Sink or Swim || Outer Banks || JJ Maybank

Chapter 7

A/N: I did borrow a scene from After We Collided for a part of this chapter, so credits to them. I only own Madison and her story line.

Madison sat at the kitchen counter, chewing on the end of a pencil as she stared at the lined paper in front of her. John B sat on the couch, flipping the compass around in his hand as Sarah worked on cleaning the mess the men left behind. JJ sat off to the side in a chair as he rolled a joint to relax from their excitement.

"Pope thought this was an anagram?" Madison asked again, she hadn't done anything else since seeing her father's etching in the compass except try to figure out what it meant.

Pope and Kiara had left wanting to give the Routledges some space after everything but Sarah and JJ silently agreed there was no way they were going to leave.

"Yeah," Sarah answered as John B didn't even bother to look up. "He said it is the most common name in the Outer Banks."

Madison nodded, jotting another idea down on a separate piece of paper, "It is."

"You don't remember seeing anything about it in dad's office? You spent the last nine months in there." John B asked with an edge in his voice he wasn't able to hide.

Madison sighed, running a hand through her hair. "No, JB. I don't think so. I don't know I was trying to figure out where he went and anything that pointed to the Royal Merchant. I don't remember a Redfield." She motioned to the stacks of papers in front of her. "These are all the locations on the island that have Redfield in the name, and this one is all the people I can think of that have Redfield as a last name, and this is the three streets that are named Redfield, and this is if it could be an anagram but I'm not great at those so I'd need Pope's help."

"He had to have known this would get back to us. That's why he left us the message. He wouldn't have left it if we couldn't figure it out," John B opened and closed the secret compartment.

"I'm trying!" Madison groaned in frustration. She knew without a doubt that if she could figure this out that she would find her dad and everything would go back to the way it was.

JJ lit the end of the joint and pulled on it twice to make sure it would stay lit before coming to stand next to Madison, passing it over to her. She took a hit and tried to let the smoke calm her mind enough so that she could think.

"You really think that's going to help right now?" Sarah questioned as she emptied the dust pan full of glass into the garbage can. She had indulged at parties before but couldn't say she agreed with JJ and Madison smoking in the middle of the day.

JJ took a hit and blew the smoke in a perfect circle in Sarah's direction, "Helps her get creative. Let those juices flow."

Sarah rolled her eyes and then cleared her throat, "Pretty much done out here...the only thing left is the office."

"Leave it," Madison took the joint back from JJ as he rested his chin on her shoulder to see what she had been working on.

Sarah shared a look with John B who just shrugged in response.

X-X-X

Four days later and they were no closer to figuring out what Redfield meant so when there was word of a party down at the beach the Pogues agreed to go let loose for the night in hopes that if they were all to completely clear their minds then maybe they would be able to think more clearly.

Madison loved parties at the beach. It was a feeling she could never get enough of between the light breeze, the only light coming from the fire and the moon, music mixing with the light sounds of the waves, and best of all being with her favorite people.