Chapter Twenty-Five
I throw myself back, and the branch misses me by inches. I land on the ground. Hard. My head slams into the ground, and I groan as pain wraps around my neck.
Bennett Mulholland looms over me, holding his branch like he’s stepping up to bat in the major leagues.
He’s bruised to hell. One of his eyes is shadowed in deep blue.
One side of his chest is so swollen and purple, I think he must have broken a rib or two.
There’s a gash down his calf and a line of what looks like a rope burn around both forearms. Dried blood tangles his blond hair over one ear.
Otherwise, he looks great.
“Surprised to see me?” he spits.
I nod.
“I should probably thank you for that,” he says, gesturing to the other side of the clearing. The boat’s emergency flotation sits propped against a tree. “If I didn’t have that thing wrapped around me when I went over, I’d have probably drowned.”
I scramble away from him. I have that feeling again.
Like I’m missing a vital detail.
I try to think of something to say. “I’m glad you made it, Ben. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I was defending myself. You didn’t give me much of a choice.”
He leans forward. “That’s funny. When you do it, it’s because you had no other choice. When I do it, I’m a criminal.”
“Because that’s what you call someone who’s committed a crime. You know, like murder and arson and assault.”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” he says, mimicking me.
I scoot back, but he closes the distance.
“Did you have a choice when you started stealing our food? Our water? When you destroyed our only shelter and put out our fire? We could have been working together to signal a rescue, and instead you’re out here making sure we—”
It all clicks together a second too late. Ben quirks an eyebrow at me, amusement dancing across his features. As if me putting the pieces together is the most hilarious thing.
I feel the blood drain from my face.
The thefts, the sabotage—it all makes complete sense now. My stomach rolls.
“You were trying to starve us?”
He shrugs. “Starvation, dehydration, exposure…I’m not picky about how you go, just that you do. Dead men tell no tales and all that.”
I gape at him. “After everything that’s happened, after everything we’ve already survived, you’re still trying to cover your tracks?”
That sparks his anger. His face turns red, and he hefts the branch up over his shoulder.
“You still don’t understand, do you? Washing ashore alone was the first peace I’ve had since that dickhead went overboard.
I might have been stranded here by myself, but there was nobody left to rat me out.
I’d find a way home, and everyone would talk about how terrible it was that a greedy, careless captain took advantage of us.
A man who had no business bringing four teens out to sea with a storm looming. What a shame only one made it home…”
As he talks, I can see how the media, the survival story enthusiasts, would run with his version. It’s front-page gold: the unfortunate teen who wanted to spend the day on the ocean with his new friends, only to watch them all die after they trusted the wrong man to keep them safe at sea.
Nobody would ever know the truth of what happened out there.
What we did to survive.
What he did to us.
He’d be celebrated as the lucky hero who made it home—instead of the psychotic asshole responsible for the deaths of four people.
Ben raises the branch with a deep sigh. “But no. You had to keep going. Always Miss Dependable: getting to shore, finding food, breaking fevers, building bonfires the size of a fucking car. If you just quit for once in your life, you would all be dead. But you’re too fucking tenacious, so now I have to take matters into my own hands before someone sees your miles of fucking smoke. ”
He takes a step closer, and my fingers fist in the sand.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way, Hannah, but unfortunately, it’s you or me…and I’ll always choose me.”
He tenses to hit me with the branch, and I throw the fistful of sand in his face.
He rears back and drops the branch to shield his eyes.
I scramble to my feet and swing my bag at his head with all my strength.
My metal water bottle connects with his jawbone, and his head snaps back. I drop the bag and run.
He screams a string of f-bombs behind me as I race out onto the beach.
I have no idea where I’m going. Only that we’re less than a mile from camp, and I can’t risk leading him to Emmy when I don’t know if Jackson’s back from his search yet. I just know I have to get the hell away from Ben.
I race down the hot sand toward the rock outcropping.
I hear him crash through the brush behind me, and he snarls my name.
He’s on me in a flash. He grabs my hair and yanks. I fall to the sand with a grunt, and Ben straddles my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. He rears back and punches me in the face. Pain rockets through my skull, and blood gushes from my nose.
My hand scrabbles through the too-hot sand.
His sweaty, angry face hovers over me, as he pins one of my arms. “Jesus, you never stop! You’ve already failed!”
My fingers close around a palm-sized rock. “Not yet.”
I smash it into his temple.
His scream carries down the beach, and he lists to one side. I dump him off me and twist to my knees. He grabs an ankle before I can get my foot under me, and I kick back. He lets out another grunt, and my ankle comes free.
“Fuck!” he shouts.
I sprint to the hard-packed sand along the waterline and pick up more speed. I have to hide or find some kind of weapon, but I can’t do either with him right on my heels.
My lungs catch fire, but I don’t slow until the big outcropping of rocks rises a few hundred feet down the beach. I don’t have time to climb it. He’ll catch up to me long before I reach the top. I cross the soft sand and plunge back into the jungle.
A tree root catches my foot, and the next thing I know, I’m on the ground.
Dirt and sand grit in my teeth, and I taste blood.
More blood drips down the side of my face, and when I tap my fingers to my forehead the flap of skin and hair is gone.
The fall ripped it off. I try to lift my head, but everything spins.
I drag a knee under me and force myself up, but he’s too fast.
Ben grabs the hair at the back of my head, his breaths sawing in and out of his mouth. “Gotcha,” he gasps.
His grip tightens, and he hurls me out of the trees by my hair. I land face-first at the base of the stone outcropping. The sky is dotted with black smudges I can’t seem to blink away. Blood streams from my nose. I can’t make myself get up.
He might actually win this.
I think of Jackson and Emmy on the beach. They have no idea that Ben is still alive, much less what he’s about to do. Will he leave them to die on their own? How long before he grows impatient with starvation and goes after them too?
Ben comes to stand beside me and folds his arms. Fresh blood coats the side of his face from the rock. “You have to do everything the hard way. I really wanted to keep my hands clean this time and let nature do the dirty work.”
I spit blood onto the rock beside my head. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“What is that, your life motto?”
He reaches for me, and I slam my elbow down on the top of his foot. He lets out a howl and stumbles back. I scoot away, and the black spots in my vision get bigger. There’s nowhere else to go but farther up the rock, toward the water.
Ben hobbles around, cursing me with every breath, and a sick sense of satisfaction courses through me. I might die here, but I’m not going to roll over and let it happen. I’ll give him hell. And if he wins, I’m coming back to haunt every moment of his pathetic life.
His gaze locks on me, rage burning in his eyes, and he lunges. I blindly kick in his direction and somehow connect with his knee, so hard I can feel his kneecap move.
He drops, cradling his knee to his chest. “Son of a bitch!”
“You should see what I can do with a PlayStation.”
I roll to my knees. A hollow ringing fills both my ears, half drowning out Ben, the sound of the ocean, even my own heartbeat.
I need to buy myself some time—long enough for my head to stop spinning, so I don’t fall off the side of this rock.
It feels like trying to brawl on a merry-go-round at full speed.
“What about Emmy?” I shout, blinking hard to clear the shadows.
If I can see him more clearly, I’ll have a better chance of hitting my mark when I lunge for his smug face.
“I know you’re a selfish prick, but I watched you make goo-goo eyes at her all week long.
What’s the plan? Kill me and watch her starve? You’d really do that to her?”
I stagger to my feet, and the ocean, the rock, the trees, they all spin.
Ben puts all his weight on his other knee and leans down to grab a rock.
“Emmy’s death will be…regrettable. I really did like her, and if things had gone differently on the boat, I might have spared her.
But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a liar.
She was ready to let me die the moment I put my hands on you.
Bullshit recognizes bullshit, and your friend is a terrible liar. ”
Fuck. She really is.
“Besides, there’s no point in sparing her now.
She’s half dead anyway. I’ll be putting her out of her misery.
Don’t worry though, I’ll really talk her up when I get home.
She’ll be famous. You both will. The girls who fought for their lives and tragically died at sea.
Hell, it’ll probably end up a Crimflix special.
I’ll say nothing but good things when they interview me.
” He holds up one hand. “Nobody will know you’re both manipulative little bitches. Scout’s honor.”
I can’t process what he’s saying. It’s such a glaring example of how disconnected he is from reality—the idea that the story he tells about a person makes up for murdering them.
That the best he can offer Emmy is stardom in a documentary because our status as girls who famously died at sea is valuable currency in his mind.
Our lives are expendable. Not his future, not his reputation, not his family name. No, those are untouchable. Us, on the other hand? We are nothing.
“What about Jackson? He’s not going to stand by and let you kill his sister.”
He frowns and tips his head to the side. “What—”
The ringing in my head gets louder…only now it’s more of a buzz. Ben freezes. His eyes widen, and he whips around to stare down the beach, first in the direction of our little camp, then the other way.
I follow his stare, but all I see is the thin line of dwindling dark smoke coming from my fire and the same curved pear-shaped section of beach that was here before—
Something moves across the sky, far off in the distance.
It’s not my ears that are buzzing. It’s another helicopter.
Only this time, Ben stares at it with dawning horror on his face. This one isn’t in my mind. There’s actually a helicopter in the sky. And it’s heading our way.
Ben looks at me, then toward my smoke signal, and I can see the gears turning. He’s wondering how he can get rid of me and Jackson and Emmy before the helicopter reaches us.
I open my mouth to tell him it’s too late, but he seems to disagree, because without hesitation, he hurls the rock in his hand at my face.
I barely move in time. The rock glances off the top of my shoulder and rips through the skin.
I gasp in pain, but before I can scramble away, he’s got a grip on my hair again, and I feel myself being dragged backward.
I dig my heels into the rock, trying and failing to find purchase. The distance between us and the edge quickly disappears.
He’s going to throw me off the fucking cliff.
Frantic now, I claw at his arms, at his legs, at the ground. Flashes of jagged, tooth-shaped rocks sticking out of the water fill my head. I know what’s waiting for me over the edge, and it seems Ben does too.
I plead with him to stop, but he only laughs at me.
“I told you, Hannah. You don’t know when to quit. I’m stronger than you. This was always how it was going to play out.”
I twist and wrap my legs around his until we’re tangled like a pretzel. I hang on as tightly as I can, and he frowns, trying to shake me off, like I’m some unruly toddler.
We’re two feet from the edge now.
“You’ll be charged anyway!” I gasp, desperate to poke a hole in his logic. To make him doubt whatever parts of his plan still seem viable in his mind. “Your story doesn’t make any sense!”
He rolls his eyes and tries to step on my calf, but I curl my knees tighter around his ankles. The effort brings back the black dots in my vision, but I ignore them.
“Think about it!” I croak. “How could all three of us die of starvation or dehydration or exposure, but you’re totally fine? How are you going to explain how you kept yourself fed and hydrated while the rest of us withered away?”
At that, he pauses.
He looks…confused.
“Never mind that Jackson will never let you within a hundred feet of Emmy,” I say. “Killing me will only double your jail time. There’s no fucking point. You have to see that!”
Ben looks even more confused. Waves crash against the jagged rocks below. My heart is beating so hard, it feels like it’s bruising itself against my rib cage.
He starts laughing. He actually throws his head back and laughs. “What the fuck are you talking about? Do you have brain damage or something?”
I… What?
He shakes his head and crouches down. His expression shifts, his lips pressing together with something that looks a whole lot like pity. “You delusional little thing. Your dream boy isn’t here with you. I killed him on the boat.”