Darkness (19 page)

With every fiber of her being, she prayed that he would not.

Ivanov said, “I am sure. We have a recording of her talking about the crash.”

Gina stiffened as the possible meaning of that registered. Could it be—were they talking about
her
?

They had to be. There was no other logical interpretation.

Yesterday, when she’d seen the plane going down and called for help over the radio—they’d been
listening
? Her blood ran cold.

I know who they are. Who they have to be
.

They were hunting possible survivors of the plane crash.

Cal.

Panic assailed her.

Her hands knotted into fists so tight that she could feel her nails digging into her palms. Fighting for calm, she closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. When she opened them again, she looked out through the opening in the door and almost gasped. She actually had to press her hand hard over her mouth to contain the sound.

She didn’t know how she had missed it up until now. She could only suppose that she hadn’t been focusing on the floor.

Now she was, and her eyes widened with horror. Lying on the scuffed linoleum inches from the heel of Ivanov’s boot was her half-eaten apple. Red and round, with juicy yellow flesh showing where bites had been taken out of it. Obviously freshly eaten and dropped.

Looking at it, every tiny hair on her body shot upright.

If they see that apple, they’ll know somebody came in, saw the bodies. They’ll search the room
.

The taste of fear was suddenly sour in her mouth.

There was no way Ivanov was going to not see it. He
couldn’t
not see it: it was right by his foot. It was just a matter of when.

“Don’t matter now,” Heavy Tread said. “If she was one of them, she’s dead.”

“
Bylo tri
,” the third man said in his grating Russian.

“He said there were three,” Ivanov translated. “Women.”

“How do you know?” Heavy Tread asked.

Gina frowned as she heard what sounded like paper flapping. Judging from the direction the sound came from—behind Ivanov, rather than in front of him where Heavy Tread was—the unseen Russian was doing something to cause it.

Ivanov replied, “Paper he is waving is list. From refrigerator. It says, three women, twelve people total on island. We have found here, nine.”

List? From the refrigerator? It had to be the schedule. Of cooking, of chores, of who would be using the boats when. It had been fastened to the refrigerator with a magnet. All their names were on it. Gina felt her blood drain toward her toes.

“We only found two women.” Heavy Tread sounded as if he was frowning. “Where’s the other one?”

“Perhaps still out on the island. At same time as transmissions from her, we picked up voices of men warning that the storm was coming. It is possible that she did not make it in.”

Heavy Tread said, “We got people searching the island to make sure nobody slips through the cracks. If she’s out there, they’ll find her.”

Ivanov said, “I hope you are right. We cannot afford any—what do you call them—screwups.”

He turned, and his foot struck the apple. It rolled, traveling in a clumsy, lopsided semicircle because half of it was eaten away.

Gina’s eyes riveted on it. Her breath caught. Her stomach turned over.

He’s going to see it now
.

He was on the move. His boot came down right beside the apple, barely missing stepping on it. Gina caught her breath. Her heart thumped so hard it felt as if it would pound its way out of her chest.

“Search the buildings again,” Heavy Tread ordered. “Like you said, we don’t want any screwups.”

Ivanov was, impossibly as it seemed, walking away without having spotted the apple. He disappeared from view—

Gina’s heart nearly stopped as he said, from right outside the closet, “What do we do about these?”

He meant the bodies, Gina could tell from his tone. Oh, God, his gloved fingers curled around the edge of the closet door. Spotting them, her eyes popped wide for an instant. She ducked, burrowing her face into the top of the nearest sleeping bag while making herself as small as possible in the corner. Her lower spine pressed up against the wall. Her toes curled in her boots. The dusty smell of long-unused gear enfolded her.

Please God please God please . . .

The sound of the closet door being pushed farther open made Gina’s heart turn over. It pounded furiously as she caught her breath, then pressed her face so hard into the rolled sleeping bag that she couldn’t have breathed if she’d wanted to. She could feel the texture of the tightly woven cloth imprinting itself on her skin. She prayed that some combination of her steel-blue coat, the gray sleeping bag that she had her face buried in, the clutter in the closet, the hanging thicket of clothes, and the darkness in the corner where she crouched would render her invisible.

She could see nothing: black on black. Every other sense she possessed, though, was hyperaware.

He’s right there. Only a few feet away. He’s got a gun
.

Her terror was so strong that she could practically feel it pulsing in the air around her. Unable to see, unable to breathe, she was claustrophobic, suffocating, wired. So frightened all she wanted to do was scream and run.

THE SOUND
of his breathing told her that he was still there. A warning prickle running down her spine made her virtually certain that he was looking inside the closet, glancing around. With panic curdling her insides and sending what felt like ice water shooting through her veins, she did her best to remain perfectly still. She visualized herself as a statue, carved from stone, lifeless and immovable.

Oh, God. Be quiet. Don’t breathe
.

Her heart jackhammered and the muscles in her shoulders and back knotted with tension as she waited—and prayed.

“WE BURN
everything, them included.” From the sound of Heavy Tread’s voice, he was on his way out of the room. “Big mistake, keeping them fuel tanks so close to the compound. Accidents will . . .”

His words became indistinguishable as his voice faded.

Gina was afraid to twitch so much as a finger, but her lungs ached from lack of air.

Close at hand, there was a soft scraping sound—cloth on wood? What was it? She didn’t know, couldn’t tell.

Do not move. Oh, God, I have to breathe
.

She heard—she was almost sure she heard—footsteps walking away from the closet.

He’s gone
, she thought, and a shiver of relief slid over her. But—she might be wrong. Or maybe what she’d heard was the third man, the one who spoke only Russian, walking away.

Her lungs burned now. She was getting light-headed, woozy. She
had
to breathe.

As slowly and silently as possible she let out the breath she’d been holding and inhaled.

Nothing happened. No bullet slammed into the back of her head. Nobody grabbed her. There was no shouting.

Still she stayed as she was, face pressed to the sleeping bag, unmoving, quietly, carefully breathing, until the silence, the lack of physical sensation that she thought would indicate that she was being watched, had gone on long enough that she couldn’t stand it any longer. Daring to chance it, tilting her head the slightest, smallest degree, she looked up.

Her worst fear was that Ivanov would be standing over her, waiting for her to make a move.

He wasn’t. There was no one in the closet with her. The door was open farther than before, but the doorway was clear. Through it, she could see a good section of the common room. No one was there, at least not within her view. The overwhelming feeling she got was that the common room was empty.

There was no way she could be sure.

Sitting up, Gina took a deep but nearly silent breath.

Her discarded apple still lay unnoticed on the floor.

As she looked at it a deep shudder racked her. Her heart galloped out of control. Her stomach roiled to the point where she felt like she needed to vomit.

I could have died. I still
can
die
.

Mary and Jorge lay just out of her view. Mary and Jorge’s
bodies
lay just out of her view. The horror of their deaths—their
murders
—was almost impossible for her to wrap her mind around. She felt this weird sense of disconnect, as if none of what was happening could be real.

It
is
real. Mary and Jorge are dead
.

For a moment everything around her went all blurry. Blinking ferociously, Gina willed the tears back.

The others, what of them? Ivanov had said they had found nine out of the twelve.

She would make number ten. That meant two of her colleagues were presumably out on the island somewhere.

Arvid and Ray, maybe? Had they gone looking for her?

There was no way to know.

But what she had taken from Ivanov’s words was that nine of her colleagues were dead.

Murdered.

By the men who were at that moment searching the compound for
her
.

If they found her, she had not the slightest doubt that they would kill her, too.

Goose bumps raced over her skin at the thought. She felt dizzy all over again.

This is no time to fall apart. Focus
.

As she saw it, she had two choices: stay where she was, or try to make a run for it.

Ivanov had looked in the closet, she was sure. It was unlikely that he would look in it again.

But he might. Or someone else might.

On the other hand, if she left the closet she could run right into them. She had no idea where they were. Ivanov, Heavy Tread, third guy—they could be anywhere. In this building. Just outside. Somewhere they could see her if she emerged from her hiding place.

For all she knew, there might be more than just the three of them.

To make a run for it, she would have to go back the way she had come: through the common room, the kitchen, the mudroom, across the meadow, up the mountain. Any other route would take her through the complex, and that was too dangerous even to contemplate.

She could take the phone, call for help. Call whom? The Coast Guard? The sponsors? 911?

A question to be answered later, she decided. The point was, she could call somebody and know that help was on the way.

Heavy Tread had spoken of the fuel tanks being too close to the buildings in the context of burning the bodies—what if he meant to cause an explosion, or in some other way set the buildings on fire
now
?

The mere thought that she could be trapped in a fire made Gina go woozy. Gritting her teeth, clenching her fists, she fought to banish the disturbing images.

You can’t lose it now
.

The men could come back into the common room at any time.

Her chance to run would be lost.

So—go?

Go
.

Moving as silently as she could, Gina picked her way to the closet door. For a moment she crouched there, listening, surveying as much of the room as she could see.