“I don’t believe you.”
“Have I lied to you before, Will?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m not lying to you now,” she continued. “Help us put an end to this ridiculous troublemaking. I know you want to. You’re tired. Lara’s tired. Danny, Carly… They’re all tired. Isn’t that why you fell for Song Island so easily? Even you and Danny. You wanted what it promised so badly, you couldn’t wait to give in.”
What the hell is happening on Song Island?
“Aren’t you tired of the constant fear, the constant running?” she asked, moving closer to him, the heat of her breath against his skin. “It can all end. It will anyway. But this way, it’ll be your choice. And you’ll have Lara. And Danny will have Carly. You’re saving them from the misery. Don’t you want to save them, Will?”
“What’s happening on Song Island?” he asked.
She smiled. “You’ll see. Just know this. I’m coming for you, Will. I’m coming for you…”
The fast boat was now almost right next to him, flying by so fast and so close the waves rose into the air a good four meters. Will braced himself as the water came crashing down right on top of him with the force of a Mack truck.
He woke up to the sight of Josh, eyes closed and right hand wound back like he was preparing to deliver the mother of all curveballs. As the kid’s hand came down, Will grabbed his wrist and held it in the air.
Josh’s eyes snapped open in shock.
“Okay, I’m up,” Will said.
“Oh, God, please don’t kill me,” Josh said, and stumbled back when Will let go of his hand.
Will sat up on a hard concrete floor in his boxers. A pair of zip ties lay at his feet, the straps slit in half. His head was spinning, but he managed to swim through the thick mud to look around him at a large, unfinished room. Lara, Danny, and the others lay scattered around him. Lara lay on her side, wearing his T-shirt. Danny snored lightly on his side as a woman kneeled next to him, lightly tapping his cheek. There were more recently cut zip ties on the floor.
The woman was saying over and over, “Wake up. Danny, wake up,” to no real effect. Danny continued to snore. When the woman looked over her shoulder, Will saw that it was Sarah. The single mother with the little girl. The voice on the broadcast.
“What’s going on, Josh?” Will asked.
Josh gathered himself, and Will saw he was wearing his boxers, too. “You want the long story or the short story?”
“Get on with it,” Will said impatiently.
Josh nodded and told him everything. Waking up while he was being dragged through the hallway by Tom. Escaping from his bindings with, of all things, a nail. Sarah deciding to help. Rohypnol in their wineglasses during dinner. The true purpose of the island.
“It’s not like you have much choice, Will,” Kate had said in his dream. “When you wake up from this, you’ll realize that Song Island isn’t the sanctuary you thought it was. Far from it, in fact.”
He crouched next to Lara and felt her pulse. It was steady, and she looked blissfully asleep. He brushed at a strand of blonde hair and watched her for a brief moment before standing up. His legs were wobbly, and it took a while to get blood circulating to all the correct parts.
Will said, “Tom and the others. Where are they now?”
“Tom’s in the Tower,” Sarah said. “The others are asleep. It was a lot of work, getting you guys here. I guess they’re tired.”
Will nodded. He had plenty of choice words for Sarah, but he didn’t say any of them at the moment. She was here, helping them. For now, that made her an ally. He would circle back to the topic when this was all over. Right now, he had a hard time just staying upright.
“Rohypnol?” he said.
“Not in its pure form,” Sarah said. “I made some changes to it.”
She’s done this before.
“You’re a chemist?” he asked.
“I worked at a pharmacy.”
He nodded. He would circle back to that one later, too. “Our clothes?”
“There’s a room we’ve been using for storage at the very back of the hotel. Berg is going over your stuff now, looking for valuables or something we can use. Tom has your weapons.”
They’ve definitely done this before.
“Tom’s alone in the Tower?”
“Yeah. I don’t know where he keeps the weapons, though.”
“There are three floors,” Josh said. “First floor, with a staircase that goes up to the second floor, in the middle. Then a final third floor.”
“What about a basement?” Will asked.
“I saw a door in the first floor. Could have been it.”
Will nodded, absorbing all the information as best he could through a plume of sleep that clung persistently. He looked over at Danny, asleep on the hard concrete floor. “Hit him harder.”
“What if…” she started.
“He’s drugged. You need to hit him harder, or he’s never going to wake up.”
“Okay,” she said, but she sounded unconvinced. Or maybe she was just afraid.
“I need that knife,” Will said, and picked up a knife someone had laid down on the floor nearby. “Stay here and wake the adults up. But not the girls. It’s better if they stay asleep through this.” He sighed, blinked a couple of times, then added, “I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?” Josh asked, sounding alarmed.
“To get some clothes and then our weapons. Tell Danny where I’m going and what’s happened as soon as he wakes up. And both of you, stay here until I come back. Don’t wander out of this room.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
“I’ll come back.”
“Okay,” Josh said, but like Sarah, he didn’t sound completely convinced.
Will couldn’t be bothered with their reluctance right now. He felt naked without his weapons, and wearing nothing but his boxers didn’t help. He walked across the big room and pushed through the door and into the dimly lit hallway. He found that if he kept moving, the fog cleared up faster.
The lights were working at half their normal brightness, and Will picked his way up the hallway, stepping around anything suspicious lurking on the floor. He listened for the slightest noise, hearing only silence around him. Of course Karen and Marcus were asleep. Why not? They had done this before.
Will thought back to the dream. To Kate. What had she said to him, with that beaming, proud smile of hers?
“I was always good at selling dreams to desperate people.”
She had sold them the dream that was Song Island. Not just them, but other people before them. How many other victims? How many times had Sarah spiked the wine during a feast of fish and friendly chatter and talks about what they used to do back in the old days?
It was all so damn perfect. The island. The food. The AC. The working indoor plumbing. He had done his best to stay wary, to look for the hidden troubles, but in the end, even he had been suckered in. He and Danny both.
Fuck.
Will forced himself to keep moving, push aside his failure. It hung over him like a black cloud, fouling up his mood. At least he was still alive. So there was that. And Lara, too, along with the others. He had failed them, but it hadn’t cost them. Yet. That could change in a heartbeat, unless he made sure it didn’t.
As he kept moving through the hallway, he thought about something else Kate had said to him in the dream. It was part of her sales pitch, and it stuck with him:
“Because Texas isn’t the only place where people like you are still fighting.”