"Where the hell are they?" Emma paced the beach, her designer sunglasses reflecting twin suns.
I squinted at the horizon. "Maybe they found fresh water." Even as I said it, the lie tasted bitter.
Kate knelt beside our pitiful supplies, arranging ration bars with military precision. "We should focus on reinforcing the treehouse platform." Her fingers trembled ever so slightly.
The midday sun turned our makeshift rope factory into an oven. I demonstrated twisting liana fibers again, the calluses on my palms catching on the coarse strands. "Like braiding hair," I lied through gritted teeth.
"Braiding requires three strands," Kate corrected automatically, then flushed. Old habits from her prep school days died hard.
Emma snatched the half-finished rope. "This is bullshit, David. You expect us to sleep on this death trap?" Her manicured nail jabbed at the skeletal tree platform swaying twenty feet above.
"Trust the process." I wiped sweat from my eyes, mentally calculating load capacities. Special ops jungle survival training never covered babysitting celebrities.
A shadow fell across the beach.
Daisy emerged from the tree line with Jack trailing like a mangy wolf. Seaweed clung to her cargo pants, her knife sheen suspiciously darker.
"Where were you?" My hand drifted toward the Glock.
Jack spread his meaty palms. "Scouting trip, hero. Found a cove past the eastern ridge." His smile revealed bloodstained teeth.
Kate's breath hitched. I followed her gaze to the fresh scratches on Daisy's forearm - four parallel lines, too precise for jungle thorns.
Emma cornered Daisy by the water purification still. "What did he make you do?"
The blank stare lasted three heartbeats too long. "Tide pools," Daisy murmured. "Mussels."
Liar.
At dusk, I found Emma by the weapons cache. Moonlight turned her sequined top into shattered glass. "We need to talk." Her perfume clashed with the rot of decaying palm fronds.
"Make it quick." I counted our remaining 9mm rounds. Twelve. Not enough.
She pressed against me, all sharp angles and desperation. "It's simple." Her lips brushed my earlobe. "Kill Kate. Tonight."
The bullet I was cleaning slipped through numb fingers. "You're joking."
"Jack's getting ideas." Her laugh sounded like breaking champagne flutes. "Poor little rich girl knows things. Saw them whispering during the storm."
I gripped her shoulders, feeling the bird-like bones. "Listen very carefully. We don't play that game here."
Her smile turned feral. "We've been playing since day one, soldier boy." She pressed something cold into my palm - Kate's pearl earring, crusted with blood. "Found this where they 'scouted'."
The night suddenly smelled of copper and betrayal.
Emma's breath smelled of fermented coconut milk and desperation. "Why?" She traced the Glock's slide still warm from my grip. "Because survival arithmetic demands subtraction."
Moonlight carved her cheekbones into marble sculptures as she pressed closer. The sequins on her ruined Valentino dress caught the firelight - a disco ball in hell. I could still see the paparazzi flashbulbs in her dilated pupils.
"Kate's family owns three private islands." Her laughter held broken glass. "Funny how none showed up on our SOS grid, hmm?"
My knife hand twitched. The blade we'd used to gut fish still smelled of copper.
She caught my wrist, guiding the steel toward her plunging neckline. "Jack's been whispering to her during watch rotations. Saw them sharing water from the same canteen." Her French manicure dug crescents into my salt-cracked skin. "How long before they vote us off this paradise?"
The fire popped, sending embers swirling around Daisy's vacant sleeping mat. Her military-issue boots stood precisely aligned at 45-degree angles, laces taut enough to strangle a man.
Emma's teeth found my earlobe. "I'll make you remember why they call me the Oscar Slayer." Her free hand dove between us, all nails and promises. "One quick thrust, hero. Then we're down to manageable numbers."
The knife grew heavy. Kate's laughter from yesterday echoed - genuine when she'd found intact sunscreen in the wreckage, immediately offering it to Daisy's blistered shoulders.
"Still playing Boy Scout?" Emma's voice dropped to Oscar-night intimacy. "That bullet in the boar's skull wasn't mercy. Adrenaline's just another drug."
Daisy's sudden cough shattered the moment. We froze as she rolled over in feigned sleep, combat knife glinting beneath her makeshift pillow. Her breathing pattern didn't change, but the fingers around the hilt tightened.
Emma withdrew like a serpent into shadows. "Dawn tide," she mouthed, pointing to Kate's silhouette at the water's edge.
When I found Kate hours later, she was humming Brahms' Lullaby while braiding tidepool seaweed into fish traps. Moonlight turned her Princeton hoodie translucent.
"David?" She smiled over bare shoulder, trap dangling from coral-raw fingers. "Could you check these knots? My brother taught me sailing..."
The fishing line suddenly looked like garrote wire.