“Okay.” He scratched his chin, thinking. “If you insist. But we should at least put her somewhere she can’t try anything on us for the duration of the storm, until we can get someone out here to pick her up.”
“She’s one small girl,” I protested. “You’re the Gentleman Gangster. You do your own stunts. You know jujitsu, for godsake. Between the two of us, I think we’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad you think this is funny.” His gaze was flinty. “But you’re forgetting Jackson.” The lights flickered again, then went dark. Gray light filtered through the skylights, leaving us in murky gloom.
“What about Jackson?” I asked.
“He’s wrapped around her little finger; we have to assume he’s on her side.”
I didn’t like the idea of colluding with Cole against Felicity and Jackson, but I didn’t see any choice. “So what’s your plan?” I asked, wishing I could see his face better in the darkened room. “Because you obviously have a plan.”
“We’ll have to knock her out, then—”
“No! Can’t we just lock her in a room or something?”
“How do you plan to do that without sedating her?” he challenged.
“Me?” I shook my head vehemently. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“You have everything to do with this. It’s your fault she’s here. I can’t get near her. She hates me. You made sure of that.”
It was true. Felicity loathed Cole as much as I did. I’d thought her dislike of him was on my behalf, but I now realized it ran much deeper than that. “What are you suggesting?”
“You have sleeping pills, don’t you?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“To drug her. You can put them in her drink. Then, once she’s out, we’ll lock her up somewhere safe till the storm clears. We’ll have to knock Jackson out too.”
I considered, uneasily listening to the rain patter on the roof. “But how are we going to explain who she is to the police?”
“There’s already a record of her claiming we were responsible for her mother’s death,” he says calmly. “It works for us. She’s an obsessed fan who stalked us because she wants revenge for something we were never involved in.”
It was hard to wrap my mind around the idea that Felicity had targeted me with the intention of killing me. I knew logically that she wasn’t my friend and I shouldn’t feel any attachment to her, but she’d been so kind to me until now. And she was Iris’s daughter. Iris, whom I’d loved. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Okay, how’s this: give her the sleeping pills, and we’ll talk to her when this is all over. We don’t have to make any decisions about what to do beyond that.”
It wasn’t like Cole to be diplomatic. I assessed him, trying to read his features in the shadows. “Why not talk to her now?”
“Because we are literally the only people on the island. If it goes wrong, it could end very badly.”
I nodded. “All right, but only as a stalling tactic. And we’ll put her somewhere safe until the storm passes.” As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. With the storm coming, we simply couldn’t take the risk. We would have to do it his way.
Felicity
Jackson and I are drenched and muddy by the time we place the last sandbag outside the restaurant. The two of us have put up a barricade in front of every doorway into the main building without any help from Cole or Stella, who are nowhere to be seen, and my muscles are wasted from lifting the forty-pound bags.
“We should go clean up and get back here before the storm gets any worse.” He raises his voice over the wind, surveying our work.
I brush my wet bangs out of my eyes for the millionth time. I can’t wait to grow them out when all this is over. “I hope Stella’s okay.”
“It’s been what, four hours?”
We exchange a weighted look, and guilt snakes around my chest. “I shouldn’t have left her alone for this long.”
“You stayed in the path of a hurricane for her.” He gestures at the rain coming down on us, growing heavier by the minute. “Let the guilt go.”
“You did the same for me,” I point out.
He hooks his finger through my belt loop and pulls my hips toward him. “And I’m glad I did.”
I consider him. Once I’d realized he didn’t hold my lies against me, I’d come clean, laying everything at his feet. He took it remarkably well; but I wonder, once the storm has passed and this is all over, whether he’ll change his mind. “Really?”
He pulls me in for a lingering kiss, his gaze steady when he releases me. “Really.”
Something strange happens inside my chest, like a bird beating its wings. I turn away so he doesn’t see the idiotic smile I can’t seem to repress as we make our way down the stairs beyond the pool, dodging flying palm fronds and debris. Fighting our way through the increasingly horizontal rain toward the bungalows, I realize the storm has intensified far more quickly than we’d planned for. My heart sinks at the thought of Mary Elizabeth out in this weather. She could so easily be swept away, if she hasn’t been already.
The water beneath the pier to the bungalows is startlingly close, sloshing up through the slats in the wood as we hurry over the slick boards to my bungalow.
“I’ll be back for you in fifteen,” he yells over the wind when we reach my doorstep.
Before he can depart, the door to the bungalow swings open, revealing a trembling Stella. Her puffy eyes are ringed with smudged mascara, and she’s wearing some kind of gauzy swimsuit cover-up that’s completely inappropriate for the weather. She waves both of us inside.
“I’ve gotta go clean up and grab my stuff.” Jackson excuses himself, but Stella will have none of it.
“Come in, for just a minute,” she says as a tear slides down her cheek.
Jackson and I step into the dimly lit living room, where the
