“Not yet.”
There’s a click, then the singsong of a woman’s voice.
“Sapphire Beach Resort on Saint Eustatius. This is Rosemarie. How can I help you?”
“God damnit, Dario!” Oria chokes out a sob. “He died for nothing.”
Massimo drops the barrel from her head and backs toward the door.
“Sweet pea?” The doctor’s arms relax a little.
“This is Rosemarie, Vice President of Customer Experience. Who am I speaking with?”
“It’s your—”
“No!” Oria shouts and—tears streaming down her face—raises her gun to Palmeri.
“Oria!”
There’s no way she’s going to thread the needle to shoot him without hitting Sarah. It’s too close. If Sarah dies, I gave it all away for nothing. I ripped down the sky and found nothing behind it but my own selfish, greedy soul.
“Fuck you.” Oria pulls the trigger.
Both Sarah and Palmeri fall.
I roar loudly enough to shake the walls.
CHAPTER 29
SARAH
I have no energy to consume. I haven’t been able to speak or open my eyes. My thoughts have been fleeting and jumbled.
Birds. The breath of a distant freeway. Leaves rustling. The pit-pat of rain has stopped. That’s how I know time passed today. The creak of cicada song is how I know I am at the house near Executioner’s Island.
My ear hurts where the lobe meets my jaw.
It happened. All of it. The return to the Colonia. Dario’s imprisonment. The wedding.
The betrayal of St. Easy.
That happened too.
I can’t wish it all away or continue to sleep through it. Behind the darkness, I’m fully conscious in a way I haven’t been. The new burst of orange behind my lids tells me it’s daytime.
I wiggle my fingers. I can move. I can isolate the heavy ache inside my left bicep where the trouble started.
Dario’s voice isn’t a garble anymore. It doesn’t sound like barking in a foreign language. It’s barking in English.
“I’ve always paid you.”
The floorboards creak outside the room.
“Yes, I called. They’re not there.”
I open my eyes. It’s our house. The one we decided would be home before we decided to move to the island together. Before we threw it all away and decided—separately—to get trapped with the Colonia.
“Then why aren’t they picking up the phone?”
I try to sit up, but the room swims. Before I fall back down, I recognize the view out the window. The lamp. The door to the bathroom. I’m relieved to be here with him. It’s over. It’s really over.
But what does that mean?
What happened to Oria? And Denise? And Massimo? The doctor. Sergio.
The room stays still, and my right arm holds me up, even as my left feels as if a spike is stuck in it.
“Just. Go. Check.” Dario makes a demand that’s undergirded with hopelessness. “That’s all. No sirens. No lights. Just ride over there in your little car and… hello? Hello?” He curses under his breath, then over it. “Fuckers.”
Visible in the hall, he taps the phone and raises it to listen, making his way into our room. He sees me sitting and stops.
He’s clean. I didn’t realize how filthy he was in the cell until he stands in our bedroom doorway, wearing pressed trousers and a crisp white shirt unbuttoned to the beginning of hair on his chest. His jaw has been shaved to the skin, and though his hair is combed, one defiant lock falls right above his eyebrow.
“You’re up.” He taps the phone and comes to me, tossing the device onto the night table as if the call he was making means nothing to him and never did.
“I am. This looked easy when I dressed it.” He inspects my ear. I can’t feel his touch there. Must be a bandage. “That knife is fucking sharp.”
I try to raise my arm to feel his smooth, clean cheek, but I can’t.
“Why does my arm hurt?”
“Bullet grazed it.” He climbs onto the bed and kisses my lips, then my cheeks. “Then hit Palmeri’s heart.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes. It’s good to see you.”
How can I help you?
Rosemarie’s welcoming voice.
Sapphire Beach Resort on St. Eustatius.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know.” He turns away, cut off from his good mood.
“What does that mean?”
Pensively, he places his hand between my breasts, taking a breath before he speaks.
“Did you send Connor the message?”
Choof off.
That phrase was for Connor. I got it right, but not right enough. “I did, but he didn’t get it.”
His face is painted in regret.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Not yet.” He pulls the sheets off me, revealing plain cotton underwear. Not the womanly, sexy things he’d promised. The bra opens so smoothly it’s as if he didn’t touch a hook—the garment itself just surrendered so his lips could graze my nipples to harden them before his teeth nipped them.
The cord of warmth runs from my breasts to my nub. It swells too big to be contained. I have to open my legs to free it and Dario’s body slides between them.
How can I help you?
“There was a trick to that, right? You didn’t actually call—”
“Shh…” He kisses the insides of my thighs. “It’s just us. You and me.”
He gets on his knees and pulls off my underwear, then raises my leg, kissing the back, bending to gently sink his teeth into the place where my thigh meets my hip.
“I need to fuck you for the next few hours. I need to do it slow so I can feel you and taste you.” He swipes his tongue over my seam. My hips jolt toward the ceiling. “There’s just us now.” His kisses move back up my belly. “The past is fading. The future’s blank. There’s nothing but this room.”
Hovering over me, leaving none of him touching none of me, he lays his lips on my cheek.
“We’re home.” I fight through the ache in my left arm to unbutton his shirt.
“We are. For now. We’ll have to go soon.”
“Massimo said that if I ran, he wouldn’t come for me.” My fingers can’t open the buttons fast enough.
“Do you trust him?”
“He thinks I’m too much trouble. By the end, he was ready to pack me a bag.”
“Then we’re okay for now.” He leans on one arm to undo his pants.
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I’ve always been here.”
Is he saying it was all a bad dream? Was it a plan we made that I made too real in my mind? I want to believe it, but How can I help you? was said in a voice I’d never heard before and didn’t make up.
Right now, he’s real. His skin under my fingers. The warmth. The crackle of his life. The feel of his breath on my throat as he kisses it, and the muffled sound his hand makes when he touches the bandage on my ear.
It happened. The imprisonment. The aborted wedding. The longing and constant terror that he’d be killed. This, right now. Our bed. Our house. He’s more real than any memory. More urgent than any fear I can recall from the past or all the worry I can create for the future.