Chapter 98

98

Elin looks up, can't see anything. But as she moves a few feet around the rock, she sees it: a ladder, propped against the stone.

More sounds: something scraping. Voices.

He's taking Ronan up there.

Despite the acute pain in her ribs, she walks as quickly as she can to the base of the rock to find Caleb scrambling up the ladder, Ronan in front of him.

Elin ducks behind a small overhang, waits, silent, but Caleb gives no sign that he's seen her. She's about to reach for the ladder when it moves. He's knocking it away from the rock.

The ladder sways precariously backward then forward before Elin manages to grab it, haul it back into position. She looks up, but Caleb either hasn't spotted her or is already gone.

Gingerly, she steps onto the first rung, starts to climb. The wind has picked up again, violent gusts tugging at her wet clothes, her hair. She immediately feels its strength as she hauls herself upward, biting her lip at the pain sparked by every movement.

Inching herself up the last rung and onto a plateau, Elin exhales, scoping out the space. The rock juts inward here, the plateau formed by a natural shelf, about a yard wide, wrapping itself around the main body of the rock on her right, which continues upward, soaring above her.

Caleb and Ronan are nowhere to be seen. They must be on the other side of the rock.

Breathing fast, she starts moving around the plateau, but the stone beneath her feet is rough, slippery. A few paces on, the wind gusts. Swaying, Elin forces herself to look straight ahead. Focus on the tips of the trees in the distance.

Don't look down.

The wind surges again. Fists clenched tight, Elin steps closer to the rock for shelter, arms outstretched for balance.

Rounding the corner a few moments later, she stops in her tracks.

Caleb, holding a gun, is pointing it at Ronan. Slumped at the base of the rock, a large gash splitting a ragged line through Ronan's temple, trickles of blood snaking down toward his shirt. Below, a massive swelling around his eye has closed it to a slit. His lips are pressed together as if he's trying to stop himself from crying.

Caleb doesn't even look in her direction. He's doing something curious: talking at Ronan, a stream of words with no pause or punctuation. A focused, verbal violence. He's enjoying the sound of himself.

This is what he wanted , Elin thinks, why he didn't kill Ronan on sight; he wanted to explain exactly what Ronan had done to his family. He wants Ronan to see him, see them.

She imagines all the moments that will have built to this point: one lie, every misstep, on top of another.

Elin steps closer. Caleb's head whips around, his eyes deadened as they meet hers. She wonders how she didn't see it before, the chilling vacancy in his face. Someone who had lost his connection to the world.

"I know you'd like to help him, but I'm afraid no can do." Caleb shakes his head, almost sorrowfully. "You've disturbed us when I was just getting into my flow." Behind him, heavy clouds hang low, making dark pockets in the sky.

"Caleb, this isn't how you want this to play out, I know," Elin says, raising her voice above the sounds of the storm. "There's still time to stop this going any further."

"But I want this to go further. This is what it's all about. This moment." Even this close, the end of his sentence is muffled by the wind.

Elin takes another step. "You might think that, but it's not the answer to anything."

"Stop." Caleb jerks his arm upward. "Don't come any closer." He lowers the gun until it's pointing directly at Ronan's face, giving a light flick of the wrist as if in warning. Ronan flinches, starts to tremble, a barely audible noise coming from the back of his throat. "He needs to be punished, here, on the rock, where it all began."

Keep him talking. "But what you're doing here, it isn't about Reaper's Rock, is it?"

His eyes flash. "It is. It's what's happening here, right now, the reaper taking the souls of people who deserve to die." Caleb glances down at Ronan. "People like him."

Steadying her voice, Elin looks him in the eye. "You really believe that?"

He seems surprised by the question. Something flickers in his expression before he composes himself. "Of course I do. Look what happened at the school, the Creacher kids."

"But it was your father who killed those teenagers on the course. There is no reaper. You know as well as I do that your father was delusional, killed those teenagers because of what happened to him at that school. But what you've done, it's about something else."

Caleb tips his head, watching her, as if he's trying to calculate what she might know. A smirk, but it falters. "Go on, then, seeing as you've got it all worked out. Tell me what that is."

"Revenge. Revenge for the fact that your father lost money to Ronan. Money he was going to use to buy the island, ensure its status as an SSSI, and revenge for the fact that Ronan went on to develop it himself, something that sent your father to an early grave."

Caleb starts to speak, as if he's about to push back, before he seems to crumple, shoulders rounding. His fingers come up to pinch the skin at the bridge of his nose as if to stop himself from crying. "That SSSI... it was supposed to be a fresh start for my father. Do you know what that school did to him?" He shakes his head. "It consumed him, turned him into a monster. He spent hours in that cave, shaping those stones, convincing himself he was some bloody reaper." His voice wobbles. "But after he killed those kids, he tried to change, you know? He took the right meds, determined it wasn't going to happen again." He jerks his arm toward Ronan. "But he trampled all over that by taking my father's money."

Ronan's eyes flicker open. "A tip, that's all it was." His voice is low, muffled by pain. Despite his protestation, it's clear that he's lying. Like a cloud weighing heavy above him, she can see it: shame. Etched into every part of his face. "I didn't mean anything by it."

Caleb's mouth drops open, incredulous. "Even now, you're lying. The company that ran the scheme, you were behind it. I found out. All you've ever done, Delaney, is take. You destroyed my father. Financially. Mentally. Until he couldn't take it anymore, until he..."

The words stop him in his tracks, the hand clamped around the gun starting to tremble, making the barrel move up and down. His eyes are smarting when he looks at her, and Elin can see it marked in them: grief. Grief and pain, and utter bewilderment—as if he's looking at the world and not understanding it anymore.

"I'm sorry," Ronan says, his face ashen. He sucks in a gaspy breath, clutching his side. "I never wanted anything like that to happen."

Elin's struck by a sharp needle of fear at the wheedling, pleading tone to Ronan's voice. No , she wants to tell him, don't try to garner sympathy, because that will make him hate you even more, because you haven't shown sympathy for him, not the slightest bit. You took from him, everything he had, and now you're trying to take more.

Tears stream down Caleb's face. "You dismissed me when I contacted you, tried explaining what the SSSI meant to my father. Like what you'd done—taking my father's savings, trampling on his fucking dream—meant nothing. " He draws breath. "One bit I never understood was how it doesn't get to you. How you can't feel it." Caleb reaches up a hand to his chest. "Feel it in here. Seth was the same. I thought he might have a shred more moral conscience, but no. People like you, you think that because you've got money and power, the rules don't apply. But I'm making you care now, aren't I? You deserve every bit of what's coming to you."

"But the others didn't," Elin says softly. A glimmer of hope; how Caleb's sharing like this, opening up—it might be enough. The lever she needs. If she can just keep him talking, she might be able to break the spell and help him see the rationale in letting Ronan go free. "Bea and Seth and Jo."

"Jo?" Caleb's eyes narrow. "But I didn't kill her." He cocks his head, breathing hard. "Is this some part of your strategy, try to confuse me by accusing me of things I haven't done?"

Another upward jerk of the gun. Ronan shrinks backward.

Elin edges closer. "Caleb, I know what Ronan did was terrible, but by hurting him, you're also doing something wrong. I know you can see that—"

"Keep away. I mean it." The gun shifts from Ronan to her and then back again, the barrel shaking because Caleb's trembling, the muscles in his forearm visibly twitching. "I know I'm doing something wrong. I'm well aware, but you know, it's right that it ends here, on this rock." A brittle laugh. "I still can't believe my poor father believed all that shit, but people believe it for a reason, don't they?" His words are emerging faster and faster. "It's a projection; they're putting the darkest parts of themselves into something else. Strange to call it a safe space, but it is. When you put all the bits of yourself that you hate and fear into a rock like this, it's no longer a part of you. It's what my father did." He shakes his head. "But I know where the darkness really lies. In us. In you. We do bad things. Not some piece of stone."

Caleb lifts his face to meet hers. For a moment she thinks he's wavering, his hand loosening around the gun, but then he looks back to Ronan. His gaze hardens, eyes flinty, his expression fixed in a way that's making her nervous.

He raises his hand a notch, fingers twitching around the gun before he steadies them.

Panic clawing at her chest, Elin reaches out a hand, steps forward, starts to say something, but Caleb's already compressing the trigger.

A deafening bang.