Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2)(81)

Somewhere below, the waves curve and sizzle in response.

The chair shakes. Quakes. The water roils. I can’t really remember when I started rocking, but then gravity tips sideways and I hit the floor with a painful slam.

***

Ethan’s dead. I know this because he’s squatting beside me, patting my aching cheek and whimpering to himself, a shape made of displaced air.

“Aeron? Boss? Holy crap, oh…crap…”

I moan into the damp, stinking floorboards. Scrape my teeth into the softened wood.

“Oh God. You’re alive, right? Right?” He pats harder, flinching with every impact, like he’s afraid I’ll suddenly snap at him for daring to touch me. When he leans in, he blurs into my vision. Just an outline with a familiar voice.

“I’m alive,” I make myself say, almost as an experiment. “But you…not.”

His voice is jumpy, soaked in adrenaline and fear. “What? I’m a freaking mess, I know, but I—”

My whole body jerks. “You’re alive? We’re alive?”

“Just about,” he wheezes. “Oh, shit. We thought you were f*cking done for.”

“Who’s we?” I wriggle, cringing into myself at the shock of pain gripping my body. “Can…can you pull up? Got…water?”

“Uhuh. Okay.” He eases up, still trembling, and grips the back of my chair.

The world swings at a nauseous angle. I hack up sour breath, but no vomit—there’s just nothing left. After a couple blinks, Ethan comes into view: sweating visibly, soaked with it, his hair a rumpled mess and his pale skin almost sunburned to blisters. A patchy, miserable attempt at a beard clings to his jaw.

“Water,” I rasp again.

“Okay! I…I have some…” He pats down his shorts—like he’d be able to stash a bottle in a pocket, or something—and then glances around until he locates a ragged green rucksack. In the pink light of the fading sun, Moshi Monsters gloat up at me with their psychotic smiles. Ash’s rucksack.

Fuck.

“Where Ash?” I bark.

Ethan tugs a bottle from the rucksack. It’s misted with condensation, but still holds water. Glorious water. When he holds the bottle to my lips, I take loud, clumsy glugs, forcing it down until I’m breathless.

“Ash…oh God, Aeron. He’s got them. Ash and Leo.” Ethan claws at his crispy mass of salted, sun-dried hair. He’s so far gone, I’m surprised he’s still upright—every word that comes out of his mouth drags with panic. “We have to get you out of here before he…you know what he does, f*ck…I’m sorry. I’m sorry! It’s just taken us so long to find you, and—and—oh, f*ck.”

A tiny rush of adrenaline licks at the sutures of my skull. “They’re okay? Alive?”

“Okay’s a stretch.” His chin wobbles, the black whiskers trembling. “And Harvey…he, uh, he definitely looks dead. There’s dead people in that home my Ma’s in, and they’ve got those empty frickin’ eyes just waiting to haunt you.”

I give a solemn nod. “Harvey definitely dead.”

“But yeah. We gotta get you out of here, somehow, we need to…”

“Need…knife. To cut tape.”

“I have a knife! Two knives!” he exclaims, half relieved, half terrified. A second later, he yanks two large kitchen blades out of the rucksack and proceeds to drop them on the floor with a shrill clatter. “Fuckin’ A. Stupid…things…okay.” He manages to grip the bread knife in his sweaty paw, and leans in to frown at the thick rounds of tape binding my upper half to the chair. “I just saw through, right? Like butterflying a chicken.”

This is what my life has come to, sports fans.

Fucking Ethan, the nanny, is carving me free.

“What f*ck going on?” I manage.

He tries to loosen the tape by tucking his fingers under it, but quickly abandons that idea, instead focusing on the angle of the knife. “How much do you know?”

“Woke up here. All f*cked.”

“Right. Not much.” He takes a big, shuddering breath. “Okay.”

“Help coming?”

“Help?” He laughs bitterly. “Gwen was trying to—I’ll start at the beginning. We got freaking drugged, Aeron. We don’t know how but he took you guys off the island—”

“Harvey,” I cut in. “Bribed.”

Ethan blinks. “I can’t even. I can’t.”

“Cut!” Dumbass! Fuck’s sake!

“I am, I’m trying not to cut you, I—”

“Cut me, goddam it, I don’t f*cking care!” With every revelation, adrenaline pushes through the foggy space in my brain, waking me further. Pain streaks through my skull in washes of crimson, the edges singed with bright white.

Ethan gulps. Continues to carve. “He took everyone except me and Gwen. I don’t know if you know this, dude, but Gwen…uh…she, like, she knows Feds. She got ‘em straight away on Skype and they’re coming, they’re trying, but they’ve got no jurisdiction. Right now, we’re screwed.”

Gwen’s an informant. You know, I’d say this was typical, but I’m too busy trying to figure out how the f*ck all this went down.