Page 255 of Evil Hearts

The catering staff had really gone overboard this time. If Hunter had come with her, there would have been enough food for him, her and the dire warning dude with some to spare. Not that she intended to give the guy anything, especially if he was following her.

While Oriana munched on a sandwich, she flipped though the photos on her phone. Maybe she’d taken a few too many, but it wasn’t like she’d be coming back here again soon, if ever. This was the trip of a lifetime sort of destination, even if it was only a day trip. Pity. She’d bet that dawns and sunsets from up here would be absolutely gorgeous.

She wondered if they ever had a vacancy for a high school science teacher. Or a geologist – she wasn’t fussy, or she never would have gone into teaching in the first place. But the chance to actually be paid to study a real volcano…

Even if there wasn’t anything available here, maybe she should look for a new job when she got home.

She’d quit her teaching position to come back to Perth to live with Hunter, and now she was free to go anywhere. Do anything. Well, within reason. Her parents would never speak to her again if she decided to take up exotic dancing, and she’d probably struggle to find another teaching job if she did that, too.

Which she would have to do, because she’d never been much of a dancer, so she wasn’t likely to make much money as one. Besides, who’d pay to watch a dumpy, thirtysomething teacher take her clothes off? She didn’t even want to look in the mirror sometimes, lest she see any more wobbly bits that she wasn’t sure how she’d get rid of.

Wait, was that the guy again? In her photo of the first tunnel?

She enlarged the white smudge with a pinch of her fingers, and there he was – like some sort of pirate LARPer, in his ruffled white shirt and high boots. Maybe he was supposed to be Dampier’s ghost. That might scare people. Well, people who didn’t know William Dampier had been a damn sight paler than the pirate pretender in this picture. He looked way too real to be a ghost, even if he could have stepped out of a previous century in the that getup. Or he could have stepped off the cover of a romance novel…

No, there was nothing romantic about stalkers, Oriana scolded herself. Not that she could be sure he was actually stalking her. He just…kept popping up. Kind of like the Musketeers did, and there was no way those girls were stalking her, on the ship or here on the island. In a relatively small pool of people restricted to the same place, she was bound to run into people who liked the same things as she did more than once. Maybe he just liked caves and hiking, and didn’t like treasure hunters. Oriana could definitely relate to that.

She finished up her lunch, and was just packing everything back into her bag when a ship’s horn sounded, rolling across the island in a mournful wave. The cruise ship only sounded the horn when they were leaving, but it wasn’t due to depart for hours – it wasn’t even noon yet, so she had plenty of time. Maybe a second ship had arrived, the supply boat or something, and they were letting everyone on the island know fresh food was here.

Satisfied, Oriana hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders and continued along the trail until she reached the promised obelisk – ha, she’d hiked the trail backwards. Which meant the other trail had to be around here somewhere, and she should recognise it because it was the one she hadn’t already taken.

Six

Oriana could definitelyfeel the difference in the second trail. Her muscles burned from the upward climb, but she had no intention of stopping. Summiting a volcano was worth not being able to walk tomorrow. Not that she thought it would come to that – Green Mountain was hardly Everest.

Even though the driver had told her about the bamboo forest and the dew pond that gave the trail its name, the green glade took her entirely by surprise.

It was like stepping into another world, on another continent, and if she hadn’t taken a dozen photos of it that showed exactly what she was seeing, Oriana might have thought she was hallucinating.

Bamboo trees as thick as her arm stood sentinel on either side of the path, rank upon rank until all she could see were trees. It looked like the sanctuary of some remote Japanese mountain temple, and as she carefully made her way along the damp boardwalk beside the dew pond, she wondered if it should have some more mystical name, more in keeping with the green paradise around her.

Maybe that guy from Kew Gardens hadn’t been all bad, seeing as he’d actually managed to create this tiny piece of paradise on an inhospitable volcanic rock. Something about the fertile volcanic soil, maybe…

Oriana picked her path between the puddles on the slippery boards until the sun kissed her shoulders again, at the end of the bamboo forest.

She’d reached the mountain peak – the chain the driver had promised she’d see was right there, only a few steps further. Her feet carried her to the top without her even thinking about it, and when she looked up…oh, she was on top of the world, with clear views in every direction. Men might think they were gods, but this, right here, was what it must feel like to actually be an all-seeing deity, with nothing but blue waters to the horizon in every direction.

Oriana threw her arms out and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. Nothing but sea and sky, sea and sky, and she was the mistress of her own destiny. Her alone.

The town she’d landed at seemed tiny from up here, a small collection of buildings and a runway clinging to a small patch of shore on an otherwise untouched island. Even the cruise ship…

Oriana’s heart stuttered in her chest.

The cruise ship wasn’t moored in the bay any more. Instead, it was powering away, toward the horizon, leaving her marooned on this rock in the middle of nowhere.

She didn’t think. She just ran.

Down the rocky path, her feet pounding on the wooden boards, heedless of the beautiful bamboo whispering about her as she sped past.

Until she slipped in a puddle, arms flailing as she let out a scream for help, before she flew off the path and into the forest, and her vison went from green to black in an instant.

Seven

Asiren screamed throughOriana’s head, and she winced at the pain it brought. At first, she thought it was a fire truck or an ambulance, but when the wailing sound just went on and on without wanting to stop, she knew something was seriously wrong.

It kind of sounded like one of those World War II air raid sirens that you heard in the movies, telling you all hell was about to break loose outside but if you hid inside your house and closed all the curtains, you might just be lucky and stay safe.

Except she didn’t have a house any more. She’d had to give up her government rental house when she left her teaching job, and she’d left her stuff at her parents’ place, in the childhood bedroom she still thought of as hers, even if it was mostly given over to her mother’s sewing stuff now. She’d have to find her own place when she got home from the cruise, much like she needed to find a new job, but…

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