The Island(25)

“No! The kids can’t stay here as hostages. They’ll be terrified. Tom takes the kids with him and I stay here and he—” Heather began but Tom interrupted.

“For God’s sake, Heather! I’ve got this, honey. It’ll be OK. Maybe I could take Olivia with me to help sort things out. You’ll be here to look after Owen. I’ll get the cash from the bank and be back this time tomorrow. Everything will be fine. Then we can all go home. We can get this done,” Tom said.

Her brow furrowed and then she nodded. “OK.”

Ma also gave him a nod.

He began to relax a tiny bit. This might actually work.

“How do we know he’s good for the money? That’s a lot of money,” Kate said.

“Americans are rich!” someone else said.

“Look at his bloody car, you idiot. It’s a bloody Porsche, ain’t it?”

“I’m good for the money,” Tom insisted over the rising hubbub.

Ma nudged Ivan next to her. He lifted the pistol and fired it into the air.

Everyone immediately shut up. In the silence Tom could hear Heather whimpering.

“Right! Now that I have everybody’s attention,” Ma said. “First off, Dr. Thomas Baxter, if you come back with coppers, you will never see your wife or little boy again. Do you understand?”

“I completely understand,” Tom replied.

“We will have taken them to another location.”

“I understand.”

“Second off, if you come with one dollar less than five hundred thousand, the deal’s off.”

“I won’t. I’ll bring exactly that amount.”

“Third off, if, after you’ve all gone back to America, the coppers come up here asking questions about missing money, you better watch your back, matey boy. ’Cause we will tell the coppers about what you done and that will only be the start of it. We’re a big family. One of us will get to America and find you.”

“I won’t renege on the deal. This is what I wanted to do from the very beginning. I know I did something wrong. I know there’s nothing I can do to reset that. But I would have done this even if you weren’t keeping my wife and son…as…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t want to say the word hostages. This was an extraordinarily delicate situation and he didn’t want to further screw everything up with the use of inflammatory language. “As your guests,” he said.

Heather was agitated. She was normally so levelheaded; that was part of the reason he’d been attracted to her in the first place. She was the opposite of Judith in many, many ways. In the year he’d known her, she hadn’t often lost her cool, but these were extraordinary circumstances. He could not afford to let her blow it now.

“It’ll be OK, Heather, trust me,” he said softly. “Look at me, honey. Look at me. Trust me. This will work. Take a deep breath. Come on.”

She took a breath and nodded. “You’ll come back with the money?”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll make them give us food and water?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

In the distance Tom could hear the sound of a motorbike.

“That’ll be Danny coming,” Matt said. “Do we have a deal?”

“We do from me,” Tom said.

“From us too,” Ma said. “We’re reasonable people, Dr. Baxter. We live here by ourselves. We don’t do harm to anybody. We don’t invite people to our island, but if they come, coppers or government, we expect them to be respectful.”

“Of course. We made the mistake and I’m very sorry about it.”

“We didn’t want any of this—” Ma said.

“Sorry to interrupt, Ma, but we have another issue,” Jacko said.

“What is it?” Ma asked.

“We found the Krauts and we’re keeping them up at the house, but they really want to go,” Jacko said.

“Tell them the ferry needs fixing,” Ma said.

“Gotcha,” Jacko said.

“Any other problems I have to solve?” Ma said and took a long drag of her cigarette.

“The children can’t possibly stay in that room overnight. You’ll have to move them,” Heather said.

Oh, shit. We’ve won this. Don’t cause any trouble, Tom was screaming at her telepathically.

Heather amazingly seemed to pick up on his thought. “Well, at the very least, we’ll need some bedding and something to eat and drink, and you’ll have to let us visit the bathroom, otherwise it’s going to be very unpleasant in there,” Heather said.

The motorbike was very close now. It was driving up to the farm. Everything was hushed, waiting.

A line of clouds.

The silent stars.

The silent yellow sickle moon.

“Danny’s gonna lose his shit,” Jacko muttered.

“We’ve done our parley and we made a deal,” Matt said. “Danny’s gonna have to like it or lump it.”

“Yup,” Ivan agreed. “Like Matt said, she wasn’t blood.”

The motorbike pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse.

The eerie quiet grew deeper.

Flies.

Moths.