At least Archer’s grand master suite, the one she’d once shared with him, was on the first floor. She could only hope that at times he forgot about her completely—it would give her an advantage when she was finally ready to make her move. She knew it was a foolish hope on her part—Archer never forgot an injury, never forgot anything, and he had a particular fondness for brutal, complicated revenge.
“Who’s coming?” she asked.
Rachel shrugged. “You know Archer doesn’t volunteer information. Should I tell him you don’t feel up to it?”
Sophie was tempted. The less she saw of Archer, the greater advantage she would have. But Archer didn’t do anything without a good reason, and this mysterious stranger must be someone important if he wanted to show off his handicapped wife. “I can do it,” she said in a wan voice. “I wouldn’t want to let him down.”
It wasn’t the answer Rachel wanted, but she had no excuse to put her hands on her, and retribution would have to come later. “I’ll tell him you said yes, then,” she said. She let her cold eyes run over Sophie’s body in the wheelchair. “If you won’t let me help you, then I’ll go order your breakfast. Unless there’s something else?”
Sophie smiled sweetly, a look that always seemed to leave Rachel unmoved. “I’ll be fine. You do so much for me anyway.”
“It’s my job.”
Sophie didn’t even blink. Rachel’s job was to spy on her and probably fuck her husband. “And you do it so well.”
Rachel cast her a suspicious glance, but Sophie’s face was absolutely innocent. She’d been working on her expression in the mirror of the bathroom, where no cameras could catch her, and she knew she was damned good. All that training had stayed with her, and she’d always been a terrific liar.
“Archer wants you downstairs by six for drinks. I’ll come up earlier and help you dress . . .”
“I’ll be dressed.?
??
Rachel let out a little noise of irritation. “And I’ll bring Joe to carry you.”
“Poor Joe,” Sophie said softly. In fact, Joe was one of the few men on Isla Mordita she trusted. He was huge, bald, immensely strong, and genuinely sweet. She’d once seen him kill a man by breaking his neck with his knees, and she knew he was responsible for many more of Archer’s murders. But Joe was always careful and considerate with her, and he disapproved of the way Archer kept her shut away. He wouldn’t actually be an ally when she got out of there, but she hoped he wouldn’t get in her way. She wouldn’t want to kill him. “Tell Archer I’m looking forward to it.”
She didn’t miss Rachel’s expression. Rachel believed Sophie was desperately in love with Archer MacDonald, longing for any sign of attention, and jealous of Rachel’s obvious closeness to him. Sophie had done everything she could to foster that impression.
In fact, last she’d figured out, Archer was sleeping with three different women on his small, private island off the coast of Florida. As far she could tell, though, Rachel reserved her jealousy for Sophie, which was interesting. She must think Sophie was a greater threat than she actually was.
Sophie could have told her the only reason Archer kept her around was to play cat-and-mouse games with her. That, and simple revenge. When he tired of it, he was going to kill her, or send someone to do it. She expected it would be the latter—Archer never wanted to get his hands dirty, and while he took pleasure in his small cruelties, so far he hadn’t cared enough about her to bother himself with her execution. Archer was too fastidious, and blood was so messy. She was just an afterthought, one he’d deal with sooner or later, if she didn’t get out first.
But that didn’t explain why he’d want her downstairs to entertain his mysterious guest. And there was no question that the guest would be mysterious—very few people were allowed on the island—and when they came, she seldom saw them. Archer kept his business dealings away from here, in Miami, in New York, in New Orleans. This was his fortress, his safe house, and he’d managed to keep it a better secret than most nowadays, when information was only a click away, on the darknet, if not through the usual channels.
Isla Mordita had once been the property of a Cuban plantation owner, and the ruins of the old sugar mill stood on one end of the island. She and Archer had sex inside the mill when she’d been stupidly, blindly in love with him. She was past berating herself for her gullible idiocy. That had filled the first year after the so-called accident, when she was confined to the bed, unable to move. By the second year, when she started to get some feeling back in her legs, she’d moved past that, into a plan for escape.
So why the hell was she supposed to make an appearance this evening? Archer liked to pretend theirs was a normal marriage, that he was a doting, devoted husband immensely proud of his courageous, beautiful wife. And she’d make herself pretty—she had learned long ago how to transform her ordinary features into the illusion of beauty, how to move, how to convince anyone that she was exquisite. She could do the opposite just as easily, and for a moment she was tempted. How would Archer respond to an aging troll who presented herself as his wife?
He wouldn’t like it, and she was smart enough not to pull the lion’s tail, not when escape was so close. He could make her life very unpleasant if she displeased him. He’d hurt her before, and she still bore the scars. She imagined he probably did research on his ever-present tablet, looking for the most painful treatments for someone with a devastating spinal injury, and a thorough businessman like Archer MacDonald was very good at research.
In the meantime, she was going to take a shower in her unobserved bathroom, and she was going to use all the customized adjustments as if she needed them. There was no lock on the door, and Rachel had burst in on her a number of times, running her cool, dismissive eyes over Sophie’s body and smirking.
Sophie wasn’t built like Rachel and the women Archer usually slept with. Even at her thinnest, her most fit, she’d still had real boobs and hips. She was simply shaped that way, and the first year, when she lay in bed and could do nothing but eat and watch old movies on TV, she’d gained a good twenty pounds.
Some of that weight was still on her, she suspected, but now it was muscle. Rachel might make the mistake in thinking her curves denoted weakness, but Sophie knew better.
She took her time in the shower. It was going to be a long day, longer now that she knew someone was waiting for her. Hell, it might be her executioner—it wouldn’t be past Archer to import someone from the mainland just to finish her off in style. Joe would do it if Archer gave him the order, but he wouldn’t like it, and Archer liked to keep his employees happy.
She didn’t think that was it. She knew Archer better than he realized, and even though she didn’t see much of him, she could read his moods. He wasn’t ready to close that chapter of his life. He was having too much fun keeping her a prisoner, by both the isolation and the supposed weakness of her body.
She had managed to fool him when they’d met, and he held a grudge—Archer believed in retribution, not forgiveness. She still had a little time left, though there was no way to be certain how much. This was all going to come to a head before long. If Archer started bringing her downstairs more often, she could firm up her plans. Being a prisoner on an island, even one relatively close to the coast, made escape difficult, and she was no Diana Nyad to swim that distance. There was always the chance she could make it, but she was going to exhaust every other possibility before taking that rash step. There had to be someone to bribe, some escape route that Archer hadn’t blocked.
In the meantime, she would spend the day as she always did, seemingly serene and content to the ever-present cameras, sitting in her wheelchair, reading. No one could tell she was doing isometric exercises as she made her way through dense Russian novels, another form of Archer’s torment. When the time came, she would be ready. Would it be tonight?
Chapter Two
He sat in the bow of the boat as it sliced through the open water, feeling the salt spray on his face. The night was calm, the cabin on the boat was warm and stocked with a bar, but he stayed where he was, perfectly still, staring out into the night sky.