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“It’s what you hope?” Santana looked up. Her eyes were red with unshed tears.
“It’s what I hope because the alternative is worse.” The problem was, it was also more plausible. I didn’t think Joel was the type to go hang out in the jungle with the snakes.
“What are you saying?” Santana looked taken aback. “Are you saying Joel’s gone over to Conor’s side?”
I shook my head. Though I didn’t want to say it aloud, the truth was, Joel had already been on Conor’s side, we just hadn’t realized it. But that wasn’t what I’d meant.
“The alternative is… Joel didn’t want to believe what I was suggesting. Didn’t want to believe that the man he’d put his trust in had murdered someone in cold blood. The alternative is, he went to confront Conor. And Conor killed him, too.”
There was a long, long silence. Three pairs of eyes turned to the water villa. And then we saw the door crack open, and Conor begin to walk across the jetty.
I stood up, off the sand. My heart was pounding.
Conor had killed Dan, I was sure of that. And it seemed increasingly likely with every moment that Joel didn’t appear that he’d killed Joel too.
Which meant, we were on an island with a murderer. A murderer who was viciously strong and who, increasingly, appeared to be without a conscience. The question was, what should we do about it? We had less than five minutes to decide.
Santana and Angel were clearly going through the same thought process. As Conor began to pick his way across the planks, Santana turned to us, her eyes wide and panicked.
“What are we going to do? Should we say something?”
“Dieu.” Angel spat the word out like a curse. “As if this situation could not get worse. No, we should not say anything. The man is a psychopath. Do you want him to kill us too?”
“But we have to get back my insulin! How can we do that without confronting him about Dan? About Joel?”
“You think if the man stole your insulin and murdered your boyfriend he will give it back upon request?” Angel demanded. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my ears, shut out their bickering while I tried to think. Because the truth was, it wasn’t bickering. This was a life-or-death decision, and Conor was almost at the beach.
“How many days’ insulin do you have?” I asked Santana. “Here, I mean—not counting the vials Conor’s got.”
Santana blinked.
“Fuck. I don’t know. Two, maybe three in my pump. Maybe five days in the vial you found. But I don’t know if it’s usable—it could have got seawater in it.”
“Look”—I made a rapid decision—“let’s not burn any bridges now. If we say something we can’t take back… that might not end well.” Conor was on the sand. I was speaking quickly now, my voice low. “We have to make him want to give back the insulin. We have to make it easy for him. If we tie him having the insulin to an accusation that he murdered Dan and Joel… do you see what I’m saying? He’ll never be able to admit that he has it. We need to find a way of getting the insulin back that lets him maintain plausible deniability.”
“Okay,” Santana said, but her face was pale, and I wasn’t sure she was convinced by my argument. “So… we ask where Joel is?”
“Yes. We stick to facts. We ask where Joel is and we ask—”
But Conor was almost up to the group, and now I realized something else. He wasn’t carrying the water.
“Hi, Conor,” I said as he approached. He smiled, pleasantly enough, and I saw that his lips weren’t dry and chapped like the rest of us, but full and moist.
“Good morning, ladies. Where’s Joel?”
“We were just about to ask you that.” I tried to keep my voice even—anxious, but not overly so. “He left the villa last night. Did he come to see you?”
“No.” Conor was either truly concerned or doing a very good acting job. He looked genuinely surprised and more than a little alarmed. “What time did he leave?”
“Midnight, maybe? We haven’t seen him since.”
“Well, I’m afraid I know what you do.” Conor spread his hands. “Nothing.”
“Well, now that we agree on that.” Angel’s voice was full of a contempt she wasn’t bothering to hide. “Perhaps we could have our water?”
“Ah.” Conor put his hands behind his back, linking his fingers and stretching so that his joints clicked, and the powerful muscles in his shoulders bunched. “Well, yes. There’s a problem.”
“A problem?” Angel’s voice could have taken the nonstick off a pan. The rolled r in problem sounded like a tiger with its temper barely under control. “There is a problem?”
