I don’t want to return to the cottage. My personal anxiety will just make Lily worse. What I want to do is run across the island through the falling autumn leaves. But as I am not allowed to leave the compound unchaperoned for obvious reasons, I have to make do with Kyle’s lofty-ceilinged library and try to distract myself by reading. It’s the best I’ve got besides scurrying back to the cottage and downing five pills to get me through to November 1st.
The welcoming library is a rectangular room of warm wood and books stretching up to the ceiling. I select a book and settle into a green armchair by the window at the end of the room. It looks out on to Kyle’s mother’s rose garden and the Rhodes’ house, a mere two-dozen feet away. The sun has yet to rise over the roof of the Russian house and spill down upon the flowerbeds and grass paths. Gardeners in old jeans and thick jackets move between the roses, removing old buds and scattering wood chips around their bases, working in the cool of the morning.
I gaze across the garden at the lower windows of the Rhodes’ house, but gauzy curtains cover the nearest ones and veil the unlit interiors, so I turn my attention to the book I’ve picked – a children’s fantasy novel, something Kyle’s parents probably read to him when he was six or seven – and flick to the first page. It’s an easy distraction. The pressure in my chest subsides a fraction once I get to chapter two.
I pause only to use the bathroom and raid Kyle’s kitchen for lunch when the noonday sunlight floods the garden. The villa is silent and eerie. The team has yet to emerge from the locked bunker.
Pages turn. The sun crosses the strip of sky between the villa and the house and shadows creep across the garden. Halloween and Shade’s possible attack creeps closer. I reach the climax of the book, in which the heroine saves the hero, and try to prolong the final pages of resolution. I read the acknowledgements. I read the author bio. I flick to the front and read through the copyright clauses. I find the part where the hero admits at last in a roundabout way that he loves the heroine and re-read it twice.
Then I close the cover and sit there for a moment, looking at the pale blue cover with its hand-drawn protagonists, feeling any joy imparted by the book leach from my fingertips.
Night has fallen. The team came up from the bunker an hour ago but I didn’t bother to get up to ask about their meeting. What would they say? It’s under control, don’t worry, you’re safe. Yeah, I don’t need Dad’s line spun for me again. After eating dinner in the kitchen, four of them went upstairs to the bedrooms and one left via the external door closest to the Russian house. It’s been quiet ever since. The bunker is free. I could get a quick workout in, then shower and sleep and . . . and yeah, maybe not tonight.
I can guess it was Kyle who left, and where to. I know where I would be, if I was him. The lower floors of the Russian house are dark, but the top floor, the Rhodes’ floor, burns against the blackness.
My eyes sting. A lump forms in my throat. I want my mother. This morning’s fears resurge.
Blood splattered across the mirrors.
Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of this?
BANG.
They are memories, not hallucinations, but that doesn’t make them any better. With a grimace, I uncurl from the armchair, replace the book, and head to the cottage.
Hopefully Kyle’s security is better than Dad’s.
.
I pause on the bridge. Huh. Weird. The lights are off in the cottage. I suppose Claire and Lily wanted an early night, but usually they’d leave one on for me.
The pressure in my chest reaches up and closes off my throat. I’m overreacting, of course I am, but tell that to the adrenaline pouring through my arteries . . . This is the punching bag all over again.
Get it together, Lys.
Slowly, oh so slowly, I open the front door.
The living room is illuminated by the green Goo light flooding through the open garden doors. Everything is normal – Lily’s pile of drawings, my jacket left lying on the couch, the scent of baked apple pie – except for two things. The sliding door is open. And a man stands in the centre of the living room.
He turns to me. Shadows pool around his deep-set eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. Nonetheless, I recognise him and his ancient, stone-washed jeans.
He’s one of the gardeners from the rose garden.
He has an R2.
Aaaargh! You can’t just stop right there!