Chapter Three
Valerie stuck her fingers into the grease-stained paper bag of Parmesan and wild rosemary twists Jess had left beside the half-dead succulent on the shelf in her cabin.
The crust shattered perfectly beneath her teeth.
It was so divine and buttery that Valerie closed her eyes and finished off what was left.
Then she stared mournfully into the empty bag.
For a moment, she considered sneaking up to the galley and stealing another bagful.
But that required getting up. And putting on a bra.
And potentially running into one of the guests making an impromptu visit in search of Jess’ signature truffle chips.
The effort felt excessive. Besides, she needed to address something very important.
Valerie looked back down at the email.
Val,
I know you probably never expected to hear from me again.
But Season Ten is going to be iconic. We’re heading to an uninhabited Greek island in the Northern Sporades, just off Skopelos.
It has brutal terrain, turquoise water, and zero mercy.
This season’s theme is even bigger than before.
Sinners vs. Saints, and we want you on it.
Everyone loves a good comeback story, and we think yours is unfinished.
Come finish what you started.
Best,
Elise
Valerie read the email again and again. Two months ago, on a seemingly perfect day, when The Valentine had been docked off the coast of Cala Luna in Sardinia, she’d spent the morning helping Luke inspect the tenders before swimming off the stern platform during her break.
The Mediterranean had been cold enough to sting her skin awake.
She remembered climbing back on board, dripping and sun-golden, before she grabbed an iced coffee from the galley on her way to the crew cabin with its bolted leather benches and tiny porthole windows.
She’d opened her laptop expecting an invoice from her mother’s care facility in Sitka when instead, Elise’s email had sat waiting in her inbox.
Of course, she wasn’t going back.
Except the money had tempted her from the beginning, no matter how hard she’d pretended it hadn’t. Adrienne was only the thing that pushed her from maybe to yes.
Her plan was simple. She wanted to make enough money to go home and build something permanent. No more yachts. No more waking up in a different marina every week. No more living according to charter schedules and rich people’s whims. No more Valentine.
She wanted a house. A life. A kitchen with wide windows overlooking Sitka Sound.
A garden bed with Nootka roses, clusters of blue flag irises, and wild bleeding hearts that would survive the mist. Of course she would have heated vinyl floors so her mother’s feet wouldn’t ache in winter.
And the walls would be made of cedar that smelled warm after the rain.
A mudroom would be permanently cluttered with Xtratufs and damp jackets.
She could picture her father standing on her wraparound deck with a mug of coffee, grumbling that the fog rolling in was too thick for fishing.
Bald eagles would be perched on spruce trees, and smoke would curl from the fireplace.
The salty smell of low tide would drift up from the shoreline.
Nowhere in those blueprints did she see herself standing on a sun-scorched beach in Greece, surviving off rice and beans while her cortisol levels skyrocketed because she was constantly terrified of being voted off.
But then she thought of Adrienne, standing in that garage in that bikini.
It had taken absolutely every ounce of Valerie not to look the woman up and down.
She wondered why a woman like her would even want to go on a show like Outlast Her.
Clearly it wasn’t for the money. Adrienne had more than she could ever know what to do with.
Valerie, on the other hand, hadn’t grown up with a lot.
Her mother had worked as a hairdresser until cancer had made standing all day impossible, and her father spent thirty years working for the Sitka harbor department repairing docks.
Her beginnings were humble. People like Kyle and Adrienne Vale were born with golden spoons, and they knew it.
And more times than not, they made sure everyone else knew that too.
Valerie groaned and rubbed a hand down her face.
The thought of Adrienne winning was more than agonizing.
It was needling. It had worked its way under her skin and festered.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it. But was it enough for her to do something stupid?
Was Valerie Lang really that petty that she would delay her entire Sitka plan because a billionaire heiress made her feel unnecessarily competitive?
Or worse. Was she arrogant enough to believe she could actually go back and win the million dollars this time?
“JESS!” she shouted, shoving the laptop to the side. She kicked the blanket off her legs, swung them over the side of the bed, and dusted crumbs off her lap. “JESS!”
Red curls appeared through the doorway first, followed by a deeply irritated-looking Jess whose sea-foam green face mask had hardened into a cracked crust across her cheeks. “What are you shouting about?” she grumbled.
“Tell me the honest truth,” Valerie said.
Jess leaned against the doorframe. “What other truth is there?”
Valerie ignored her tone. “How dumb would I be if I went back on Outlast Her and tried to win the title again?”
Jess took a moment to reply. Then her mask tightened as her eyebrows shot up. “Only as dumb as someone who jumps back into shark-infested water after already losing an arm.”
Valerie pulled a face. It was the answer she expected and agreed with. It was dumb. Extremely stupid. Entirely idiotic. “Do you think the Vales will let me quit mid-season?”
“They’d have another engineer in your room by the end of the week.”
This was also the truth, which was why Valerie picked up her laptop again and clicked reply to Elise’s email.
WHEN VALERIE STEPPED onto the dock in Mykonos, two things became crystal clear.
One: the boat they were boarding was a custom-built, forty-foot luxury tender that a young Valerie would’ve sold a kidney to take apart piece by piece.
Its pearlescent hull shimmered like an abalone shell, and the cream-colored leather looked so buttery soft it felt illegal to sit on it.
Every chrome fitting gleamed. Every teak panel was polished.
Then there were the twin 400-horsepower engines that would propel them toward the island at a speed that turned the Aegean wind into a gale.
And two: Adrienne was nowhere to be seen. Which had been a relief.
After their interaction in the garage of The Valentine two months ago, there had been almost no further contact during the Vales’ visit.
No more probing questions. On the second morning, Valerie found a handwritten note sitting on the dining table addressed to her.
My iPad’s refusing to connect to Wi-Fi. On the third, there had been a follow-up emergency involving a bedside reading lamp that had started flickering.
On the fourth, Adrienne had walked past her with a single, steely glance, and by that evening, when Valerie had come up from the engine room after replacing a coolant sensor in the generator, Adrienne had left for Austria.
Had Valerie spent the weeks thereafter thinking about Adrienne far more than was mentally advisable?
Yes. Had she downloaded Instagram again only to secretly stalk the woman’s socials late at night, hunkered in her bed while everyone else was asleep?
Had she zoomed into each photo of Adrienne on the powdered slopes of St. Anton am Arlberg; Adrienne waist-deep in crystal-clear water in the Seychelles; Adrienne standing beside fashion model Erica Litzman on a beach in Saint Tropez?
Absolutely yes. And was she bothered by the fact that the billionaire heiress, who had claimed that she was partaking in Season Ten of Outlast Her, had either backed out, which was the most likely explanation, or simply lied?
One hundred percent.
“All right, contestants,” Elise shouted across the marina. The boom mic in her hand dangled uselessly against her cargo shorts. Her voice was loud enough. “We’re starting soon.”
Earlier, Elise had caught Valerie by the arm and leaned in close enough for Valerie to smell espresso and peppermint Trident gum on her breath.
“You coming back on this show means a lot to me. Don’t fuck it up.
” Then she’d marched through the crowd toward the end of the gangway and stepped onto an old salt-crusted fishing crate.
“As you’ve probably realized, there are only six of you standing here...
because you are the Saints tribe. The loyal ones.
The moral compasses. The expected fan favorites.
” She gestured toward the group with a sweep of her arm.
“Congratulations, ladies, for being the good ones this season,” Elise said, tucking strands of blonde hair behind her ears.
Valerie frowned deeply. Only six of them?
With the camera crew weaving around the dock, and production swarming everywhere, six people had looked like twelve.
Besides, she’d been too nervous to count, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t been escorted to the marina in separate vehicles specifically to avoid communication beforehand.
She’d forgotten how stealthy everything felt, like they were government agents transporting nuclear codes instead of a bunch of lesbians about to survive on an uninhabited Greek island for national television.
Valerie’s stomach twisted into a pretzel. Did that mean Adrienne was here? Maybe she was just on another boat, and she would be competing in this game as a Sinner.
Valerie squinted at the horizon. The sea was an impossible shade of peacock blue with white-crested peaks created by the Meltemi wind. And there, in the distance, was a white speck.
“The boat will slow down about half a mile from shore, and you will all jump out and swim the rest of the way,” Elise said. “The water’s a bit choppy, so we’ll have lifeguards out. If you’re struggling, please don’t panic. Just wave your arms and you will be assisted.”
Valerie almost snorted. She’d swum in far worse conditions than this.
At nineteen, she’d jumped from a fishing trawler off Kodiak Island to untangle a fouled line in water so cold her hands had numbed.
In Croatia, she once ended up swimming half a mile back to where a drunk guest had left her behind after she’d gone to rescue him from a faulty jet ski. Half a mile in the Aegean Sea was easy.
“Once you hit shore, Vivian will be waiting for you at the beach.” Elise gestured toward the tender. “All right, contestants, let’s load up.”
Five minutes later, the captain eased them away from the dock.
Then he punched the throttle. Several contestants grabbed for the rails as the hull smacked against the chop.
Ahead of her, a woman who looked strikingly like Sienna Michaels—formerly known as Sienna McKenzie—from Season Seven of The Sapphic Match grabbed for the Panama hat on her head before it blew off. But it couldn’t be, could it?
The woman sitting to Valerie’s left, who had tattoos of wildflowers snaking up both forearms, had lurched forward hard enough that she snapped back like a bungee cord.
Her hand landed on Valerie’s knee. “Fucking hell,” the woman gasped, immediately snatching her hand back. “This is asking for a spinal injury.”
When Valerie stared at her as if she’d never considered getting grievously injured by a boat in her life, the woman added, “I’m an ER nurse. I’ve seen people break their backs on Lake Tahoe just because they hit the wake wrong. It doesn’t take much.”
“Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen to any of us,” Valerie said.
Then she turned back to the marina and watched the pastel houses shrink behind them.
A few moments later, she turned forward again and saw the island properly for the first time.
It rose from the sea in jagged pale cliffs streaked with rust-colored veins where minerals bled through the limestone.
The shoreline was basically rock, giving way to small stretches of coarse sand.
Then, to the right, tucked into the curve of a cove, was a dense thicket of Aleppo pines and mastic trees.
“Over there!” a woman with dark curls tied up in a sun-yellow bandana yelled suddenly.
Valerie followed her outstretched hand and spotted the Sinners’ tender cutting across the water from the opposite direction. It looked identical, but Valerie wasn’t paying attention to the boat because she was looking for Adrienne.
And there she was.
Adrienne stood near the bow. The wind snapped through the loose white linen shirt hanging open over a black bikini. Her honey-brown hair whipped wildly around her face. She wasn’t looking at Valerie... and then she was.
Their eyes met. Valerie could see the gears grinding in Adrienne’s mind, the frown forming faintly, then more pronounced as surprise, then shock, then pure disbelief flickered across her pretty face.
There had been a part of Valerie that believed Adrienne wouldn’t remember her.
Why would she? Valerie was no one compared to the celebrities, socialites, and billionaires she spent her days with.
But then it became crystal clear that she did.
“TWENTY SECONDS!” the captain yelled.
Valerie snatched her gaze away from the boat toward the water.
Her mother’s face flashed suddenly into her mind.
Pale and thin, wrapped in a soft cardigan inside the assisted living facility outside Sitka.
Valerie pictured her father arriving every Tuesday with supermarket flowers.
He still lived in Valerie’s childhood home, which was a narrow two-story house with steep stairs and doors not wide enough for a wheelchair.
Sometimes when the weather held, Mick wheeled Hattie through the facility’s garden paths lined with damp cedar mulch.
When they got to the little koi pond with a view of the water, Hattie would insist on walking.
She’d grip Mick’s arm and get five breathless steps before needing to sit again.
All Valerie wanted was a place they could all be together again. That was the plan. Had always been the plan. So what the hell was she doing here?
Was this a mistake? Should she have stayed aboard The Valentine? Would it have been better if she had worked her final year offshore and kept her head down, instead of wasting the month on throwing herself back into a game that had nearly gutted her the first time?
“GO!” the captain screamed, tearing her thoughts apart.
Before Valerie could think herself out of it, she dove into the water.