They laughed. Red Beard drew a sweaty hand across his face, wiping under his nose. Both of them, in fact, were beaded with perspiration. Their fake beards were probably itchy and suffocating. Why did they feel the need to disguise themselves? I barely knew anyone on St. Barths. And if they were going to kill me, I'd never have the chance to identify them anyway.
"What's so funny?" I asked, my heart pounding so hard now I shook with each beat.
"Your little boyfriend never paid," Mr. Stilted English said.
A gray cloud obscured my vision, and it took a long moment for me to realize it wasn't actually there. That I had just come this close to fainting dead away.
"He . . . but you went to him? You told him where I was, what you were going to do?" I rambled. Behind me, the apple jumped around in my hand. Upton couldn't leave me here for dead. He just couldn't.
But obviously, he had. What motive did these two have to lie? Hot tears welled up in my eyes. How could I have believed Upton when he told me he loved me? I had believed he wanted to be my boyfriend. I had almost slept with him. Sawyer was right about him. He didn't deserve a girl like me.
"He decided it was a better idea to go to the police," Mr. Stilted English told me, taking a step forward.
My desperate rambling thoughts were brought up short. Okay.
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Well, maybe Upton wasn't all bad. Going to the police wasn't as bad as ignoring the situation completely, right? But if he really loved me, why bother? Why not just pay?
"How do you know he went to the police?" I asked. Not that I cared. I was just stalling for time. The longer we stood there, the more the real reason for their visit sank in. Somewhere, one of them was concealing a gun. The gun that held the bullet that was going to kill me.
There was another laugh. "Because we are the police." Stilted English finally lost the stilt and went back to his regular voice, his French accent.
"Surprise, Miss Brennan!" Red Beard added.
In a rush, I realized who they were. Red Beard was Officer Marshall, and Stilted English was Officer Gravois. The cops from the hospital. The ones who had found my assertions so amusing. The ones who assumed I was a spoiled brat who was not, in fact, being stalked by a murderer.
They were going to murder me. Oh, the irony.
The two of them approached me now, slowly, predatorily, like lions stalking a gazelle. I took an instinctive step back. Officer Marshall stopped in his tracks.
"Wait. She has something behind her back."
Gravois lifted his dark glasses and eyed me with suspicion. "What are you hiding, eh? Some kind of homemade weapon?"
I let out a shout as I flung the apple at Marshall with all my might. Thanks to my weakened state, it made a pathetic arc in the air and landed in his ready hand. He snorted a laugh.
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"What did you think you were goingto do? Knockme out with your superhuman strength?"
He tossed the apple up and down a few times. I watched him play his little game and held my breath. He was going to throw it over his shoulder, or down on the ground. What had I been thinking? This was never going to work. What were the chances that he would actually-Then he lifted the apple to his lips and took a bite.
My heart leapt with joy. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect moment. Right now he was chewing on poison. The juice trickled down his chin. How long would it take before he keeled over dead? I had to be ready. Had to use the moment of surprise to take on kidnapper number two. Marshall chewed, swallowed, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
Come on manchineel. Workyour magic.
But nothing happened. He just licked his lips and tossed the rest of the apple in the sand. Nothing.
My shoulders sagged along with all my hopes. Had Mrs. Ryan been lying when she told us about the dangers of the tree? Was she just that morbid that she wanted to scare us for no reason? Or had I been wrong about the tree? Was it just some ordinary crab apple?
"Sayyour good-byes, kid," Officer Marshall said.
He drew a gun out of the back waistband of his pants and pointed it at my chest. My breath stopped in my throat. These were the last few beats of my heart. The cold sand beneath my feet was the last thing I would ever feel.
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I was about to close my eyes and see whatever it was my subconscious wanted me to see in my last moments, when suddenly Officer Marshall's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he crumpled to the ground. His whole body started to shake, and drool poured out the corner of his mouth. Both Gravois and I were so stunned that for a moment, neither one of us moved. But then my eyes flicked to the gun, which was now twitching like mad, Marshall's fingers curled around the handle. Gravois saw it, too, and at the same time, we lunged.