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“I can swim fine.” I coughed and spat water. “Leave me alone. Where’s Zana? Santana and I aren’t going anywhere until we know she’s okay.”
There was a pause, Conor clearly calculating something, and then he seemed to sigh and make up his mind.
“Zana…” he called. “Zana, come out. Apparently, Lyla’s going to spend all day in the sea unless she sees you.”
There was another movement behind the windows of the water villa, and then the pane slid slowly back, and Zana stepped out onto the veranda.
I gasped, so hard I nearly swallowed seawater again, and had to cough and choke.
Zana had a black eye. A very spectacular one that bloomed halfway down the side of her face. Someone had hit her. Very hard.
From the beach, I heard Santana’s gasp too, a few moments after mine, as she made out what I’d been able to see immediately.
“Get back here!” she called to me. “Lyla, get back to the beach. Now. And Zana, come here.”
But Zana was shaking her head. I stayed, treading water, keeping a wary distance between myself and Conor.
“She’s fine,” Conor called. “Aren’t you, Zana? She just slipped on the jetty last night, hit her face.”
But it didn’t look like a cut from falling. It looked like a punch, from a man’s fist. And from the way she was clutching her dressing gown around herself, I was pretty sure it wasn’t the only bruise.
This was the price Zana had paid for siding with us yesterday, for helping us source the coconuts, and for lighting the bonfire.
“Lyla!” Santana barked, furious with anxiety. “Get back here, now.”
I hesitated. My instinct was to go to Zana, check she was okay, but there wasn’t much I could do, treading water mid-ocean with Conor beside me. I certainly couldn’t pull myself up onto the jetty. It was too high above the waterline, and I was too weak from dehydration.
“Zana,” Santana was calling. “Zana, come over to the mainland. Tell us what happened.”
“I told you what happened,” Conor’s voice was flat, hard, as cold as his extraordinary pale-gray eyes. “She slipped. Didn’t you, Zana?”
Zana nodded, tremulously, and then she turned and disappeared into the water villa. I trod water, staring after her for a while, and then, realizing there was nothing more I could do, I turned and swam back to the shore, feeling Conor’s eyes boring into my back with every stroke.
SANTANA AND I arrived back at Forest Retreat hot, thirsty and very angry, to find Angel hacking at a green coconut. She looked up as we came into the clearing, and her face fell.
“Where is the water?”
“We didn’t get it.” I flopped onto the sand beside her. The adrenaline of the encounter with Conor was wearing off, and I felt sick and dizzy. “We didn’t get a chance even to discuss it.”
I lay back, feeling my pulse pound in my throat, while Santana filled Angel in on what had happened.
As I could have predicted, she exploded, throwing down the coconut and jumping up to pace the clearing.
“And you still tell me we shouldn’t kill him?” she demanded to me. I shut my eyes, feeling the saltwater stinging at my corneas. The sight of Zana’s bruised, battered face floated in front of my eyes. I didn’t know anymore.
“I have maybe two days left of insulin in my pump,” Santana said softly. “And whatever I can scrounge from that vial, and after that I’m pretty sure he’s going to let me die. You said it yourself, Lyla. He doesn’t want us to survive. He can’t afford us to go public about what he’s done.”
“So what do we do?” I sat up, ran my hands through my salt-stiffened hair. It felt like we weren’t playing at survival anymore. It felt like this was really it. Him or us. But maybe Conor had known that from the very beginning. “Because I can’t kill someone in cold blood, Santa. I can’t. Maybe in self-defense, but—”
“This is self-defense,” Angel broke in angrily. She was over on the far side of the clearing, and her eyes were fierce. She looked like an avenging angel, the kind with a flaming sword. But she had only a piece of bamboo she was slashing at the undergrowth with. Slash. Slash. “It is him or us, Lyla.” Slash. “Stop kidding yourself.” Slash. “He has been in this to win, from day one. It has just taken the rest of us longer to understand the rules of his game.”
“So what are you proposing?” I snapped. “Bludgeon him to death with a piece of bamboo? Drown him, like he did Dan?”
“I don’t know,” Angel said. She hit bad-temperedly at the undergrowth again, and this time there was a sudden commotion in the leaves. Angel jumped back, and we all saw a big brown snake rear up from its nest. For a minute it looked like it was poised to strike, and Angel gave a little shriek. And then it slithered away, into the forest, with shocking speed.
Angel had her hand pressed to her chest. She looked pale, and there was a clammy prickle of sweat on her upper lip.
“Grâce à Dieu. Do you think it was poison?”
