Darkness

by Karen Robards

  Ordinarily she would have yelled out some version of “Hey, honey, I’m home” upon letting herself into the building. Ordinarily she would have stripped down to her socks and jeans and thermal shirt and parked her coat and boots with the others in the cubbies, then scooped up some clean clothes from her clean laundry basket—they each had two baskets, one for dirty and one for clean—in anticipation of a coming shower before proceeding farther into the building. But because she meant to grab the phone and head back outside, and really wanted to attract as little notice as possible until that was done, she didn’t do any of those things.

  Instead she took off her gloves and stuck them in her pocket, pushed back her hood, and carefully wiped her feet on the mat. Then she walked very quietly through to the kitchen, reveling in the warmth. The industrial-size stove and refrigerator were relatively new—as in, fewer than twenty years old—but the dark wood cabinets lining the walls probably dated from World War II. A lighter wood island that stood in the center of the room had the look of having been handmade, probably by bored Coast Guarders some considerable time before the station had been abandoned. There were no remaining signs of breakfast, not even the lingering scents of coffee or bacon. She snagged an apple from the bowl on the island on the way through because she was starving. Biting into it, enjoying the spicy scent and crisp sweetness way more than she normally would have done, she headed on into the common room.

  It was large, paneled in dark wood, with a long inner wall that alternated built-in shelves with storage closets and an equally long outer wall with a pair of windows. It smelled a little of dust, a little of—was it mold? Something slightly dank and unpleasant. Three worn leather couches, plus battered coffee and end tables complete with lamps, were arranged around a striped rug at the far end of the room. They faced an outdated boxlike TV kept solely for playing DVDs, a surprisingly eclectic selection of which took up a fair amount of space on the shelves. Six mismatched armchairs complete with reading lights formed two semicircles facing each other in the middle. The section of the room nearest her and nearest the kitchen was for eating. It contained a long table covered with a red-and-white gingham plastic tablecloth with eight folding chairs arranged around it, and two smaller four-tops, one of which held a partly completed jigsaw puzzle of a beach scene that people worked on as the mood struck them. Gina personally had contributed a corner piece of blue sky.

  THE PHONE was nestled in its case on one of the shelves. With a quick glance around to make sure she was alone, hungrily munching the apple as she went, Gina headed toward the phone. Three of the lamps were on, two of the closet doors were ajar, and she could hear footsteps overhead on the second floor. Heavy footsteps: undoubtedly one of the men. But no one was anywhere they could see her.

  Carpe diem.

  Taking another huge bite of apple, she hurried for the phone. She would grab it, head outside—

  Walking between the long table and the one with the jigsaw puzzle on it, she almost stepped on a cheery red Santa sweater. Pausing with her foot still in the air only inches above it, she looked down at it stupidly. Mary Dunleavy’s sweater—Gina would have recognized it anywhere. A big Santa face in the center accented by dozens of tiny dancing Santas on the sleeves and around the neck and hem. What she was seeing was a small section, but . . .

  Staring down at it, Gina swallowed the bite of apple as she took one more cautious step that carried her past the tables. Her eyes widened. Her heart lurched. Mary was wearing her sweater. Her outflung arm lay limply on the worn linoleum floor.

  Mary lay limply on the worn linoleum floor.

  Gina froze in her tracks, staring down at the other woman in stupefaction.

  Mary was sprawled on her back just beyond the big table. A small, trim woman in her late thirties with short platinum-blond hair, she wore jeans with her sweater and red and purple socks on her feet. Her pale hand with its bright red manicure stretched out beseechingly. Her round, cheerful face was slack and gray. Her lips were parted. Her black glasses were askew.

  Her eyes were open. Usually a vivid blue, they were almost colorless now. They were also glazed over. The pupils were wide and fixed.

  Mary was dead.

  Gina’s throat seized up. Her stomach turned inside out.

  She was just registering that Santa’s beard in the middle of Mary’s sweater was a shiny, wet red instead of its usual fuzzy white when out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a large shape on the floor in the shadows near the wall.

  She looked toward it. Jorge Tomasini lay curled in a fetal position. There was no mistaking the fact that he was dead: half his face was gone, leaving red gore where his left eye and cheek and jaw should have been. His head lay in a puddle of blood. It looked like a spill of bright scarlet paint that was slowly spreading over the scuffed linoleum.

  The apple fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers. It hit the floor with a thud and rolled a few inches away.

  A scream bubbled into her throat. Something—a sixth sense?—made her choke it back. What had happened to them? What could have happened to them?

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  Whatever it was, it must have just happened. The blood—on Mary, on Jorge—was still fresh, still spreading.

  Shock, grief, and fear hit her like a baseball bat. Her chest was suddenly so constricted that it felt as if a giant hand were wrapped around it, squeezing. She tried for a deep breath and ended up with something that was shallow and painful.

  Footsteps thumped on the stairs.

  Her head snapped up, whipping around toward the long back hall where a staircase led to the second floor. Someone was coming down the stairs with a heavy tread.

  Gina’s heart leaped into her throat.

  She didn’t know who it was, but—

  Her every instinct screamed, Get out now.

  Pivoting, she ran back the way she had come, being as quiet as possible but hideously conscious of the soft thud of her footfalls, the slithering rasp her arms made brushing against the body of her coat, the barely stifled sobs of her breathing.

  Danger was as tangible in the air as the moldy, unpleasant scent that she suddenly realized was probably blood.

  She was just about to fly through the doorway into the kitchen when she heard someone open the back door and walk into the mudroom.

  Two someones, she realized as she stopped dead, practically teetering on her toes inches short of the threshold. Men. She could hear them talking.

  One said, “Ty iskat vezde?”

  To the sound of the back door closing, the other replied, “Da.”

  She was no linguist, but she recognized Russian when she heard it.

  Behind her a man called out in English, “Ivanov? Anything?”

  Having reached the bottom of the steps, the man with the heavy footfalls from the stairs was coming along the hall toward the common room.

  None of the voices belonged to her colleagues.

  Stark fear turned her blood to ice.

  Two of her friends had been brutally murdered—and she was trapped between the men who probably did it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nothing,” a man who was presumably Ivanov called back in heavily accented English.

  From the sound of his voice she could tell he was coming through the kitchen, presumably heading for the common room. Panic sent Gina’s pulse rate soaring. She could hear it drumming in her ears.

  Hide.

  It was the only thing to do, the only chance she had. Wildly she looked around.

  Under the table . . . behind the couch . . . in the closet . . .

  The closet was the only possible place to go. Everywhere else she would be spotted the moment someone walked through the room.

  Juiced by a spurt of adrenaline, Gina fled toward the nearest closet with a door—a wooden double slider—that was partly open. Unless someone actually looked in it, she wouldn’t be seen. Pushing the door open a little wider, she dove inside. It was maybe three-by-six feet, m
oldy-smelling, dark. There was a jumble of gear on the floor, snowshoes, fishing rods, a net on a long pole. Rolled-up sleeping bags piled in a corner. Clothing hanging from the overhead bar. She tripped over something—the hose of a bicycle pump—and barely managed to catch the upright metal canister part before it hit the floor. Bent almost double, with the cool metal column of the pump in one hand, she froze in place with her heart in her throat as she heard Heavy Tread walk into the room.

  Stomach twisting, she realized that she’d missed her chance to slide the door shut behind her.

  Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe he would have noticed that it was open and now it’s shut.

  “You sure it was one of these folks?” That was Heavy Tread. He was American, she could tell from his voice. It had a noticeable accent—Texas?

  “Only people on island,” Ivanov replied. He was in the common room, too. She caught herself on the verge of gulping in air and immediately clamped down, forcing herself to breathe in careful, quiet sips instead.

  Her heart pounded so hard she could practically feel it knocking against her breastbone.

  “Eto byla zhenshchina,” the third man said. He was in the room, too.

  Trying not to make any sound at all, carefully lowering the bicycle pump so that it rested on the ground, Gina recognized that last word, meaning “woman.”

  “It was a woman,” Ivanov said, in a way that made her confident that he was translating. He walked into her line of vision as he spoke. Seen from the back, he was of average height and stocky build. A black knit cap hid his hair. He wore a forest-green puffy coat and black ski pants with boots. Stopping beside the long table, he glanced down.

  Gina’s stomach turned over as she realized that what he was looking at was Mary’s body, which had to be lying almost at his feet.

  “Not this one,” he added, indicating Mary. “I do not think.”

  “Why not?” Heavy Tread asked.

  “This one talked funny.” Ivanov’s black-gloved hand came up to rest on the table. With a surge of nausea, Gina saw that he was holding a gun.

  Mary was—oh, God, had been—originally from New York. She’d had a heavy Brooklyn accent. If Ivanov knew about her accent, then Mary had talked to Ivanov before he’d killed her. Had he questioned her? Tortured her?

  Gina felt faint.

  She was still staring at Ivanov’s gun when it hit her that if she could see him, he could almost certainly see her. All he had to do was turn around and look toward the closet.

  Gina’s vision swam briefly as she experienced a jolt of pure terror. Her heart rate hit warp speed. Her lungs begged for air. It took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to suck in big, hungry gasps.

  Quiet. Breathe in, breathe out.

  “Sure it was a woman?” Heavy Tread asked.

  Afraid of moving for fear of knocking into something else or in some other way making a noise, Gina knew she had no choice. She had to get out of sight, which meant going deeper into the closet. Easing back step by careful step, she sidled into the corner behind the knee-high pyramid of sleeping bags. Keeping a precautionary hand on them so that nothing toppled, wary of straightening for fear of disturbing the clothes above her head, she sank down onto her knees instead. Pulling her hood up over her head, she ducked so that her face would not be a telltale splotch of pale in the gloom. She was deep in shadow, and the piled sleeping bags were between her and the opening. She should have felt safer.

  But she was trembling with fear.

  Careful to keep her face lowered, she couldn’t resist peeking up through her lashes to observe whatever she could. All she could see of Ivanov now were his fingers curled around the gun on the table, a sliver of his leg, and the heel of his big black boot. Her mouth went dry as she looked at him. She swallowed hard. Could he see her? Only if he came over to the closet and looked inside, she decided.

  With every fiber of her being, she prayed that he would not.

  Ivanov said, “I am sure. We have a recording of her talking about the crash.”

  Gina stiffened as the possible meaning of that registered. Could it be—were they talking about her?

  They had to be. There was no other logical interpretation.

  Yesterday, when she’d seen the plane going down and called for help over the radio—they’d been listening? Her blood ran cold.

  I know who they are. Who they have to be.

  They were hunting possible survivors of the plane crash.

  Cal.

  Panic assailed her.

  Her hands knotted into fists so tight that she could feel her nails digging into her palms. Fighting for calm, she closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. When she opened them again, she looked out through the opening in the door and almost gasped. She actually had to press her hand hard over her mouth to contain the sound.

  She didn’t know how she had missed it up until now. She could only suppose that she hadn’t been focusing on the floor.

  Now she was, and her eyes widened with horror. Lying on the scuffed linoleum inches from the heel of Ivanov’s boot was her half-eaten apple. Red and round, with juicy yellow flesh showing where bites had been taken out of it. Obviously freshly eaten and dropped.

  Looking at it, every tiny hair on her body shot upright.

  If they see that apple, they’ll know somebody came in, saw the bodies. They’ll search the room.

  The taste of fear was suddenly sour in her mouth.

  There was no way Ivanov was going to not see it. He couldn’t not see it: it was right by his foot. It was just a matter of when.

  “Don’t matter now,” Heavy Tread said. “If she was one of them, she’s dead.”

  “Bylo tri,” the third man said in his grating Russian.

  “He said there were three,” Ivanov translated. “Women.”

  “How do you know?” Heavy Tread asked.

  Gina frowned as she heard what sounded like paper flapping. Judging from the direction the sound came from—behind Ivanov, rather than in front of him where Heavy Tread was—the unseen Russian was doing something to cause it.

  Ivanov replied, “Paper he is waving is list. From refrigerator. It says, three women, twelve people total on island. We have found here, nine.”

  List? From the refrigerator? It had to be the schedule. Of cooking, of chores, of who would be using the boats when. It had been fastened to the refrigerator with a magnet. All their names were on it. Gina felt her blood drain toward her toes.

  “We only found two women.” Heavy Tread sounded as if he was frowning. “Where’s the other one?”

  “Perhaps still out on the island. At same time as transmissions from her, we picked up voices of men warning that the storm was coming. It is possible that she did not make it in.”

  Heavy Tread said, “We got people searching the island to make sure nobody slips through the cracks. If she’s out there, they’ll find her.”

  Ivanov said, “I hope you are right. We cannot afford any—what do you call them—screwups.”

  He turned, and his foot struck the apple. It rolled, traveling in a clumsy, lopsided semicircle because half of it was eaten away.

  Gina’s eyes riveted on it. Her breath caught. Her stomach turned over.

  He’s going to see it now.

  He was on the move. His boot came down right beside the apple, barely missing stepping on it. Gina caught her breath. Her heart thumped so hard it felt as if it would pound its way out of her chest.

  “Search the buildings again,” Heavy Tread ordered. “Like you said, we don’t want any screwups.”

  Ivanov was, impossibly as it seemed, walking away without having spotted the apple. He disappeared from view—

  Gina’s heart nearly stopped as he said, from right outside the closet, “What do we do about these?”

  He meant the bodies, Gina could tell from his tone. Oh, God, his gloved fingers curled around the edge of the closet door. Spotting them, her eyes popped wide for an instant. She ducked, burrow
ing her face into the top of the nearest sleeping bag while making herself as small as possible in the corner. Her lower spine pressed up against the wall. Her toes curled in her boots. The dusty smell of long-unused gear enfolded her.

  Please God please God please . . .

  The sound of the closet door being pushed farther open made Gina’s heart turn over. It pounded furiously as she caught her breath, then pressed her face so hard into the rolled sleeping bag that she couldn’t have breathed if she’d wanted to. She could feel the texture of the tightly woven cloth imprinting itself on her skin. She prayed that some combination of her steel-blue coat, the gray sleeping bag that she had her face buried in, the clutter in the closet, the hanging thicket of clothes, and the darkness in the corner where she crouched would render her invisible.

  She could see nothing: black on black. Every other sense she possessed, though, was hyperaware.

  He’s right there. Only a few feet away. He’s got a gun.

  Her terror was so strong that she could practically feel it pulsing in the air around her. Unable to see, unable to breathe, she was claustrophobic, suffocating, wired. So frightened all she wanted to do was scream and run.

  THE SOUND of his breathing told her that he was still there. A warning prickle running down her spine made her virtually certain that he was looking inside the closet, glancing around. With panic curdling her insides and sending what felt like ice water shooting through her veins, she did her best to remain perfectly still. She visualized herself as a statue, carved from stone, lifeless and immovable.

  Oh, God. Be quiet. Don’t breathe.

  Her heart jackhammered and the muscles in her shoulders and back knotted with tension as she waited—and prayed.

  “WE BURN everything, them included.” From the sound of Heavy Tread’s voice, he was on his way out of the room. “Big mistake, keeping them fuel tanks so close to the compound. Accidents will . . .”