16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Micah
T he evening looms as we step outside the warmth of the cabin. At this time of night, when both the sun and moon share the sky, the shadows are the longest. It’s not an ideal time to go looking for London, but I can’t stay here without her for another second. Especially now that I am certain that Naomi is playing games.
Naomi stumbles forward, and my fingers tighten around my bone weapon.
Fresh footprints mark the melted mud and snow. Two sets of them lead right up to the window, then back into the forest, where they seem to disappear again. Whoever it was wasn’t even trying to hide themselves. Someone was here recently. These muddy prints were not here when I was out here twenty minutes ago.
My stomach tightens when a flicker flashes in the corner of my eye. I lift my hand as Naomi opens her mouth to speak, only to close it again as I grab her and pull her into my chest, covering her mouth. “Someone’s out there, watching us,” I whisper.
“What? What did you see?”
I press my hand harder. “Shh, Naomi. Don’t fucking talk.” She freezes in my arms as I scan the darkness. “London?” I call out and listen .
My ears are keen. Only the familiar sound of silence answers me.
“London, answer me. I know you’re there,” I yell out as Naomi wiggles and squirms in my arms, which only causes me to tighten my grip on her mouth, suffocating her so she will shut the fuck up. The wind rustles through the thick trees while Naomi shakes, then goes limp. Just the raw, rugged sounds of nature.
I wait.
Listen.
I barely let Naomi breathe.
The shadows close in on me, and my heart rate spikes. London saw me with Naomi; she must have. She saw what Naomi was trying to do to me, what I let her do to me, when all along it was London I needed—the one I obsessively craved.
“London, come out. We can talk this through.”
Silence. No London, no ghost, no figure peering from the woods, and for a moment, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. My paranoia is finally catching up with me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen things I shouldn’t have in these woods.
I hang my head low and listen. Really listen… This island is so quiet that if they so much as move, I will hear them.
A few moments pass, but I’m patient, keeping my focus.
Then a muffled wind echoes from the trees, bringing along a faint cry that has my ears perking up. The shadows are messing with my sense of direction. In my mind, I can hear her as clear as day—her sweet voice calling my name, so low that I wonder if it’s real. It could be my mind recalling the entire winter when I had her pinned down, teasing her with my tongue. I recall the soft skin of her thigh as it brushed under my fingers while I made her squirm and squirt, bruising her with my lips as she lay fully under my control.
Her final cry when I abandoned her.
My heart falters from the pain in that cry and her last words to me before I left, foolishly dismissing them as an outburst .
“Don’t fucking hurt her,” I say in no direction in particular, but I can imagine Ezra is with her and Nigel is somewhere close, watching me. Enjoying this.
Naomi bites down on my hand, marking my flesh with her teeth, and I drop her.
“Fuck. Micah,” she coughs out, grabbing her neck and touching the red marks I left on her. “No one is here. You’ve lost your damn mind.” Tears flow out of her eyes as she chokes on her breath and keels over. I had no clue how hard I was holding her. I flex my jaw and blink, coming back to reality, then smile.
My dick isn’t so enticing now, is it, sweetheart?
I ignore her scowling and continue to scan the forest as we edge toward where I think I heard London. Or someone…
Naomi waits and crosses her arms while every hair on my arm stands on end. “She’s here, and I don’t think she’s alone.”
“No one is here, Micah,” Naomi scoffs.
I stare at the thickest part of the woods, where her cry echoed from. I heard them flee after Naomi bit me. My instinct is to chase London, but I won’t. I’ll hunt her instead… I’m better at that.
I nudge Naomi forward. “Move.”
She frowns but nods and takes a tentative step into the darkness.
“Good fucking girl,” I mutter under my breath, watching her, making sure she listens. Her blonde ponytail swings as she faces me. Her eyes flash slightly and a brief twinge appears on her lips before she turns away and struts forward—every ounce of pep back in her step.
Fuck me, this girl loves the abuse.
They all seem to with me.
I take one final glance at the cabin, wondering if I will ever make it back here or if I’m turning my back on it forever. My eyes are drawn to the footprints, and I falter.
The snow has melted, so perhaps there were no footprints, or perhaps they were ours all along. I recall my last steps just an hour earlier. I came back from the woods and walked around the cabin to the cooking site. Naomi was here the whole time. She could have left those footprints.
So why are my senses screaming at me?
She is here.
Five fucking days, and I promised London I’d only be gone a few hours.
“Micah, I can’t walk that fast,” Naomi whines as I set an intense pace toward the airplane and she struggles to keep up. “Can you please just take me to the others? I’ll tell you where Ezra is if you let me go. Please, Micah. Please. I don’t want to go with you back there.”
I whip around to face her, my knife flashing in the moonlight. “Nope. Keep up, Naomi. And stop fucking whining. I’m trying to think.”
Naomi’s strength is back—she proved that to me when she pushed me down and straddled me. If she has the energy to take my cock down her throat, then she can keep up to help me find my girlfriend. In fact, I think she has been better for a while now and was just pretending to not feel well because I’ve been doting on her.
The fear in her eyes is real now… finally. She sees me for what I am as her hands keep drawing up to the bruises on her neck. I’m not proud of it, but it’s time she knew what I am. Now she can stay the fuck away from me and, hopefully, keep her life intact.
We walk through the dense woods, deeper into the night, until the landscape finally starts to change. I know I’m close and fully aware this could be a trap to lure me away from the cabin again, but I don’t care. The food is well-hidden, and getting London back means everything to me. The woods are too quiet, everything in the air is off, and I hate the feeling of not being in control. With my bone weapon sticking out of my backpack and my sharp knife in my hand, I hack at the dense bushes standing in my way of finding her.
I scan the woods immediately in front of me and finally spot what I’m looking for—fresh broken sticks, proving that someone was here. Almost as if there was a struggle here mere moments before .
“They aren’t far ahead,” I say to Naomi as she struggles to keep up. “We have to get to the airplane. That’s where they are headed.”
London, I’m coming for you, baby.
Naomi finally admitted where Nigel and Ezra are staying, in a cave system close to the airplane. I know these caves; I found them in the fall when I stalked this island from end to end. The problem is that there are hundreds of these holes scattered everywhere, so it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
I slow my pace, the ground slippery as we head toward the airplane, and I let Naomi join me as we enter a dangerous area full of cracks in the earth. As much as she drives me crazy, I’m not ready yet for her to fall to her death inside one of these things. I grab her hand and make sure she sticks close to me. She leans into me as we walk, enjoying my hand in hers way too much.
“What are you going to do when you find them?” Naomi asks as I grab her waist and lift her over a dark hole. I pause and release her back to her feet.
“I’m going to return you to Ezra.”
It’s not what she wants, but she doesn’t have a choice. I’m banking on the fact Ezra won’t be able to resist Naomi when he lays eyes on her. Especially with how shiny and pretty I’ve made her.
He’ll want her back.
She lets out a sob. “You’re so fucking predictable, Micah. This is so typical of you. I’m not telling you what cave it is. You can’t make me go back to that place.”
Pathetic.
No wonder they are so desperate. There is no fresh running water anywhere. Only rodents, bottom feeders, and dead bodies. I look around at the barren land in disgust, grateful for the cabin I found for London.
“Why did he move you here?” Inquiring minds want to know. What drew them to live like this? At least the lake site offered fresh water, a place to bathe and fish.
Her eyes whip up at me. “To hide from you, Micah. For a few weeks, Ezra was petrified that you were going to come back and kill him. ”
“He should be petrified,” I say, hacking some brush. I probably would have killed him, and I definitely will now if he has London.
Naomi stops walking, crosses her arms, and scoffs. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Micah. Maybe give Ezra some credit; he remembered all these holes in the ground. We took a chance, checked them out, and found one to live in. Some of them have tiny caves buried in the earth. They provided good shelter, better than what we had at the lake. It doesn’t seem like much, but it kept us alive… not that you care at all about us living.”
Interesting. And I hate to admit it, but smart.
She casts her brown eyes up to meet mine, her words causing a chill to run up my spine. “He’s obsessed with his hatred for you. He’s not himself, and he hasn’t been since that night. I couldn’t look at it anymore. I couldn’t deal with him any longer.
“Look at what anymore?”
“His fingers, Micah. The ones you chopped off, remember?”
How could I fucking forget?
The wind shifts, and I can tell we are close based on the putrid stench of decaying flesh nearby.
My sight is drawn to the broken silver tip of the airplane as I pull Naomi into me. She loves it, her body responding with a slight arch of her hips against mine.
I lean down and whisper, “There is a lot you don’t know about me, Naomi. I’m much smarter than you think I am. And just so you know, I’m never going to fuck you, so quit trying. I’m only keeping you alive to try to prove to my girlfriend that I’m not the monster she thinks I am. Now, shut up. We’re here.”
Her eyes widen when she finally notices how hard I’m gripping the sharp knife in my hand and that I’m holding it two inches from her face. How tense and rigid my body is. How fast my heart is beating.
She bites her bottom lip, her frosty breath teasing the air. She turns her head in every direction as if only realizing what I’ve known for a while.
We are being watched …
She sucks in a breath as a wolf howls in the night. “Micah… I’m really scared.”
I scoff. “Well, he’s your boyfriend, sweetheart, and you caused this.” Oddly enough, the one she should be most frightened of is me, yet that fact hasn’t cemented in her brain yet.
I keep my eyes laser-focused on the plane and the burnt brush that envelops it. The growth, dust, and mud caked on it allow it to blend into the natural surroundings.
I scan for any sign of the others as we huddle down on the cold earth. Naomi can sense that I’m not playing around, and eventually, she sits cross-legged in the dirt and leans back on her arms, peering up at me. I watch the trees and the plane as I listen to the wind. Any sign that will trigger me.
She stays quiet.
They are here; I know it. They weren’t that far ahead of us. Whoever it is, I have to admire their level of patience, which leads me to believe it’s Nigel… since Ezra has the patience of a pit bull, especially when it comes to waiting someone out. His dumbass would have made himself known by now.
After about twenty minutes of obsessively watching nothing moving, I take a few steps and jerk my head toward Naomi. “Come on, get up. Let’s go check it out.”
It’s not that I’m scared because I know I could take anyone out. However, I’m not sure I can take on the two of them if it comes down to that. I refuse to put London in a position where she’s ever on this island without me. Even if I’m unsure where London’s head’s at or what side she’s on after what I did to her.
We walk up to the airplane, and I push down the bile in my throat, ignoring the goosebumps rising on my arms. The memory of this place suffocates me as I remember when we were crash-landed and I thought I was about to lose my brother. That’s all I gave a shit about in that moment. The joke’s on me… I fucking lost him anyway. I never would have thought the girl he was comforting that day would become my fucking obsession, though. My only reason for living .
As we approach, I easily pull the door open.
Red flag number one.
The last time I was here, I closed it. I distinctly remember securing the doors after I pulled the upholstery apart to create the shelter. Someone was here, and it wasn’t fucking me.
I clench my jaw as I peer inside, then keep Naomi behind me as I step in, trying not to show how much this place creeps the fuck out of me. I couldn’t sleep for five days after hauling all the dead bodies to that open grave. I didn’t lie down; I paced for hours in the same spot, hidden in the trees away from the others, trying to settle myself down. It’s not an image I’ll soon forget. It nearly broke me that night, and I almost didn’t come back from it.
“What do you see?” Naomi whispers behind me. I press my arm against her chest, looking in both directions. The broken windows, the carnage, the blood… I give her a warning look, and she bites her lips shut and wraps her little fingers around my arm, digging her nails in.
The last time I was here by myself, I swear that I saw someone who was supposed to be dead. In fact, I distinctly remember carrying this kid’s body to the pile of corpses the night the plane crashed.
But there he was, standing ghostly still in an Armani suit by the bathroom at the back of the plane, staring at me like a creepy ass motherfucker. It was a junior named Troy, a friend of James, Ollie, and Nathan. And he looked pissed, like he’s the one who should have been alive instead of me. He watched me the entire time I was in here. He scared the ever-loving shit out of me, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I told myself that was the last time I’d ever come here.
As my eyes adjust, my heart stops. Right in the same spot as where the ghost was standing is London. A sense of dread settles in my stomach. I don’t recognize the girl in front of me. She’s battered and bruised, her hair is falling in her face, and hatred is spewing from her eyes.
I blink twice to convince myself she’s real. Her head shakes, and my gaze falls upon a shadow standing menacingly behind her, his thumb firmly holding a knife to her throat.
Ezra Fingerless Schwartz.