AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He stopped level with the box and held out his hands. They dripped water and his hair and clothes were wet too. “I come in peace.”
“Sure you fucking do.” My words shook, and my heart beat hard enough to make me worry it’d explode any second.
“That’s sure you fucking do, Sir.”
“Not anymore.” I resisted the need to wipe my face. Sweat had prickled up on my brow, probably due to my stomach turning into a block of ice. When nervous, confuse your inner thermostat. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
How was I going to do this? He’d grab me still. Were there handcuffs that fi –
“Before I will do that, let me tell you something important. A story.”
A what? “A story?” When I hesitated, he sat on the box.
“See. I’m no threat to you. Besides, I don’t think you know much about guns, do you?”
Was he trying to decide if I could shoot? “I can pull this trigger fine. I didn’t say sit, I said turn.”
His monotone delivery continued. “If you shoot me and kill me how will you get off this island? The sat phone is locked away. You going to wait for Glass and shoot him too? Let me talk then you can think about these orders again? Maybe I’ll cooperate?”
His logic was impeccable. Bastard. He was setting a trap here, but what was it?
“Talk. Two minutes.”
He shifted his feet, rested his forearms on his thighs. “I remember, meisie, how much you like what I do to you.” His eyes narrowed. “Last chance to give me the rifle without fuss. I’ll only punish you a little.”
My grip crunched in enough to strangle the rifle, if it were alive. “One minute forty.” Pity I had no watch.
“Suit yourself. I wanted to tell you who I met on the beach just now. An old fisherman, drunk, lost. He ended up here by accident. Was a nice guy with a boy of his own. His son has a baby coming too.”
He went on with more detail about his talk with the fisherman. Now and then, as he spoke, he would study the rifle in my hands then look away, then stare at it again. It made me think he respected what a bullet could do. But then he stopped looking and I agonized that it wasn’t loaded at all. Damn him. He’d been in combat and been fired on many times. Were there bullets in this thing or did he scorn the threat of me with a loaded gun?
I frowned. And why was he saying this? Was his new friend sneaking up on me? The tension of wondering if there was someone there, about to jump me, became a compulsion. I did a quick scan behind me then whipped my head back around to check Pieter. He hadn’t moved. Thank god. My heart stuttered back to life and he smiled at me.
“So?”
“So he told me his life story. I told him some of mine. He’d found a bit of paper on the beach, from your resume. It had your picture on it and I was worried he might have read your name. He said he could only read a little English. Then he went on to tell me he saw what I did to you last night.”
That...I recalled, all the pain, all the climaxes Pieter had forced from me. In his strange way, he cherished me, yet here I was ready to shoot him. Why? Was what I was doing right? If it wasn’t... An unwelcome tear rolled down my face.
Fuck it. I was right. I must be.
Except I sort of, kind of, loved some of him. How was that possible?
The rifle seemed heavier every second. Where was this heading? “And? Sixty seconds left.”
Only I was the one dreading the end of my countdown...and I had no clue why. Just something about how he regarded me. As if being held down and hurt a million times while he fucked me into nirvana wasn’t going to have psychological impact. Be strong.
“Not giving me the gun?”
“Fuck off.”
“I don’t think so. He gave me this big speech about being good in this lifetime, which I agreed with. He’s right about what is morally correct. I agreed that what I’m doing to you is wrong.”
Stunned, I rearranged my fingers on the rifle. Was he saying he was going to let me go? Did I dare ask him that? My vocal cords wouldn’t function for all of half a minute. If I never said it, I’d never hear him say no.
“Are you...are you saying you’re going to free me?”
He nodded, looking sadly at the ground between my feet.
