My eyes flit to Morose. His eyes look as if they could bulge out of his head, his cheeks flame with fury, but he’s grinning.
“You thought you didn’t need a man like Cy, didn’t you?” he says. I shiver, a sort of cold awareness coursing through me.
“Don’t talk to him, Harper,” Cy says. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
The words chill me even further. Terrorist. Of course. It was nothing short of an act of terrorism. Manipulation of the military, law enforcement, the abductions, and brainwashing.
“Don’t kill him, Cy,” I whisper. “He doesn’t deserve to punish you further. This is on camera. He’s confessed.”
“Confessed?” Morose says, his nostrils flaring. “Confessed? To what? To performing a scientific experiment to prove an age-old truth? To demonstrate the ability to manipulate people to love one another? To prove that love is only a contrivance of modern culture to populate the masses, and that any two saps could fall in love with each other?”
“Don’t listen to him,” I say to Cy. “Don’t.”
“My purpose was clear,” Morose continues. “It’s all there. It’s all in writing. Modern day conveniences strip us of our humanity. What I did? I brought you back to humanity. You ought to be thanking me for what I did. I gave you the most base form of survival so that all you had was each other. I gave you—”
“Gave us?” Cy says, advancing on Morose with the cold, calculating look of a man ready to kill. His hand shakes on the gun that he has trained on Morose. “Gave us? Don’t you mean took away? You think you know what it is that humanity needs? What we needed? You set her up to be raped. Murdered. It was only by some miracle I didn’t kill her myself!” He bellows at the end of his proclamation, and I flinch. He speaks the truth, though. He could have. I witnessed the way he controlled himself. The way he held himself back.
“Cy, no!” I scream. “Don’t!” His gun is pointed at Morose’s temple, his hand trembling with the effort it takes to hold himself back.
I want to kill the old man myself. I take another step toward him, but Cy holds up his hand.
“No, Harper. He isn’t worth it.” Both of us are making sure the other doesn’t do something foolish and impulsive. Something that could get us killed.
Morose’s eyes swing to Cy. “Of course, you’ll tell her what to do and she’ll listen, won’t she? She’s been trained to obey, hasn’t she?” He throws his head back and laughs.
“You’re right, Cy. He is a terrorist.” I turn to Hunter. “They both are.”
“And you took us because we had no family,” I say, shaking my head. They both underestimated us. I have connections, and the legal department I know well will prosecute both of them to the fullest extent of the law.
“How did you do it?” Cy asks. “I want to know. I want to fucking know everything.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Hunter says. “He waved his money in front of anyone who would listen. Those who would take to it easily, who had the skill sets he needed, he put on the cruise ship. Actors. They all had a script. All had a part to play.”
My stomach tightens. I remember. I remember how on board the ship they’d pay such close attention to me. Offering me room service, massages, complimentary wine and champagne. I fell for it.
“Go on,” Morose says. The sick bastard’s proud of his plan. I can tell the way his chest swells, and his shoulders go back. He wants this on record. He’s sick.
“He recruited a few with military background, but not many. Mostly men who pretended to be military.”
“The pilot,” Cy says. “The men who took me.”
Hunter nods. “Yeah. Both in custody now.”
Morose looks at him sharply. “Yeah,” Hunter says, shaking his head. “They were the first I called in.”
“You betrayed me,” Morose says to him. “You’ll get nothing.”
Hunter shakes his head. “Don’t you see? None of us gets anything. This is over. It’s over. You aren’t being called the genius you expected, but a sick bastard.”
Morose’s eyes look like they’re going to bug out of his head. He opens his mouth to protest, but Cy shakes his head. “Go on, Hunter.”
“You took everything from all of us,” he says to Morose. “For those who wouldn’t go willingly, who wouldn’t do what he asked for money, he threatened.”
I sigh. Lila. She was only one of how many?
“He paid millions to manipulate that island,” Hunter says. “Just far enough from the Caymans that it’s uninhabited. But he privately owns it. We orchestrated nearly everything. The weather conditions. And when he thought it time to put you all to the test, we used camera equipment to make it appear that you had no food.”
Cy nods. “It’s why everything would be gone overnight,” he says. “And how we found out some of it was still there, it just appeared it wasn’t. Not magic. Not a mystery.”