ONLY ANGEL | JJ MAYBANK

TEN... the luck of the draw

CHAPTER TEN

•••

It was in the early morning when Collins found herself on Heyward's boat with the rest of the Pogues. She'd crept out of bed and left the house before Charlie had even woken up, leaving him a note on the fridge informing him of her whereabouts. Except, she didn't really go into full detail on what exactly she was doing, because somehow she didn't get the sense that Charlie would appreciate the fact that she was spending her free time treasure hunting instead of nonstop studying.

She had her brother's sweatshirt on with the hoodie up to tame her unruly curls as they blew into her face in the wind while they drove further into the ocean than she'd ever been before. Her stomach felt uneasy at the thought of being so far from land- along with general motion sickness as the boat swayed side to side and crashed against the waves. Her mind raced with paranoid thoughts of all the things that could possibly go wrong and leave them stranded at sea. The only consolation was that if they did happen to sink, perhaps maybe their bodies could lie with the gold and the fishes on the ocean floor.

In the meantime, JJ manned the steering wheel, John B surveyed the waters, and Kie organized their equipment in preparation, while Collins and Pope were stationed in front of the monitor which controlled the drone.

"This is so much better than the robot we made in science club that could only move pennies." Collins murmured, observing the contraption and tinkering with it in amazement. She wasn't a huge robotics girl, but she did always think it was cool how a bunch of parts could come together to make something functional. And she liked making the robot hand little pieces of hard candy to her like her little butler, so there was that, too. This device was even better, it was going to show them the gold.

"Way better. By significant proportions." Pope nodded his head in agreement. "So, you know what you'd spend your 80 mil on yet?"

Collins tried not to choke on her own breath at Pope's abrupt and totally crazy question which he had asked so incredibly casually.

"Yeah," John B chimed in nonchalantly with a glance up from the tablet displaying the GPS. "JJ and I already declared that we're going full Kook, Kie's making a double album, and Pope's doing the responsible thing by putting his cut towards his college fund."

At the mentioning of their spending plans, JJ craned his neck to look back at them from his place in the helm, too preoccupied with steering them in the right direction to come back there and actually speak face to face. He sighed loudly in exasperation to make up for it. "Come on, guys, I didn't tell her yet!"

"Well, what were you waiting for?" Kie scoffed with a shrug. Telling someone that they were about to become a millionaire wasn't exactly the kind of news you held off on telling.

Collins was still too stunned to comment on the subject, so she was left shifting her focus back and forth between Kie and JJ as they began to bicker. Kie was attacking him for keeping her unnecessarily in the dark and JJ was attempting to defend himself. She was more concerned with the fact that they'd decided this at all.

"I was going to tell you, okay, Collins?" JJ peered over at her with utmost sincerity in his voice. "I just thought that the news would sound better after we got the gold. Like on those cheesy gameshows when the guy wins $100 but then it turns into 100k, and it's all crazy and fun because it's a surprise—"

"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Pope deadpanned from beside her. JJ just scowled at him.

"So now that we've established that," John B turned back to Collins and raised his brows, "what'll it be, CJ?"