Page 159 of The Island

“You’re not in a position to give permission,” Heather said.

“It’s my island!”

“It’s not your island and it never was. Where’s the key to the Porsche?” Heather asked, pointing the rifle at Ma’s head.

“You won’t shoot.”

“Ask Jacko if I won’t shoot. I’ll shoot you and your grandson.”

“You’re an animal!”

“Where’s the key!” Heather screamed, pointing the empty rifle at the little boy’s head.

“Nightstand. Right next to the bed,” Ma said.

Heather saw the key in a little dish beside the bed on top of all their phones. She shoved the key and the phones in her pockets.

“What’s all that yelling, Ma?” a dazed-looking Danny asked, wandering in from the hall. Heather pointed the empty Lee-Enfield at him.

“Hands behind head, kneel on the ground! Now!”

Danny got down on his knees and put his hands behind his neck. “This isn’t fair,” he wailed.

Heather walked behind him. “I’m sorry about Ellen. I really am,” she said and hit him in the back of the head with the heavy rifle stock. Danny fell face-first onto the ancient floorboards.

“As soon as they see you coming, they’ll back the ferry offshore. You’re screwed,” Ma said with a cackle.

“We would be screwed if this was an island,” Heather replied.

A cold lick of hatred in Ma’s eyes. She fortune-told. She could see what this young woman would do to all she had built here if she was allowed to live.

It was also a look of recognition. A mirror. She’d come here as a young woman and mixed things up and married in and destroyed things and built things all those years ago.

Ma lashed weakly at her with her cane. “I’ll have you, you bitch!” she said furiously.

“Well, you’d better move fast.”

Heather ran down the hall. She waved goodbye to little Niamh and bolted down the stairs. She darted across the farmyard to the Porsche.

“It’s me,” she said as she opened the driver’s-side door. Olivia, in the front passenger seat, grinned and relaxed her grip on the rifle. Heather placed her foot on the brake and pushed the start button, and the Porsche roared into life.

She drove around the farmhouse, checked where the sun was, and headed east.

In the rearview mirror, she saw Matt on horseback galloping into the farmyard.

“Matt!” Olivia said.

“On a horse!” Owen added.

“I see him! Damn it. Keep an eye out behind us, Owen, they’ll be after us soon,” Heather said after a minute.

“I think they already are!”

“No way!”

She looked in the mirror.

A bunch of them had piled into the Toyota Hilux and were getting it going.

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