For three days, I was free to do what I wanted to.
The map of the island showed few roads, but that was expected. It wasn’t as if this small thing needed much of a road network, or that the doctor had people to maintain them. Potholes and dips were mandatory, it seemed. I learned not to go above fifteen mph unless I wanted to risk overturning. The emergency pendant was beginning to look necessary.
I felt the pendant, as I steered, and my fingers traced to where the chain rolled across the collar. Neither of the men had told me I must wear the collar but removing it would mean destroying the lock or the collar.
“Not ready to risk my ass for that, yet.” I had too much else to do to be experimenting with minor bratting.
It was tempting to simply spend the days lazing in the sun, walking at sunset, and eating. No crocodiles or gorillas. There were no predators of any sort, I’d been informed, apart from a rare venomous snake but the chances of meeting one were miniscule.
As I steered around another dodgy corner, I recalled the passionate farewell. I would happily volunteer for being kissed by Cassius and the doctor, forever. Yet here I was, trying to find dirt on the doctor, seriously bad dirt, trying to implicate him in murder. This situation didn’t feel serious, though. It felt like a holiday with kinky friends. A holiday where I got to roleplay a detective.
I was not sure why it was so, except that this was rolling out like true CNC might do—if I were Emme and had a raging craving for the hard stuff, where everything was real as real could be. I was on a Girls Own adventure being a kinky Mary Sue.
I stopped to check the map, and verified that yes, there were only a few turn-offs, and I was going the right way. I couldn’t ever get lost here. I could walk across the skinny part of the island in fifteen or twenty minutes, but the car was a fancier and less-sweaty method. After a small amount of driving at a snail’s pace, I braked to a halt at the beach hut.
I hopped out and left the keys in the ignition because only lizards and crows were in the vicinity.
Seeing this the day after the crazy debauchery, a place where I’d been tied up and screwed by two men at once, I found the quietness eerie. I turned to survey more of my surroundings, breathing in sea air, and fairly inhaling the gorgeous sky showing through the trees, and I thought about that tower.
Swimming here was dangerous, but I could. No one would know.
“No,” I murmured to myself. “Another day.”
I set off for the graveyard. Horror stories had never been my deal, so I expected zero zombies or walking skeletons. I stopped again and heard nothing except the sea, the wind rattling the branches, a distant sea gull crying, and the sand slipping past my shoes. I stared at those. I could hear the sand. “No humans. This is almost too fucking quiet.”
The staff might be watching me with a drone, but with so few clouds I would probably spot a drone. There was nothing up there.
I continued on to the graveyard, to discover my heartbeat was faster than it should be, plus I had this odd ache in my chest. I massaged it. So much for not being scared. When there was nobody for fucking ages, when screaming will alert nothing except the birds, being alone became…wrong.
However, the headstones had not moved since I last saw them, and there were exactly zero skeletal hands rocketing from the earth. This was promising.
“No ominous drums or violins playing.” I sucked on my teeth.Fuck, Charity, calm yourself.“It’s all in my head.”
I pulled out the phone and saw the charge was getting low. Cassius had thoughtfully left a charger for it in the coat, and I might need to use that tomorrow. I would turn it off when I wasn’t using it. Then I walked the cemetery from left to right then right to left, zigzagging down the few rows, aiming and shooting, until I had a pic of every legible name.
I should give these to Cassius to check for recent history.
“Because of course any decent killer will name his victims, truthfully.” I tapped the phone on my chin.
Wasn’t there a killer who stuck his victims into graves with another person because nobody ever dug up those again? If that had been done here, good luck to the doctor. I was so not digging anyone up to get tissue or bone samples.
The offer from Jacob was that if I found anything incriminating, he’d let me go. And his people would analyze everything I sent him. I might never know the facts if he chose to lie to me. I needed access to the internet, and the doctor had said I could use a computer here. I’d ask Inigo.
A lightbulb moment hit me. Any internet searches done would remain in the history…but I could delete the history and hope no one here could dig it out. Either I stayed clueless and sent this information to Jacob and learned nothing from it myself, or I risked searching.
“Fuck. What to do?”
I turned to walk back to the car and by the time I reached it I’d decided to climb up to the remains of the tower. I could see the mound on the ridge from here and even though the map showed no true road, there had to be a path going there.
Yes, I would do an internet search for the names of the dead. Those who do nothing in life get nowhere. Then I recalled the quote I was thinking of, from Jean Paul Sartre.To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.
To risk my life… I was doing that simply by living nowadays. I did it when I drove Emme home that night, only I wasn’t aware we were being tracked, or that we would be nabbed and taken away and assaulted. Assaulted badly. I closed my eyes and wished that away. I was here now, and moderately safe from that sort of assault. I swallowed down bile. CNC kink was not assault. Being forced to have multipleOs when you wanted to be made to, was definitely not assault.
And why did I have this need to convince myself? I sighed. “Probably because this is the iffiest CNC ever.”
I could either cower in a corner or I could take risks, and fuck me if this situation demanded I do exactly that, otherwisenothingwould be left of me. Nothing except for a fearful woman who barely dared to move in case I did something the doctor, Cassius, or this mysterious Jacob thought was bad.
I scooped up my backpack, double-checked I had the pendant, and that the water bottle was full, plonked a hat on my head, and I set off for the far end of the beach.