Page 69 of Fire Island
“You don’t have to tell me, not if it’s too hard. Let time pa?—”
“No. I want you to know. Because I don’t think it’s over.”
I can only search her face, hanging on tenterhooks as she composes herself.
“He stole Firefly, beached her on the eastern side, and I was stuck here. He had me chained to the generator for the first week. That part was okay...”
Okay?Heat rises in my core.
The fuck?
“Evie, no . . .” I grind out.
“I tried to sabotage the generator but failed. I thought maybe that could help somehow. He wanted me. Upstairs. I fought him on everything. He locked me up here. There were two locks on the door. The lantern room was boarded up so I couldn’t try to climb out or signal for help in any way. He was thorough, I guess.”
That explains the screw holes on the door.
“I thought maybe Em would have come out to check on things. Only, the one time he came out, I was still in the basement, and Timothy must have hidden. I don’t know.”
Timothy. A name to the pasty little fucker who tried to off me. Tried to hurt Evie...
My hands curl to fists.
Evie moves from my lap and sits in front of me. Now her gaze drops, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.
Fucking hell, I have a fair idea of what comes next.
“He wanted me to... I was instructed to scrub myself clean in the shower, and then he cuffed me to the—our—bed. Every time he touched me, I flinched. I couldn’t help it. I was so scared. So he sat at the end of the bed and made me spread wide for him while he?—”
She bunches up her face.
“Stop.”
“No. You need to have all the information before we go any further, Cal. I wanted control back. I wanted to escape. I thought that would be the way. So, I did what he asked. I bared myself, opened up, literally. He saw everything.”
“Did he...” My voice cracks, and I can’t rein back the fury welling up.
“No, that’s as far as he got before I decided to kill the queen.”
“The queen?”
“He brought me back up here, must have been satisfied with—” She glances up and worries her bottom lip through her teeth. “I was running out of time, I thought surely next time he drugged me and carted me downstairs, he would?—”
“He drugged you?” Horror pinches my face.
“So, I smashed her. I found the wrench, and I couldn’t stop.” Her voice breaks. Her mouth flattens to a thin line as tears course down her cheeks. “I had no choice. It was the only way to get someone, anyone, over to the island. And... it worked. Em came. But then he had a gun, and I couldn’t scream for help. We went to the fishing hut, then his friend came. They’d been in on the whole thing, together. It was the middle of the night when I finally got a chance to grab the EPIRB. I was screaming over the radio for Em. Eventually, he found me tossed over the side in the water where they left me.”
The last words fade as she hauls in a much-needed breath.
My body vibrates with rage where I sit.
Christ.Fucking. Almighty.
I push to my feet, pacing a short length. If the Fresnel wasn’t a pile of glass already, I’d obliterate it to shards myself.
They would have abducted her.
Done god knows what, and then . . .
