Chapter 9
9
CATHERINE
T here’s no way.
It can’t be a house, because there’s no reason for a house to be sitting here on this island. There aren’t even any signs of life here, other than the bugs. I’ve heard a few animals moving around, too, and tried not to think about what they might be. It’s one thing to have an animal jump out at you when it’s light out. It’s another thing in the dark.
So far, nothing’s jumped out at us, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. The trees here are close together, and the plants are thick in places. There’s still plenty of room for something to make a leap, if it wants to.
“Jacob, that’s—” Not a house. He’s tired. I’m tired. We’re very tired, and that’s why he thinks he’s looking at a manmade shelter that we didn’t have to build ourselves.
But then I see the line of the roof, and the planks that make up the siding, and moonlight glinting off a window .
It has a window.
“That’s a house,” I whisper.
Is this what it feels like to become religious? I’m suffused with hope and love and gratefulness. I have a sense of awe .
That is a house.
My sense of awe crashes back to earth when my brain kicks back on. That’s a house, and this seems like a weird place for a house to be. It might not only be a house.
It might also be a trap.
I want to run for it so badly. If it has a window, it probably has a door, and it might even have a lock. I know better than to think it’ll keep Raymond Harris out forever, but it would feel so good to have a lock between us and him, even if we’re only safe for a little while.
“We shouldn’t run. We should go slowly. In case there’s anyone in there.”
“I don’t see any lights.”
“I don’t either, but…still.”
Jacob squeezes my hand.
We make our quiet way down the path that’s opened up in front of us. It’s not a very wide path, and doesn’t look much different from where we’ve been walking—in the natural gaps between trees. Is that on purpose? Did whoever built this house want it to blend in?
Probably they did. They put a house on a deserted island, after all.
Maybe it’s not as deserted as I thought.
“Did we jump to conclusions?” I ask Jacob in my softest whisper to counteract the intense urge to break into a dead sprint and fling myself into that house. “Do you think people live on this island?”
“I haven’t seen any other houses, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“I wonder if Raymond Harris knows the people who own this house.”
“If he did, he’d be here already.”
“Not if he’s more interested in—you know. Murder.”
“I don’t honestly see how he could be interested in anything but a nap after he flew us here, crash-landed, and then unsuccessfully tried to kill us. He’s been walking around as long as we have.”
“True.” And he also has some sort of head wound. I think Raymond Harris’s is worse than Jacob’s. There was a lot more blood.
I make my footsteps as quiet as I can.
The path opens into a clearing, with the house—a cabin, really—on one side, and a waterfall on the other. I gasp at the sight of it. I can’t help myself. It’s not a loud, crashing waterfall. It’s a small one, bubbling out of a rocky formation and filling a pool underneath.
“Surprise,” Jacob says. “I picked a resort with a waterfall.”
“It’s perfect .”
“It will be if we can get inside. And if there’s nobody waiting to kill us.”
Something snap s in the trees, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Jacob holds my hand a little tighter. He heard it, too. It’s impossible to see what made the noise. The trees around the clearing hide everything.
Hopefully, they hide us , too.
“Let’s see if it’s unlocked,” he suggests.
We’re almost to the cottage—there’s a door not far from the window—when something catches my eye.
“Hang on. Do you see?—”
“What?”
I tug Jacob’s hand and bring him with me to where the path opens into the clearing. One of the trees has something on it, like someone stapled a bark-covered poster tube to the trunk. A long poster tube. It’s almost as tall as Jacob, and goes all the way to the ground.
My mind cleared of all thoughts involving insects, I give the tube-shaped thing a poke.
It rustles.
I poke it again, and then, in a stroke of inspiration or maybe just exhaustion, I stick my fingers into the side closest to the trunk and pull.
It unrolls in my hand, and keeps unrolling until I’ve stretched it across the path to a tree on the opposite side.
“There are hooks ,” I whisper to Jacob. The opposite end of the bark-poster has holes that slide right over the wooden hooks, which would look like a knob in the bark from a distance.
Jacob blinks at the netting. There must be something holding the sections of bark and leaves and assorted other foliage together.
“This doesn’t seem real.”
“It’s real. I just touched it.”
“Why would someone do this?”
“To hide their private resort, obviously.”
Jacob smiles, but it’s not one of the dazzling, charming grins he gives people at parties. It’s not even the way he smiles at me when we’re at home together. It’s a faraway thing, like he’s seeing the end of the journey, and he’s fine with it being over.
We are not at the end of the journey.
“Okay. Now it’s front-door time.”
I feel better with the camouflage across the path. It must blend in pretty well, otherwise there’d be no point in having it, and I know it’s not strong enough to keep out a man with murderous intentions, but it’s much, much better than nothing.
We go to the door together, and Jacob steps ahead of me. He pulls on the handle first, which does nothing, then gives it a push.
It sticks for a second, then comes free.
“I’m not going first.”
This time, Jacob’s smile is sturdier. “I wouldn’t let you, kitten. I need to make sure there’s nothing untoward in there.”
“God, I hope there’s nothing untoward.”
Jacob steps across the threshold.
I go with him.
I’m not going to let go of his hand while he’s checking out the secret cottage, and I’m not going to stand outside while he does, so the issue of who goes first ends up being moot. Jacob moves inside enough to let the door close behind us.
I take a deep, relieved breath.
“It smells…sort of normal in here.” Dusty, yes. Slightly humid, yes. But nothing’s decaying. “Is that a good sign or a bad one?”
Jacob switches places with me and studies the interior side of the door. He flips a latch near the top and finds a deadbolt lower down. When he gives the handle a firm tug, it doesn’t move.
His shoulders sag. I hadn’t realized just how stiffly he’d been holding them until they droop with his obvious relief. Jacob leans his forehead against the door and pats it like he’s greeting an old friend.
“Jesus. I never thought I’d love some abandoned cottage this much. Two locks on the door? I couldn’t have asked for better.”
“Excuse me. You chose an abandoned cottage for our honeymoon? I thought you said this was a resort.”
Jacob turns back to me, his expression sobering. “You’re right, kitten.”
“Right about what? I was joking.”
“It doesn’t seem abandoned. It seems cared for, if only minimally.”
That’s when my adrenaline runs out. It crashes harder than the plane does, and every step we took tonight burns through my feet. My shoulders ache from bracing ourselves on the plane. My whole back aches from carrying my bag for what has to be hours on end.
A maintained cottage is even more mysterious on an island where we haven’t seen anyone but Raymond Harris. If someone’s keeping the forest from devouring the cottage—I’ve seen enough TV to know that’s what happens to houses left alone—then it really can’t be abandoned.
Somebody will be back. It’s only a matter of time.
“I don’t care if they come back tonight. Let’s see what else is in here.”
There’s not much to search through. The entire cottage is one room, except for a tiny bathroom that looks like it was built between two trees.
“There’s a sink,” I tell Jacob. “A real sink in here.”
He reaches over me and turns one of the taps.
Nothing happens.
“Hmm,” he says, then wanders out to the main room. The only room. There’s a plane-sized kitchen area on one wall and a double bed on another. A small wooden table and two wooden chairs. No other furniture. Jacob peers into the cabin’s second sink, then crouches to open the cabinets underneath.
Nothing jumps out at him from the pitch-black shadows underneath.
I don’t know how Jacob can see what’s in there, but he must be able to. After a few seconds, he reaches into the cabinet. Something click s.
And then…
There’s a sound.
A faint rumbling sound, almost too quiet to hear, like a plane passing far overhead. Only it’s close to the ground.
It might be in the ground.
It is in the ground. It’s in the back wall of the cottage, too.
Jacob stands up, staring at me like he’s come across buried treasure, and slowly, tentatively, turns the tap.
Water comes out of the sink.
This is what it feels like to become religious. I don’t know what religion I’m joining, but my spirit is soaring at the sight of a running tap. It sputters a few times, my heart going with it, but then it just…runs. Like it’s a normal sink in a normal cottage on a normal island. Like we might not die after all.
“Do you think it’s good water?” I don’t care that my voice trembles. I’m not into wilderness survival. I still know that water is a major issue. I know we’ll die without it. “Like, clean enough to drink?”
“I think that’s the sound of a filtration system,” Jacob answers. “And it seems like a waste of time to pump dirty water into a cottage.”
A sense of peace settles over me. The water will be fine. If it’s not, we’re stuck on this island anyway. At least we have a roof over our heads.
My eyes are gritty with exhaustion, but as long as we’re in this cabin, I’m going to be as human as possible. I pull my travel soap and toothpaste out of my bag and step into the bathroom.
There’s a small flameless candle perched on the basin that I hadn’t noticed before. With the flick of a switch, the bathroom is bathed in fake candlelight. It’s as good as the real thing.
The sink works.
I discover that the toilet works, too. It’s normal. It’s so normal that I could cry, but I don’t.
The shower works.
It’s a far cry from the bathroom in Jacob’s apartment in New York, where he took me to recover from escaping my father. Jacob made it his life’s mission to draw me bubble baths, which were never complete—in his words—without music and champagne and little fans of fruit arranged on plates and waited for me on the purpose-built shelves that went with the tub.
But I have soap, and a tiny bottle of decent shampoo, and there’s a stack of scratchy washcloths and worn towels, so I have everything I need. All the sweat from wearing the hood of my packable rain jacket washes down the drain along with the dirt from the forest. The anxiety goes, too. Raymond Harris might still jump out at us from behind a tree, but it’s not going to happen in this bathroom. I’m too tired to spend long in there, anyway, so any murderers lurking in the woods won’t have time to find a way in.
When I come out, Jacob’s leaning against the wall, his face glowing in the light of another flameless candle, which he holds in his hand. He’s turned down the blankets on the bed, and the covers are open to white sheets.
“The bed’s fine,” he says. “We should sleep.”
“I had toothpaste and soap in my bag. And I left my shampoo in the shower. The water gets pretty warm.”
He lets his head fall back, eyes closed in ecstasy. “Have I ever told you that you are the living embodiment of perfection?”
“Now you have.” My face warms up. We’ve been through the night from hell, and I still want him to say those things to me.
He really is my passionate hobby.
I don’t get into the bed, because I know I’ll pass out immediately. I change into my spare tank top and panties— never travel without them—and wait for him to finish up. There’s a single decorative item in the cabin, and it’s a big wooden bowl hanging on a peg near the table.
Jacob’s efficient in the shower and emerges a couple of minutes later with his towel slung low over his hips and one of the candles cradled in his palm. My mouth waters at the sight of him. I can’t not want him.
The heartache is stronger, though. He’s too thin, with bruises under his eyes and sharp cheekbones that didn’t look nearly so bad in the light of the plane.
Or maybe he’s gotten worse since we landed. It hasn’t been the easiest night. The cut on his head isn’t actively bleeding, but it doesn’t look. The fall from the wing of the plane didn’t help. And he said a few weird things while we walked.
Jacob tosses the towel over one of the chairs and digs through his bag. He finds a fresh pair of boxers, pulls them on, and drags me to the bed.
And then he curls up around me like he thought he’d never get to do it again, his back rounding and his arm slung over my waist in a tight grip. We’ve slept together lots of times, but he never seemed this desperate.
“Don’t move,” he says.
“Where would I go?”
Jacob doesn’t answer.
“Jacob?”
Nothing.
He’s asleep, and we haven’t even pulled up the blankets.
I should probably do that. To protect us from the air and anything hiding under the bed.
But Jacob’s warm, his arm already heavy in his sleep, and I don’t want to do a single thing to disturb him. If we get cold, one of us will deal with the blankets.
I fall asleep faster than I ever have, my heart light. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to be fine.