“What does that even mean?” Carly said.
“You know, that movie? Brokeback Mountain?”
Carly and Lara exchanged a confused look.
“You know what he’s talking about?” Carly asked.
“Not a clue,” Lara said.
“Christ, how old are you two?” Danny grunted.
She barely slept all night. The queen-size mattress felt too big without Will, and she kept turning over on her side to look across the bed, expecting him to be there. His presence was always such a soothing reminder that everything was fine, that if Will was sleeping soundly, it had to be safe for her to do the same.
She couldn’t count on that tonight.
Instead, she lay awake, staring at the patio window. There was a nightlight in one corner, but most of the room was dark and she only had her conflicted thoughts to keep her company. It was cool outside, and she pulled the blankets up to her chest.
Will they fight?
Yes, they would fight. Brody and West were fighters. She knew that the second she laid eyes on them. The same trait that made them so valuable out there was what would make them a problem on the island. They were aggressive, daring, and most of all, willing to cross lines in order to get what they wanted.
Even so, she couldn’t completely fight back the feeling of guilt about what she was about to do to them when the sun came up. Brody and West had saved the others. Bonnie admitted as much, regardless of what they may or may not have done to other survivors…
I can’t risk it. If they did kill those other people…
I just can’t risk it. Not with Elise and Vera, and the others…
She turned over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Dark patches of shadow danced above her, mocking her.
I can’t risk it…
There was no decision here. There was only the one choice in front of her. It was obvious.
Wasn’t it?
She told herself her experiences with the Sunday brothers had nothing to do with this. No, she wasn’t punishing West and Brody because of what the Sundays had done to her all those months ago…
When her mind slipped — and it did, every now and then — she found herself reliving the days inside that cabin hidden in the woods. The Sundays. Life with the Sundays. They had kept her chained to the floor, and she could still smell the desperation, along with the filthy dress they forced her to wear because she wasn’t deserving of decent clothing. She could still feel the cold, merciless bite of the metal collar around her ankle…
May you forever burn in hell, John Sunday. You and your brothers.
The gunshot woke her up. It split the calm, serene night air like lightning, shooting across the island and through every room and hallway of the hotel.
Lara was on her feet before the gunshot even finished its echo. She snatched up her Glock from the nightstand and scanned the room to make sure there was no one inside. She calmed her breathing, put the gun back down, and grabbed her pants and shirt and pulled them on, then spent more precious seconds struggling to shove her feet into socks and sneakers.
Footsteps raced across her door, then Danny’s voice: “Lara!”
“I’m coming!” she shouted back.
The footsteps faded as Danny raced up the hallway. She listened to the direction he was heading.
North.
That meant the back of the building, which meant—
The Tower.
Then two more gunshots, this time coming in quick succession.
Shotguns.
Lara glanced at her alarm clock: 2:14 a.m.
Blaine.
Maddie had the night shift in the Tower, but Blaine would have already relieved her at midnight. He would be there now.
Lara threw her gun belt around her waist, slipped the Glock into the holster, then snatched up the Benelli M4 shotgun from the corner and ran for the door.
Carly was in the hallway in pajamas and a cotton T-shirt, standing just outside the girls’ room with a Glock in her right hand. “Danny just went.”
“Stay with the girls!” she shouted, and ran up Hallway A, following in Danny’s footsteps.
She burst out of the hotel’s back door, the cool air sending a thrill through her body. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline.
She ran as fast as she could, making a straight line for the Tower.
She was halfway there when she saw the door into the lighthouse had been thrown open, bright lights spilling out across the grass. She caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked up at the windows on the second and third floor, glimpsed movement along the second floor, just before Danny appeared in one of the openings.
He was scanning the hotel grounds when he spotted her. “Lara! Get down!”
“What?” she got out, just before a shot shattered the night air around her. She felt something fast zip past her head.
She threw herself to the ground so awkwardly that she lost the shotgun halfway down. It landed in the grass a few feet from her. Lara scrambled forward, snatching it back up and turning toward where she thought the shot had come from.
She heard two shots coming from behind her and looked back at Danny, who was firing from the second-floor window with his M4A1. She tried to follow where he was shooting, but even with the bright LED lights all around them, there were still too many patches of darkness where anyone could be hiding.
Lara scrambled to her feet and raced toward the Tower, even as Danny fired two more shots. The hidden shooter answered Danny’s shots with two of his own, and chunks of the Tower’s second-floor window — where Danny was standing — filled the air.
Danny stepped back a bit, but undeterred, kept returning fire.
When she was almost at the Tower, she stopped short at the sight of blood on the grass outside the door. There was more blood inside, a jagged line running along the floor and continued up the spiral staircase. She darted inside then hurried up the steps, listening to Danny shooting from above her.
She stuck her head carefully through the second-floor opening. Danny was still at the window, peering out with his rifle. “Danny, what’s happening?”
“Third floor, Lara,” Danny said. “Blaine’s hurt.”
She climbed up onto the floor, then hurried over to the second set of cast iron staircases.
“Watch for the blood,” Danny added, just as a shot dislodged a section of the window frame above his head. Danny took another step backward, before returning fire.
“Whose blood?” Lara asked.
“I don’t know, a lot of bleeding going on up there.” Danny fired again. “I have him pinned down behind one of the palm trees.”
“Who’s out there?”
“One of the cowboys. West. I think.”
“You think?”
“Hard to tell who’s up there with Blaine.”
“Danny, what—”
“Upstairs, Lara,” he said, cutting her off. “Blaine’s kinda bleeding to death.”
Lara hurried up the staircase, almost slipping on the fresh blood that covered the steps. She grabbed on to the railing to keep her balance, and pushed on toward the opening.
When she stepped up onto the third floor, she was greeted by another thick pool of blood right away. It was coming from a body. Brody. Or what was left of Brody. A shotgun blast had taken his head almost clean off, spraying chunks of it against the wall. A knife lay nearby, very close to his open hand. It looked like one of the knives from the hotel’s kitchen.
Blaine sat on the floor across from Brody’s lifeless body. There was another knife sticking out of Blaine’s left side, and he was pressing his hand over the wound, his Remington shotgun resting in his lap. Three spent shotgun shells formed a kind of semicircle around him.