by Sam Sisavath
“I tried that, too,” Lara said, grinding her teeth. “Nothing.”
Maddie and Danny exchanged a brief look that they were probably hoping she didn’t catch.
“What’s going on?” she asked Danny.
“You’ve been up here for two hours,” he said. “Go back to the hotel. Go eat something.”
“Soon.”
“When?”
“Soon, Danny.”
Maddie put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine, Lara. It’s Will. He’s pretty good at being fine.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. She hoped it was at least semi-convincing.
“Come downstairs and get something to eat with me. Danny will call if he gets anything on the radio.”
Lara nodded. “I’ll be right down.”
Maddie gave her a pursed smile that said she didn’t entirely believe her, but the smaller woman left anyway. Lara waited until she couldn’t hear Maddie’s footsteps before looking over at Danny. He was watching her closely.
“He’s in trouble,” she said.
“What else did the guy say?”
“That was it. He cut the connection and hasn’t picked up again. No one has. Someone should have, Danny.”
“It doesn’t mean Will’s in trouble.”
“Then why hasn’t he called back? He knows we’d be monitoring the emergency frequency by now.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have access to the building anymore. Or a radio.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Last night he said he was going to help this Mike guy clear out an Archers early in the morning, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So maybe he wasn’t at the hospital when everything went bad, when this dickhead you talked to took over the place. Or so he says.”
“He sounded pretty damn certain.”
“Look, if this was Joe Blow we’re talking about, I’d be worried. If it was Joe Blow’s ex-military badass brother-in-law, I’d still be worried. But it’s Willie boy, so I’m not all that worried.”
“What about Gaby? I haven’t heard anything from her, either.”
“If Will’s around, he’ll look after her. And vice versa.”
“She’s just a kid…”
“She’s eighteen.”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen? When did that happen?”
“Today. She turned nineteen today.”
“Huh. I guess I gotta get her a present when she comes back.”
If she comes back. If they come back.
“Go get something to eat,” Danny said. “You haven’t eaten since last night.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not? Then what did you eat this morning?”
“I…” She shook her head. “I was too busy helping you catch West all night.”
“And West has been caught. So go down to the kitchen and eat something. It’ll make you feel better.” He unclipped his radio and held it up. “I’ll give you a ring if something comes through. Promise.”
She hesitated.
“Go, Lara,” Danny said.
*
Food helped, but it didn’t keep her from thinking about Will. Or Gaby. Or about what was happening eighty miles away in Lafayette that very moment. But at least it kept her from fainting, because she had felt lightheaded on the walk over, and for a moment didn’t think she would actually make it.
Mae had become a fixture in the kitchen along with Jo, Bonnie’s eighteen-year-old sister. Sarah was more than happy to spread the work around, and although Mae brought some cooking experience, Jo was clueless but, according to Sarah, anxious to learn.
Bonnie found Lara while she was finishing up a plate of foil-baked crappie outside on the patio, watching Lucy, Kylie, and Logan racing around the expansive grounds of the hotel, while Vera, Elise, and Jenny chased them. She wished she could be more like them, allow herself to forget what was happening out there. With Will, with Gaby…
What the hell is going on out there?
“Still no word from Will?” Bonnie asked.
Lara shook her head. “Danny’s keeping an eye on the radio.”
“From what I hear, Will’s extremely capable.”
“He is.”
“Then he should be fine.”
“I hope so.”
“You were lucky to find him and Danny.”
I wasn’t always so lucky.
“I was,” she said.
Bonnie leaned against the railing and watched the kids. After a while, she said, “I’ve missed that.”
“What?”
“Children laughing. Not that we’ve had a lot to laugh about, but they’ve persevered. God knows how, but they never once broke down during all those miserable days and nights hiding in basements and homes.”
“Kids are adaptable. We don’t give them enough credit for it.” She looked over at Bonnie, who looked preoccupied with something. “What is it?”
“This whole thing with West and Brody… I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep apologizing. It’s done and over with.”
“I know, but I still… God, I never wanted it to be like this.”
“As Will would say if he was here now, it is what it is.”
“You love Will.”
“A lot,” she said without hesitation.
Bonnie smiled. “That’s bad news for Roy. He’s been trying to enlist me into talking him up to you.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “He doesn’t give up, does he?”
“He can be very stubborn. Roy was the one who kept us alive before we ran across West and Brody. We lost a couple of people during that time, and I think he blames himself. I’ve tried to tell him he shouldn’t, that he did his best.”
“If it makes him feel any better, the old me would have totally swooned over him.”
“Missed his chance by that much, huh?”
“Yup.”
They looked back at the kids. Bonnie’s girls had tired themselves out and were resting in the grass, while Vera, Elise, and Jenny ran rings around them.
Her radio squawked, and she heard Maddie’s voice: “Lara, Danny, we have a problem.”
So what else is new?
She unclipped the radio. “What’s going on, Maddie?”
“It’s West.”
Next to her, Bonnie tensed at the name.
“What about him?” Lara asked.
“He’s gone,” Maddie said.
*
“Gwen discovered it when she brought his lunch over,” Maddie said. “She came and woke me from my nap because my room was closest, and I called you guys.”
“When was the last time someone came to see him?” Lara asked.
“Four hours ago,” Sarah said. “Around eight in the morning, when I had Bonnie bring him his breakfast.”
Bonnie nodded. “He was in there when I brought it over.”
The tray still sat on the bed, a used plastic spoon and crumbs of bread left behind on a Styrofoam plate.
“So he could have gotten free any time between eight and now,” Lara said. “Four hours.”
“Who had the key?” Bonnie asked.
“I did,” Lara said, pulling the key out of her pocket. “Not that he needed it, apparently.”
She pulled the door toward her. The deadbolt was still in place, but someone had used a prying bar to break the door open at the strike plate. There was a big crater left behind in the doorframe. The wood around the area where the lock would be had caved in.
“Where’s Roy?” Lara asked.
“He’s on the beach,” Maddie said.
Lara nodded. “How old is Derek?” she asked Bonnie.
“Fourteen,” Bonnie said. “Why?”
“He’s a pretty big kid for fourteen. I thought he was sixteen when I first saw him.”
“I guess.”
“Where is he now?”
“You think…?”
“It’s n
ot one of the girls, I know that much. You need a lot of strength to do this to the door.”
“Oh, God,” Jo said quietly.
Lara looked over at her. “What is it?”
Jo turned to Bonnie, as if asking for permission. Bonnie nodded.
Jo looked at Lara. “Derek always sort of looked up to Brody and West. You can’t really blame him,” she added almost defensively. “They’re big and tough guys. Kids like Derek are impressionable, and whatever we thought of them, we couldn’t have gotten here without those two.”
“Where is Derek now?” Lara asked.
*
Derek was exactly where Bonnie said he would be—in his room, still wearing the same hoodie from yesterday. He sat on the end of his bed, hands in his pockets, as if he had been waiting for them and was relieved when they finally showed up.
“You found out, huh?” he said.
Bonnie exchanged a look with Lara.
“Where is he?” Lara asked him.
“I don’t know. He said it was better if I didn’t know, so you couldn’t force me to tell you. I told him to take me too, but he wouldn’t, that it was better for me to stay here. Are you going to kick me off the island now?”
Lara didn’t answer him. She turned to Bonnie. “I need to talk to Danny about this.”
“I’ll stay here and talk to him for a while,” Bonnie said. “If I find out anything, I’ll come get you.”
Lara nodded. She left Derek’s room and stepped back into Hallway A. Maddie and Jo were waiting for her outside.
“God, he really did do it,” Jo said, looking sick to her stomach.
“Like you said, he’s impressionable.” She started up the hallway, the two women falling in behind her. Lara said into the radio, “Danny.”
“So, go West, young man rides again?” Danny said through the radio.
“Can you see anything from up there?”
“I’m scanning every inch of the island, but if he’s back in the western half, we’re probably going to have to do this the old-fashioned way…again.”
“Lock the door to your floor, just in case.”
“Will do, boss.”
She sighed. She still hated that title.
“Roy,” she said into the radio. “Where are you?”
“On the beach,” Roy said through the radio. “You need me somewhere else?”
“No. Stay where you are. Radio immediately if you spot him. He might be going for the boats, and if he does, let him. Don’t try to stop him.”
“You mean just let him go?”
“Yes. At this point, if he wants to leave the island, he’ll be doing us a favor.”
“Okay,” Roy said.
She looked over at Maddie. “Go back to the lobby, just in case he shows up there.”
Maddie nodded and jogged off, one hand on her holstered Glock.
Jo moved up alongside her. “Can he get his hands on any weapons? Besides the knives in the kitchen, I mean?”
“No, we have everything locked up in the Tower basement as a precaution.”
“So he probably only has that prying bar…”
“Probably.”
“He’s still hurt. Maybe he won’t try anything.”
“Yeah,” Lara said, though she didn’t believe it.
What was that Will always said? “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
She looked over at Jo. “Tell me the truth, Jo. Will he hurt the kids?”
Jo shook her head. “Brody, maybe, but I don’t think West would. He’s really not that bad of a guy, honestly. He might have hit Bonnie once or twice, and he got aggressive when he wanted her to, you know, do things that she didn’t want to.”
She doesn’t know about West and Brody killing the other survivors for their supplies and the gold watch. Bonnie and Roy never told her.
“But, I don’t know,” Jo continued, looking very uncomfortable. “I don’t think he would stoop to hurting the kids, but I could be wrong.”
“Go bring the girls into the hotel anyway, just to be safe.”
Jo nodded and hurried off.
Lara stopped at her room and went inside. She hadn’t completely lied to Jo. Most of the weapons were in the Tower, just not all of them.
She closed the door and walked straight to the nightstand. The sight of the soft, comfortable bed reminded her that she hadn’t slept in a while, ever since waking up in the middle of the night to chase West. She thought about lying down for a moment to catch that nap Maddie had suggested. What would it hurt?
An hour. Maybe thirty minutes?
That’ll have to wait.
She opened the nightstand drawer and froze.
The spare Glock she was looking for wasn’t there.
She was still trying to process that when she heard the closet door opening behind her and reached for the Glock in her holster—a split second before she felt the cold barrel of the missing gun pressed against the back of her neck.
“I figured you might have a spare piece or two in your room,” West said behind her. “Is it yours or the boyfriend’s?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
She was surprised she wasn’t more afraid, that her voice didn’t break slightly or tremble when she responded. Why weren’t her legs shaking? A man had a gun pressed into the back of her neck. She should be scared right about now.
“Not really,” West said.
“Don’t do anything stupid, West.”
“Shut up, Lara. You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.” He pulled the other Glock from her holster. “Now, be a good girl and keep your trap shut for once, or I might just put a bullet in you out of pure spite.”
“West, don’t—” she started to say.
He grabbed her by the hair and pulled back so hard she almost screamed. Somehow, she managed to stop herself. Instead, her mind raced, looking for a way out of this that would keep them both alive. That would keep her alive.
He pushed himself up against her. She imagined he had to lower himself quite a bit, given how much taller he was, to whisper menacingly against her ear. “This is where you beg me not to kill you.”
“Are you going to kill me?” she managed to say, despite the pain pulling at her scalp.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
West must have sensed her lack of fear, because he let go of her hair and moved back. She let out a relieved sigh, then turned around to face him. He gestured for her to sit down on the bed. She did, watching him the whole time. He leaned next to the closet door.
Reminder to self: put locks on all the doors.
All the hotel doors were equipped with keycard locks, but there hadn’t been any need to keep the doors locked when it was just them. Now, with Bonnie’s group on the island, it was something she should probably bring up to everyone. Of course, to do that, she had to survive this encounter with West first.
Oh, that’s it? Easy peasy, then.
West had her other Glock stuffed in his front waistband. He was wearing the new pants and shirt she had sent over to him earlier this morning, and he was still favoring his right leg from his wounds. She wondered if it hurt him just to be moving around even a little bit.
Maybe he’s not as strong as he looks…
“I was going to let you go,” she said. “After you healed up. I would have given you supplies, weapons, and let you take your chances out there.”
“I won’t have much of a chance out there on my own.”
“I thought you were a tough guy.”
He chortled. “I’d be tougher with Brody.”
“It’s not my fault you and he decided to try to kill Blaine last night.”
“Yeah, well, it was a good idea at the time.”
“So that was the big plan?”
He sighed almost wistfully. “It wasn’t a bad plan. Once we were armed, we could renegotiate our stay on the island. But, unfortunately, things went sideways.”
“It doesn’t have to go further than this. Y
ou haven’t hurt anyone yet. This situation is still salvageable, West. Right now the only thing you’ve damaged is that door down the hall, and maybe my closet. Give me the gun and I won’t count this against you.”
He smirked. “I’m the one with the gun, Lara.”
“And I have people with guns out there, too. They outnumber you, the last time I checked.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not scared at all, are you?”
“Should I be?”
He was right, though. She wasn’t scared at all. Not even a little bit. If anything, she was just annoyed. At her own stupidity, at her inability to predict his movements, at her unwillingness to let Danny end it all earlier this morning.
I’m not Will. And I’ll never be Will.
He lowered the gun to his side, grimacing slightly from the effort. “I was hoping for a little bit of fear. Just a tiny bit? Now I don’t know what to do with you if you’re not going to play along.”
“There are only two ways out of this, West. Give me the gun and I forget this ever happened. I let you rest, heal up, and then I put you back on land, just like I originally planned. The other option ends with you dead.”
“And who’s going to do the shooting?”
“Maddie. Carly. Or Danny. It doesn’t matter. The second option always ends with you dead. I’d rather not see you dead, West.”
“It’s not fair, you know,” he said, almost pathetically, and for a moment—a split moment—she nearly felt sorry for him. “We brought them here. If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t have made it. We did that. We did a lot of things for them they couldn’t do on their own. You think it was easy?”
“I know it wasn’t easy. I’ve been there.”
“Yeah, I forgot. You were out there, too. So you know how hard it was. And then we get here, what’s the first thing they do? They turn on us. Those bitches.”
“They told me what I asked them. The truth. That’s all.”
“Danny. The blond California surfer. He had it out for us from the word go, didn’t he?”
“Danny was born and raised in Texas.”
“Bull.”
“It’s true.”
“Hunh. He looks like a California surfer.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
He walked across the room to the patio window. She noticed that he was moving gingerly. He brushed back the curtain and looked out. “Nice view you got here.”
