'she's kook fuckin' royalty, man.'
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a lot of things go unnoticed in the outer banks. things like missing millions in gold, underage drinking, and the bruises that litter the skin of the kook princess.
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( recipe for disaster )
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LUCY CREPT OUT OF TANNYHILL PARTICULARLY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING.
Rafe had returned late in the day, long after breakfast, had fallen into bed beside her with little more than a 'goodnight'. His eyes had been dark, his shoulders slumped. Lucy didn't want to know where he had been. She doubted he would give two shits if he woke up and she was gone. More specifically, Lucy knew she didn't give two shits if he woke up to an empty bed.
The Druthers was floating gently at the end of the Cameron jetty, and Lucy knew Sarah had been planning on sleeping there, so that seemed to be her best chance at finding her. The generators in the main house had been on and off all night. The hum had woken Lucy up three times, but had done little to shake Rafe from whatever drunken stupor he'd gotten himself into. That was most definitely a blessing.
The yacht had air conditioning, but most importantly, it was further from prying eyes than Tannyhill. She'd rather not sneak back home and deal with her parents, either. It was for that reason that Lucy was currently sneaking through the gardens, the cleanup from the hurricane still unfinished. She was avoiding stepping on the pieces of Rose's broken statues to the best of her abilities, and she winced as she stepped onto the jetty, the planks creaking beneath her.
Taking a couple of hesitant steps towards the Druthers, Lucy spared a glance over her shoulder, checking again if any of the lights inside the house were on. Ward had a tendency to rise early.
She had made it halfway to the boat when a noise echoed from the end of the jetty, and Lucy's head snapped up.
What the fuck was John Booker Routledge doing on the Druthers at five in the morning?
"John?" He looked at her like an animal caught in headlights, and then he looked away, then looked back, then he scratched the back of his neck, then looked down at his shoes, and finally swallowed. In other words, he did a very good job of acting the part of someone who was definitely not supposed to be where he currently was.
"John B," he said, correcting her. The kid went by his middle name, for whatever reason. That, and the fact that his father had disappeared at sea nine months ago, was all Lucy knew of him. Disappearances at sea appeared to be becoming something of a theme in the OBX.
"Right," Lucy said, the word rolling slowly off her tongue, "John B." He was fidgeting. "Why are you here?"
"I had scuba tanks," he answered, "I went to, you know, fill them with air. But the compressors were busted."
"Because of Agatha."
"Yep. Agatha."
"And you decided to return them, what, right now?"
