I jerked.
Snow settled on my skin.
Shock and stupor.
Hate and horror.
I wanted to attack him, but I daren’t move.
The world swam.
Sickness drowned.
How could you fight a crazy person?
How could you win against someone who had no boundaries and followed no rules?
How the hell did Sully survive a childhood with this lunatic?
Drake drove the gun deeper into me, making me moan with disgust. “Vials. Now. Or I shoot her in the cunt right here, right now. She might not die, but it would be a horrific injury, don’t you agree?”
“Fine! Fine!” The scientist vanished into the lab, yelling at max volume for elixir.
“Finally.” Drake huffed, thrusting the gun into me one last time before removing it and wiping his forehead with his arm. “Was that so difficult?”
I swayed as Drake let me go.
I swallowed back a rush of loathing, doing my best not to run or attack him.
Nasty silence fell as we waited on the stoop, listening to the quick scurry of feet in the lab. Would help arrive? Was there anyone here with a damn weapon?
A minute later, a trolley with two large boxes shot from the lab, pushed at warp speed by the poor scientist. No one else. Just a terrified chemist with no background in warfare.
“About fucking time.” Drake stepped aside, jerking me with him as the trolley came to a stop, the boxes clinking and clanging with glass vials inside. “The second you get back inside that little lab of yours, I expect you to make more of this stuff.”
“But I can’t. Not without—”
The mercenary angled his gun at him. “Get cooking, nerd. Your new boss expects a thousand more boxes of elixir.”
Drake snickered, grabbing a box and shoving it into the older pilot’s hands. “Carry this, please.” He gave the younger pilot the second box. “And you.”
Gripping the seemingly heavy boxes, the pilots turned and practically ran back to their helicopter as if they couldn’t wait to be airborne.
Four hundred vials of a heart-crippling, body-hijacking drug.
And Drake has it.
Shit.
“See ya ’round.” Drake waved at the scientist, then spun me around and dug the gun into the base of my skull. “Walk, Eleanor.”
I had no choice.
I walked under his instruction and away from potential help.
The mercenary protected Drake’s back as we marched, sweeping his gun at the lab.
Drake won again as we piled into the helicopter and took wing.
Chapter Two
I WATCHED MY LIFE instead of lived it.
I watched as a man who’d just sold his soul to fury broke the surface of his ocean.
I watched as a speedboat with five police pulled up beside him in a wash of wake and bubbles.
I watched as he was pulled from the sea and deposited dripping wet and clothing sodden on a bench.
I watched as the speedboat gathered inertia, carrying its drowned passenger toward the islands that’d become his hell.
I watched as that same man fell off the side of the boat when he went to stand and found that he couldn’t.
That same man felt no pain as two policemen hauled him from the shallows and carried him up the beach. He felt no comfort when a green caique landed on his head, squawking in fear, cooing for comfort. And he felt nothing but cold-hearted fury as his body was dragged into Campbell’s surgery and placed upon the very same bed where Eleanor and he had slept in each other’s arms.
Eleanor.
Fuck…Eleanor.
My watching shattered.
I was no longer voyeur to a man who’d lost everything.
I was that man who’d lost everything.
I felt the pain.
I lived the misery.
Yet…everything was distant.
Muted.
Sound far away.
Sensation dulled by the cape of absolute rage.
Fury.
Motherfucking fury.
I didn’t care about the pats of concern or worried questioning.
I didn’t speak a goddamn word as police hovered like gnats and Campbell came bowling from other patient rooms.
His white coat held streaks of crimson.
Blood.
Jealousy’s blood.
The metallic life force woke me up a little more, slicing through my fury-fugue. Not entirely. Not completely. Just enough to remember how to speak, how to function, how to be a man instead of a singular emotion.
“Is she alive?” I croaked.
The police began jabbering in Indonesian, one moving close to begin his interrogation. “Mr. Sinclair, we need to know—”
“Leave.” I bared my teeth. “Leave this surgery. Leave my islands. You’re too fucking late.”
“We weren’t too late. We saved your life.”
“You let my life fly fucking away.” I quaked on the bed, the frame creaking under my soaking, furious weight. Little plops of seawater splashed on the tile, ruining the sterile environment, unwilling to relinquish me just yet.
The ocean understood me.
It was liquid in its power. It filled my veins with briny fury.
“Go!” I snarled.
“But we really must insist—”
“GO! Your questions are worthless.”
“There is a dead man with a gunshot to his abdomen and yourself who, according to requests for our help, have been dealing with a coup—”
“A coup that you’re too late to stop.” I dropped all my guards. I stopped pretending to be tame. I revealed the nastiness, the malice, the manslaughter I wanted to reap. “Get the fuck off my island! I won’t ask again.”