Plummeting down, down, down.
My heart squeezed each time his splash replayed.
A splash and then...nothing.
My thoughts weren’t in my body, locked on Drake’s lap, skimming over the sea, but back there. Back where Sully had fallen. Where he’d disappeared. Where we’d been separated against our will.
Sully...please.
Almost an hour had passed.
The longest, nightmarish hour since I’d last seen him.
Since I knew he was alive...
“Descending,” the pilot yelled over the din. “Found it.”
The pilot’s voice brought me back; Drake’s legs tensing beneath mine ripped me from my wonderings.
I glanced out the window, shuddering as Drake’s hold on me tightened.
Monyet.
The island with a large laboratory hidden within its paradise, pumping out drugs that went above and beyond aphrodisiacs, creating who knew what else within its walls.
Sully...are you okay?
My mind split down the middle. It now had the ability to focus on my plight while staying firmly on Sully’s in my past.
It was like staring into two mirrors.
A mirror angled behind me—a portal to a man who I begged to rise from the sea. And another angled on my present—revealing unfolding events taking me farther and farther away from him.
“About fucking time,” Drake muttered as the helicopter engines cut off mid-screech, the rotors slowing down the moment we touched land.
I shuddered again, overflowing with disgust as Drake pushed me off his lap and onto the seat beside him.
For fifty minutes or so, the pilots had skimmed over Sully’s empire, peering at each island, trying to figure out which one housed a lab. Unfortunately, it’d become fairly obvious as darkness descended, and lights spangled below.
The smaller islands with no inhabitants were easy to discount, followed by those with smaller populations performing whatever tasks Sully had set for them to do. Monyet was at least twice the size of Serigala, and directly in the centre of a fortified encampment. Ringed with fences and palm trees, it sat in a well-lit facility reeking of scientific dealings.
“We’re on the main helipad within the barbwire perimeter,” the older pilot said. “They’ll have heard us arrive. Better figure out your story, quick.”
“I don’t need a story,” Drake said. “This is family owned, and I’m family. Therefore, it’s mine, and everything inside is mine.”
“Nothing is yours,” I snapped. “You’re a thief.”
He chuckled, his eyes still tight with fatigue from his indulgence with elixir. “Thief? I prefer to be called an opportunist.”
“Bastard suits you more.”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind that one.” He looked out the window, eyeing up the lab he’d come to raid.
Drake had been bold and uncaring that he trespassed. He’d stolen so much from Sully already...and now, his thievery would continue on a different island.
Sully...
I hugged myself as goosebumps decorated me.
Please...please be okay.
“What’s the plan?” the remaining mercenary asked.
I curled around my pain, turning my attention away from the mirror on my present and stared into the one showing that ever-repeating image of Sully being thrown out of the helicopter.
Falling.
Falling.
Splash.
“There’s four of us,” Drake muttered, rubbing his eyes as the exhaustion still consumed him from Euphoria. “They’re just nerds. We’ll knock, ask politely, and leave. They don’t obey; they die. I want out of this stinking country the second we’ve got elixir on board.”
“Fine.” The mercenary nodded.
The pilots jumped from the cockpit, moving toward the door where Sully had tumbled.
Nausea lapped up my throat.
You better be alive, Sully.
The pilots—one young with brown hair, and the other old with grey—glanced at each other before the older one snipped, “You hired us to fly you around, Mr. Sinclair, not to shoot anybody.”
Drake latched his fingers around my wrist, jerking me from the helicopter.
I tripped at the sudden inertia and fell to my knees as he yanked me from the machine. My skin scraped on the roughness of the helipad as he dragged me to the grass a few metres away and left me puddled at his feet.
I hissed at him.
He smirked.
Keeping his hand on my shoulder to prevent me from standing, he nodded at the mercenary to pass a spare handgun to each pilot. “Stand with me, gentlemen, and you won’t have to shoot anyone. You’re there for show, that’s all.”
The men accepted out of ingrained decorum, cringing against the arsenal. “What do you expect us to do?”
“Just have my back.” Drake grinned, his fingers digging deeper into my shoulder. “They won’t put up a fight. My brother hires pussies. Geeks who jerkoff into their test tubes. I promise.”
“It’ll be easy.” The mercenary chuckled. “In and out. We’ll be done in five minutes flat.”
“Get off me.” I struggled, shoving Drake’s hand away and swooping to my feet. “Don’t touch me.”
Blood trickled from my grazed knees.
Sickness splashed up my throat.
Drake just laughed as if I was a silly gerbil caught in his paws.
Ignoring him, I locked eyes with the pilots, and snapped, “Sullivan Sinclair will pay you an exorbitant fee if you use that gun you’re holding and kill the man holding me prisoner. Take me back to Sully, and you’ll be rewarded—”
“Stupid, stupid Eleanor.” Drake slapped me around the head, sending me tumbling forward, my skull throbbing. “Don’t listen to her, gentlemen.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll give you a bonus when we disembark in Jakarta. How about that? Help us gather this last item, and I’ll pad your payday with another twenty grand each.”
“Sully will give you a hundred,” I hissed. “Kill Drake and—”
“Shut the fuck up, bitch.” The mercenary tried to strike me, but he missed.
I ducked and ran.
A gunshot cracked in the night, kicking up grass and soil by my feet.
I froze.
Drake’s footsteps padded lazily behind me.
My skin crawled as he moved in front of me and reached out like a considerate confidant, taking my hand in his. “First and final warning, Eleanor Grace. Move without my permission again, and the next bullet goes into your back. You’ll either die or be disabled. Either way, I’m past caring.”
He jerked me into him, his palm gluing itself to mine. “I’m getting old, you see. After fucking that goddess last night, my urge for sex has been well
