19. Chapter 19
Kara
She’s definitely on the island. The words do not make sense at first. They should. They are small ordinary words. Words a person might say about someone arriving for vacation, or a dinner reservation, or a weekend visit. But Vanessa is not supposed to be here.
Vanessa is supposed to be in Orlando busy at her restaurant. I can imagine her worried and texting too much. Not here. Not close enough to photograph me on Cole’s boat.
My body understands before my heart does. My heart is afraid … of absolutely breaking into pieces. I hear Sloane speaking. Rafi on the laptop. Cole beside me, his body angled between me and the door like Vanessa might walk through it at any second. Maybe she could. She could already be outside.
“Lock down the inn,” Sloane says into his phone. “Quietly, without panic. I want eyes on the office, both exits, and the service road.”
Rafi’s voice comes through the laptop. “I’m trying to narrow the tower sector. She’s moving or the signal bounced. Hard to tell.”
“Find out,” Sloane says.
Cole’s hand brushes my elbow.
“Kara.”
I look at him. His face is controlled, but his eyes are not. The fury is still there, banked under discipline. Maybe that should frighten me. It doesn’t.
“What do you need?” he asks.
The question breaks something in me because I do not know the answer.
My best friend is on the island. She may be behind all of this including breaking into my house and standing in the dunes taking photos while I sat on the porch like prey behind a screen.
My best friend may have been the ghost haunting me since culinary school.
What do I need? A different truth. A rewind button.
“I need to understand,” I say.
Cole’s mouth tightens. “That may not happen today.”
“I need to hear her.”
“No.”
The word is immediate. Sloane looks over. Cole does not soften it.
“No,” he says again. “Not unless it serves a purpose.”
“It does.”
“For you emotionally, maybe. Not operationally.”
My anger flashes hot. It feels good for half a second like a hot knife cutting through hard butter.
“You do not get to decide which parts of my life I’m allowed to face.”
His jaw flexes.
Sloane steps in before he answers. “Kara.”
I turn to him and I know he sees my pain.
“If we call her, it is controlled. We record and keep her talking. Rafi works location while she’s on the line. You do not give her information. You do not tell her where you are. You do not agree to meet her alone. If she tries to pull you emotionally, you let one of us end the call.”
My laugh comes out thin. “That sounds easy.”
“It won’t be, Kara.”
At least he doesn’t lie.
Cole’s voice drops. “She knows where to hurt you.”
I look back at him.
“She already has,” I whisper.
His expression changes, and for a second, we are back in the bedroom. His hand on my face. His mouth on mine. The devastating tenderness of being wanted instead of watched. Then the laptop chimes.
Rafi says, “I have the recording setup ready.”
Sloane nods. “Use my phone. Unknown number blocked. We’ll call Vanessa’s cell.”
My stomach turns. Vanessa’s cell. I know that number by memory.
I have called it from grocery store aisles, airport bathrooms, production sets, hotel rooms, parking lots after long events when my smile hurt and I needed someone who knew what the smile cost. I have called it crying and laughing. Now Sloane dials it like evidence.
The phone rings once. Twice. Three times. Then Vanessa answers.
“Kara?”
Her voice breaks over my name. For one brutal second, I almost break with it.
Honey-warm. Tearful. Relieved. So perfectly Vanessa that my body reaches for the old version of her before my mind can stop it.
I close my eyes and feel Cole shift closer. I open them again.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Oh, thank God.” Vanessa exhales shakily. “Honey, I have been losing my mind. Where are you? Are you safe? Who is with you?”
Sloane holds the phone on speaker between us. His other hand lifts slightly, motioning to be careful.
“I’m safe,” I say.
“With him?”
The word him comes sharp. It’s out of place and too sharp.
My throat tightens. “With security.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Every person in the room goes still. Vanessa seems to realize it too because she laughs once, airy and strained. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just scared. You know how I get when I’m scared.”
I do. I know exactly how Vanessa gets. Big feelings and even bigger declarations. She’s the one with a hand on my shoulders, telling me the world is too sharp, and I need to let her soften it. The memory hurts.
“Are you on Sunbreak Harbor?” I ask.
Silence is all I hear for just a second. But’s it’s long enough that I find it suspect.
“What?” she says.
“Are you on the island?”
“Kara, who is putting these ideas in your head?”
Not no. My pulse knocks hard once.
“Answer me.”
“I am trying to protect you.”
Sloane’s eyes sharpen. Cole’s face goes colder than I have ever seen it.
I swallow. “From what?”
“From people who don’t know you. From people who make you doubt the person who has always been there. From men who show up with hard bodies and hero complexes. It’s like suddenly you forgot who drove you to therapy when you couldn’t stop shaking.”
My hand curls into a fist. She’s doing it again. Using the past … my old wounds like a knife pointed at my gut.
“Do not bring Dr. Vale into this,” I say.
Vanessa’s breath trembles through the phone. “I was there for you. Not him.”
Sloane mouths, Keep her talking.
I force air into my lungs.
“Were you there yesterday?” I ask.
“Where?”
“At my house.”
“No.”
Too fast.
“Vanessa.”
“No,” she says again, louder. “No, no, no. See? This is what they do. This is how they isolate you. They make you suspicious of everyone who loves you, and then you cling to them because they feel like the only safe thing left.”
Cole’s hand closes around the back of a chair. Hard. I hear wood creak.
“Is that what you think my bodyguard is doing?” I ask.
“I think he likes you scared.”
The words slice through the room. Cole does not move. I step closer to the phone.
“No.”
“Kara …”
“No. You do not get to do that.”
Vanessa goes quiet.
My voice is shaking now, but it is still mine. “You do not get to twist him into something ugly because you don’t like that I trust him.”
“You trust him?” she whispers.
She doesn’t sound angry over this, more like devastated. It’s as if I have betrayed her. The absurdity of it nearly knocks me sideways.
“He has kept me safe.”
“I kept you safe.”
“When?”
“All those years.”
“When, Vanessa?”
Sloane’s gaze locks on mine. Rafi leans closer to the screen.
My heart is beating too fast, but I keep going because if I stop now, I may never start again.
“Culinary school?” I ask. “Is that when you kept me safe?”
The silence that follows is not empty. It is full of the thing hiding between us.
“Kara,” Vanessa says softly. “We were so young.”
My stomach drops. Cole steps toward me, but I lift one hand as if to say, not yet.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“You were brilliant. Everyone knew it. Everyone saw you. Professors. Bloggers. Chefs. Those stupid boys in our cohort who acted like they invented reduction sauces because they watched one documentary.”
She laughs weakly, like we are sharing an old joke. “They were going to eat you alive.”
I cannot breathe.
“So you sabotaged me?”
“No.” The word comes fast, then softer. “No, honey. Not like that.”
Not like that.
Sloane’s face goes still in that terrifying way again.
“What did you do?” I whisper.
“I slowed things down.”
A sound I don’t even recognize comes out of my body. It’s small and ugly. Rage building inside of me.
“I had to. You were burning too bright. You didn’t know how people looked at you. You didn’t know what they wanted. They would have taken everything from you and called it opportunity.”
“You changed my oven temperature.”
Vanessa says nothing.
“You swapped my ingredients.”
“I corrected an imbalance.”
The words are so calm that for a moment, I do not understand them. Then I do.
Corrected an imbalance?
My hand flies to my mouth, but it cannot hold back the sound this time. It comes out broken and raw, ripped from somewhere younger than I am now.
Twenty-three-year-old me hears it. The younger me finally knows she was not crazy. And somehow, the truth hurts worse.
Vanessa is crying now. I can hear it in her breath. “I stayed. After all of it, I stayed. No one else did. I was the one who picked you up off the floor.”
“You put me there.”
“No. No, that’s not fair.”
“You put me there.”
“Kara, please.”
“You put me there, then held me while I cried.”
My voice does not sound like mine anymore. It sounds bold and somewhat frightening.
Cole is watching me like he would tear the world apart if I asked, but I do not ask. I need to stand through this. I need to hear it.
Vanessa’s crying turns sharper. “You don’t understand what it was like to stand next to you. You have never understood. Everything comes to you. Cameras love you. People love you. They taste one thing you make and act like you invented hunger.”
Her jealousy is naked now. It’s old and stinks … completely rotten. Somehow, Vanessa has convinced herself she can wrap it up with a bow and call it love. And I fell for it. Evidently, I needed a friend so badly that I bought the package set to detonate when I opened it.
“I loved you,” she says. “I love you so much it makes me sick sometimes.”
Sloane mouths, Location.
I nod once, though my body feels far away.
“Where are you?” I ask.
Vanessa laughs. “Now you ask.”
“Where are you?”
“Would you come if I told you?”
“No,” Cole says.
Not loud.
But Vanessa hears him.
The line goes quiet in a way that makes my skin prickle.
“There he is,” she says. “The man who thinks standing close means he knows you.”
Cole steps beside me. “Vanessa.”
Her breath catches.
“You need to turn yourself in,” he says.
“Oh, I bet you sound very convincing to scared women.”
I feel the poison she is trying to slide into the room. I feel it search for a place to land. It finds nothing. Not this time.
Cole’s voice stays level. “No one else needs to get hurt.”
“I haven’t hurt her.”
I laugh. I cannot help it.
Vanessa makes a wounded sound. “Don’t laugh at me.”
“Then stop saying things that are insane.”
Sloane’s eyebrows lift slightly. Even Rafi freezes on the screen. The words shock me too. But they are true.
Vanessa’s voice drops. “That is him talking through you.”
“No,” I say. “That is me finally hearing the truth myself.”
Another silence.
Then Vanessa says, very softly, “You always come back when you’re scared.”
“I’m not coming back this time.”
The moment changes. I know it before anyone moves. The grief disappears from Vanessa’s voice. Something colder takes its place.
“Then I guess I’ll have to make sure he can’t keep you.”
Cole reaches for the phone. “Vanessa …”
The line disconnects. For half a second, no one breathes. Then everyone moves at once. Sloane grabs the laptop, Rafi still visible on the screen.
“Rafi, get the Sheriff to Bluefin. Quiet approach. I want marina exits covered and harbor patrol notified.”
“I’m sending units,” Rafi says. “She’s near the south slips, maybe moving.”
Cole turns to me. “You stay here with me.”
“No.”
“Kara …”
“No.” My voice shakes, but it does not bend. “She is at Bluefin because she saw us there. If she sees police first, what does she do?”
Sloane looks at me.
“She runs,” I say. “Or she hurts someone. Or herself.”
Cole’s face is iron. “You are not bait.”
“I’m not asking to be bait. I’m asking to be useful.”
“No.”
“Cole.”
“No.”
The word cracks through the cottage. I step closer to him. His eyes burn into mine.
“You told me you wouldn’t take my choice away,” I say.
His face changes like I hit him.
“I’m not asking to go alone. I’m not asking to be stupid. I am asking you to stop treating this like you can end it by locking me in a room while everyone else fights my life for me.”
His jaw works.
Sloane speaks quietly. “Controlled approach. Kara stays in the vehicle unless I say otherwise. Cole stays on her. Eli covers the dock. Harbor patrol blocks water exits. If Vanessa is armed, we pull back.”
Cole does not look at Sloane. He looks at me. I see the war in him. Protector against promise. Fear against respect.
Finally, he says, “You do exactly what keeps you alive. That’s what we need, Kara. That’s what I need.”
That surprises me more than if he had argued again.
His voice is rough when he adds, “And if I tell you to get down, move, or run, you listen because you trust me. Not because I command you.”
“Fair,” I whisper.
Sloane is already at the door. “Let’s move.”
Bluefin Marina waits across the island. So does Vanessa. My best friend. My saboteur.