38. Jezebel

CHAPTER 38

JEZEBEL

S keleton Cay was roughly circular and a little over a mile across, although it felt much bigger when you were fighting your way through trees and bushes and vines. I’d have given my Porsche for a machete at that moment.

All I had was my dive knife, which was only four inches long, and Cole didn’t even have a knife because Jon had borrowed it out of his BCD pocket and “forgotten” to return it. I suspected he’d taken it on purpose. If there had been a problem on the dive, if we’d returned to the boat early, they didn’t want us fighting back. Guess they hadn’t even thought about my knife. But I was a woman. Therefore, I wasn’t a threat.

“Shoulda stayed on the sandbar,” Cole muttered, followed by a string of expletives as he got tangled in something spiky. Ever the gentleman, he’d insisted on going first. Despite the shortie wetsuits we were wearing, we were both covered in scrapes and scratches, and mosquitoes trailed us like tiny drones.

“At least we have water here.”

When Priest sent me on my first jungle survival course with Tulsa, Dusk, and Dice, I’d spent the entire trip cursing his name, but now I was grateful. Because as soon as Cole and I emerged into the sunshine, I’d recognised the pointed leaves of Vitis tiliifolia , also known as the water vine. I’d chopped into the woody stems with my knife, and we’d savoured the water that trickled out as if it were Chateau Lafite.

“How did you know which vine to cut, anyway?” he asked.

“Whenever I can’t sleep, I like to watch the Nature channel.”

The lies were getting harder. Until I met Cole, bullshitting my way through life had been a breeze.

We were heading for the prison, which sat on a rise at the south end of the island like a mini Alcatraz. The stone walls of the hulking cellblock had turned dark with age, and the walls were half covered with greenery—moss, more vines, and tiny bushes whose roots had burrowed into whatever cracks they could find. There were two smaller buildings to the left, and if I had to guess, I’d say the larger one was the barracks where the guards used to live, and the smaller one was for storage or possibly a workshop. The highest point on the island was the old water tower to the right. At this rate, we’d reach it in approximately three years.

“Hey, I think there’s an animal track,” Cole called from ahead of me.

I quickly caught up. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Why would it be a bad thing?”

“Because we don’t know what kind of animal it is.”

“I don’t think we have bears in the Caribbean.”

“You don’t think we have bears?”

“We definitely don’t have bears in the Caribbean. These look like little hoof prints. Maybe a deer left over from the buccaneer days?”

“Or the pigs could have spread. I mean, I already found out firsthand that they can swim.”

The animal track did make the going a hell of a lot easier as we didn’t have to fight through so much undergrowth, and we reached the perimeter of the prison complex in less than half an hour with only minimal extra damage to our limbs.

Mental note: get a waterproof first-aid kit to take diving with me. Neosporin sure would have come in handy right now. After we checked out the prison, I’d see if there was a way to get back down to the sea because saltwater was the next best thing.

“This place is grim,” Cole said.

“I think it was designed that way. What were you expecting? A hotel?”

“No, but after what we’ve been through, a shower would have been nice. Do you think they still have water here? Drinking water, I mean.”

“That water tower doesn’t look good, and any pumps they had will be long dead. But there might be a well somewhere. They must have had their own water supply.”

There was no fence around the prison, and we were able to walk straight up to the walls. We continued around the cell building until we reached what must have been the main entrance. Despite the fact that the prison was on a remote island, they’d still employed a sally port, and the outer gate was padlocked and topped with razor wire. The padlock looked reasonably new, a few scratches but not a hint of rust. Did someone from the government check up on the place?

“Don’t like the idea of climbing over that,” Cole said, looking up at the rusty coils. “Even with all those vines growing across the top, the wire’s still going to cut you to shreds.”

He was right. Climbing that fence would be a last resort.

“This can’t be the only entrance,” I said. “The sally port would have been used as a safety measure, to search prisoners and make sure no weapons got inside. Plus loading and unloading prisoners is often the weakest link in the chain of movements. Ten bucks says there was another way in for staff and deliveries.”

“So we carry on looking?”

“We carry on looking.”

We fought our way around the building, and sure enough, there were two metal doors on the west side. The bad news? They were also padlocked up tight. And farther on, the rear of the building—the north side—was hidden by a prickly tangle of vines and undergrowth as the jungle reclaimed the land.

“Guess the government really doesn’t want this place getting featured on BuzzHub,” I said.

“There’ll always be idiots who try. Those urban explorers who post videos online.”

“This isn’t very urban,” I pointed out.

“You know what I mean.”

I did. A video from the inside of Skeleton Cay prison would earn thousands of views or likes or whatever social media influencers used to measure their self-worth these days.

“Let’s try the accommodation block,” I suggested. “I bet it won’t have the same security measures as the cellblock.”

It didn’t. The wooden door that led inside was locked, but it was also rotten, and when Cole and I shouldered it together, it popped open with a dull thud . Progress.

“Ready to go ghost hunting?” I asked, and Cole hesitated at the threshold.

“You think this place is haunted? ”

“If any place is going to be haunted, it’s this one.”

Despite the sunlight outside, the interior was dank and gloomy, and it seemed that whoever built the place had tried to economise when it came to windows. At the front of the building, the officer’s club or whatever they liked to call it was still full of furniture—musty couches, coffee tables, even a giant TV from the pre-flat-screen days.

All of a sudden, Cole squeaked and leapt sideways, knocking into me. I grimaced as a rat jumped out of a couch seat and ran across the floor. Fuck my life. I should have stayed in Vegas. I should have heeded my lucky dollar and walked away at the Black Diamond.

“How do you feel about grilled rat?” I asked. “We could make a campfire.”

“You want me to catch a rat ?”

I’d actually planned to do that myself. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but I quickly realised that rat catching was unlikely to be on Obituary-Writer-Bella’s list of skills.

“Uh, yeah? I can collect the firewood.”

Cole just sucked in a breath and kept walking. Through a set of double doors, a mess room full of dining tables led to a kitchen. We checked every cupboard, but there was no food left. Not even cans. Not that we had a can opener.

On the second floor, bedrooms had been abandoned with drapes at the windows and linen on the beds. At least we had somewhere to sleep tonight. Somewhere very dusty. And damp. The walls were covered in water stains, the result of zero maintenance over the past several decades.

“What are you doing?” Cole asked as I opened the door to each room in turn and checked the ceilings.

“Looking to see if there’s a way up to the roof.”

“Why the hell do you want to go up to the roof?”

“Haven’t you ever watched a survival movie? We need to signal to passing planes. Write a message to anyone looking for us, and the roof is the best place to do that. ”

“Wouldn’t it be better to see if there’s a beach? We could use a stick to write in the sand.”

“You said before that there wasn’t a beach.”

“Not a sunset-and-cocktails Instagram beach, but there might be a small bay somewhere.”

“So I can break my other leg climbing down to it? No, thanks. Maybe we’ll be able to scrape a message into the dirt on the roof? Or we could use bed linen and weight it down somehow?”

“I guess.”

There was no way onto the roof from the inside, no hatch or stairs, but we did find a metal fire escape that led from the second floor to the ground. The fire escape had a wide metal landing, and when we piled three nightstands on top of each other, then two, then one, the wobbly pyramid formed giant steps high enough that I’d be able to scramble onto the flat roof.

Predictably, Cole didn’t like the idea.

“This doesn’t look safe.”

“Well, do you have a better plan?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted. “Sweetheart, you’re still wearing a cast.”

Of course I was. I only had one dive boot, and the cast gave my left foot better protection than if I tried walking barefoot. As it was, I’d had to pick three thorns out of my toes.

“You’re very observant. Hold the pile steady, okay?”

He didn’t have a choice. I hopped up onto the roof before he could stop me, and there was a good reason for that. I was going to write an SOS message, all right, but it wasn’t going to say “HELP.” No, I needed to spell out “BEAR.” I’d considered “SHARK,” and if it had been a simple shipwreck, that would have been perfectly adequate because Cole and I weren’t in immediate danger. But I was worried about Dr. Blaylock. Whatever the boys were doing, I couldn’t see him being complicit. So, “BEAR” it was.

I studied the old-school built-up roofing, layers of felt coated in bitumen to make it waterproof. How did I know that? Because in Priest’s school of special ops, we’d learned all about construction. If we knew how a building was made, we could work out how to destroy it.

The good news? On a built-up roof, the top layer was usually covered in a layer of gravel to protect it from debris and sunlight. On the barracks building, the stones were dirty on top, but when I stirred them up, lighter undersides were revealed. All I had to do was scuff a message for Echo.

The bad news? The stones got through the holes in my cast and hurt like fuck when I stepped on them.

I gritted my teeth, spat several curses, and began scuffing. The sooner I got this done, the faster?—

“Everything okay?” Cole’s head popped up at the edge of the roof.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You were turning the air blue up there.” He took in what I was trying to do. “Hey, walking on those stones has gotta hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sit down, I’ll do it.”

“But—”

“What kind of man would I be if I let you do all the work?”

“If equality means that much to you, I’ll let you cook dinner.”

“Bella…” Cole scrambled onto the roof and wrapped his arms around me, kissing my salty hair. “I love your adventurous streak, but I’m not letting you injure yourself.”

“Don’t use that fucking word around me,” I muttered.

“Love? Why do you hate it so much?”

“Because I’m unlovable. ”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Just because one man hurt you doesn’t mean they all will.” Great, now we were onto forehead kisses. Those were the dangerous ones. “I’m not going to walk away from this. From you.”

“Oh, you will. Give it time.”

“I do love you, even if your spirit animal is a cactus.”

I tried to back away, but his arms tightened. “A cactus isn’t an animal, you asshole. My spirit animal is a spiny bush viper.”

“It’s the sentiment that counts.” Cole fisted his hand in my hair and raised my lips to his. “You’re not unlovable, my prickly little bush viper.”

He kissed the breath out of me before he let me go, and I didn’t have the will to resist. Cole was bad news in all the best ways. When he finally released me, I stalked to the far side of the roof and sat on a ventilation unit, beyond annoyed at yet another screw-up. I could hardly tell Cole to write “BEAR,” could I? He’d think I’d lost my damn mind.

And he’d be absolutely correct, just not in the way he thought.

While he wrote his HELP message, I tried to do damage control by scratching a small bear in the gravel at my feet. Not the word, but a picture. It was only two feet across, but a military satellite could read a car licence plate from space, so we stood a chance.

Or maybe not.

“Cute lion,” Cole said.

“It’s not a lion; it’s a bear.”

He tilted his head to the side and grimaced. “I’m not seeing it.”

“It’s a fucking bear.”

“Okay, it’s a bear. Why did you draw a bear?”

“I just like bears.” Dammit, it did look like a lion. What if Echo thought it was a lion? A lion was better than nothing, but still… “I was bored.”

He squeezed my hand. “Let’s go find some food.”

“We need water more.”

Cole loved me.

Except he didn’t.

He loved the woman he thought I was. The one I’d been pretending to be. I didn’t love her. I didn’t hate her either, but I grew more uncomfortable by the minute, as if I were wearing too-tight jeans for Thanksgiving dinner.

And I couldn’t even open the top snap for relief.

“There’s a path over here,” he said. “We can get down to the sea.”

My first thought? Thank goodness.

My second thought? “Why the hell is there a path?”

“I guess they used it to take supplies and criminals to the prison.”

“No, I mean why is there still a path? Everything else is overgrown.”

“Huh.” Cole paused halfway across the cracked yard in front of the main building. “It’s wide and built from brick, more of a road really. Guess the trees didn’t grow fast enough. And don’t forget animals live here.”

Maybe. But as we headed to the harbour, I swore I saw branches along the way that looked cut rather than broken. Cole said nobody ever came out here, but I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps that was why the well we’d found near the barracks still worked? I’d wound the bucket down on a surprisingly new-looking rope while Cole explained that seawater was heavier than freshwater, so when it rained, the precipitation formed a semicircular lens under the island. I already knew that thanks to an overly talkative Navy SEAL with a geologist for a mother, but I’d acted dumb and said “wow” in all the right places. After sharing half a dozen almost ripe mangoes for lunch, we’d decided to carry on exploring.

It might have been fun if not for Dr. Blaylock’s fate and complications caused by the L-word.

“This jetty would’ve been a bitch to get to in the old days,” Cole said as we approached the harbour.

Actually, “harbour” was too grand a description. There was a natural gap in the rocks that surrounded the island, and the gap opened up into a small lagoon, protected from the wind. There was a tiny pebble beach, barely thirty feet wide, and a jetty had been built out into the water, rotten wood bridging the gap between a man-made wharf and a larger rock in the middle of the lagoon. It was unusable now.

I stripped off my wetsuit for the first time in over a day and held my hands up to the sun.

“Now, this is starting to feel like a vacation.”

Cole crossed his arms behind his head and stretched. “This is such a damn mess.”

“We’ll get your boat back.”

Once Cole was safely out of the way in his villa on Emerald Shores, I knew exactly where I’d be going with the girls. Okay, not exactly where, not yet, but there was no way Echo didn’t know the Crosswind ’s location at this precise moment. She snooped on everything.

“You think? The cops in San Gallicano are underpaid, understaffed, and undertrained. The government keeps cutting taxes because that wins elections, so public services suffer, then voters get unhappy, so the government cuts taxes again. It’s a vicious circle.”

“Welcome to politics.” I waded into the shallows. “Forget that for the moment and swim. ”

“I swam enough yesterday to last me a lifetime.”

“C’mon, if you fall off the horse, you need to get right back in the saddle.”

“I’m not a big fan of horses either.”

“Really?” I hopped up onto a rock. “How about mermaid sex?”

Cole sprinted into the water like a lifeguard from Baywatch . Damn, he was pretty.

“Get the wetsuit off,” I instructed.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Too late, I remembered Echo and her satellites. Ah, too bad. She was a big girl, and she knew how to blur the parts she didn’t want to see. Cole shoved his wetsuit and shorts down over his hips, and I parted my legs, biting my lip as he pushed my bikini bottoms to the side.

“Fuck!” he cursed, and not in a good way. His arms windmilled as he leapt backward and landed with a splash, cock sticking up like the mast on a sinking ship.

“What?”

“Something touched my leg.”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. I laughed and laughed until Cole glared at me and snapped, “It’s not funny.”

It was a tiny bit funny. Lips pressed together, I dove into the water and looked around for the offending item. It was probably a fish. There were plenty of them down there—butterflyfish, damselfish, and…ooh, dinner.

“Look, baby. It’s bigger than yours.”

Cole narrowed his eyes at the dripping sea cucumber in my hand, but then his stern mask cracked.

“It’s a little limp, don’t you think?” His turn to laugh as it shot white goo all over my arm. “Okay, that’s impressive.”

“Eew.”

Dammit, I’d forgotten sea cucumbers ejected their guts through their anus to ward off predators. I dropped the gloopy pile back into the water and sidestepped as it sank.

“What’s the opposite of an aphrodisiac?” I asked.

“Shut up and take my dick like a good girl.”

“You think you can order me around?”

“I think you like it.”

Okay, maybe I did, but shhh. Don’t tell anybody. I sat on the rock and twined my legs around Cole’s waist as he slid into me bare, stretching me until he bottomed out. How had one night in Vegas turned into this?

“I love you,” he whispered as he began to thrust.

“Shut up.”

“I’m going to keep telling you until you believe it.”

And just for one minute, I let myself pretend it was true.