Chapter 5 #2
The kitchen is not just nice. It’s beautiful in the same expensive, carefully assembled way as everything else.
A huge stone island dominates the center, with stools tucked neatly beneath one side. The counters are pale and glossy, the cabinets custom and seamless, the appliances high-end stainless steel built flush into the walls.
Pendant lights hang low over the island, their warm glow mixing with the last of the evening light from another bank of windows facing a different direction than the ones in the other room.
There’s a wide sink beneath those windows, and beyond it I see a tropical garden.
A lush, beautiful garden with arches of greenery and big, colorful flowers.
Everything in the kitchen is spotless.
Not staged. Not unused. But orderly in the way of a house cared for by people with money and probably professional help.
My confusion turns sharper and stranger the longer I stand there.
What is this place?
Why am I here?
And why, if I’m here against my will, is no one stopping me from moving through it?
I turn in a slow circle, scanning the kitchen and the connecting spaces again, but the house remains silent. No guard. No locked gates in sight. No obvious supervision. No one standing between me and the doors leading outside.
A thought rises, sudden and almost absurd in its simplicity.
What’s stopping me from just leaving?
I stare toward the living room again, toward the glass double doors and the sand beyond them.
Nothing obvious.
That can’t be right. There has to be something. Someone. Some reason it only looks this easy.
But what if it is?
I am clearly nowhere near home. This is obviously not New Jersey. Still, people get home from strange places every day. Airports exist. Phones exist. Police exist. If I can get out, if I can find another house, another person, a road, a town—anything—I can start getting back.
It probably won’t be simple, but it will be possible.
Maybe whoever brought me here thought I would be out for longer.
My breath gets shallow.
Take the chance.
I move back through the living room toward the doors, every muscle tight, half expecting something to happen the closer I get. The glass reflects the room behind me in softened evening shadows. Outside, the patio glows in the fading light, and beyond it, the beach looks empty and endless.
I reach for the handle.
Open it.
Nothing stops me.
Warm air brushes over my skin immediately, soft and humid and scented faintly with salt and something floral I can’t identify. It feels strange against my body after the cool interior of the house. Not just warm—very warm, even though it’s evening. The kind of warmth that clings gently to skin.
I step out onto the patio.
The stone beneath my bare feet still holds heat from the day. The outdoor table sits untouched, clean and ready for use.
The bonfire area beyond it looks almost too perfect, the built-in seating curved in a welcoming half-circle around the dark center where flames would go. It all feels so beautiful, so designed for comfort and pleasure, that it only makes the wrongness worse.
I keep going.
Off the patio. Onto the sand.
The sand is warm too, softer than I expect, shifting beneath my feet as I make my way toward the water. I keep looking around as I walk, scanning the edges of the property, the neighboring stretches of beach, the line where the house behind me gives way to whatever comes next.
Nothing.
No one.
The waves come in with a gentle rush, folding over themselves in water that looks too clear, too bright even in the deepening evening. When I get close enough, I stop and turn in one direction first.
Beach.
Just beach.
Then the other.
More of the same.
Long stretches of pale sand extending away in both directions, broken only by clusters of palms and the occasional shape of oddly small and distant houses. No boardwalk. No roads in sight. No crowds. No familiar cold gray Atlantic horizon.
I stand there breathing hard, the hem of my dress stirring lightly in the breeze, and the realization hits so abruptly that it feels like the ground drops away under me.
This is not simple.
It is not simple at all.
This water—this warm, impossibly blue water meeting my bare feet in small, soft waves—is not the Atlantic Ocean.
I know the Atlantic. I grew up with it. I know its color, its mood, its bite, even in warmer months. This is different. Everything about it is different.
The air.
The humidity.
The heat.
The softness of the water, the lush sand.
The whole tropical unreality of the place.
This is also water I’ve seen before. On vacation.
I turn slowly, looking back at the house.
It rises behind me, elegant and warm, all glass and light and polished wood, a luxury house in a tropical setting so beautiful it could be a postcard.
And I am standing barefoot on the beach in front of it, wearing last night’s dress, with no idea who brought me here or how far from home I really am.
A cold wave of understanding moves through me.
Getting out of the bedroom was easy.
Getting out of the house was easy.
Getting back to New Jersey is going to be something else entirely.
I stay there at the edge of the water, staring in both directions at the empty beach, as the evening settles deeper around me and the full shape of that terror begins to take hold.
Because there won’t be any airports for me. No police. No phones. No neighbors.
No help at all.
And no getting back to New Jersey.
Because I’m on an island.
A motherfucking island.