Rebel Island by Rick Riordan

uprooted palmetto, an outboard motor wedged upside down in the dunes, its propeller spinning lazily.
    And footprints—fresh footprints sunk deep in the wet sand.
    They led toward the west shore of the island, where a covered boathouse extended on pylons over the water.
    A faint light flickered in the window.
    “Does Ty know how to drive a boat?” I asked.
    Chase shook his head. “But that wouldn’t stop him. I mean, the poor guy was freaking.”
    “We gotta yell before we go in,” Markie warned, “so he doesn’t shoot us.”
    “Whoa,” I said. “He has a gun?”
    Chase nodded. “A marksman’s pistol. He’s a shooter on the college team. Didn’t I mention that?”

    Ty wasn’t making much progress with the boat.
    He’d partially wrestled off the tarp, which now hung from the prow like a deflated hot air balloon. He stood in the boat, trying to start the engine, despite the fact that it still sat on rails, five feet above the water.
    “Yo, Ty,” Chase said. “Come on down, dude.”
    Ty’s expression wasn’t much different from the many bail jumpers I’d nabbed over the years—cornered, desperate, more than a little dangerous.
    “Help me with this,” he pleaded. “I gotta get out of here.”
    “Ty,” I said. “You can’t. You’ll die out there.”
    “The storm’s calming down! I can make it easy. I
have
to get out of this place.”
    Markie belched, which I guess was meant to be a gesture of sympathy. “Dude. Ty, c’mon. The eye’s passing over us, is all. You’ll never make it. Look at the fricking water under you.”
    Sure enough, in the launching slip, green water was sloshing around, splashing everywhere. The boathouse floor was slick. The supplies strewn about the boathouse were soaked. On a nearby worktable was a red canvas duffel bag.
    “I tell you what, Ty,” I said, “come back into the house for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes. We can sit and talk. If the storm is still dying down when we’re finished, you can come back down here and I’ll help you launch the boat. If the storm gets worse, you’ll stay until the morning. And then we’ll see.”
    Ty’s left eye twitched. I tried to picture him on a firing range, shooting in a competition. It was a troubling image.
    “I can’t breathe in there,” he said. “I can’t go back in that house.”
    “Just fifteen minutes,” Markie said. “Come on, dude. That’s fair. I’ll get you a drink.”
    “I’ll need a bottle,” Ty said. His face was beaded with sweat.
    “Sure,” Chase agreed. “You can’t start that boat by yourself, anyway. You’re a screwup with engines.”
    Ty took a shaky breath. He started climbing down.
    “You can take him inside?” I asked Markie. “I want to look around for a second.”
    “No problem.” Absolute confidence. I started wondering if maybe there was more to Markie than the ability to belch.
    Ty got out of the boat. “Only fifteen minutes,” he reminded me. “Start counting.”
    “I will,” I promised. “And, Ty, if you’ve got your gun…”
    He blinked. “My gun? Not with me. It’s…back in my room?”
    I didn’t like the way he made it into a question. I looked at Markie. “Find it.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “And don’t touch it. Put it in a bag or something. Bring it to me for safekeeping.”
    Markie raised an eyebrow, but then he nodded and led Ty away.

    “Hold up,” I told Chase.
    I walked him over to the worktable and showed him the canvas bag. “Is this Ty’s?”
    “Never seen it before. Why?”
    A new red duffel bag in the middle of grimy bait buckets and tackle boxes and mildewed coils of rope. It was packed full, and what bothered me most were the shapes pressed against the canvas, like the bag was filled with bricks.
    I unzipped the top. Cash—twenties and fifties, all neatly bundled.
    “Whoa,” Chase breathed. “How much—”
    “Quick estimate? About twenty thousand.”
    “Dude. What’s it doing sitting out here?”
    “Good question.” I