“For what?”
“Stalking, lying, attempted murder,” she rattles off. “I don’t know. Were you going to kill me?”
I shake my head. “I’d thought of it, in the beginning. But I decided not to, once I got to know you.”
“Thanks, I guess,” she says.
I feel hot tears on my cheeks, a sinking sensation in my chest. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” I whisper. “I just want to be normal.”
Stella sits next to me on the bath mat and rests a hand on my back, gently patting me like I’m a child. “That stupid interview when I announced the memoir…” She closes her eyes. “Cole’s call to do this movie came soon after. I didn’t put the two together at the time, but now it seems obvious his offering me the part was more about bribing me than anything else—to make sure I kept my mouth shut. Not that I ever would have published anything about Cole’s fetish—or Iris, no matter how desperate I was for cash. How would that have made me look? And it didn’t matter anyway—as you know, no one wanted the damn thing. He mentioned it the night we hooked up though. I tried to set him straight about it, but then we were having sex and…” She sighs. “The next day he fed me this story about Jackson blackmailing him to hire me and do this film, so I didn’t think about the interview again. I’m an idiot.”
I rest my head on my knees, wishing my brain were working better. “Jackson did mention something about Cole bribing him too.” I gasp. “Jackson! You gave him the lemonade too. We have to go get him.”
I grip the counter with my free hand, and between the two of us, we manage to heave me to standing. “We have to get you both somewhere safe to hide so Cole still thinks I’m on his side,” Stella says. “Otherwise he might kill us all.”
I wish I thought she was only being dramatic. “I don’t know how far I can go. Are you supposed to meet him somewhere?”
She nods. “In the wine cellar—once I drugged you.”
I squint at her. “Leaving me here?”
“I didn’t realize how high the water was going to get,” she insists. “I made him promise he’d put you somewhere safe once you were asleep.”
“Yeah, right.” I snort.
“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot for listening to him.” Her bloodshot green eyes plead with me to forgive her. “There’s a storage closet and janitor’s office next to the wine cellar—”
“Too close.” I shake my head. “I won’t be able to get down there without him seeing me.”
She thinks. “There’s an office off of reception. Apparently the walls up there are concrete, and at least you could lock the door.”
The idea that a locked door is going to do anything for me is laughable, but with the sleeping pills smoothing the grooves of my brain, I can’t come up with anything better. It’ll have to do for now. I splash my face with cold water from the sink and discard my remaining brown contact, unexpectedly buoyed by the act.
Stella’s breath suddenly catches. “He has guns. I just remembered. In the wine cellar.”
Of course he does.
“Let’s try to get to them before he does,” I say.
I follow her into the living room, where she shoves bottles of water, flashlights, nutrition bars, and a towel into a backpack. “You ready?” she asks.
And then the lights go out.
Stella
The darkness was so complete, I couldn’t remember which way I’d been facing in the room. It was like I was back in the womb. I fumbled for the power switch on the flashlight, and a bright beam cut through the black before Felicity snatched it and shut it off, sending us plummeting back into the inky void.
“We can’t risk him seeing the light once we’re outside, if he’s out there.” She grasped my hand in hers. “We need to let our eyes adjust.”
We stood hand in hand, unmoving, while the wind roared around the eaves and the rain pounded the roof. Something crashed outside. The darkness remained.
“We have to go.” Felicity pulled me toward the door.
“I still can’t see,” I protested.
“He won’t be able to either,” she pointed out.
She turned the handle and the door flew open with a thunk. “Ow,” she cried.
“Was that your head?”
“My shoulder.” She stepped out into the billowing rain, tugging me behind her.
Outdoors, the coal-black lessened to a dusky gloom punctuated by a gale so strong, I immediately lost my footing and had to grab on to the door frame to brace myself. A deck chair hurtled past, absorbed into the chaos before I could make out where it landed.
Felicity linked her arm through mine, and we steeled ourselves against the storm as we stepped onto the saturated pier. The sea rolled mere inches beneath the boards, pushing through the slats and surging over the sides as it seethed. When we reached Jackson’s bungalow, Felicity banged on the door and rang the bell, shouting over the wind, but it was useless. “He’s asleep,” she cried, her voice edged with desperation. “We have to break in.”
Water washed over our ankles as we assessed his bungalow. Like all the cabins, his had extensive decking on the front that faced the sea, but no windows on the back, and the windows on the sides were obscured by wooden slats, designed for privacy. A foot-wide ledge ran halfway around the outside of the bungalow, ending beneath the slatted windows, a good ten feet from the front deck. Felicity reared back and kicked the door with all her might, but it didn’t budge.
She groaned and leaned her head against the door, her energy flagging.
“We have to go,” I said. “I’ll come back for him.”
“No,” she insisted, shaking her head to wake herself up. “These bungalows could go underwater at any minute. I’m not leaving him here to drown.”
And with that, she
