I’ll be the extraction team instead of executioner.
We arrived at a docking area with boats of all sizes as Vic jumped down into a speedboat with his arms open like it was clap worthy.
I was shaking on the inside and irritated more than normal here. Even the Xanax was having a hard time keeping up.
“What’s the plan? Light a match and we’re out?” I jumped down and took the corner seat in the back hoping I didn’t hurl.
Bowen shoved the key in the boat, seemingly fine for someone who doesn’t fly. “I have to get something I left behind.” His voice was cold, and I knew the creep was hiding shit.
That’s all he knew how to do—hide.
“Of course you do,” I muttered to myself as the boat cut through the water while Khaos blabbered on about recreating the Titanic.
My leg bounced again against my own will when the island came into sight and I swallowed hard. I had never been here, yet I had a visceral reaction to the place. Chalking it up to having a daughter now, I tried to push it all down deeper.
Pulling up to a dock off the island, Bowen let the boat stall out when guys with guns rushed the dock aiming with their fingers on the triggers. These guys were in all black, head to toe like a fucking swat team on roids. Pushing Khaos behind me, I pulled the gun out of the back of my joggers, aiming right back while Vic followed suite.
Just slower.
Bowen only got closer, climbing the dock with his hands digging in his jacket while putting himself between us and one squeeze of a trigger. “I’m Clave, idiots, or do you want me to prove it?”
I wanted to see him prove it.
Slapping whatever he dug out, he pushed it against one of the guy’s chests with aggression and the guns finally dropped with muttered apologies coming from their ski mask covered faces.
My heart was going too fast and my hands shaking with this place acting like poison.
I held onto my gun, not ready to part with safety like that when I dropped my arm by my side and pushed past Bowen further into the coverage of trees. “Can we fucking get this over with?”
“Feeling uneasy Rothschild?” his voice grated against my every nerve.
Turning around, I let our bodies be inches apart, something I avoided for years. “Keeping secrets, Astor? That’s what you do best isn’t, it? Being a vault instead of human?”
All my anger turned inward, folding in on myself, when the words echoed in my head in my monster’s voice.
Being a vault instead of a human.
I don’t know why I remembered the phrase, or those words strung together but I had heard them before in someone else’s voice instead of from the monster inside me. Looking over my shoulder, I swore I heard the forest behind me begging me to figure out why I remember hearing those words.
“Remembering things?” Pushing past him, I sat behind the wheel of one of the black golf carts waiting like even the island knew we were coming. Someone knew because this place was as vacant as the place Bowen was supposed to have a soul.
I needed to be in control somehow, even if it was clutching my gun and the wheel at the same time. Pressing on the horn, I tuned out all the whispering and the violent headache creeping up my spine.
Bowen was smart to choose the other ride when I spotted him and Vic speaking close together like they had a plan we didn’t know. I was already anxious and now they were poking my paranoia awake. “What are they talking about?”
Khaos shrugged, putting his dirty vans on the front of the cart before slumping back into the seat while blazing up the end of a joint. He was down for whatever and normally knew everything.
“You have a tell when you lie. Eye contact.” I said it in a flat voice, so he knew I knew he was lying with no threat. I would kill him last if it came down to it.
He didn’t respond when my foot pressed down on the gas and sped us forward even though I didn’t know where I was going or what the plan was. All I knew was I was here to help set this place on fire and hopefully make it out alive.
Bowen and Vic passed us like I expected when I debated going over the edge, at least an injury would keep me from having to participate. My head was on a swivel when I heard the thick forest whisper to me again, the same words I recognized, only louder.
Khaos could tell I was coming apart when he handed over the joint between his fingers. “Might wanna take a hit. This is going to be a long day.”
It wasn’t an observation; it was a promise.
Taking the joint from him after already a few more Xanax deep than normal, I felt the weight of my body wanting to relax sitting on my chest like a weight. I felt heavy but no amount of heaviness stopped the anxiety, paranoia, or the creepy fucking feeling this place must have given Bowen.
The dirt roads were deserted and when the buildings came into view it looked like a five star resort instead of what Bowen claimed this place really was.
It was like pulling teeth on the plane when I demanded more answers and the entire plane seemed to get it besides me. Finally, he spelled it out when he shouted from one side to me before we decided to divide the area evenly and not kill each other from that high up.
Bowen was molested by people in our lives
