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“I take it—” I said, and then realized my throat was dry as dust and my voice barely audible. I coughed, tried to moisten my lips, and tried again. “I take it Dan’s not back?”
Santana’s head had whipped around at the sound of my cough, but at the sight of me she seemed to deflate. Now she shook her head.
“No.” Her voice was as croaky as mine. “I’ve gone over all the accessible parts of the island—the staff quarters, the empty villas, the cabana—nothing. I’m really worried, Lyla. What if something’s happened to him?”
I bit my lip. What I wanted to say was that if something had happened to him, he was probably fucked. But then, that increasingly seeming like it was true for all of us—the only question was how fast.
“Good morning,” we heard from behind us, and both Santana and I turned to see Angel standing there, stretching to the sky. She looked improbably coiffed, her hair wrapped up in a headscarf that gave her face the look of a queen: all sculpted cheekbones and tilted eyes.
“Angel. How did you sleep?”
“Okay. It was good to have company.” Her face was somber. “Have you heard from Dan?”
Santana shook her head. There were tears brimming at the corners of her eyes, and I thought perhaps she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“I’m really scared,” she said at last. “Wh-what if he went after Conor and something happened?”
“I really don’t think he did, Santa.” I put my hand on her arm. “I went out there last night, and he looked genuinely like he’d been asleep.”
“Did you ask him about the insulin?” Santana asked, and I shook my head.
“No, I thought about it—but I didn’t want to start something in the middle of the night while we were still looking for Dan.”
“But also…” Angel said, and then stopped.
“But also?” I prompted.
“But also… well, I have been thinking about the insulin. It was here, yes? In the villa?”
Santana nodded.
“If Lyla is right and the person who took the insulin was also the person who left open the villa door, evidently it must have been taken after breakfast and before supper. Correct?”
I looked at Santana and we both nodded. I wasn’t quite sure where Angel was going with this. But Angel spread her hands, a look of pantomime astonishment on her face that we were being so stupid.
“Mais, dis donc, it could not have been Conor. He was on the beach all day, no? We would have seen him from the place where we were building the bonfire.”
I frowned. My brain felt like it was running at half speed—a mixture of lack of sleep and dehydration, I suspected, but I forced myself to think back to the day before—and from what I could recall, Angel was right. Angel, Santana, and I had been up on the headland all day, watching the sea, and we would have seen Conor if he’d headed into the forest. Santana was frowning too.
“I… I’m trying to remember but… look, he must have gone somewhere. He must have taken a piss or something, surely? Was he really in the water all day?”
“He went into the water villa,” Angel said. Her voice was patient as if she was speaking to small but stupid children. “Two times. But he did not go into the forest. I would have noticed. I do not trust that man. I keep my eye upon him.” She wisely tapped at the corner of her eye, and then folded her arms, as if that proved her point.
“You’re right,” I said slowly. “As far as it goes. But it depends if I’m right about the door. It might be unconnected. What if he took it yesterday?”
“Before Dan argued with him about the water?” Angel was looking skeptical, but Santana was shaking her head.
“No, not possible. I refilled my pump yesterday morning, straight after breakfast. All the vials were there then. It must have been taken some time after we went up to the headland to build the bonfire. And Conor was already fishing by the time we got there.” Angel opened her mouth to speak, but Santana was warming to her theme, “But also, and this is maybe more to the point, how would Conor have known it was there? He’s never been in our villa as far as I know—was anything else moved, Lyla?”
I shrugged.
“Not that I could see. It didn’t look like any of our bags had been searched.”
“Right. So, whoever took it, went straight for the insulin. Like they knew where it was.”
There was a sudden, ugly silence, and our eyes, all of them, turned to Joel’s sleeping form, sprawled out across his mattress, as if drawn by magnets.
“No,” Santana whispered. “No. He wouldn’t.”
