Page 117 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

If only Bella hadn’t stood up on the rooftop and shouted. If only she’d hidden until these crazies did whatever they needed to do and left. Cole knew his life was over, but hers didn’t have to be.

Who were these men? Why were they on Skeleton Cay? Cole didn’t recognise any of them, and he didn’t recall seeing the boat before either. It was a nice one. A Mako, expensive and very fast. It would easily outrun theCrosswind, but it sure wasn’t comfortable for long journeys. A tiny outdoor kitchen and a head under the console were the only luxuries. Cole knew that because one of his neighbours had a similar boat. A former stockbroker. After making his fortune in New York, he’d retired to Emerald Shores at the grand old age of forty-two.

The guy walking behind prodded Cole with the barrel of his handgun. Jeron. Cole had heard one of the others call him Jeron. He was a wiry white guy in his early thirties, and the odour of sweat and stale cigarette smoke seeped from his pores. His accent said he was a local.

“Keep walking.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the prison.”

“It’s locked.”

“Then I will unlock it.”

Well, shit. Was this guy an official? No, no, he couldn’t be. He would have identified himself and arrested Cole, not aimed a pistol at him. Whoever these men were, they were on Skeleton Cay illegally.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

“That isn’t your concern.” Jeron poked Cole with the gun again, harder this time. “Faster.”

They were nearly at the courtyard when a muffled gunshot rang out. At least, Cole thought it was a gunshot. It wasn’t as if he’d had much experience with these things. On instinct, he jumped for the undergrowth, but his captor grabbed him by the shoulder and laughed.

“Relax. They’re not shooting at us.”

Icy fear ran up Cole’s spine. If nobody was shooting at him, then that shot had been for Bella. Which meant that they weren’t looking for hostages. They were simply eliminating witnesses. But the shooter might have missed; Cole needed to believe that. Fuck, theyhadto have missed.

If Bella was dead, Cole would soon follow because he wasn’t dumb—he knew these men were only keeping him alive until they found her. They’d stand him in the courtyard with a gun to his head and threaten to shoot him unless she came out of hiding.

His captor made him kneel six feet away while he worked on the padlock, and the outer gate of the sally port soon swung open with acreakthat reminded Cole of fingernails on a blackboard.

Suddenly, life at the Galaxy Hotel and Casino didn’t seem all that bad.

“Up.” The man motioned with his gun. “Inside.”

Only the outside gate was locked, and Cole opened each door in turn—five of them—until they arrived in an echoing two-storey cellblock. Jeron marched him through the gloom to a storeroom that housed a new-looking generator with an exhaust pipe running through a broken, barred window and turned on the power. These men spent enough time here that they maintained the electrics? Damn. Out in the cellblock, overhead lights blinked into life, shining like tiny suns from the ceiling high above.

“Walk,” Jeron ordered.

Spartan six-by-eight cells faced each other across a stone aisle that might have been part of the bedrock itself. The second tier didn’t have a solid floor, just narrow walkways outside the cells and a sheet of wire mesh stretched between them, presumably to stop prisoners up there from hurling shit at the inmates below.

The place gave Cole chills, not just because of the temperature—although he was only wearing swim shorts—but also due to the vibes. How many men had breathed their last here? The cellblock felt like hell itself, minus the fires. And it smelled like death. When Cole was eight and growing up in California, a cat had passed in the crawl space under his house. He and his mom didn’t know at first that the cat had died—it had chosen the most inaccessible corner as its final resting place—and for weeks, the house had stunk like the prison on Skeleton Cay.

Were there cats on Skeleton Cay?

Cole glanced left and right into cells as his captor herded him toward the rear of the building. Like the barracks, they looked to have been abandoned in a hurry. Narrow, metal-framed beds butted up against the walls, complete with thin mattresses and even thinner pillows. No flush toilets, only buckets in the corner. Some cells had a metal desk and chair; others didn’t.

One cell had a jumbled lump on the bed, and as Colesquinted into the shadows, he realised with ever-increasing horror what he was looking at.

Putrefied flesh.

Bones.

A person, or they had been once.

His stomach heaved, and he turned to the side and vomited.

“Nobody should come to Skeleton Cay,” Jeron said. “There are enough warnings, but still people try.”

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