'Belle…?' Dee found her mouth hanging open. Snapped it shut. 'But, when she finds out I'm alive…'
'She won't. At least, not until it's too late,' Long Shadow assured her, stepping away to look for his clothes. 'I made sure her eyes here were…' he trailed off.
Dee, who'd been about to sit back down, stilled. 'What eyes?'
Long Shadow turned back to her but said nothing.
'What eyes?' she repeated, feeling a coldness insinuate itself between them.
'Surveillance cameras,' he said.
'Surveillance cameras?'
She heard herself parroting but couldn't help it.
'Here.' Long Shadow reached up and parted the hides in the top of the tepee where the poles converged. Dee stepped forward to look. Mounted between them was a miniature video camera. 'And here.' He turned and lifted the dream catcher that hung on the wall above where they slept.
The feathers drifted in idle protest, but Dee's attention was drawn to the tiny lens beneath it. 'I disabled them when I first saw you on the raft,' he explained. 'I was worried that whoever had tried to kill you would be monitoring the equipment in DeMartande's absence.'
'DeMartande…' she echoed. Then more faintly, 'Pietre,' as her mind flashed to an image of Roc handing her over to Pietre at the nightclub in Cairns — his reptilian eyes mesmerising her as he wooed her with the offer of a fantasy holiday. Then the sting in her arm as Mr Black had drugged her in the limousine.
Dee felt as though a balloon had exploded in her face. She looked up at Long Shadow, her voice flat with shock. 'These cameras, they're in the caves? At the lagoon?'
'Someone always watches,' he reminded her gently. 'But not here.'
She nodded. 'And you knew all along.'
'Yes.'
She took a moment to assimilate that. 'So… my God is a voyeur,' she said, and surprised them both with a brittle laugh. 'There's irony for you.' At last she knew how it felt to be on the other side of the lens — to have her privacy violated.
The depravity of her coupling with Mack, her cruelty to Christophe, the perversity of her liaison with Josh — it all came back to her now in a new and tainted light. She wasn't part of their tribe, the mythical 'Wendee' who would teach them grace. She was a whore brought in to amuse the master.
That was why she hadn't seen 'Peter' since her arrival on his island. He'd never intended to interact with her. Merely to watch.
That thought led her to wonder if she was his first 'Wendee'. She could ask Long Shadow, but as she looked up into his eyes she suddenly didn't want to know — didn't want to hear about other women he might have held in his arms, hearing the words of love she'd thought were for her alone.
'Are you one of them?' She couldn't trust anything now.
'I am employed by DeMartande. But my loyalty is with you,' he said, holding her eyes. Dee could see how much he wanted to touch her — could see his constraint — wanted to believe him. But could she?
'What exactly are you employed to do?' she asked. 'To act? To pretend to fall in love with me?' Dee wasn't analysing her anger. It just came out.
'No. Only to make love to you — '
'And you got carried away?' she cut in. 'You decided to ad lib and — '
'…until I am returned to my normal duties,' he finished quietly.
'Which are…?'
'I am new to the DeMartande service,' he explained, ignoring her suspicious tone. 'But before this fantasy, which is my first…' Dee nodded for him to go on, hiding how much that admission meant to her. '…I was under Xavion's command,' he went on, 'acting as a body-guard when required. Patrolling the island and the surrounding waters. Boarding intruding vessels to kill their occupants if so ordered.'
Dee stopped nodding. 'Kill people? You've killed people for DeMartande?'
'Three so far.' His face was expressionless.
'Who… What is he? What does he do?'
'He's an international arms dealer.'
They stared at each other for a slow five heartbeats, then panic made her lurch into action. She dropped to her knees, scrabbling around the floor for something she could wear. 'I'm getting out of here now,' she said again, and snatched up the sheet.
She held it for a moment, her fists clutching the thin cotton against her chest. Then she turned slowly back to Long Shadow. 'He won't let me go, will he?'
Long Shadow shook his head. 'He's never released anyone who might identify him. I suspect he plans to kill you when he tires of the game.'
Dee blinked, then sank heavily onto the fur. 'I'm going to die.' She stared at the dream catcher with its feathers that lifted in the breeze but could never float free, trapped in the web of twine that framed them.
Just as she was trapped.
Long Shadow crouched in front of her and took her cold hands in his. 'You will not die,' he said. 'Not while I live.'
She dragged her dull gaze from the dream catcher to Long Shadow, trying to find something solid amid this surreal nightmare. 'Do you really love me?' she asked.
'As you love me.'
She looked into his eyes. Saw it. 'I believe you,' she said. Swallowed down a lump of fear. She wasn't alone. 'What will we do?'
'Escape.' He looked away, searching the tepee, as though for an idea rather than something tangible. 'I thought I could do more here without endangering your life, but I was wrong.' He looked back at her. 'We'll steal the helicopter and leave tonight.'
'But you said Pietre was due back this afternoon.' Her voice was rising but she could do nothing to control her fear. 'We've got to go now.' She grabbed his arms. 'We've got to — '
'Don't panic, Wendee. Please.' He held her shoulders, his voice louder than it had been, but calm.
The tone seeped through to her. 'I'm sorry.' She forced her clutching fingers to relax. 'I'm frightened.'
'I know.' He kissed her and she clung to his lips, wanting the reassurance. 'But we have to wait,' he said when he could pull away from her, 'Night is safer,' and he sat her back onto the fur. 'Now I must go to Belle or she may send another messenger. Fortunately, I was outside when the last one came or you might have been discovered. We can't risk another intrusion.' He reached for his clothes.
Dee didn't want to, but she had to ask, 'Who was the messenger?'
He paused for a moment, the muscles in his forearms tightening before he stood to pull on his leggings. 'It was the boy. Christophe,' he said over his shoulder.
Dee looked down at her lap. Bit her lip. She asked, 'Was he… all right?' wondering how she could worry about Christophe when her own safety was so tenuous. Perhaps as Josh had said, it was the mother love. Long Shadow would never believe that.
He turned to her. She saw his feet but couldn't bring herself to look up.
'He had a bruise on his cheek. Welts on his back.'
Dee closed her eyes. Put her hand over her mouth to still any words that might escape.
'He'd come from Belle,' Long Shadow added, and Dee needed no other explanation.
Remembering Skye's experience with Belle and her riding crop, Dee felt sickened — more so when she recalled her empathy with Belle and her desire to experience the torturer's high for herself.
'Poor Christophe,' she said, then pressed her lips together to stop her grief emerging.
'I know you care for the boy,' Long Shadow said stiffly from the doorway, 'but I will not help him. Your life is all that's important to me.'
She nodded, tried to pull herself together. 'I understand.' Then looked up at him bravely. 'What are our chances?' she asked. 'Realistically?'
Long Shadow relented and came back to her side, crouching again to kiss her face as two tears she couldn't contain slid down her cheeks. 'DeMartande is a monster,' he conceded, 'with more corpses in his life than you've had students. But I have a plan — '
