Page 86 of The Engagement Party

“We need to get you to a doctor.” In a few steps she was at his side, lifting him up to balance his body against hers. He outweighed her and almost dragged her down.

They struggled over to the rental car. She balanced him against the driver’s side door and held out a hand in front of him. “Keys.”

It took a second for the word to compute. When it did, he didn’t fight her. Going against her out here, in this wrecked condition, amounted to a death sentence. No, if he wanted to make a move he’d have to do it at the hospital or clinic... and beat her to it. He had no doubt she’d turn him in to save her own ass. She absolutely expected him to make that sacrifice and if he balked he would lose.

“Here.” He dragged the keys out of his pocket and handed them to her.

She stood there, looking at the chain then at him. “Is this a joke?”

“This has been the least amusing day of my life.”

She held up the keys. “There’s no key fob on here.”

His eyes finally focused. He saw the tag with the house address. The set to the car had the fob and two other keys he put on. One Will sent and it opened the chain for the golf cart. The other was an extra key to their house, which he carried just in case.

This set consisted of three keys, likely to the various buildings on the island. The wrong keys. How had he missed that? The injuries and the panic, maybe? He’d been moving faster than his brain for what felt like hours now, and that was saying something since his pace barely qualified as a crawl.

Sonofabitch. His world tilted until it flipped over.

“You idiot!” She yelled the words.

Good. This was better. He’d stopped her plan by accident, but the result would be the same. “We’re stuck here.”

Some of the anger cleared from her eyes as she glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe not.”

He followed her gaze to the lone golf cart still chained to the security pole. They’d removed the lock earlier and left it off. “That’s not going to get us very far.”

“For your sake, I hope you’re wrong.”

Chapter Sixty-One

Ruthie

Dylan shot the boat. Well, of course he did. The action fit with every other annoying, dangerous, calculated thing he’d done over the last few months. He used her. She used him back. She then used Will, which she couldn’t dwell on now. When the race for survival ended she would mourn, but she doubted that would wash off the stink of her complicity in this horror.

“Grab the tarp or whatever material is in there.” Ruthie couldn’t bring herself to walk back into the shed to get it. She passed the job off to Mitch, which wasn’t fair but nothing about the guy’s life had been fair.

He frowned at her. “For what?”

Sierra stared unfocused into the distance. The hole in the boat seemed to be the final shot that knocked them both off-balance. Neither functioned with any efficiency. They’d gone into some sort of fugue state. Blank and unhelpful. Ruthie needed them to snap out of it.

“We’ll stuff it into the hole.” She said the words nice and slow, hoping a sign of life would spark within them.

“Will that work?” Mitch asked, still sounding groggy and a bit lost.

“Yeah.”Sure... right?

Sierra nodded as she snapped back into the woman who had helped lead them through hours of terror. “It can be temporary. We only need to get far enough across that we can make the last bit by swimming. Everyone can swim, right?”

Ruthie realized she shouldn’t have picked an island for this adventure. “Life jackets?”

Mitch shook his head. “Not that I can see, and I really don’t want to dig deeper in there.”

“I guess I’m going to learn to swim the hard way.” Ruthie really hoped that was possible.

The door creaked as Mitch disappeared into the shed. The sound of disembodied footsteps echoed around them. When he popped out again his face looked drawn and pale. He stopped in front of them with a greasy towel hanging from his clenched fist.

“What about the tarp?” Sierra asked.

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