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“Angel,” I whispered. “Angel, we’re going out. Try—” I stopped. I’d been going to say, try not to fall asleep, but she was already snoring. “Try to stay safe,” I said instead. “Okay?”
“Shh…” Angel said. Her voice was slurred and she shrugged her shoulder, trying to shake off my hand. “Je dors.”
I sighed. At least she was still able to talk. That seemed like a good sign. I just had to hope she wouldn’t slip any deeper.
“Come on,” Santana said. “I think we should get going. If Conor is drugged, then we don’t know how long it’ll last. And the sooner we get this over, the sooner we can get back to Angel.”
I nodded, and we climbed out of the bathroom window and made our way into the forest.
CHAPTER 31
THE WIND WAS picking up as we made our way through the trees and down to the beach, and as we walked slowly along the pebbled path, the undergrowth whipping back and forth in the breeze, I had a sharp flashback to the night of the storm, the night I had run out to the radio shack to try to call for help. If only someone had picked up then. If only I had caught the boat before it went out of radio range. How different everything might have been.
Santana was holding the syringe full of insulin clenched in her fist. She had filled it to the brim before we left, sucking up every drop of what was left in the vial.
“Do you think it’ll still work?” I asked, watching her tap the syringe gently, pressing out the air. “I mean, the vial was open. It’s been in the sea.”
Santana just shook her head.
“I don’t know. I just know we have no other option.”
Now, I watched her as we walked, side by side through the swaying trees. She looked like a different woman to the one who had come here just a few weeks ago. Her beautiful hair was matted and ragged where her extensions had been pulled out. Her skin was burnt and peeling, and she had lost more weight than seemed possible in the short time we’d been here—although I suspected most of it was water. Even her face was different, her cheekbones sharper, her eye sockets deeper, her lips cracked—but most of all, it was her expression that was changed. Gone was the lazy, drawling amusement of the girl I had met. Now, all I could see was a grim determination to survive at all costs.
“You okay?” she asked as we rounded the corner of the path and came out onto the beach. She looked at me curiously. “Are you having second thoughts?”
I shook my head. These weren’t second thoughts, they were first thoughts. I had never wanted this plan, had never wanted it to come to this. But I’d accepted that it was Santana’s right to do this, and if it was Santana or Conor, I was going to choose to protect Santana every time.
“No, no second thoughts,” I said. “You have to do this. I understand. I just wish…”
I trailed off. Santana nodded. She didn’t need to finish my sentence. We both knew what I was thinking. I wished it hadn’t come to this. I wished that radio call had gone through. I wished we’d never come to this island, any of us.
And yet, if we hadn’t…
Maybe this was how it was meant to be. Maybe this was the only way it could have ended.
We had reached the jetty now, and I watched as Santana set one foot gingerly onto the planking.
“Christ, this is rickety,” she whispered, and I realized that she’d never been out to the water villa since that first day. I’d gone out a couple of times, and Angel at least once, but Santana, never.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. The thought was turning uneasily in my mind—what if Santana couldn’t make it across? What if I ended up having to administer the insulin? Could I do it? Could I kill someone in cold blood?
But Santana only nodded grimly, and stepped onto the next board.
The waves were lapping against the jetty, not as fiercely as the night of the storm, but with an energy that was closer to it than anything we’d experienced since, and when I set my own foot onto the walkway, I felt the same trepidation I’d seen in Santana’s face. The planks were as unstable as they had been the day I went out to confront Conor, and now they were wet with salt spray as well, the waves just licking up to splash the planks with spume.
Ahead of me I could see Santana edging from plank to plank, almost crouching against the wind, trying to keep her center of gravity low, and I followed her example, bending my knees and shading my eyes against the spray. The one advantage to this weather was that if Conor wasn’t drugged, it would make it harder for him to hear us coming. Our footsteps on the jetty and the sound of the door sliding open would be drowned under the splash of the waves.
When I finally set foot on the veranda, I realized that my teeth were clenched with concentration, and I had to make a conscious effort to breathe and shake out the tension that was locking my shoulders and jaw. Santana caught my eyes and pointed at the door, then did a little thumbs-up, her expression interrogative. The meaning was clear—ready?
I nodded, took a deep breath, and then we walked together towards the Ever After Villa.
Through the big glass window, I could just about make out Zana sprawled on the bed, and beside her Conor, apparently dead to the world. Which one of them was drugged, if either, was impossible to tell. There was a coconut propped in the corner of the room, but there was no way of knowing if it was empty or full, or even the one that Santana had given Conor.
Up against the far side of the room I could see the stacks and stacks of water bottles—and beside it the crushed empties. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but the number of empty containers looked much higher than I thought it should have. We were down to less than one bottle a day, if everyone stuck to their rations, but the number missing looked much higher than that.
On the other side was the food, a much smaller pile, mostly boxes and tins.
And in the corner… I looked automatically up at the place where the camera should have been and let out a shuddering breath.
