“You fucking bastard,” Cy growls. His fist flies, and he decks Hunter across the nose. A thick stream of brick red blood trails down his face, and Hunter shoves Cy off him. Cy’s quicker, and though he stumbles, he’s back at him. Cy hits him again, Hunter’s head snapping back with a sickening crack.
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” he growls. In a swift move, Hunter rolls, taking Cy with him. My hands tremble on my gun when I see something gleaming silver in Hunter’s hand.
“Cy! Watch out!” I scream, just in time. Cy bows out of the way of the swinging blade, but it nicks him. I don’t think. My hand shaking, I pull the trigger. Hunter’s body slumps to the floor.
There’s blood everywhere, but I don’t care. He was going to kill Cy. I run to him.
“Are you okay? Oh, God.” I’m crying and shaking, but Cy just reaches for me.
“Call back-up, baby.”
In the other room, Morose has turned into a crying, weeping mess. It turns my stomach.
But I don’t listen. I can’t.
I pick up the phone and call my contact waiting in the hotel where we met. “Bring in the authorities,” I say with a sigh.Chapter 12CyAgainst all fucking odds, we’re back in the hotel room. The pain in my side is just a superficial wound bandaged by medics, and after a quick trip to the hospital, they released us both.
The police came in and arrested Morose. They wanted to bring us in for questioning, but there will be time for that.
“Not now,” I told them. “We’ll give you everything, but not now.”
One of them pushed, and I felt my blood pressure rising, but it seems his partner thought better of it. “Let them go,” he said. “We’ll have our time. This is theirs.”
It seems Harper knows everyone. The officer who let us go was the brother of a woman she calls Arianna. We’re given the freedom to go back to the hotel room under surveillance.
I’m weary. We both are. So fucking weary.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you for killing the sick old bastard,” one of the officers said when he took me and Harper to the hotel room. “Would’ve turned a blind eye toward that.”
They saw the live feed from the office. They had to. It’s hard to imagine that the truth is already out. It has to be, but it feels like lancing a wound. A painful sort of healing.
“Appreciate that,” I said to the officer. “But goddamn it, I don’t want any more blood on my hands.”
“Understood. If there’s anything I can do to help you two, you let me know.”
Between the police and her media connections, they contacted her brother. They gave us souped-up cell phones I don’t even know how to use, clothing, money.
When we get to the room and are finally alone, I fold myself into one of the armchairs, pulling her onto my lap.
“Call him,” I told her. “I’ll hold you while you do.”
It isn’t just that I know she needs my support right now. I want to be with her in this. I love this woman, and whatever is precious to her is precious to me.
She calls her brother on speakerphone. And together, we hear the glee in his voice as he talks to her.
“They said you were gone, Harper. You aren’t gone? You’re okay?”
Her eyes fill with tears and she nods. “I’m okay, baby. I’m okay.”
He breathes out a sigh of relief audible on the other side of the phone. “Thank God,” he says. “You know it’s my birthday, don’t you?”
She falls back against my chest and laughs while she cries, curling up next to me and keeping the call on speaker so I can hear.
“I know it, Daniel,” she whispers. “And we’re going to celebrate.”
God, how we’re going to celebrate.
“Me and you?” he asks.
“Me, and you, and my…” she pauses. What do you call a man you’ve survived with? The man you love?
Friend isn’t enough.
Boyfriend isn’t either.
And I won’t assume fiancé unless she agrees first.
“My friend,” she finishes. She completes her phone call. I don’t know how to respond, because she dredged up every one of the fears I held on the island.
But then she hangs up the phone, buries her head on my chest, and weeps. Her body wracking with tears, I hold her while she releases the pent-up grief from everything she’s been through. The trauma we experienced. The intensity of the past few days. I just hold her.
“Let it out, baby,” I tell her. “You’re safe now, Harper.”
But maybe she’s crying because she holds the same fear I do?
As we fall asleep, and I’m troubled with questions I can’t answer.
I’m her fucking friend?
Now that we’re back to America, where does that leave us?
Can she stay with a man like me?
I dream I’m back on the island. It’s a hot day, so hot I’m sweating while the sun beats down in the unrelenting waves of heat I’ve grown accustomed to. We’re by the waterfall, the heavy sound of the falling water filling my senses. Harper is peacefully asleep beside me, and I’m lying on the bank by the water. For just this moment, it’s idyllic. Then my stomach churns with hunger, and I wonder what we’ll eat next. There’s a searing pain in my side. I’m in the water, and I can’t seem to swim for the pain.