Heart pounding, bladder bursting with the urgent need to pee, Marla pushed on up a steep bank of grass and over the top where she could finally see the lighthouse. No light from its windows, she was prepared for that. But neither could she see the little lights of the boats. Marla began to feel the creeping fear that she had merely conjured them, a mirage of boats to give her hope on this, surely the last night of her life. She felt stricken. The rocks on which the lighthouse made its home were deserted. She could hear the rusty door grating on its hinges in the wind. Her heart descended yet further. She glanced behind her, trying to ascertain the shape of her pursuer in the gloomy landscape. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The realization did nothing to calm her nerves. If anything, she’d prefer to see him, at least then she’d know where he was. Perhaps he’d taken some secret route around the woodland and was already moving into position to cut her off before she could retreat back under cover. Her clarifying thought returned and galvanized her. Vincent. If Fowler and his goons were responsible for shutting out the lights then it followed that Vincent would be in the firing line.
Clambering down the rocks and toward the lighthouse she looked up at the tower, monolith-like against the night sky. The rusty door banged shut, then open as she approached it, putting her nerves even more on edge. Up the steps and inside, avoiding the pool of stagnant water. Oh, but it was dark in there, standing trembling at the foot of the stairs too afraid to go up and too afraid to stand still.
A loud bang and a flash burst out from the darkness, causing Marla to shriek in surprise and crouch into a defensive position. Sparks and smoke from the service closet beneath the stairs. She tentatively peered inside, just to make doubly sure. An electrical fault, that was all. A further jolting, loud pop and a shower of sparks made her jump. It provided all the encouragement Marla needed to turn and ascend the stairs, her nerves in tatters.
The control room was eerily quiet and cold to the eye, swathed in a band of cool blue moonlight that reflected, frostlike, off every damp shiny surface in the room. Pietro’s body was nowhere to be seen, with only a dirty tangle of bedclothes suggesting he’d been there at all. She crossed the room, eyeing an upturned bucket curiously and following a water stain across the floor to where Vincent’s chair lay on its side. She righted the chair, an act of respect for the old man, and walked over to the pile of molding books and periodicals stacked nearest the little coffee stove. Vincent’s decaying library had been ransacked, that was for sure. Torn pages were scattered everywhere and broken-backed volumes had been left open where they had fallen, with some lying on their backs looking like fish out of water gasping for air. The mildew that covered the books was like lichen in a graveyard, a headstone for each of Vincent’s memories, each tome an epitaph for his stolen years in this island prison. A splash of vivid color caught her eye among the dull fusty books and Marla peered closer to find a pornographic magazine like the ones she’d seen in the basement of the Big House. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, strangely afraid that these pages might be part of Vincent’s collection. And yet, why not? An old man alone for all these years, he would surely miss physicality with a woman. Perhaps his jailers thought it a joke to slip this filth in with his crossword puzzles, eager to get a rise out of a widower whose eyes had seen too much tragedy to care for such lusts. No, something had been here and defiled Vincent’s little world, she felt sure of it. Those sickly smells from the basement and the attic of the house were here with her in the room, bringing with them a flavor of decay, of wrongdoing. She suddenly felt more afraid for Vincent than for herself. Had that awful monster of a man been here? Had these high windows played dead witness to the sound of an old man’s neck cracking like a twig? She buried the thought, kicking the pages of the vile magazine beneath a pile of sodden encyclopedias. Then, out the window, she caught sight of first one then many of the tiny little lights. They were still adrift on the ocean. She dashed over to the windows, moving along their circle until she had a better view toward the lights. They were heading east, around the headland. If they continued on their course, they would be heading toward the houses, toward the security buildings—and the jetty.
Chapter Thirty
“Get the goddamn floodlights off. How long does it take? Jesus! I told you they like to dock in near-freaking-darkness, the arc lamps play havoc with their skin…”
Fowler’s men got to it. All around him a frenzy of black fatigues. Guy ropes were tightened up and tied off, the deck washed down, barrels and other storage containers removed and placed where they should have been days ago. Of all the times for an official visit, they had to pick now. Now, dammit. Fowler stood, his neck muscles tensed so much that they looked about to snap at any given moment, looking out to sea and those little firefly lights. They were a portent, flags heralding a doom about to unfurl in his tight little world. The chief did not like inconveniences of this magnitude. An unannounced visit from these little boats, and the people they carried onboard was the largest inconvenience he could imagine. He barked more orders to his men, how many times did he have to tell them—all but the emergency lights, throat sore from all the shouting. A nasty headache was forming from a splinter of pain behind his left ear. He knew it would only grow more painful as the night went on. Good. He needed his pain sometimes to better focus on who, and what, was most deserving of his wrath. The American bitch had started all this and he grimaced at the very thought of her. Without her antics with the laptop and the security network those little lights wouldn’t even be there—bobbing their way closer to his little empire to peer into the dark corners of his oversights, his ineptitude. Yeah, it was the American girl’s fault all right. She’d be put to task for all she’d cost him. If not for her, the old man would still be poring over crossword puzzles and sipping that foul brew he dared call coffee, impotent and insignificant in his rat-infested tower. But no, he’d seen fit to turn on the fucking lights. Christ! Fowler was sure the pilots of those boats had seen them, idling towards the beam for a while like moths to a very big, ugly flame before resuming their collective course to the jetty. The old man would pay for this, but right now he had to focus on the task in hand.