Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
The helicopter banked over open water with the Pacific flashing hard blue beneath them, sunlight glaring off the swells in broken sheets of white.
Ahead, the island rose sharply from the ocean in layers of black volcanic rock and dense green jungle, the compound built into the cliffs so carefully it barely revealed itself at first glance.
White structures appeared in fragments between the trees. Glass catching sunlight through the canopy. Pale stone terraces carved into the hillside. Narrow paths winding through tropical growth thick enough to disguise the security hidden beneath it.
Beautiful in the deliberate way Lars preferred.
Grace kept her gaze on the island because it was easier than looking at the hand resting lightly against her thigh. Lars barely moved during the flight. The relaxed posture, the idle movement of his thumb against her leg, all of it carried the same quiet certainty: she belonged to him again.
The helicopter noise filled the cabin in heavy rhythmic pulses while the island grew larger through the window, and his thumb traced slow, absent movements against the seam of her cargo pants like he’d forgotten his hand was there at all.
Grace had learned long ago that the casual touches were worse than the violent ones.
Violence, at least, admitted itself honestly.
The helicopter banked toward a landing platform carved into the upper cliffs.
As they descended, the details sharpened.
Security fencing hidden behind flowering hedges.
Cameras recessed beneath overhangs. Armed patrols moving along lower paths in soft gray tactical gear designed not to disrupt the illusion of luxury.
Lars’s version of safety had always looked like paradise from the outside.
The skids touched down with a hard metallic vibration.
Before the rotors had fully settled, the side door slid open and humid air rolled through the cabin carrying salt, wet earth, and tropical flowers. One of Lars’s men stepped up immediately, eyes flicking over Grace with detachment.
“She stays with me,” Lars said.
The operative nodded once. “Protocol requires—”
“She stays with me.” Lars didn’t raise his voice or sharpen his tone. He simply repeated himself, and the operative stepped back immediately.
Lars stood first and offered Grace his hand as though helping her out of a town car instead of a military transport.
She ignored it and climbed down on her own.
The operative still performed a brief secondary search once her boots hit the tarmac.
Quick hands at her sides. Waistband. Ankles. Cargo pockets.
His fingers closed around the Aegis Key in her right pocket.
The operative pulled it free and glanced automatically toward Lars before offering it across his palm. A small flash of satisfaction crossed Lars’s face before the expression disappeared again beneath composure.
He took the Key and turned it once between his fingers, sunlight flashing briefly along the metal edge before he slipped it into his pocket.
The operative continued the search. His hands brushed past the hidden Velcro seam beneath Grace’s vest without noticing it. The evidence drive remained pressed flat against her ribs. The Casio stayed undisturbed on her wrist.
“Clear,” the operative said.
Lars stepped closer then, his hand settling lightly against the center of Grace’s back as he guided her toward the compound. The touch looked almost intimate from a distance. Protective, even.
Grace felt the control in it immediately.
The pathway curved downward through dense landscaping lit by low amber lights that hadn’t yet shut off against the dawn.
Plumeria drifted heavily through the humid air.
Water moved somewhere nearby, hidden fountains feeding narrow black stone pools that reflected the paling sky overhead.
Every inch of the island had been engineered to soothe people before they realized they were trapped there.
Grace noticed the security anyway.
Camera angles.
Motion sensors.
Guard rotations.
The places patrol lines overlapped near the eastern terraces.
Her brain kept mapping exits automatically, even while another part of her fought a losing battle against one thought repeating hard enough to drown everything else beneath it.
Oliver had to be here.
Alive. Maybe sleeping. Maybe awake. Maybe frightened. Maybe—
Lars steered her through wide glass doors into the residential wing before the thought could finish itself.
Cool conditioned air wrapped around her skin.
The interior smelled faintly of polished wood and expensive citrus cleaner, the same carefully neutral scent Lars had always preferred in his homes.
Lars never really built homes. He built controlled environments disguised as comfort.
They moved deeper into the corridor. Thick rugs softened their footsteps while dawn light filtered through narrow windows overlooking the ocean. Somewhere below them, waves broke against the cliffs in a slow, rhythmic crash.
He stopped beside the door without ceremony, as though this were merely another point along the hallway instead of the center of Grace’s world narrowing to a single room. An observation window had been built into the wall beside it, narrow and with the tint of the backside of a one-way mirror.
Lars looked at her for a moment before speaking. “Go on.”
Grace moved toward the glass before she consciously decided to.
The room beyond glowed softly in the jungle-filtered light. A small bed sat against the far wall beneath wide windows overlooking the water. Books were stacked unevenly on the floor beside it. A child-sized sweatshirt hung over the arm of a chair near the corner.
Oliver sat cross-legged on the rug at the foot of the bed with crayons spread around him in loose disorganized clusters.
Drawing.
The sight hit Grace so hard her vision narrowed around it.
One sock had twisted halfway beneath his heel. His hair curled against the back of his neck, where it needed to be cut again. He held the crayon in a clumsy fist while his tongue pressed slightly between his lips in concentration, blue streaking heavily across the paper beneath his hands.
He looked healthy—alert, steady, absorbed in his drawing instead of frightened or sedated. Grace’s hand flattened silently against the wall beside the window as something inside her body gave way all at once.
For days, she had lived with images Lars wanted her to carry. Oliver crying. Oliver terrified. Oliver hurt. Every possibility sharpened into something monstrous by helplessness and distance.
But the reality sitting six feet away on the rug was painfully ordinary.
A little boy drawing dinosaurs.
A half-finished glass of milk sat near his elbow. One of the books beside the bed had been opened upside down. His knee bounced faintly while he colored.
Grace felt the sound of his name rise into her throat.
Oliver.
She could already see exactly what would happen if she said it aloud.
His head lifting. Recognition spreading across his face. That instant of certainty before confusion followed when she didn’t come to him because Lars stood beside her.
Because she could not cross the room and gather him into her arms and breathe him in and promise him she was here now.
She could survive him not seeing her.
She could not survive watching him reach for her.
So she stood perfectly silent outside the observation window while her son kept coloring crooked blue scales onto a dinosaur with complete concentration.
Beside her, Lars said nothing for several seconds.
Grace hated the quiet versions of Lars most. The moments when he said nothing at all and simply watched her absorb exactly the amount of pain he intended. Then his hand settled against the center of her back again.
“He’s been well cared for,” Lars said softly. “As I promised.”
Grace forced herself to step away from the window. Every instinct in her body resisted it.
Lars guided her farther down the corridor at an unhurried pace. “You’ve made this far more difficult than it needed to be, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be repaired.”
Repaired.
Like she was damage inside a system he intended to restore.
“You’re going to help me put everything back where it belongs,” Lars said. “Then all of this unpleasantness will finally be behind us.”
Grace kept walking beside him while the hallway carried them farther from the room.
Farther from Oliver.
She did not look back.
She kept her eyes forward because looking back might still break whatever control she had left.