Power Games (37 page)

She turned and buried her face in Jacob’s chest. ‘She stole from me!’ Tawny blubbed. ‘She’s a thief!’

Celeste was shaking. She blotted her lip on the back of her hand.

‘We’re not ourselves,’ said Angela. ‘None of us are.’

‘I am!’ Tawny wailed. She clutched Jacob’s bulk like it was a rock in a stormy sea. ‘I’m the same! I’m still the same as I always was!’

The affirmation didn’t come to Celeste immediately, rather it swam up slowly, set in motion by Tawny’s lavish protestations, the scorn the model had poured on her since the moment they had been introduced, deriding her at every opportunity and eclipsing her in the mighty shadow of her celebrity—and now in the claiming of Jacob, who had stepped up in her defence.

I’m not the same
, thought Celeste.

She was sick of it. She was sick of Carl pushing her and hitting her. She was sick of being told what to do. She was sick of being bullied. She was sick of being weak. She was sick of regretting. She was sick of being the one they all trampled over because she didn’t believe she was anything worth taking care of.

‘I’m glad I took it,’ she said.

The group stopped their squabbling.

‘I might be a thief, but do you know what you are, Tawny Lascelles? You’re vain, spoiled and selfish and I couldn’t care less what you think of me. I took your necklace because I wanted a piece of you. I wanted to be a tiny bit like you, just for a day. And do you know what? Now, I can’t think of anything worse. I don’t want to be you, and any woman who does needs their head examined. You might be pretty on the outside but you’re ugly in your soul. You make yourself feel good by making other people feel bad, and the sad thing is
you’ve been doing it for so long and you do it so well that you’ve forgotten how to stop. I’m not going to be the other person any more.’

She pushed past, knocking Tawny on the shoulder. The supermodel’s mouth was open.

‘Oh, and one more thing.’ Celeste stopped. She turned, and slapped Tawny clean across her cheek. ‘That’s for making me bleed.’

64

Day 21

M
orning was slow to arrive.

Eve didn’t want to remain at camp. Since Kevin’s attack on the shark, their behaviour had been raw and unpredictable, as if the pretence no longer needed to be upheld. The pretence of what: society? Humanity?

Days after the event, the beast’s scent still filled the air, a bitter reminder of their lost selves—and the new frontiers of their capability.

Angela would never let her go alone, so Eve hung back until the moment came when she could slip into the forest unnoticed. She would be back before dark.

And, with any luck, she would bring Mitch Corrigan with her.

It was a bold claim, she accepted, as she followed the pig run up the side of the mountain. Eve feared that to bring him back alive was no longer an option, but to bury him would put all their minds at peace. It might give the group what they needed, a sense of closure, of starting afresh. After last night, they needed it.

She hadn’t wanted to admit her anxieties when Kevin had
raised them, but she felt it too. She felt like someone was watching them.

Her legs dripped with sweat and her shirt was heavy. Her belly was swollen now, the navel distended. She stopped for breath, drinking thirstily.

When she reached the plateau, she looked out to the west. It was darker this side. The sea churned and the rocks were craggy and sharp. A thin line of sand snaked along the base of the cliffs and she was about to turn away and shout his name when something new registered: something she had not noticed before.

At the furthest reach was a cluster of caves. She had observed these during previous excursions, gouged out nubs whose innards were dark and dripping—but the biggest, an almost vertical slit in a face of hard grey rock, had eluded her until now.

The cave seemed to live and breathe. It seemed to stare back.

Eve lowered herself onto the beach, careful to hold the shoots and sprays that broke the descent. Down on the sand, the cave seemed bigger.

Leading into it was a trail of footprints.

Eve stopped. It was strange to see the mark of a person anywhere except at camp. Unease climbed in her stomach.

Corrigan? But another possibility surfaced.

The woman they had lost, the flight attendant. She had become magical and threatening in Eve’s mind, polished and smiling when they had boarded at Jakarta, then a terror-stamped mask when they had fallen from the skies. She was the dark shake of the trees, the whisper of the wind, the question mark they could not face.

Eve pulled herself together. She was no longer that frightened little girl, afraid of the dark and the monsters it could
bring. Her monster was locked up in jail. He was gone. He couldn’t hurt her again. There were no other monsters.

Closer to, she saw the prints were big, the size of a man’s, and couldn’t decide if this was a comfort or not. Their trajectory was unusual: they didn’t go direct into the mouth of the cave but, rather, seemed to step around it, changing direction.

If only Angela were with her. Angela would apply reason and sense, not let her imagination run away. It was a Silvers trait, Eve realised, and what had attracted her to Orlando in the first place. You just felt they knew how to handle things.

‘Corrigan?’ She stepped inside.

His name sounded weird in the dark, throwing itself back at her. She felt as if she were disturbing a creature that had been slumbering a thousand years.

The walls of the cave were damp and freezing. Water pooled at her feet. A crab scuttled over her toes and she put her hands in front of her to feel the way.

Something shifted in the dark. ‘Who’s there?’

No response. She had not come prepared—no light, no defence. Alone.

‘Who’s there?’ she echoed, staring into the chasm.

Again, something moved. Eve felt the wall behind her, fingers touching daylight, and stayed where she was. The shape came closer. She could sense its approach in the dark.

‘Corrigan, is that you …?’

But the sight that met her eyes was not Mitch Corrigan.

It was something else entirely.

All morning, Tawny refused to stir. She lay on her bunk, clutching the diamond chain around her neck as if it were the last vestige of a familiar world.

She thought of LA, of New York, of glamorous fashion galas and starry-eyed fans, of margaritas at Nobu and dancing
at the Barrio, of runway shows and make-up chairs, of sharing a penthouse with her croupier lover and screwing until dawn, of photographers who eyed her ravenously even though they saw dozens of models a week, because she, Tawny, was the ultimate.

She wanted her manager. She wanted her car and her Security. She wanted Minty and JP. She wanted her hairdresser.

Angela tried to rouse her, but she barked at her to get lost. Celeste attempted an olive branch, but Tawny blanked it. Why should she play nice?

That witch had stolen from her, humiliated her—and, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, she had seduced her man …

I don’t like you any more.

Tawny could spew when she remembered Jacob’s words.

No man had ever said that to her—as far back as she could recall, no man, married or divorced, single or attached, old or young or tall or short, had been able to resist her. And now Jacob had shunned her in favour of … of that
thieving cow
?

Tawny would not—could not—accept it. A long time ago, in a distant hospital bed, she had pledged that her days of being the victim were over.

She wasn’t about to start again now.

She would find a way to deal with Celeste Cavalieri.

No one crossed Tawny Lascelles and got away with it.

65

O
ver a week in the cave had left him ravaged and delirious. He was emaciated, his eyes sunken and his lips cracked. His ribcage strained. He was naked save for a pair of underpants, blotted now with sand and grit.

Eve went to touch him and he flinched out of reach. The Mitch Corrigan who glared back at her was part animal, part man. His skin was bleached from the darkness of his hideout. He hunched beneath the dripping arches.

‘Corrigan …’ She held out water. ‘I’m here to help.’

As her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she could make out the pit of his lair. Fish bones littered the sand; and the remains of a fire, chalky and black.

He regarded the liquid suspiciously.

‘Come with me,’ she urged. ‘We’ll look after you, Corrigan.’

He didn’t trust her. Why should he?

‘Get out.’ His voice was rusty, like a car engine spluttering to a start.

Eve held her hands up, to show she meant no harm. ‘Not unless you come with me.’

‘Never.’

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘I can’t stay anywhere.’

A flash of the old senator—on TV or at the White House, his pristine smile and the smooth cap of his hairpiece. All decorations had been stripped.

‘Come outside,’ she said. ‘Into the sun.’

He coughed, hacking and grisly. ‘No. They’re waiting.’

‘Who?’

‘They’re here.
I feel it.’

Eve took a chance. ‘I feel it too.’

His hands were shaking, the fingernails blackened and torn. ‘You lie.’

‘It’s with us,’ she said. ‘Something in the trees.’

‘No. Here.’

‘In the cave?’

‘In the sky.’

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘Me. And I’ve been waiting for them. I’ve seen their footprints.’

‘Those are your footprints.’

‘They weren’t the first time.’

Eve swallowed. ‘The first time?’

‘I saw them, on day one. From the mountain.’

Your eyes must have tricked you.

Eve wanted to say it but didn’t, partly because it would break his confidence and partly because she didn’t know if it was true. She hoped to God it was true.

‘If I come back, they’ll know where to find us.’

‘We’ve got a better chance together, haven’t we?’

He laughed. ‘You mock me, Eve Harley. Do you think I don’t know it was you who followed me to Italy? I know. You think you’re clever but you’re not. You all do, but you’re the ones in the dark.’

‘Corrigan …’

‘And now I’m here, so why don’t they take me?’

Without warning he ran past her, out onto the beach, imploring the empty sky.

‘
Take me, you bastards!
’ He punched the air; his arms aloft, pleading with such savage abandon that for a moment Eve half believed the dome was about to part, revealing a shaft of light through which Signor Rossetti’s bizarre creation sprang forth.

Nothing happened.

Corrigan buckled to his knees at the altar of his faith.

‘Put me out of my misery!
Take me!
’

Eve watched as the desperation of the last nine days, and all the days that had gone before, came pouring out. At last, unanswered, he wilted.

The storm passed. Eve came to him. This time he endured her touch. ‘Please come back,’ she said again.

Corrigan was defeated. ‘It’s too late.’

‘It’s never too late.’

He glanced at her. For the first time, his eyes were engaged. He regarded her differently, softly, almost human again.

‘You’re pregnant,’ he said, out of the blue.

‘Yes,’ Eve said, smiling. ‘I am.’

66

E
very bone in Noah’s body hurt. There was a shooting pain in his side. He hadn’t dreamed, nor had he been aware of time passing—just a big black gulf between then and now.

What was then?

What was now?

Where was he?

He opened his eyes and saw he was on a stretcher, the white cotton beneath him starched and clean. A basic arrangement, a square cabin, and other beds like his, rigged up to saline drips and sachets of liquid. Noah thought of war films he had seen. Ailing soldiers.

The throb in his head didn’t help, the kind of throb that made him conscious of the shape of his sockets and the dips and troughs of his skull: all that mechanical stuff he wasn’t supposed to think about. It was hot: inescapable heat that filled the nostrils and the ears, and he recognised the heat, sort of, at least the smell of it, dense and tropical with a shave of lime peel. He could hear the ocean. A band of sunlight eased through a crack and he tried to sit up but the sting in his side was too much.

He needed water.

A face hovered over his. The nurse smiled, and brought
a bottle to his lips. ‘Don’t move,’ she said in English. ‘Stay here.’

‘Where am I?’

He wasn’t sure if he asked it, if the words came out. They must have, because she replied: ‘You were hurt. We brought you back.’

A spread of crimson bloomed at his waist, staining the sheet, and he groaned, went to sit again but the pain forced him back. His knuckles were split and cracked. His lower lip was bust. The skin around his eye was shiny to touch, grape-smooth, and when he closed his other eye he could barely see at all.

He peeled back the sheet. The knife had gone deep. Surrounding a thick white compress was a livid purple welt, and the tail end of a trail of stitches.

‘How long have I been here?’

‘One week,’ said the nurse.

A week!
Despair crashed over him.

And then he remembered.

We can help each other
, the man had said,
I have a lead, let’s talk …

The man had introduced himself as a friend of Angela’s … How could Noah have been so careless?

He had wanted to believe it. A friend of Angela’s, someone to help: someone who trusted as strongly as he did that they lived. He remembered the liquor, sour and salty. His senses fading, his reactions slowing …

The fight.

Flashes of the brawl assailed him in bursts, beaten up and left for dead.

MOVIE STAR NOAH LAWSON FOUND SLAIN IN ISLAND PARADISE.

They would say it was his fault. Trying to play the hero.

Come on, come on, come on.
No time to waste.
Think!