Hurricane- JJ Maybank (Outer Banks)

10.

"And all we hear is just Bam! Bam! Bam!" JJ was being a little dramatic with the story about Lana to the others. I sat drinking tea in the corner, while I let the boys explain. Might've been a big mistake on my end. "Knocking paint off the wall from the inside! Look at this shit." JJ bends his head down to shake the paint from his hair.

"That's dandruff. Disgusting." Kie says, leaning back in her seat.

"Thank you." Pope exclaims as JJ continues to brush his hair out.

His hair fell over his face. God, his hair would be the death of me. So long and blonde. Not me falling for a blonde boy.

"Look at all that! It's paint! At that point, I was just waiting for death."

I let a laugh escape my lips and he turns around to face me.

"Don't laugh! You were there. Didn't you just feel your heart racing?"

"Not really. We've been in situations like this before. But go on."

"You saw the guys that shot at us?" Pope asks.

John B nods.

"Did you get a good description of them?" Pope adds on.

"Anything?" Kie adds.

"Burly. The type of guys you see at my dads garage. You guys know he made cargo hides for drug smugglers. I can tell you with full confidence, these boys, these killers." He takes a pause to take a drag from his juul. I couldn't help but laugh. He was being very dramatic. He gave me another look before continuing. "They're square groupers."

"They're square groupers, like narco square groupers?"

He takes another hit of his juul, I could tell he was very worked up. He didn't show it at the house, or maybe he did and I wasn't paying attention.

"Yeah. But you weren't there, bro. Dude! I wasn't taking little mental polaroids the entire time, I was under duress." He backs away from Pope. "I could tell by the way Miss.Lana was screaming that these guys are serious, serious hombres man. This is too much for me, okay?" He runs his hands through his hair, taking another hit from his juul.

"My dads office." John B begins to ramble on about how he used to make fun of his dads office and everything he used to do before he went missing. The royal merchart.

We all follow him in. I had never been in here, only walked past before his dad went missing. His dad spent a lot of time in there but he hasn't opened it since he left.

"So, you have a death compass." Pope says as they all go on exclaiming about the boat wreck.

JJ and I just sort of stood quietly in the corner. We both were definitely not the smartest of the bunch.

"See the handwriting. It's my dad's. How he writes his R's funny." John B holds up the compass, showing it to JJ.

JJ looked to the handwriting, trying very hard to read what it said.

"Red field. It says red field." I said behind him, helping him out.

"Maybe it's a clue where he's hiding." John B says.

Pope and him keeping going back and forth, trying to break the code. I looked out the window, seeing a car pull up. The two men from Miss.Lanas.

"Guys, we have company."

"Are those them?"

I could hear JJ breathing heavily behind me, he was close to me again.

"JJ, hey. Where's the gun?" I look back to him, holding out my hands to his shoulders.