories of three of the mutineers who’d died in the early days of the settlement on Dauntless: Foley, Pritchard, and Jessup.

Eddie reached out and traced Jessup’s name with his index finger. “Henry Jessup made it to Sumatra, Joe,” he said in an undertone.

“Maybe,” Joe said. “Maybe not.”

Eddie’s expression was unreadable as he traced the name again.

“Leave it aside for now,” Joe said. “Let’s go outside and talk. Then in about twenty minutes Mavis will hand out the plates and cups, and we’ll descend back here like locusts.”

Eddie flashed him a nervous smile. “Right. Talk. I can do that.”

Probably underwater with a mouthful of marbles, Joe thought wryly.

Joe squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Come on.”

Outside they ran into Fisher Harry Finch, Little Harry Finch, and Young Harry Barnes.

“Fisher Harry,” Joe said, nodding at them. “Little Harry, Young Harry.”

“You made it,” Young Harry Barnes said, a grin breaking through his bushy white beard. “You’d have been missed otherwise, Red Joe.” He looked to Eddie. “Mr. Hawthorne, it’s good to see you again.”

“It’s Eddie,” Eddie said. “Good to see you too.”

Eddie relaxed the longer they talked, but he still stuck to Joe like a limpet as they worked their way through the islanders.

“Nasty business,” Verity Corporal said, gesturing to Eddie’s head when they were introduced.

“Nasty,” Mavis Coldwell agreed happily, popping up behind her.

Eddie took a step closer to Joe.

“Do you need a hand with the cups and plates, Mavis?” Joe asked pointedly, and she shot him a narrow look before going to get them ready.

Verity Barnes, talking with Verity Corporal, hid a smile behind her hand.

“How do you do it?” Eddie asked, wide-eyed as he followed Joe back into the church when it was time to eat. “Everyone has the same name!”

“It’s just the way it is,” Joe said. “It’s the way it’s always been here. It’ll all make sense after you have a few drinks.”

“Really? It might make less sense then.” 

“Well,” Joe said, “shall we try it and see?”

Eddie huffed out a laugh. “That sounds like a plan, Red Joe.”

Eddie did loosen up with a few drinks inside him, and talked with some of the island’s teenagers about Sydney, and university. Distance Education only went up to Year 10, so most of the kids on the island went to boarding school for their final two years of high school, and some stayed on for university or for job opportunities they didn’t get on Dauntless. Some kids, like Little Harry Finch, stayed on the island after they’d finished Year 10 and would probably never leave, but the lure of civilization was too strong for many of them.

Joe thought of Amy, and wondered if she’d come back like she’d always said she would. It was an easy promise to make, he knew from experience, before you saw what the mainland had to offer.

Joe watched as Eddie talked to the kids. He was animated and cheerful, his cheeks ruddy from the cold, but also possibly from his second cup of Sarah Hooper’s rum. It packed more of a punch than whoever it was that had hit Eddie over the head on Thursday night.

He looked around the crowd too, checking to see that nobody was staring daggers at Eddie for the crime of being a Hawthorne. He saw curious glances mostly although once, as Short Clarry bustled his way through the crowd, he did see John Coldwell glaring at Eddie with blatant contempt. It appeared that most of the islanders were keeping their distance from Eddie though, apart from the youngsters. People were wary and speculative though not downright hostile.

It was the best Joe could have hoped for really. The Dauntless islanders had very long memories of George Hawthorne’s tyranny.

The night ended, as it always did, once the food and drink was gone and people began to drift off in dribs and drabs towards their homes. Most people didn’t have far to go at all—only to the main street or the few cottages behind it, but there were a few from further away. Round Robbie Hooper lived on the eastern tip of the island with his wife Yellow Sarah and their kids, and Young Harry Barnes had a shack down on the edge of Mayfair Bay. Joe’s walk home wasn’t as long as theirs, but it was all uphill from the village.

Joe collected up his casserole dish and his empty flagons, and waved away Sarah Hooper’s offer of another drink.

“Aw, just one, Red Joe,” she said winningly. “It’ll save my poor old arms carrying it home!”

Joe snorted at that, because Sarah Hooper had just turned thirty-five back in January, but he took the proffered jug and drank the last of the rum. It went down smoothly, and warmed him.

“There,” Sarah said. “That’ll brace you for the walk!”

“Knock me on my arse, more like,” Joe told her.

She winked, and swept away.

“I get it, you know,” Eddie said as they walked down the main street, heading home. “This place is something else.”

Hiccup walked beside them, invisible in the darkness.

“What you’ve got here, it’s special,” Eddie said, the moonlight glinting off his glasses. “Tourists would love this place. Like, you get a travel show here, and a bunch of Instagram influencers or whoever, and Dauntless could be the next big thing. But also, it could ruin it too? Like, tonight. That’s not gonna work if it’s you guys and hundreds of tourists, you know? God, maybe John Coldwell’s right. You’ll end up with hotels and rental cars and it’ll be awful.”

He was rambling. Joe liked that about him. Joe had never been that talkative, not even when Amy had been home. Maybe some people would say he and Eddie were too different, but Joe liked it. Eddie was a talker, and Joe was a listener. What wasn’t perfect about that?

He smiled at Eddie.

“So you need to preserve what you have here,” Eddie continued, stumbling once on the rocky path up towards the point and steadying himself by grabbing Joe’s hand. “Like, find a way to get tourism to work for you, without turning the island into some generic destination, you know? Like have you ever been to the Gold Coast? Did you know it used to be nice?”

“It’s still pretty nice,” Joe said mildly.

“But it’s not special,” Eddie said, his eyes growing large. “Also, no. You’re wrong. It’s horrible.” He swayed a little as he walked. “I’m so drunk I can’t feel my face. Or am I just cold?”

“It’s probably a little bit of both.”

“Mmm.” Eddie tugged on Joe’s arm, pulling him to a stop. He tipped his head back. “Wow. Look at all those stars!”

Joe smiled and looked up.

Above them, the night sky was a field of brilliant stars, bright and blazing.

“Wow,” Eddie said again, exhaling slowly. He looked at Joe, and then reached out and placed his cold palm against Joe’s cheek. “I like you a lot, Joe Nesmith.”

Joe’s chest swelled and warmth flooded through him despite the chill air. “I like you a lot too, Eddie Hawthorne.”

“I’m very drunk right now,” Eddie told him seriously, “or I probably wouldn’t have said that. I can’t feel my face, Joe!” He poked a finger into Joe’s cheek.

“That’s my face,” Joe said. “Come on, lightweight. Let’s get you home and into a warm bed, hmm?”

Eddie’s eyes widened hopefully. “Can it be your warm bed?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “As long as you don’t throw up.”

“I promise not to throw up, Joe,” Eddie said solemnly.

Joe leaned forward and kissed him softly. “Okay then.”

He’d put a bucket beside the bed, he figured, just in case.

CHAPTER 6

Joe woke early. He’d been doing it for so many years now that he didn’t need to set an alarm. He carefully disentangled himself from Eddie, dressed, and then went into the kitchen and pulled his boots and his jacket on before letting Hiccup outside for her morning pee. He left the kitchen door propped open for her while he did his check of the lighthouse.

It was a bright, cold day. The sea was smooth, its rolling surface only broken into choppy waves close to the island and to the jagged rocks that ringed it. On days like these Joe usually liked to stand on the catwalk for a while, leaning on the rail and taking in the view, but usually he didn’t have someone sleeping in his bed back at the cottage.

The sea didn’t have anything on Eddie Hawthorne.

Joe headed back down the winding stairs.

Hiccup met him in the yard between the lighthouse and the cottage, her tail swinging lazily. Joe scratched her head, and she leaned against him heavily.

“Is Eddie awake?” he asked her.

Her ears twitched and she beamed up at him.

“You like him, huh?” Joe asked her. “Me too, Hic. Me too.”

Joe had never been one for summer—or winter—flings with tourists, but then most tourists who came to the island were retirees. Dauntless Island wasn’t exactly a draw for the young backpacker crowd. It probably never would be, however much Short Clarry dreamed of those tourism dollars.

Last night Eddie had said he liked him, and Joe had said he liked him back. He wondered now if that was something Eddie would remember this morning, and if he still meant it. Joe thought they had something more than attraction and convenience, and he didn’t know if that was worth acknowledging, or if it was something they’d both be better off ignoring since Eddie would be going back to the mainland soon.

Too bad he only had Hiccup to talk it through with.

Eddie was poking around in the kitchen when Joe and Hiccup got back to the cottage. He was yawning and blinking, his hair sticking up in odd ways.

“Feeling okay?” Joe asked.

“Hmm.” Eddie considered that for a moment. “Not great, but considering how drunk I was last night I should probably been feeling a lot worse than I do.”

“Sarah Hooper’s rum has a hell of a kick,” Joe said, moving around Eddie to get to the kettle. He filled it in the sink, and set it on the stovetop. 

Eddie hugged his chest. “It’s cold this morning.”

Joe remembered that he’d left the door propped open when he’d done his rounds, letting all the cold air in. “Go sit in the living room,” he said. “I’ll bring you your coffee when it’s done.”

Eddie flashed him a grateful smile and shuffled out of the kitchen. Hiccup followed him.

Joe expected to find him snoring on the couch by the time the coffee was done, but instead Eddie was inspecting Joe’s bookshelves blearily, and the framed photographs standing in front of the books.

“Is this you?” he asked, sliding his fingers over the glass of a frame.

Joe nodded. “Me and my sister, on my dad’s boat when we were kids.”

Eddie held his gaze cautiously.

“My mother passed away when I was nine,” Joe said, setting the mugs down on the coffee table. “Cancer. She went to the mainland for treatment, but it didn’t do her any good.” His eyes stung a little at the memory. “I was living over in Sydney when Dad’s boat went down. I came back to look after Amy.”

Dauntless was in his blood, in an unbroken line that stretched back two centuries. Joe couldn’t be the first Josiah Nesmith in two hundred years to abandon the place. And it was home. It would always be home. He’d thought about not coming back after Dad died. He’d thought about sending for Amy instead, and making room for her in the poky Sydney flat he’d been living in at the time, but it had been nothing more than an idle thought really.

“Would you ever move back?” Eddie asked softly. “To Sydney?”

Joe had the sinking feeling he was asking about more than Sydney. He felt a pang of regret, but he owned Eddie the truth. “No. Dauntless is where I belong.”

Eddie’s mouth quirked into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Yeah, of course.” He bent down to pick up his mug, and winced. “I need a couple of aspirin and at least another few hours sleep before I’m human again, I think.”

“Bacon and eggs for breakfast first?” Joe asked, hating himself for being glad Eddie had changed the subject. 

Eddie’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “That would be amazing.”

They went back into the kitchen, and Eddie began to rummage through the fridge to find the eggs and bacon. Joe unhooked his keys from his belt and crossed to the green medical chest to grab some aspirin for Eddie’s hangover. He unlocked the padlock and wiggled it free, and lifted the lid.

And stared down at the packs of medication and bandages there.

The diary…

Henry Jessup’s diary was gone.

Joe’s heart raced and his blood ran cold.

“Hey,” Eddie said. “You’ve got spinach here too. Want me to make omelettes instead? I make a mean omelette.”

The diary was gone. Joe reached into the chest and pulled the first tray out. He dug through the contents, scattering wrapped bandages and dressings all over the kitchen floor.

Hiccup grabbed one, and brought it back to him. She dropped it in front of him and waited expectantly to be told she was a good girl.

Joe hauled out the second tray, sending a plastic jar of pills rattling over the floor.

“Joe,” Eddie said, “what’s…”

He trailed off as he came to stand beside Joe.

Joe looked up at him.

Eddie’s expression was as tight as his voice. “Where’s the diary?”

“I don’t…” Joe shook his head. “It’s gone.”

Eddie stepped back, the colour rushing from his face. He reached out and gripped the top of a chair as though he was afraid he’d stumble.

“How can it be gone?” he asked. “It was in a locked box, and the only person who has a key is…”

Joe shook his head again.

“You,” Eddie said flatly. “You’re the only person who has a key.”

Joe rose to his feet.

Eddie took another step away from him. “You knew where I was camping too, didn’t you, Joe?”

It took Joe longer than he liked to respond to that, because the idea was so wild, so totally out there, so fucking crazy that for a moment he didn’t even make the same connection that Eddie had. When he did, it almost floored him. “Jesus, Eddie, no!”

“You have his name, Joe,” Eddie said. “You’re the one with the most to lose if it comes out Josiah Nesmith was a criminal, not a hero.”

“No,” Joe said woodenly. “I don’t care about that.”

“Of course you do,” Eddie said. “This whole fucking place does!” He dragged his hands through his hair. “That diary is my whole fucking thesis! Oh, Jesus. I need to go. I need to fucking go.”

Joe reached out a hand.

“Don’t,” Eddie said, his voice colder than Joe would have ever thought possible. “Don’t you touch me. I need to go.” He edged around the kitchen table, disappearing into the living room. He appeared moments later, shoving his stuff into his ugly orange backpack.

“Eddie,” Joe said over the buzzing in his skull. “Please. You’ll freeze out there.”

Eddie held his gaze, angry and defiant.

“Just think,” Joe said. “Please, just think. If I’d taken the diary, why the hell would I have opened the chest in front of you?”

He saw the hesitation in Eddie’s expression for a moment, but then Eddie was backing away toward the kitchen door.

“I didn’t hurt you, Eddie,” Joe said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I wouldn’t. I like you.”

Eddie pressed his mouth together in a thin line, and for a moment Joe thought he’d got through to him. Then Eddie lifted his chin and shook his head. “I need to think, okay? I need to think, Joe, and I can’t do that here. I have to go.”

“Eddie—”

Eddie walked out.

Hiccup bounded happily out of the kitchen door after him, and was back a few minutes later, staring at Joe with her head on an angle.

“No, we’re not going with him,” Joe said, his voice cracking. “We’re staying here.”

He knelt down on the floor and began to clean up the items from the medical chest.

“We’re staying here.”

Joe climbed the lighthouse stairs to the catwalk, and walked around the lee side so that he could see the way into the village. Eddie’s red jacket and orange backpack were already nothing more than a distant flash of colour against the patchwork of green hues that made up the island. Joe watched him until he vanished from the windswept hillside into the first copse of pine trees that dotted the way. He didn’t wait to see him pop out the other side of the trees amongst the sandstone cottages of the village.

It was Dauntless Island. It wasn’t like he could get lost.

Joe climbed down the stairs again and then, whistling for Hiccup, made his way to the ocean-side of the point and headed down the steep, twisting track. Eddie’s yellow tent was where he’d left it the night he’d retrieved his belongings. The tent was flat and battered. Water ran off it in streams when Joe picked it up. 

Hiccup crunched a pinecone while Joe folded the tent up as best he could.

Joe carried the tent back up to the top of the point and left it at the base of the lighthouse.

Joe wanted nothing more than to either chase after Eddie, or to go to bed and wallow in his misery for a few hours, but neither of those was helpful. He’d neglected the vegetable garden for a few days now, so he worked there instead, punishing the weeds like it was their fault his day had gone so sideways so quickly.

Joe couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a theft on Dauntless Island. Well, before Eddie’s arrival had shaken everything up. People on Dauntless left their doors unlocked, because you never knew when a neighbour needed to drop in for something. Mavis didn’t even lock the shop at night, and Joe wasn’t the only one who’d ever taken advantage of that by slipping in to help himself to something he needed, and leaving a note and the money behind.

So anyone could have come up to the cottage last night, either during the Saturday night celebrations, or later when Joe and Eddie had been sleeping, and got into the kitchen. It didn’t explain how they’d got into the medical chest though. Joe kept that locked, because that was in the rules, and if he broke them and the Royal Flying Doctor Service found out then he’d lose his authorization. He kept the chest locked because he was told to, not because he’d ever thought anyone would steal from it.

Joe sighed and ripped another weed out of the hard-packed clay soil.

“You’re the only person who has a key,” Eddie had said, and it was technically true, but also…

Eddie had only seen Joe open the box with the keys he kept on his belt. He didn’t know the spare key hung on a hook on the side of the fridge.

Joe closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to think of who might.

God.

He couldn’t think of a time he’d grabbed that key instead, but it must have happened once or twice, right? If he’d been caught without his work clothes on, too early in the morning or too late at night. 

Someone must have noticed, and remembered.

Except how did they know the diary was in the medical chest to begin with?

Joe groaned, and closed his eyes against the bright sunlight.

Young Harry Barnes, the biggest gossip on the island, must have seen the diary yesterday morning. And he’d had all of Saturday night to tell literally everybody. Whoever had attacked Eddie for the diary in the first place must have overheard him.

Joe leaned back on his knees, lifting his face to the sunlight and stretching out the kinks in his spine.

Yeah. Young Harry Barnes must have talked about seeing the diary in the medical chest, and someone else must have remembered where Joe kept the spare key.

Joe wished the pieces had fallen into place a little earlier. Before Eddie had accused him of attacking him in his tent that first night, and stealing the diary last night.

Joe’s brain definitely could have put it together a little sooner.

And Joe didn’t care about the diary, not really, or at least not in any passionate way. He cared that it mattered to Eddie and his thesis, but that it called Josiah Nesmith a murderer and a rapist?

Joe had been raised on stories of Josiah Nesmith’s heroism, and it was mad to think that it might all be lies, but it didn’t matter. He thought of what Eddie had yelled at John Coldwell at the museum on Friday morning: “It was two hundred years ago!”

Yes and no, Joe thought. Yes and no.

The name Josiah Nesmith still carried a lot of weight on Dauntless though. The islanders deferred to Joe because of it, and it came with a certain amount of expectation and responsibility. The expectation was that Joe would be mayor after Short Clarry retired, and that he’d become the leader of the community, the way his father Tall Joe had been before he died. And, as Josiah Nesmith’s direct descendant, Joe had a responsibility to the community as well, and to those who visited the island.

His actions mattered, and so did his opinions.

He couldn’t just ignore the fact that someone had assaulted Eddie, and now stolen the diary, and clearly putting the word out that he wasn’t happy about the assault hadn’t been enough.

Joe would have to do something he’d never done before.

He’d have to call a village meeting, and lay it out straight.

He wanted the diary returned, and the attacker unmasked. And he would demand it, with all the authority of Josiah’s Nesmith’s name.

It was his birthright, and his responsibility. And, more than that, he wanted to prove to Eddie that he’d never hurt him.

Joe walked down into the village late in the afternoon, and headed straight for the second biggest gossip on Dauntless.

The bells on the shop door jingled as Joe walked inside.

“Mavis,” he said in greeting.

“Red Joe,” she responded, folding her arms over her bosom.

“I’m calling a village meeting,” he said, “in regards to this whole situation with Eddie Hawthorne.”

Mavis lifted her brows.

“And I’m informing the police as well,” Joe said. “Something was stolen from my house last night, and I want it returned.”

“Stolen!” Mavis exclaimed with a gasp. “From you?”

“From my house,” Joe said. He didn’t miss that fact that she wanted clarification—as though Eddie being attacked and having his laptop stolen wasn’t anywhere near as exciting or as scandalous as someone daring to steal from Red Joe Nesmith.

“Oh, the police though?” she asked, her brow furrowing “Is that necessary, do you think, Red Joe?”

“I do,” Joe said. “A man was attacked, and now we’ve had another theft on top of the first. I think it’s very necessary, and I’m sure the police will agree.”

Mavis didn’t look entirely convinced. “A village meeting though? You know there’s not a meeting scheduled until next month. Short Clarry is bringing over some hotel fellow from the mainland.”

“It can’t wait until next month,” Joe said. “I’m calling one now, for tomorrow. Noon at the church. Put the word out.”

She looked him up and down for a moment, as though she was seeing something new in him. His father maybe, or all of his forefathers together. Her mouth quirked at last. “I’ll do that then, Red Joe. Noon, at the church.”

“Thank you,” Joe said. He turned to leave, and then turned back again. “Have you seen Eddie today?”

“Yes.” She huffed. “He came in earlier, asking about passage off the island. I told him there is none until Young Harry Barnes goes over to the mainland on Wednesday, and he asked me about the fishing boats. Well, I told him, those are for fishing. If we used those as taxis, nobody would eat, would they?” She sniffed. “He didn’t like that much.”

Joe could imagine.

“Well, then he asked where he was allowed to camp,” Mavis said. “And I told him I’m not tourist information, am I, and he said he knew that, but tourist information was closed.”

Poor Eddie, Joe thought. He was winning friends and influencing people all over Dauntless, wasn’t he?

“So I told him John Coldwell had some tourist maps at the museum,” Mavis said. “And he looked like he’d sucked on a lemon when I said that, and he didn’t even buy anything when he left!”

It was a not-so-subtle reminder, Joe thought, and selected a packet of beef jerky from the stand near the register. He dug through his pockets for his wallet.

“Don’t forget to let everyone know,” Joe said. “Village meeting, noon tomorrow.”

“I’ll make sure the word goes out,” Mavis said.

The bells jingled again as Joe left the store and headed for the museum. Maybe John Coldwell would be a little more receptive today, and maybe Joe could find a way to ask him—without outright accusing him—if he’d taken Henry Jessup’s diary.

He wandered down the street to the museum, Hiccup meandering alongside him.

The museum was closed, but unlocked, just like always. Joe lifted the latch and pushed the door open.

“John?” he called. “It’s Red Joe. Are you in?”

It took him a moment to realize that the stand of postcards and brochures by the counter had been knocked over, its contents scattered all along the floor.

Hiccup bounced forward, sniffing excitedly, and Joe caught her by the collar.

That’s when he saw the blood spatter on the floor.

CHAPTER 7

“John?” Joe called, tugging Hiccup back toward the door of the museum. He pushed her outside and pulled the door shut, ignoring her whines of protest. He walked back to the counter of the museum, careful not to step in the blood on the floor.

He’d thought it a spatter pattern at first, but as he drew closer he saw a darker patch of it on the floor under the counter and a hand-shaped smear on the counter itself. The postcard rack, lying on the floor, was dented, and Joe couldn’t help but imagine John Coldwell standing behind the counter and someone—why did it look like Eddie in his mind?—picking up the rack and swinging it into John’s head.

“John?” he called again, moving out of the main room into the one behind it.

This one held ink portraits of HMS Dauntless and her crew and a piece of the spar salvaged from the wreck site. The story of the mutiny was told in framed text around the walls, like a mutineers’ Stations of the Cross.

The room looked undisturbed.

A third room, covering the island’s history since the mutiny, also appeared unscathed.

“John?” Joe unhooked the piece of rope at the bottom of the stairs, and ignored the sign that said ‘Private’. He climbed the stairs. “John?”

John lived upstairs. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a spare room that was overflowing with books and old newspapers.

“John?”

There didn’t appear to be anything disturbed in the bedroom. In the bathroom, the rust-stained old basin had smears of blood inside it, and a bloody towel lay discarded on the floor.

Joe didn’t know what he was looking at. He didn’t know if John had come up here and cleaned himself up, or if his attacker had.

“John?” he called again as he made his way back downstairs.

There was no answer, but Joe wasn’t expecting one by now. John Coldwell was clearly gone, and so was whoever else had been here.

Joe’s stomach clenched.

Eddie had been here. Eddie, who was distraught at losing his diary. If he’d thought John Coldwell had taken it—and why wouldn’t he think that? Joe was pretty damn certain of it himself—then could he have snapped and hurt him?

Joe wanted to say it was impossible, but he’d known Eddie for three days. Knowing someone for three days was the same as not knowing them at all, surely. As hard as it was to think of Eddie’s smile, to think of Eddie’s kisses and the way he gasped as he came, and to think of Eddie as anything apart from someone that Joe liked—and maybe even more than liked—he’d be a fool not to consider the possibility that Eddie might have done this.

Joe stepped outside the museum, pulling the front door shut so that Hiccup couldn’t get inside.

He looked up and down the street.

Emily Barnes was walking up from the jetty, dragging a plastic tub on wheels behind her. The tail of a skipjack tuna jutted out from the end of the tub.

“Have you seen John Coldwell today?” Joe called out to her.

“Not today,” she said, stopping. “But I was fishing round the point with Little Harry on his dad’s boat.”

More like canoodling in the wheelhouse, Joe thought. “If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.”

“Okay,” Emily said, and continued on her way, the wheels on the tub squeaking.

Joe dragged a hand through his hair.

Where the hell was John Coldwell? And did Eddie have anything to do with his disappearance? Jesus. It was all such a mess now. He should head back to the lighthouse and get on the radio to notify the police. Except even if they headed straight out they’d still be hours away, and Joe needed to find some answers before then.

He looked down the street towards the statue of Josiah Nesmith, and the church just beyond it. He drew in a breath to steel his resolve, and headed for the church with Hiccup beside him.

The last time the church bell had rung out in warning across the island, Joe had been in Sydney and his father’s boat had been smashed on the rocks out from the point. The islanders had pulled two men out of the water that day, but lost three. Joe had listened to Amy recounting the story, days later and in choking sobs, of how the first she knew anything was wrong was the ringing of the church bell.

Katrina Finch was the first person to run to the church, followed closely by Short Clarry and Mavis Coldwell, and then the men who’d been unloading at the jetty.

“What’s going on, Red Joe?” Short Clarry demanded. “What’s happened?”

“There’s blood in the museum,” Joe said, “and John Coldwell is missing. Has anyone seen him today?”

It turned out that Mavis had been the last to see him, when John Coldwell had stopped in for a cup of tea.

“Was this before or after you sent Eddie Hawthorne down to see him?” Joe asked.

“Before,” Mavis said. “About an hour or so before.”

Joe’s heart sank. “Has anyone seen Eddie Hawthorne?”

John Dinsmore had caught a glimpse of someone on Seal Beach on the western side of the island, but he’d been out in his boat at the time and couldn’t say who it was. The bloke had been in a red jacket though, and that must have been around lunchtime.

“I knew no good would come of a Hawthorne on the island,” Mavis announced, clicking her tongue.

The bell brought more of the islanders over the next hour or so, but none of them had seen John Coldwell or Eddie Hawthorne since earlier in the day. Even Young Harry Barnes, who’d hiked into the village all the way from his shack, hadn’t seen them, and Young Harry Barnes usually knew where everyone was even before they knew it themselves.

Joe led a small delegation of islanders to the museum, Short Clarry and Young Harry Barnes among them, to show them the blood and the evidence of a fight.

Short Clarry scratched his thinning hair and sucked in his lower lip in consternation. “What on earth is going on lately, Red Joe? What on earth?”

Joe couldn’t have summed it up better himself.

“Someone took the diary from my house,” he said. “Eddie was angry, but I don’t think he’d do this, even if it was John Coldwell who stole it.”

“Hmm.” Short Clarry clicked his tongue. “But what if it wasn’t just stolen? What if it was ripped up or thrown in a fire?”

Well then. Joe hadn’t considered that, but yes, perhaps that would make Eddie angry enough to strike John Coldwell. A crime of passion over a dusty old book seemed ridiculous to Joe, but it wasn’t just a book, was it? Not to Eddie, who was making it his life’s work, and not to whoever had attacked Eddie for it in the first place.

“We need to send out a search party,” Joe said. “For John Coldwell, and also for Eddie Hawthorne. And we need to call the police.”

Short Clarry squared his shoulders. “Righto, then. Let’s get this started.”

The last time the islanders had formed a search party it had been for Verity Barnes’s youngest, Baby John, who’d wandered off in the night when he was three, leaving nothing but an open door behind him. He’d been found hours later curled up asleep with one of Big Jim Corporal’s goats. Lost John was now seven years old, and the new nickname had stuck. Still, when he was an old man he might prefer it to Baby John.

Dusk was settling over the island by the time the search parties were ready to start out, and it promised to be a cold night.

Joe stood back while Short Clarry issued instructions.

“We don’t know what’s happened, though it looks bad,” Short Clarry finished up with. “Mind you all remember that if you find him, Hawthorne or no, he’s still a tourist, even if he is descended from a tyrant.”

“Okay,” Joe said, before Short Clarry could accidentally talk the islanders into forming a lynch mob. “Thank you, Short Clarry.”

Short Clarry smiled and nodded.

“I’m going up to the lighthouse to call the police,” Joe told him. “After that I’ll join the search on the point.”

“Righto,” Short Clarry said, and checked his watch. He spoke to the crowd again. “We’ll meet back here at nine. It’s going to be a cold one. Watch yourselves out there.”

Murmuring vaguely, the crowd dispersed into smaller groups and set out.

As he walked up the street, Joe passed Sarah Hooper stepping inside her house. He was close enough to hear the dull thunk of the lock as she turned it.

A locked door on Dauntless Island.

That was a first.

And it didn’t bode well for what the islanders thought of Eddie Hawthorne, did it?

Joe headed up toward the point with Hiccup, unease biting at him.

Eddie’s yellow tent was still lying at the base of the lighthouse when Joe got back.

He went into his cottage, and stood in front of the radio in the kitchen. Then, drawing a deep breath, he turned it to the channel for the water police, and made the call.

“Dauntless Island to Marine Area Command,” he said, and then repeated himself through the static.

It took a little while to answer. The channel was monitored, Joe knew, but rarely used.

“Marine Area Command here. Go ahead, Dauntless.”

“I need to report we have two possible missing persons and a land search underway,” Joe said.

“Copy that, Dauntless. Go with all the details.”

Joe hoped the guy was ready with a pen, because it was a long story.

Joe rejoined the search party on the point, his oilskin pulled tight around him to protect him from the bite of the wind.

“What’d the police say, Red Joe?” Verity Corporal asked, the wind tugging her red hair in all directions.

“To keep them informed,” Joe said. “They’ll send a boat over in the morning if we haven’t turned them up by then.”

Verity nodded, the beam of her torch bouncing along the tussocky ground. “No point searching at night anyway,” she said. “Can’t see a bloody thing.”

In the faint distance, Joe could hear someone calling out John Coldwell’s name.

Shortly before nine, footsore and dispirited, their party returned to the church.

Nobody had found any sign of either John Coldwell or Eddie Hawthorne.

“Righto,” Short Clarry said. “The police will here tomorrow. Go along home. Check your yards and your outbuildings, and we’ll get an early start on it in the morning.”

One or two people looked to Joe.

“We’ll get an early start in the morning,” he agreed.

Beside him, Short Clarry huffed, and Joe wondered if he thought he was overstepping his authority here. Island politics could be as complicated as island family trees, and the two were mostly intertwined and impossible to untangle anyway.

The islanders dispersed slowly, and Joe’s feet ached at the thought of the long walk back up to the lighthouse.

“Cup of tea before you head back?” Short Clarry asked as they walked along the main street. “Something a little stronger, maybe?”

“Not tonight, thanks,” Joe said. “I’ll turn in, I think, while I can.”

Short Clarry clapped him on the shoulder. “See you first thing, then.”

Joe nodded, and watched as Short Clarry walked into his cottage.

Joe whistled for Hiccup, who came bounding out of the darkness, and they continued on their way.

They’d already started up the hill towards the point when Joe stopped suddenly.

Check your yards and your outbuildings, Short Clarry had said, but had anyone checked the yard at the museum? It was the former customs house, and there had once been a storage building out the back for seized goods. That had been knocked down years ago now, the stone used for other construction around the place, but the basement still remained. The basement had been used as an icehouse, back in the day.

Shit.

Joe turned and looked back towards the village. He didn’t want to walk all the way back there now, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep if he didn’t put his mind at ease by doing everything he could.

He turned and headed back to the village, Hiccup looking at him like he was mad.

I know,” he told her. “I know. Come on.”

It was dark, but Joe knew his way. Mavis’s window was closed, and the curtains were pulled. He wondered if she’d locked the shop tonight, like Sarah Hooper had locked her door.

What did they think? That Eddie Hawthorne, inheritor of his great-great-great-grandfather’s bloody tyranny, was running amok on Dauntless Island? Cracking people over the heads in some sort of mad revenge spree?

Joe thought of Eddie, and his big eyes, and his grin and his glasses and the way he wrinkled his nose and the way he kissed, and wished he could laugh at the idea. Except how well did Joe really know him? How well did anyone know anybody?

Joe’s boots crunched against the dirt as he and Hiccup walked back down the main street toward the museum.

It was cold, and it was getting colder, and Joe had forgotten his gloves. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat instead, and tried to ignore the fact his fingers felt like icicles.

He and Hiccup reached the museum at last and walked down the side of the sandstone building. It gleamed in the moonlight. The back yard was a little overgrown, and it took Joe a moment to remember where the basement was. It was difficult to spot even in the moonlight: a dark door lying against the grass like it had been dropped there from a great height.

Joe crouched down and heaved it open. No shower of dirt came with it and Joe’s stomach clenched. Had someone opened it recently? He turned his torch on, and shone it down the dark, narrow stone steps.

The beam of the torch hit John Coldwell in the face.

He looked as though he’d been dead for hours.

Joe trudged back up the hill towards the point, glad that Hiccup was with him. He felt colder than the chill night warranted. Colder than the grave. Part of that, he supposed, was from descending those steps into the basement that had once been used as an icehouse. But most of it came from pressing his fingers to John Coldwell’s throat in what he’d known had been a vain attempt to find a pulse. John was already cold and stiff. There had been nothing Joe could do for him.

Joe shivered, and continued up the hill. The beam of the lighthouse drew him on, solid and strong.

When he reached the top of the point, he noted that Eddie’s tent was still there.

He entered the lighthouse, switching on the interior lights as he stepped inside. Hiccup, like always, waited outside. She wasn’t a fan of the steep steps.

Joe climbed the stairs to the flag room, and opened up the crates.

He wondered if Eddie would remember what he’d told him on that tour of the lighthouse. If he’d remember what the flags were for.

Joe climbed up to the lantern room, and went out onto the catwalk.

It was dark now, but the sunlight would hit the lighthouse first in the morning, and it would shine like a beacon.

Joe moved around to the leeward side of the lighthouse, where the flags wouldn’t be seen by shipping traffic. He fastened the two flags he’d chosen to the rails.

One was a blue checked flag.

The other was divided into four squares. The top left and the bottom right were red. The top right and the bottom left were white.

Would Eddie be able to read them?

The flags fluttered in the wind, broadcasting a message for those who could read it. 

Your movements are not understood, said the first. 

And the second said, You are running into danger.

Because the moment John Coldwell’s body was found, there wouldn’t be a man or woman on the island who didn’t assume Eddie Hawthorne was responsible for his death. And Joe wasn’t sure that his name alone would be enough to protect Eddie until the police arrived.

Eddie needed to stay hidden, wherever he was, and to stay safe.

Eddie hadn’t made any friends on the island. And hadn’t Joe himself thought that he might have attacked John Coldwell, all over a dusty old diary?

Right up until he’d found John’s body, Joe had believed it might be possible. He might have continued believing it if he hadn’t looked in the old icehouse behind the museum.

Because how would Eddie even know the icehouse existed? It wasn’t in any of the museum brochures, and John Coldwell would never have volunteered such information to a Hawthorne.

No, the existence of the icehouse was something only an islander would know.

Which meant that only an islander could have killed him.

And Eddie, of course, would never have left Henry Jessup’s diary tucked inside John Coldwell’s jacket where Joe had found it.

Joe slipped his hand inside his pocket as he went back down the curving steps. The diary, no longer wrapped in plastic, felt damp and cold to his touch, the pages brittle.

Hiccup was waiting for him outside the lighthouse.

Joe walked to his cottage, turning once to stare up at the flags fluttering and snapping in the wind.

Then he went inside, and closed and locked his door behind him.

He took the diary from his pocket and inspected it. As far as he could tell, all the pages still seemed to be there. He opened it carefully somewhere in the middle, and squinted down at the faded, spidery handwriting. It was hard to read. It took Joe’s eyes a while to made sense of the letters, and of the words they formed.

…that on the 2nd day of February Lt. Jos. Nesmith grew belligerent with Capt Hawthorne for the captain refused to allow the men to force their attentions upon the women passengers of the Antigone. The civilian passengers were much alarmed. The next day being the 3rd, Jos. Nesmith & a company of his men seized muskets and demanded Capt Hawthorne resign his post. 

Joe closed the diary again.

All of this, he thought.

All of this for such a little book.

Joe opened up the kitchen pantry, and pulled a box of Cornflakes out. He removed the inside packet, slipped the diary into the box, and then replaced the cereal. Then he shoved the Cornflakes box to the very back of the pantry.

It was no medical chest, but that had hardly been secure either, had it? And what was a padlock to someone who had killed a man?

Joe crossed to the radio, and turned the volume up. “Dauntless Island to Marine Area Command.”

“Dauntless Island, this is the Marine Area Command. Have you found your missing persons?”

Joe rubbed his forehead. “Negative, Marine Area Command. I need to report a homicide.”

CHAPTER 8

By dawn on Monday the weather had turned bad thanks to a cluster of storm cells moving in from the southwest. Joe hadn’t slept much during the night. He’d dozed for a few hours, but spent most of the night sitting in the kitchen instead, talking on the radio to the police. They’d tried to send a chopper just after midnight, but the weather was even worse nearer the mainland and it had been forced to turn back again. Now there was a boat on the way, but the going was slow and rough, and it wouldn’t arrive until mid-morning.

The clock on the kitchen wall told Joe that it was dawn now, but it was still dark outside. The sun was barely able to breach the low, black clouds that clung to the island. There was a softening of the gloom, that was all, but no true light.

Joe did his rounds of the lighthouse and headed into the village to rejoin the search parties, knowing that one of the men they were searching for was already dead, and desperately hoping that the other wouldn’t be found.

“Miserable weather for it,” Fisher Harry Finch said through his scarf as Joe joined him outside the church.

Joe grunted in agreement, looking around the crowd and wondering which of his neighbours was a killer. He saw Young Harry Barnes standing off to the side of the crowd, his shock of white hair encased in a fug of cigarette smoke, and made his way over to him.

“Nasty fucking day,” Young Harry said cheerily, and coughed and smacked himself on the chest. He spat on the ground. “Bloody chest infection. Looks like I might be getting that new prescription from the doctor next week after all.”

Bloody cigarettes, more like, Joe thought, but he hummed in agreement. “Listen, Young Harry, did you talk to John Coldwell on Saturday night about that diary of Eddie Hawthorne’s?”

“Oh, yes,” Young Harry said blithely. “It’s a fake, he says, but I told him that you had it locked up like it were the crown jewels!”

Joe’s heart sank. It must have been John Coldwell who’d stolen the diary then. He must have known where Joe kept the spare key for the medical chest, and remembered it.

“John Coldwell’s gone a bit mad, I reckon,” Young Harry said. “Foaming at the mouth over this Henry Jessup nonsense, and now running off for God knows what reason.”

Joe hummed again.

“Everyone knows that Henry Jessup died on the island anyhow,” Young Harry said. “His name’s in the church. It’s just a lot of foolishness, over nothing.”

“You were in the search party over at Seal Bay last night, weren’t you?” Joe asked. “Did you see any signs of Eddie Hawthorne?”

“Didn’t see a bloody thing,” Young Harry told him, and squinted at the sky. “And it won’t be much better today, I reckon.”

“Yeah,” Joe agreed, hope igniting in his chest. “I think you might be right.”

Wherever Eddie was hidden, Joe hoped he stayed there.

Joe pulled on his gloves—he’d remembered them this morning—and looked around at the crowd. These people were more than his neighbours, they were his family. And one of them had killed John Coldwell.

It was a chilling thought.

One of these people was a murderer, and Joe only saw familiar faces. This time last week he’d have trusted any one of them with his life. Now, he felt as though the ground was shaky beneath his feet, and that everything he’d thought he’d known about his history, about his home, and about the people he shared it with, might be a lie.

The sooner the police arrived and sorted this whole mess out, the better.

He looked up towards the point, to the lighthouse. It rose out of the darkness in the distance, as ghostly and pale as a bleached bone. The flags Joe had fastened there last night weren’t visible in the gloom.

Mavis stomped over to Joe, a heavy walking stick in her grasp.

“Bloody awful weather,” she said. Still, she was wearing her gumboots and her bright yellow puffer jacket, so Joe had no doubt she was here to lend a hand to the search. All the islanders were, apart from the young kids and those who needed to stay behind to watch them. Even the fishing boats wouldn’t leave the jetty until the search was done. That was the Dauntless way.

“Bloody awful,” Joe agreed.

“You think it’ll clear up later?” Mavis asked, peering into the sky.

“Should do,” Joe said. “Weather report said it would.”

“Good,” Mavis said. She looked around the crowd. “Who are we waiting for?”

Short Clarry bustled through the crowd, waving and nodding.

“Ah.” Mavis huffed out a breath. “No show without Punch.”

Joe wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that, and was saved having to by a sudden yell, which cut through the cold air as sharply as the call of a gull.

“Dad! Dad!” The soles of Jemmy Finch’s shoes slapped against the ground. “Dad!”

Jemmy Finch, Fisher Harry Finch’s second eldest, was a scrawny kid of thirteen, all long limbs he hadn’t figured out how to grow into yet, and hair like wet straw.

“Dad!” he yelled again, puffing and panting in the gloom of the dawn. “Under the jetty! John Coldwell is floating under the jetty!”

The islanders crowded the edge of the harbour at the jetty. Joe, by virtue of his name, was given room at the front of the crowd alongside Short Clarry as Fisher Harry Finch and Sea John Barnes waded into the black water underneath the jetty and rolled John Coldwell out like a seal.

They dragged him up onto the shoreline.

He was white and bloated. The sea wasn’t kind to its victims.

Fisher Harry Finch shone his torch over John’s head, making a hissing sound when he found his cracked skull. “Aye. There it is.”

Joe thought of the rack of postcards and brochures in the museum, and wondered if John had even seen it coming before it connected with his head.

“Oh,” Short Clarry said, shaking his head. “Oh no.”

“I reckon that maybe he didn’t run off at all then,” Young Harry Barnes said. “Huh.”

“I knew it!” Mavis said. “I knew no good could come from a Hawthorne on Dauntless. Didn’t I say it, Red Joe? Didn’t I say to mark my words?” She crossed herself.

“I reckon,” Young Harry Barnes continued, puffing on a cigarette, “that the young Hawthorne bloke up and killed him!”

“Stop that,” Joe said. He spoke loudly, hoping his voice would carry to everyone. “That’s for the police to decide, not you, and not me, and not anyone on this island.”

He wondered if George Hawthorne had ever felt like this—staring down his crew in a last futile attempt to maintain order. Of course, Joe had the advantage over George Hawthorne, didn’t he? He had a police boat on the way.

“The police are coming,” he said. “Leave them to do their job.”

“Righto,” Short Clarry said. “Red Joe is right! Though, if it was the Hawthorne bloke who did this to poor John Coldwell, are any of us safe right now?”

A murmur of unease went through the crowd.

Thank you, Short Clarry, Joe thought, for trying to douse that fire with petrol.

He wished he could tell them that Eddie hadn’t done this, but the last thing the islanders needed right now was the awful truth: that one of their own had put John Caldwell’s body down in the old icehouse, a place Eddie couldn’t have known about, and come back later to dump the body in the harbour. That one of their own was a killer.

Dauntless had proven itself a powder keg in the past. Joe didn’t want to be the one who lit a match today. The police would be here soon. Eddie just needed to lie low until then.

“The police are coming,” he repeated loudly. “In the meantime, the search is off.”

“What?” Short Clarry asked, his brow creasing. “Red Joe, there’s another man missing!”

Yeah, Joe thought, and the last thing I want is for him to meet his end on Dauntless the way his great-great-great-whatever-grandfather did.

“The search is off,” he repeated. “Let the police look for Eddie Hawthorne when they get here.”

Short Clarry pushed his shoulders back. “I’m the mayor, Red Joe, have you forgotten? I’m in charge of searches!”

Joe stared back evenly. “And I’m Josiah Nesmith. Have you forgotten that?”

The crowd shifted and murmured restlessly. Mavis’s jaw dropped. Young Harry Barnes puffed on a cigarette, owl-eyed.

Joe heard Eddie’s voice in the back of his mind. “So you’re like royalty or something? Holy shit. You are. You’re like the true king of the island, aren’t you?”

Or something, Joe had told him, playing it down.

But something wasn’t nothing. The blood of Josiah Nesmith ran in Joe’s veins, and that carried weight on Dauntless Island, even two hundred years later.

He held Short Clarry’s gaze.

“Righto,” Short Clarry said at last, straightening his scarf. “Righto, you heard the man. Search for the murderer is off! I need some men to carry John Coldwell into the church!”

He shot Joe a worried look as he bustled busily away.

Mavis hummed, the sleeve of her puffer jacket brushing against Joe’s coat as she sidled up to him. “Calling off the search for a killer, hmm?”

“For a missing person,” Joe said evenly.

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you know, Red Joe?”

He shrugged. “Usually about half as much as any other man.”

Her thin mouth tugged up at the corners. “Oh, doubt that very much, Red Joe. I doubt that very much.”

She stomped away.

Joe waited at the jetty while the islanders slowly dispersed.

“Yes,” Joe said to Hiccup as he trudged his way back up the hill toward the point. “I’m a fucking idiot, probably, and they all think I’m a traitor for protecting a Hawthorne, which I am— protecting him, I mean, not being a traitor—but only because I know he didn’t kill John Coldwell.”

Hiccup stopped to eat a bug.

“If you’ve got a better idea on how to handle it, I’m all ears,” Joe muttered.

Hiccup hacked up the bug again, and then pawed at it excitedly.

Joe looked up at the lighthouse. A shaft of sunlight had pierced the clouds at last, and the flags Joe had hung there last night fluttered in the light.

Your movements are not understood. 

You are running into danger.

Joe hoped that Eddie saw them, and understood the message.

He hoped, even more than that, that Eddie was safe. There was a killer on Dauntless, after all.

He turned back and looked toward the village, and saw a group of people setting out towards the east of the island. Towards Seal Beach, where Eddie had been seen last.

Fuck.

Apparently Josiah Nesmith’s name didn’t carry as much authority as Joe had hoped.

Joe hurried toward home. He crested the hill and reached his cottage at last. Eddie’s tent was still lying in a bundle at the door to the lighthouse, and Joe figured he should take it inside or something. But he had more pressing concerns for now.

He unlatched his kitchen door and stepped inside the cottage. Hiccup padded after him, and collapsed in a heap on the floor, her tongue lolling.

Joe crossed to the radio. “Dauntless Island to Marine Area Command?”

“Dauntless Island, this is Marine Area Command. Go ahead.”

“I need the ETA of your police vessel, Marine Area Command.”

“Copy that. Marine Area Command to OPV Bluefin, do you copy?”

A third voice cut in over static. “This is OPV Bluefin. Dauntless Island, we’re about two hours out. What’s the situation there?”

Unravelling rapidly, Joe thought. “Someone moved John Coldwell’s body last night. It was found under the jetty this morning. I’ve got over a hundred people on this island who think Eddie Hawthorne killed a man, and a bunch of them still looking for him now. If they find him I’m not sure what will happen.”

“Copy that, Dauntless. We’ll be with you as fast as we can.”

“Copy, thanks. Dauntless out.” Joe exhaled heavily and set the receiver back down.

He thought of Henry Jessup’s diary, stashed in a Cornflakes box, and wished it had never fallen into Eddie’s hands to begin with. Joe had been unsure how he felt about it at first, but he knew now. A man was dead. Josiah Nesmith’s reputation wasn’t worth killing for. No man’s was.

Joe sighed again, and looked out the window toward the lighthouse. If the Bluefin was still two hours out, it wouldn’t even be a speck on the horizon yet.

“Breakfast, hey?” he said, and Hiccup was at his side in an instant, her tail thumping against his knee.

It was another porridge day.

Joe made some for himself, and set some aside to cool for Hiccup. Amy would tell him off for feeding Hiccup people food when she came back for the summer, but Hiccup didn’t have any complaints. Anyway, oats hardly counted, right?

Feeding her porridge in a people plate was probably wrong too, but who was going to find out?

Joe checked his watch when he and Hiccup had finished their porridge.

It was almost eight. Still over an hour until the police arrived, but Joe was too pent up to just sit around and wait.

He took his coat from the hook behind the door, pulled it on, and stepped outside into the chill air.

Hiccup nosed her way around the yard as Joe strode for the lighthouse.

He pushed the door open, and climbed the stairs to the lantern room. Once there, he took his binoculars and stepped out onto the catwalk. He scanned the grey horizon. Visibility was poor. The clouds were low and the sea was choppy. The horizon bled into both of them. It was no clear line today—it was a charcoal smudge.

Joe watched it anyway, filling his lungs with salt air.

He stood there until his fingers turned white with cold, and then went back inside.

He was placing the binoculars back in their case when he heard the faint clang of the door, ninety-six steps down. And then a voice drifted up the to the lantern room, strangely distorted by the shape of the lighthouse tower.

“Joe? Are you up there?”

Joe’s heart skipped a beat.

Eddie!

“Eddie?” Joe jogged down the steps, holding the rail and leaning over as he hurried down, turning like the hand of a clock around the dial of the lighthouse’s central mast. The black and white tiles on the ground floor spun in his vision.

A familiar figure in a green beanie and a red jacket stepped into his sight, and Joe caught himself on the landing of the second floor, leaning over the rail.

“Eddie!”

Eddie looked up at him, his face flushed and his grin a little bashful. “Hi, Joe.”

Joe caught his breath. “What are you doing here, Eddie?”

“What?” Eddie pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “I mean, it was cold last night. Really fucking cold! So I thought I’d come back for my tent, and then I realized that was an arsehole move, and so I’m here to apologize. For being an arsehole, mostly. I know you didn’t take the diary. That was like a midnight cold-as-balls revelation that I had. It’s like you said. Why the fuck would you lock the diary up, and then steal it from there? That would be pretty fucking dumb, wouldn’t it?”

Joe blinked down at him. “Did you see the flags?”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said. “They look nice.”

“They’re not nice, Eddie! They’re a message!”

“Oh, right,” Eddie said. “For boats and stuff.”

“For you, you bloody idiot!”

“For me?” Eddie’s jaw dropped. “What sort of message?” He tugged his beanie off and jammed it in his pocket. “I don’t speak flag, Joe!”

Joe hurried down the rest of the steps, and at last joined Eddie at the base of the central mast. “Your movements are not understood. You are running into danger.”

Eddie wrinkled his nose. “What are you talking about?”

Joe grabbed him by the shoulders, and didn’t know whether he wanted to kiss him or throttle him. “Where were you last night?”

“In like, some trees?” Eddie shrugged. “Near a beach? It was fucking cold, that’s all I know. I think there was a goat.”

“Did you hear the bells yesterday?” Joe asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said. “For Sunday church, right?”

“We don’t have church services here, Eddie! Jesus Christ!” Throttle him. He definitely wanted to throttle him. 

“Well how was I supposed to know that?” Eddie demanded. “What were the bells for then?”

“Someone killed John Coldwell, and the entire fucking island thinks it was you!”

The colour drained from Eddie’s face. “What?”

“John Coldwell is dead,” Joe said. “And everyone thinks you did it.”

“Who—” The word was lost in a huff of breath. Eddie swallowed. “He’s dead?”

“The police are coming,” Joe said. “I know you didn’t hurt him. So we just need you to stay put somewhere safe until the police get here, okay? And we can get everything sorted out then.”

“Joe.” Eddie clutched the sleeve of Joe’s coat. “I saw him yesterday. He was fine. I mean, he was horrible, but he was fine. Why would… why would someone kill him? Oh god.” He tightened his grip on Joe’s sleeve. “I’m going to be Wicker Manned on this island, aren’t I?”

“That’s not a thing, Eddie.” Joe released his shoulder and cupped the side of his face. “The police will be here soon. You’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, his eyes wide. “But people think I killed him? Seriously?”

“Because of the diary,” Joe said. “And because you were the last person to see him.”

Eddie’s brow creased. “But I wasn’t the last person to see him. When I was leaving the museum I saw—”

Behind him, the door to the lighthouse was pulled open.

“Hello, Mr. Hawthorne,” Short Clarry said, stepping inside. “Nice to see you again.”

And he pointed a gun at them.

CHAPTER 9

Joe’s blood ran cold as he stepped in front of Eddie.

“Oh, don’t do that, Red Joe,” Short Clarry said. “This isn’t about you.”

Joe stared at the narrow barrel of the revolver. “Where’d you get that?”

“This old thing? It was my grandfather’s. He was issued it in the war. It’s an Enfield No. 2. A collector’s piece by now, probably.” His mouth turned down at the corners. “John Coldwell could have put it in his museum.”

Eddie’s fingers dug into the back of Joe’s coat.

“Put it down, Clarry,” Joe said, keeping his voice even. “The police are on the way.”

“This is island business, Red Joe, not police business. John Coldwell was one of ours, and it’s right that we should sort it out. That man behind you is a killer, and—”

“Bullshit,” Joe said. “That’s bullshit.”

“Believing the word of a Hawthorne over one of your own now, are you?” Short Clarry asked.

“It was an islander who killed John Coldwell,” Joe said. “And it’s an islander pointing a fucking gun at me right now.”

“Then step aside,” Short Clarry said, “and there’s half your problem solved.”

“It was you,” Eddie said suddenly. “I was leaving the museum, and I passed you. You’re the one who killed him!”

Short Clarry didn’t even flinch.

“All this,” Joe said hollowly. “All this for some old diary.”

“No,” Short Clarry said. “All this for Dauntless, Red Joe! For our future! I’ve been talking to investors. Investors! And then John Coldwell put everything in jeopardy when he attacked Hawthorne for the diary. Tourists won’t want to come here if they think that’s how they’ll be treated!”

Eddie spluttered.

“Short Clarry, you’re pointing a fucking gun at that same tourist right now,” Joe told him.

Short Clarry looked at least a little shamefaced. “Yes, well, he’s not a tourist now though, is he? He’s a witness.”

“Because you fought with John Coldwell over what happened with the diary,” Joe said. “You got angry, and you hit him with the rack, and you killed him. And Eddie had already seen you going to visit him.”

He felt one of Eddie’s hands digging into the pocket of his coat, and turned his hip to help him. His torch was still in his pocket, and it wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was heavy, and it was better than nothing.

“That’s the long and the short of it,” Short Clarry said. What had Joe thought of him the other day? A fussy little man in a fussy little house. That didn’t seen quite real today. “Then I saw him, didn’t I? Climbing up to the point in that bright red jacket, sticking out the like the balls on a dog, and now here we are.” He gestured with the pistol. “Step aside, Red Joe.”

“No. I can’t do that.” Joe’s heart raced. “I won’t.”

Almost two hundred years ago, on this very point, Josiah Nesmith and his fellow mutineers had hanged Captain George Hawthorne.

What would our great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers think of us now? A Nesmith standing in front of a Hawthorne, except this time he doesn’t have a rope in his hands.

Joe hoped their ancestors at least appreciated the irony.

Short Clarry didn’t waver.

“Is this really what you want?” Joe asked, feeling Eddie slide the torch free. “I’m the last direct male descendant of Josiah Nesmith.”

“We’re all mutineers at heart, Red Joe,” Short Clarry said, “even now. You’re no better than the rest of us. Come on now, last chance to step aside.”

Joe stepped aside just as Eddie threw the torch.

It was a bad throw. The torch went wide, smashing against the wall behind Short Clarry’s right shoulder. It was enough to make him flinch back though.

“Run!” Joe yelled, pushing Eddie toward the steps. “Go!”

They were younger than Short Clarry, and faster.

Eddie hauled himself up the stairs, Joe only a step or two behind him.

“Lantern room!” Joe yelled. “Go!”

They thundered up the steps.

Below them, a shot rang out, a short sharp crack that echoed through the tower. Joe’s heart skipped a beat, but by the time he’d registered the sound— registered it and understood it and expected to feel a sudden burst of pain—it was already over and he was still moving. Eddie, who’d shouldered the wall heavily when the shot sounded, was still stumbling up the stairs in front of him.

They passed the door to the flag room. The steps were steeper here, narrower, and they thundered up them.

Eddie spilled into the lantern room ahead of Joe, a flurry of limbs and panic.

“Outside!” Joe grabbed his trusty binoculars and followed him out. He slammed the door shut, twisting the handle closed and then jamming the binoculars under the handle. They fell straight through and hit the catwalk.

“Oh god,” Eddie said, gripping the rail and gasping for breath. “I thought you had a plan!”

“That was the plan!” Joe gripped the handle tightly.

“That’s a terrible fucking plan!”

“If you’ve got a better one, Eddie, now would be the time to share!”

“Can he shoot through those windows?” Eddie asked. “Because we’re kind of trapped here now!”

“Those windows can withstand a cyclone.”

“That doesn’t answer the question, Joe!”

It didn’t, did it? But how the fuck would Joe know? He was fairly sure this was an unprecedented situation, and not one that had been considered by any lighthouse designers.

Joe leaned around the metal door to look in the windows into the lantern room, just in time to see Short Clarry arriving inside, panting for breath.

“Go around the other side,” Joe said. “Get the flags.”

Eddie hurried to obey.

Joe twisted around and stared out at the ocean. There was a speck of white on the horizon now. It had to be the MPV Bluefin, the police boat. Still a good forty minutes away, probably.

Hurry the fuck up, Joe willed them.

The handle of the door rattled. Joe gripped it tightly, and looked through the windows again.

Short Clarry glared at him through the glass, and mouthed something Joe was pretty glad he couldn’t hear. He didn’t mistake the way that Short Clarry tapped the gun against the window though.

Eddie scurried back into view, the two flags tangled up in their ropes. “What am I doing with these?”

“Waving them,” Joe said. “First to that boat out there.” He didn’t let go of the door handle to point. “Then to anyone who can see you in the village.”

Eddie opened his mouth to reply and caught a glimpse of Short Clarry through the windows. He yelped like Hiccup when she got her tail caught in a door, and then dropped to his hands and knees on the catwalk.

Which was fair, really, because what did either of them know about ballistics? Eddie could wave his flags from down there just as well.

Joe stood gripping the handle so that Short Clarry couldn’t open the door from the inside. He tried to brace his weight against the door in the hope that he could hold it closed against Short Clarry’s rage if he did lose his grip on the handle. His heart thumped and adrenaline coursed through him.

The speck of white on the horizon gradually grew larger and larger.

But not fast enough.

Joe’s arms were aching by the time Eddie crawled back around the catwalk to him.

“Anything from the village?”

Eddie squinted at him. “Lost my glasses. I can’t see shit!”

What a pair they made. If their ancestors weren’t still laughing at the irony of Joe stepping in front of a guy with a gun for Eddie, then they were definitely laughing at their ineptitude. 

Short Clarry wrenched at the door again, putting his whole weight into it, and Joe wasn’t sure how much more his shoulders could stand. A fussy little man, he’d thought of Short Clarry, but underneath that diffident exterior the man was built like fucking ox.

“Binoculars,” he said, nodding at them.

Eddie grabbed them. “What am I doing?”

“Signalling,” Joe said. “Get a reflection, and get it to the boat out there.”

“Right,” Eddie said, fumbling with the binoculars. “Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot, right?”

“Oh, so you know that, but not the flags?”

“Everyone knows that.” Eddie hunkered down beside him, angling the binoculars to the scant sunlight.

The door shuddered again, and Joe felt it jar his bones. Worse, his hands were sweaty now, and his grip on the handle was loosening.

“Fuck,” he said, his voice cracking. “Eddie!”

Eddie looked up at his him, his expression stricken.

“I can’t hold it!”

Eddie dropped the binoculars and clambered to his feet. He stood beside Joe, shoulder to shoulder, and puts his hands over Joe’s.

“You let go,” he said, the wind whipping his hair around, “and I’ll hold it. We’ll brace it together.”

Joe’s eyes stung as the door shuddered again. He glanced behind them. The boat was closer now, close enough to make out the shape of it, and the blue checks along the side of it.

Still too far though.

His sweaty grip slipped another fraction. 

This wasn’t going to work, and Joe was pretty sure that Eddie knew it too. It didn’t need saying.

“I like you, Eddie Hawthorne,” he said instead, his heart in his mouth. “I like you a lot.”

And Joe really hoped that Eddie could read between the lines, because there was a lot more his words didn’t say:

I like you, Eddie Hawthorne, because you’re funny and cute and you wear stripy socks. I like you because you laugh a lot. I like you because you have a smile like sunshine, and you share your food with my dumb dog when you think I’m not looking. I like your books and your glasses and the fact that everything you wear clashes. I like you, and even though I hardly know you, I want to. I like you because I think we’re good together and, whatever happens here, I think that I could have more than liked you too.

 “I like you too, Joe Nesmith,” Eddie said with a wonky smile, and Joe knew he’d got it. Eddie’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. His hand nudged Joe’s.

 Joe’s grip loosened.

The door smashed open before they were ready for it, catching Joe a glancing blow. He stumbled back, hitting the rail of the catwalk. He caught the rail, and his knees hit the catwalk. He shook his head to clear his vision, and looked up to see Eddie backing away from the door, and Short Clarry advancing on him.

Short Clarry was red-faced and sweaty. The gun shook in his hand.

“Clarry,” Joe croaked. He tried to stand, and a wave of dizziness stronger than the wind buffeted him. “Clarry, don’t.”

Short Clarry ignored him.

Eddie continued to move back, one hand on the rail.

“Clarry,” Joe croaked again.

Eddie and Short Clarry moved out of his sight, around to the leeward side of the catwalk.

Joe fought against his dizziness, and pulled himself to his feet. Leaning on the rail heavily, he moved counter-clockwise around the catwalk, stumbling into Eddie as Eddie edged the other way.

Eddie gripped his hand tightly as Short Clarry advanced on them.

Joe squinted out over the edge of the catwalk as he caught a glimpse of movement down by his cottage. A streak of black. Hiccup. She was bounding down the hill joyfully, her tail wagging.

And there was someone striding up towards her. Someone in a bright yellow puffer jacket.

“You gonna shoot us, Short Clarry?” Joe asked. “And are gonna shoot Mavis Coldwell after that?”

Short Clarry turned to look.

Mavis wasn’t alone as she crested the hill. Young Harry Barnes was with her, his wild Santa hair going mad in the wind. And John Corporal was with them, and Verity Corporal too, and Little Harry Finch.

They saw the flags. They actually saw the flags, and came. Joe wanted to sag with relief, but they weren’t done here yet. Short Clarry could still kill them both.

Short Clarry turned back to face Joe and Eddie, his expression blank.

“They’re all gonna know, Short Clarry,” Joe said. “They’re all gonna see. And the police are almost here. It’s done. Stop. Just stop, and put the gun down.”

There was almost something proud in it, Joe thought later, when Short Clarry smiled.

“We’re mutineers, Red Joe,” he said, and puffed out his chest. “We’ve always been mutineers.”

And then, before Joe could even take a step towards him, Short Clarry stepped towards the rail and pitched himself over the side.

The wind carried away the sounds of the impact.

An hour later Joe and Eddie sat at Joe’s kitchen table.

“Well, what a mess,” Mavis Coldwell said, pressing a fresh cup of tea into Joe’s shaking hands. “I always said nothing good would come of it, didn’t I, Red Joe?”

“You did,” Joe murmured.

“I’m sorry,” said the detective, shoving Hiccup’s head off her lap as Hiccup gazed at her adoringly. “Who are you again?”

“Mavis,” Mavis said. “Mavis Coldwell.”

“Ah,” said the detective. “And you’re related to the victim John Coldwell, yes?”

“Yes,” said Mavis. “John Coldwell was my third cousin. And Short Clarry was my first cousin, if you need to write that down too.”

“That would be Mayor Clarence Finch?”

“Oh yes,” said Mavis, bustling to the kettle and back again, and sliding a cup of tea under Eddie’s nose. She hummed, considering. “Former mayor.”

The detective blinked.

“Well, I didn’t vote for him anyway,” Mavis said, as though that settled it. “He always had something about him, didn’t I say so, Red Joe? Something just off about him?”

“You did,” Joe said, although he recalled no such thing.

“Everyone on the island is related to everyone,” Eddie told the detective. “And they all have the same names.”

The detective rubbed her forehead. “Right.”

Joe watched as a uniformed police officer walked past the kitchen window.

Short Clarry had left a mess, in more ways than one, and it would take a long time to clean things up. There were currently police down in the village, dealing with John Coldwell’s body, and the crime scene at the museum and the icehouse, and interviewing the islanders. They were all over Joe’s yard as well, and in and out of the lighthouse.

It was a mess.

The detective clearly thought so too. She flicked back a few pages in her notebook and frowned.

Joe curled his shaking fingers into a loose fist, and Eddie laid his hand on top of his.

Mavis raised her eyebrows, and hummed.

Joe exhaled slowly. He pulled his hand from underneath Eddie’s, and Eddie’s face fell. Joe stood, and put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. Squeezed it, and then leaned down and kissed the top of his head.

Mavis’s eyebrows vanished into her hair.

Joe crossed to the pantry, and pulled the box of Cornflakes out. Then he returned to his seat and slid the box toward Eddie.

Eddie looked at him. “Um, thanks, but I’m not really hungry.”

Joe rolled his eyes, and pulled the box back. He opened it, pulled the bag of cereal out, and shoved the box to Eddie again.

Eddie peered inside. His eyes widened, and he drew in a sharp breath as he reached into the box and pulled out Henry Jessup’s diary. “Oh my god!”

He caressed the cracked spine for a moment, and ran his fingers over the cover. Then he opened the book, revealing brittle, browning pages full of cramped and faded writing that was illegible to a quick glance with modern eyes.

“The diary,” he whispered. He blinked, and his eyes shone. He closed the little book, and held it to his chest. “Joe, you found the diary! Be honest, did you think about throwing it in the ocean, just once?”

“No,” Joe said. “Not even for a second.”

Eddie surged into him and kissed him, one hand still cradling the diary to his chest and the other tangling in Joe’s hair. “You saved the diary. And, yes, my life, but also the diary. And my thesis, and my future low-paying career as a historian.”

Joe’s chest filled with warmth, and he smiled. “Well, so long as you dedicate your thesis to me, I guess.”

“I could do that,” Eddie said, leaning back slightly and beaming at Joe. “I mean, it will look really weird to publish a thesis about a murdering rapist criminal mutineer, and then dedicate it to him as well, but I’ll make sure people know I mean you, and not him.”

The detective cleared her throat, and held out an open plastic evidence bag.

Eddie’s expression fell. “Really?”

The detective nodded.

Eddie sighed, and slipped the diary carefully into the evidence bag. “Bye, Henry. See you soon.” He looked at the detective. “You’ll take care of it, right? Like, no reading it with sticky fingers or anything?”

“I’ll take care of it,” she assured him, sealing the evidence bag and folding it over before sliding the diary into the pocket of her coat.

Joe took Eddie’s hand and squeezed it. “It’ll be fine, Eddie.”

Eddie leaned against him. He drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Yeah,” he said at last. “It’ll be fine.”

CHAPTER 10

Joe hated the summer, and the smattering of tourists it brought from the mainland. He waited at the end of the jetty on Wednesday afternoon, wishing he’d remembered his sunglasses. The light bounced off the water, stabbing into his eyes. Young Harry Barnes was just tying up now, and the first couple of tourists, a retiree couple in matching pink polo shirts, were wandering down the jetty, oohing and aahing at the village and the lighthouse.

Joe nodded at them as they passed him.

Beside the jetty, Hiccup swam in circles like a seal. Only her snout and her eyes protruded from the water, and her tail trailed behind her like a broken rudder as she made bow waves through the water.

Another couple followed the first. This couple was young. The woman had a baby strapped into a carrier on her back, and the man was loaded up with camping equipment.

Short Clarry’s dream of turning Dauntless Island into a tourist hotspot hadn’t really panned out, but Joe didn’t think that anyone really minded. The islanders made some money every summer by opening up their cottages as bed and breakfasts, and tents sparsely dotted the island while the weather was warm. Things continued the way they always had on Dauntless, and maybe they always would.

The boards of the jetty creaked underfoot as Joe finally walked down to Young Harry’s boat. The tourists were off now, leaving the locals unpacking their groceries and purchases from over on the mainland, and—in one case—their luggage.

“Joe!” Amy shrieked with delight when she saw him, leaping onto the jetty and hurrying down to meet him. Her thin summer dress was tugged tight against her body in the breeze, and did nothing to conceal her condition.

She launched herself at him, and Joe caught her, and swung her around.

“You weigh a ton!” he accused her when he set her back down.

“Fuck off,” she said happily. “But I know, right? And I’ve still got three months to go. How long until the entire island knows I’m a fallen woman?”

“Well, considering Young Harry Barnes brought you over, it’ll be all over the island by tonight,” Joe said. He bumped her shoulder. “You doing okay? With the ex?”

“That loser?” Amy asked. She shuddered. “We’re completely over, believe me.”

There was a story there, Joe thought, and he was sure he’d hear it later. He slung an arm around Amy in a quick hug, then went and collected her luggage.

“Oh!” said Young Harry Barnes, slinging a pack over onto the jetty. “What have you got in here? I could use this one as an anchor, Amy!”

“It’s not that bad!” Amy protested.

Joe lifted the pack and slung it onto his back, his muscles straining. “No, it really is that bad.”

They walked down the jetty toward the shoreline. Hiccup met them, shaking herself dry and bouncing and wriggling in enthusiastic circles around Amy.

“Hiccup!” Amy crouched down and hugged her. “I missed you so much!”

“Oh, thanks,” Joe said dryly.

Any straightened up again, and shot him a look. “You go without saying, dickhead.”

Joe snorted, and they walked slowly along the main street.

The statue of Josiah Nesmith cast a long shadow in the afternoon sun.

They passed the church, and then the museum. The door was bolted shut, but the sign on the door said it would be open tomorrow. They walked further up the street, past the familiar sandstone cottages, following the path their feet had worn since they were children.

“Holy shit,” Amy said. “Has Mavis’s shop got a new sign?”

“And a new ice cream fridge,” Joe said. His mouth quirked. “It’s been a whirlwind of change. The whole island’s talking about it.”

Amy’s eyes danced. “Oh, I can imagine. First we get a new mayor, and suddenly it’s fancy signs and fridges as far as the eye can see. When will the madness end?”

They started up the hill.

“How’s that going, by the way?” Amy asked.

Joe shrugged. “It’s not too bad. The lady from the Electoral Commission said she’d never seen a ballot paper with only one name on it before.”

“Well, who was going to run against Red Joe Nesmith?”

“I didn’t even want to run!” Joe muttered. “Mavis just announced that I was, and I couldn’t back out.”

“That sounds like her,” Amy agreed.

“It made the papers in Sydney,” Joe said.

“Well, it’s not every day that that the former mayor dies trying to kill the guy who turns out to be his successor, by launching himself off a lighthouse,” Amy said. “That’s probably newsworthy, even for Sydney.”

Well, that was fair.

They trudged up the hill toward the lighthouse.

A cloud of smoke swirled out of Joe’s kitchen door, followed by an idiot waving a tea towel.

“Hi!” Eddie called, flapping the tea towel. “Shit, hi. I’m Eddie, and you must be Amy, and I was trying to make some scones as like a welcome home thing, and I accidentally made fire by mistake.” He grimaced apologetically in Joe’s direction. “It was a very small fire, and it’s out now. Promise.”

Joe walked into the smoky kitchen. The cremated scones were in a baking dish that had been hastily dumped in the sink. Joe checked the oven was definitely off, and that nothing was still burning. 

Eddie bustled around behind him, poking at the scones. “Oh, they’re not salvageable at all, are they?”

“There’s biscuits in the pantry,” Joe told him. He moved through to Amy’s bedroom, and dumped her pack on the floor. When he got back to the kitchen, Eddie was rummaging in the pantry, and Amy was sitting at the table, her gaze taking in all the changes—some small, and some large—that had taken place in her absence.

The largest, no question, was Eddie. After his first trip to the island he had, unaccountably, kept coming back. And then, one day, Joe had asked him to stay. And Eddie hadn’t, not at that time, because he still had his thesis to write, and a whole life back in Sydney, but he was here now at last and things were going well. He could still talk under wet concrete, and he was still grumpy as shit in the mornings before he got his coffee, but it turned out those were things that Joe could live with. And it turned out Eddie could live with Joe as well, and the way he snored, and left crumbs in the butter. They balanced each other out in the ways that counted. And, more than that, Joe was stupidly in love with the guy, and vice versa.

“So Joe tells me you’re running the museum now,” Amy said. “Any new exhibits scandalizing the locals?”

“Not yet,” Eddie said. “But once my thesis is published, there’s going to be a whole room dedicated to Josiah Nesmith: The Man, The Myth, The Monster.”

Joe helped himself to a biscuit. “I told you, if you call him a monster, someone will kill you for real. Come up with another m-word.”

“Mur-der-er,” Eddie sounded out, eyes round with delight. 

“Not that m-word either,” Joe said blandly.

Eddie flashed a grin at Amy. “I’ll probably call it The Man, The Myth, The Mutiny. That way I can still have a display of Henry Jessup’s diary entries, but it won’t be quite so—what was it you called it, Joe? Confronting?”

“I said blatantly antagonistic.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “That way it won’t be quite so blatantly antagonistic to the islanders. That’s the plan, anyway.”

“And our plans are usually flawless,” Joe said wryly. “Right?”

“Right!” Eddie exclaimed, his eyes dancing. “What could possibly go wrong?”

The opening of the Josiah Nesmith: The Man, The Myth, The Mutiny exhibit was held two months later on a Saturday night. Eddie’s professor from the university came, and so did some people from the state tourism board, and even a couple of journalists from the Sydney papers. There were canapés and champagne and for a while things seemed quite cosmopolitan. Then the champagne ran out and was replaced with the islanders’ moonshine, and things took a more raucous—and festive—turn.

Sarah Hooper’s rum was definitely involved.

Somehow Joe and Eddie escaped the crowd and found themselves in front of Josiah Nesmith’s statue down on the waterfront.

“Cheers,” Eddie told it, and raised his cup. “You murdered my great-great-great-grandfather because he told you to stop being a rapist, but I’m totally screwing your great-great-great-grandson, so it sort of evens out in the end, doesn’t it?” He hummed. “Really makes you think.”

Joe slung an around his shoulders.

“Makes you think,” Eddie repeated, swaying slightly on his feet. “Balance, and yin and yang, and…whatnot.”

“Sure,” Joe said, because he was too drunk to argue.

“It’s nice,” Eddie said. “The universe has balance. That’s nice.” He leered at Joe, and tried to smoosh their faces together but only succeeded in smearing his mouth along Joe’s jaw. “You’re nice too, Red Joe Nesmith.”

“So are you,” Joe said, hooking his fingers into Eddie’s belt loops to keep him from staggering backwards. 

“Oh god,” Eddie groaned, dropping his forehead onto Joe’s shoulder. “We have to walk up that fucking hill now don’t we? Will you carry me, Joe?”

“No.”

Eddie sighed loudly. “My sexy silent fantasy lighthouse keeper guy would carry me!”

Joe snorted. “You should call him then.”

“No,” Eddie muttered and groaned again. “I like you more. Come on, let’s go.”

They held hands as they walked up the street, and still managed to bump into one another along the way.

The party was still going on at the museum, and would probably die down sometime in the early hours. It was Dauntless. Joe figured someone would pull the door shut when they were done. It was the island way.

They sobered up a little on the walk.

Above them, the stars were bright and infinite. Joe breathed in the salt air, and felt warmth spread through him. Here he was, on his island, under a field of stars, holding the hand of the man he loved, and he was happy.

“Holy shit!” Eddie shrieked suddenly, tugging wildly on Joe’s hand as he stumbled sideways. “Oh, no, wait, it’s just Hiccup.”

Hiccup bounced to Joe’s side, and pressed her nose into his free hand.

Joe petted her instead of screaming and they continued up the hill.

In front of them, shining in the moonlight, the lighthouse jutted up from the point, the light blinking out to sea. Joe inwardly sighed at the idea of having to do his final rounds before bed. The walk had sobered him up a little, but he wasn’t looking forward to the steep winding steps.

Hiccup bounded ahead of them, cresting the hill first.

Joe walked after her, tugging Eddie along with him.

“Hey, Joe?”

Joe stopped and turned and Eddie bumped into him.

Joe put his arms around him, and Eddie beamed at him. “What, Eddie?”

“Remember what I told you that first time we walked up the hill drunk?” Eddie wrinkled his nose, and his glasses shifted.

“What did you tell me?” Joe asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“I said I liked you, Red Joe Nesmith.” Eddie knocked their noses together.

“And what did I say?” Joe asked.

“You said you liked me too.”

“Ah,” said Joe. He carded a hand through Eddie’s scruffy hair, and held it there. “Can I amend that now?”

“Hmm.” Eddie pressed his mouth into a thoughtful line, his eyes dancing. “How would you like to amend it?”

“How about this? I love you, Eddie Hawthorne, even though you told the whole world that my great-great-great-grandfather was a murderer and a rapist and a criminal, and just awful.”

Eddie considered that for a moment. “That’s an acceptable amendment. And I love you, Red Joe Nesmith, even though my great-great-great-grandfather wasn’t awful, and yours killed him.”

“Agreed,” Joe said.

“Agreed,” Eddie echoed, and then laughed and kissed him. “I love you, Joe.”

Joe’s heart swelled. “I love you too, Eddie.”

They kissed again under the lighthouse while Hiccup ran in circles around them and the moonlight illuminated the island.

ABOUT LISA HENRY

Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.

Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn't know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she's too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly. 

She shares her house with too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

Lisa has been published since 2012, and was a LAMBDA finalist for her quirky, awkward coming-of-age romance Adulting 101.

You can connect with Lisa here:

Website: lisahenryonline.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisa.henry.1441

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisaHenryOnline

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/5050492.Lisa_Henry

Email: lisahenryonline@gmail.com

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Fall on Your Knees, with J.A. Rock

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Darker Space (Dark Space #2)

Playing the Fool series, with J.A. Rock

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The Naughty Boy (The Boy #1.5)

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Stealing Innocents