Fourth a Lie (GODDESS ISLES Book 4)

by Pepper Winters

  Still fighting my need to kill him, I snarled, “I will dance on your grave when you’re dead.”

  “That’s not very nice.” Wiping blood off his lip, he cleared his throat and muttered, “I came here with an olive branch, would you believe? I actually came to congratulate you, Sullivan, before your anger made me do something I regret.” His attention flickered to Jealousy. “She was such a good lay. Let me tie her in any position, stick any toy inside her. I didn’t want to hurt her. I’d grown rather fond of her.” He whistled under his breath. “But what you’ve created with Euphoria and elixir? Fuck. Me.”

  Blood seeped in an ever-widening stain over Jealousy’s stomach. What the fuck had he hit? Her guts? Her womb? Was she dying and wouldn’t even wake before her last breath?

  She needs Campbell, immediately.

  “You’re a genius, baby brother, and I mean that sincerely. A goddamn prodigy.”

  Seething, I searched for a way to stop Jess bleeding out and the much-needed miracle of ensuring Eleanor, Pika, Skittles, and Cal weren’t shot too.

  “I don’t want your compliments, Drake. They make my every achievement vile.”

  He ran a hand over his face. He looked like death had nibbled him, then spat him out—just as unwanted by the underworld as he was to the living. His fatigue almost promised an armistice but I knew better than to trust such a lie.

  A thought wormed into my brain. A thought I wanted to kill straight away as it would delay this feud yet again. But at least it would buy me space for Eleanor and time for Jess. I’d already cancelled my business and removed myself from future dealings anyway. I no longer fought to protect my assets because they had become firm liabilities.

  The only thing I wanted to protect was a human...

  A complete switch from my previous apathy toward my own kind.

  Keeping my voice as civil as I could, I snapped, “What do you want, Drake? You want this to end between us? Fine. Talk frankly and let’s finish this.”

  Hurry.

  Drake looked behind me, narrowing his gaze at the mercenaries keeping their guns trained on a sobbing Eleanor and a seething Cal.

  I refused to look.

  I didn’t trust my restraint if I looked. I’d lose it, and do something that might get all of us killed.

  Drake puffed up his chest, standing a little taller. “Talk frankly? That will be novel for us.”

  “It might usher this bullshit along.” I flicked a glance at Jealousy, her skin growing whiter by the second even though she already resembled a ghost.

  “Fine.” He cleared his throat again. “You want to negotiate? Let’s negotiate. Elixir. If you don’t have any more vials on this island, I’m guessing you have more.”

  “I do.”

  “Where?”

  My voice revolted, unwilling to give up my secrets but I forced them out. “Monyet.”

  “And what exactly is Monyet?”

  “Another island. I have a lab there.”

  A lab unbound by FDA rules and bureaucratic tape. If I had a breakthrough in the Java Sea, I didn’t need to worry that it would be stolen by greedy politicians or shut down by corrupt governments.

  The lab out there was a country all on its own. Overseen by Peter Beck with regular live streaming and condemned to far less paperwork, breakthroughs on Monyet had far surpassed those of my lab in America.

  “And how many vials are ready to go?”

  “Sully, don’t!” Eleanor’s yell made me stiffen, but I ignored her.

  “Four hundred.”

  Drake whistled again. “Does anyone else have the recipe?”

  I tapped my temple with a smirk. “Just me. I give it to my scientists piece meal. No one knows the full ingredients.”

  He pursed his lips, thoughts racing in his gaze. He took a moment, deliberating for far too long. I grew angsty to help Jess. I grew furious to protect Eleanor. I honestly didn’t know how long I could restrain myself from wrapping my fingers around his throat and strangling the bastard.

  Finally, Drake sniffed and held out his hand. “A truce then. Give me the four hundred vials, write down the recipe, give me access to the codes for Euphoria, and sign the deeds for Goddess Isles into my name, and—”

  “That isn’t a truce. It’s the exact same request that I denied at the start of this fucking war.”

  “Ah, ah, let me finish.” He clucked his tongue like an asshole. “Give me those things. Let’s face it...you don’t need the wealth, Sullivan. Be generous and spread it around. Give me what I ask and...I give you my word I will not kill Eleanor...or you.”

  A laugh fell from my mouth. A bark of disbelief. “Yeah, right. You’d been better off telling me baboons can fly than promising not to hurt—”

  “Calling me a liar?” His face darkened. “I give you my word, Sullivan.” He waved his hand that still speared between us. “Shake on it, and my men will lower their weapons. You, me, and Eleanor will take a little helicopter ride to wherever this lab island is. If you’re telling the truth about the four hundred vials and you sign over the titles to this sex-fest, I will personally drop you off in Jakarta where you two can go live happily ever after in some mansion elsewhere.”

  “Sully...he’s lying.” Eleanor’s suspicion blended with my own.

  Actually, it wasn’t suspicion. It was damn right knowledge.

  Drake had never conceded or compromised in his entire life.

  If we flew with him to Monyet—if I signed those documents—he would kill me.

  One hundred motherfucking percent he would murder me before the ink was dry.

  He would put a bullet in my skull and then either abuse Eleanor until she begged for death or kill her and leave her to rot beside me.

  I narrowed my eyes, studying him.

  He licked his lips, his blue gaze doing their best to hide behind sincerity but far too smug.

  He thought he could hoodwink me.

  He thought he could keep me a pliant prisoner, willingly walking to his guillotine.

  And the shitty situation about this was...I didn’t have a fucking choice.

  If I said no, he’d shoot Eleanor.

  If I refused again, he’d shoot Cal.

  If I continued to deny him, he’d rip off Pika’s wings and break apart Skittle’s body. He would revert to the psychotic child who got his kicks from mutilating animals who couldn’t fight back.

  Jess is dying.

  Hurry the fuck up.

  If I accepted his terms, at least I had an opportunity to protect Jess and everyone else behind me.

  Monyet was a fifteen-minute helicopter ride.

  That would give me time to plot.

  Stepping into him, I gritted my teeth from the rancid sensation of touching him and slipped my hand into his.

  “Sully, don’t!”

  “Be quiet, Jinx.”

  Drake grinned like a heartless mongoose as his fingers latched tight, and we shook. “Good choice, Sullivan. Good choice.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” I yanked my hand away. “And we both know the outcome of what I’ve agreed to.”

  He smirked, his shields dropping, showing me the fate he had planned. “You always were too smart, baby brother. But smarts will get you killed. I’ve always told you that.”

  Snapping his fingers, he rounded up his mercenaries. “Gentlemen, I believe we have a flight to catch. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  AS A GUN BIT into my lower back, ushering me down the bamboo jetty to a red helicopter manned by Drake’s pilots and not Sully’s, my instincts hissed a sinister warning.

  The warning became louder with every step, evolving from a hive of bees to a swarm of plague-driven locusts.

  As Sully winced and did his best not to limp on a harpoon massacred leg, he climbed regally into the cabin and a sixth sense bombarded me with pictures I hoped would never come to pass.

  Sully shot.

  Me dead.

  Drake victorious with elixir.
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br />   My heart threw itself against my ribs, so convinced, so sure that if we flew with Drake, we would die with Drake.

  I tasted the inevitability. I heard the bullet before it’d even been fired.

  I didn’t need puddles or masks removed in Euphoria for another kind of premonition. The kind that iced my blood and froze my bones. The kind that set my heart pumping in entirely new ways, seizing my muscles so I would not meet my end.

  The mercenary behind me grunted when I refused to climb the steps into the aircraft.

  Sully winced as the man wrapped his hands around my waist and tossed me into the cabin.

  I fell on my knees, the bare floor cutting with its metal grippy covering.

  Sully bent and gathered me tenderly, pulling me upright and placing me beside him. He didn’t speak. He just stared. His sea-glass, waterfall gaze held mine, and I knew I wasn’t wrong in my fears.

  Violent sickness rushed up my throat.

  The leather seats squeaked with promise as Drake and his men sat down.

  The squeal of the engines and the growl of the rotors all added to the shivery sensation of dismay.

  Drake will kill us.

  The moment Sully gave him what he wanted...he would kill us, destroy our story, and end our love before we’d even had a chance to fully unfurl it.

  No.

  I shook my head as Sully cupped my cheek and ran his thumb over my lips.

  Still he didn’t speak even as the helicopter swooped into the dusky sky, sliced through ribbons of peach and gilded sunset and added power to the rotors to cut across the ocean in search of yet another island.

  I understood Sully’s unwillingness to talk with his brother sandwiching me between the two Sinclairs. I appreciated his desire to keep our bond as hidden as possible.

  But he couldn’t stop the crackle of connection between us.

  He couldn’t stop the tingle or tangle between our souls.

  And he couldn’t lie to me.

  He could only nod and narrow his eyes, trying to convince me he had a plan to avoid death. I tried to trust him. To believe he had some mystical way to win.

  But I wasn’t convinced.

  We were running on fatigue and the dregs of bad health. Sully had the added disadvantage of dealing with constant pain. Whatever he attempted probably wouldn’t be rationally thought out. It would be instigated by sheer stubbornness and worry over my own survival rather than his.

  I wanted to tell him not to put himself in harm’s way.

  To make him listen and agree not to be stupid.

  But he let me go and stared out the window, looking far below where his islands were tiny gemstones and the jewellery thief was here to steal them.

  The mercenary who’d clambered into the cabin last hadn’t closed the door. Wind whipped into the space, cooler up here than down below. My aches from elixir and my bruises from palpitations all ratcheted up my rapidly climbing worries.

  Something is coming.

  I could feel it.

  Could feel the cloak of fate. Hear the inching disaster.

  I just couldn’t tell who would be the survivors—us or Drake.

  My jumping thoughts collided around my head.

  I leapt a mile as Drake planted his hand on my knee, squeezing cruelly from his seat across the cabin.

  Sully instantly snatched his touch away, leaving Drake’s fingernails burning tracks in my skin. “Don’t fucking touch her.” Sully’s nostrils flared, and his entire presence bellowed in the cabin, seething with challenge. “Our truce will be over if you do.”

  There was nothing weak about him. Nothing more terrifying than a beast backed into a corner.

  I’d never been more afraid of him or more proud.

  His attention hadn’t been on the vista outside, after all. His mind turned inward, problem-solving our predicament.

  Drake sneered over the din of rotor blades.

  The aura of anticipation and the sick taste of prophecy continued filling the small space. A trickle, a torrent, a gush of tense calamity. The lashing wind only made the waiting worse. It howled and clawed, my hair turned into live vines, slipping around my shoulders and dancing in the space above me. My skin erupted with goosebumps. My yellow shirt flapped around my body.

  After playing the role of a goddess, I actually felt like one.

  I stupidly bought into the illusion that I was more than human.

  That I could feel fate stretching its powers and reaching for us over the sea.

  My fingertips tingled with sick magic as I pressed them together. My stomach fluttered as if I’d swallowed a thousand hummingbirds. My rage at Drake’s entrapment and my temper at not seeing a way free caused the strangest kind of power to arch and spark in my blood.

  Maybe it was all a fantasy.

  Perhaps elixir still played havoc with my nervous system.

  Maybe all people facing imminent death felt otherworldly, ready to transform mortal shells and spread their wings to a new existence.

  Perhaps it was all in my head and the hissing, heating awareness, the tightening, tingling anticipation meant nothing was going to happen.

  So how could I explain the three things that happened almost as if I’d foreseen them?

  How could I predict that something was going to happen?

  How could I have known that in the sky above Sully’s paradise, one of us was going to die?

  My heart galloped.

  The world seemed to slow.

  And the three things happened in quick succession.

  One, the flight path flew us over Serigala.

  Sully sucked in a murderous growl, his fury overflowing at the desecrated, blackened wasteland below. The soil stained with blood and rubble, workers and locals still picking over the refuse, doing what they could to salvage such a nightmare.

  Two, the police finally arrived.

  Far too late and far too below us. I caught sight of flashing lights and decaled boats racing with white water to our aid.

  And three, Sully reached his threshold.

  Serigala’s destruction and the police’s useless arrival poured gasoline on a wildfire he couldn’t control. I braced myself as he launched from the seat and threw himself at the guard sitting opposite with his gun resting warningly on his knee.

  One second to punch him. Another second to steal his gun. A final second to pull the trigger and switch man to corpse, his cadaver thumping heavily at our feet.

  For a moment, the world paused.

  The rotor blades seemed to quieten. The sensation of doom stopped running its evil fingers down my skin.

  But then, everything I’d been afraid of happened.

  Drake yelled.

  Sully attacked another mercenary.

  The pilots swooped left, snatching the floor from beneath Sully’s feet, sending him sprawling into the fuselage by the open door.

  “Look out!” My voice tore over my tongue.

  “Stop!” Drake bellowed as the mercenary grappled with Sully.

  A gun went off.

  A bullet flew from weapon to flesh.

  Sully’s eyes widened.

  The mercenary’s gaze narrowed.

  I would never know who was shot because fate once again became my enemy.

  The helicopter swerved.

  And my whole world tripped out the open, wind-lashing door.

  “NO!”

  I bolted to my feet.

  I slammed to my knees as Sully fell.

  And fell.

  And fell.

  “No!!!”

  The mercenary plummeted to the sea.

  Sully crashed toward his ocean.

  Our eyes snagged and locked.

  One second.

  Two second.

  Three.

  And then...he was gone.

  His body swallowed by a splash.

  The blue wetness of his empire swallowing him whole.

  Drake slammed on the cockpit partition. “Man overboard!”

>   I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t look away.

  I stared at that ocean with every atom of myself.

  I willed Sully to appear.

  I dreamed and prayed and wished and begged.

  But nothing.

  No arms reaching for the surface.

  No man swimming from the depths.

  Just an empty ocean licking its lips after enjoying a snack from above.

  The police boats added speed, chasing to Sully’s and the mercenary’s entry.

  Loud hailers did their best to scream above the roar of mechanical blades. Threats and warnings, typical police menace to yank the helicopter to heel.

  Drake snarled and punched the fuselage. “Fuck!”

  A gun whistled from below.

  “They’re firing at us!” The pilots added speed to the rotors, shooting us out of reach. “The police fuckers are firing at us!”

  Twice I’d been shot at in a helicopter.

  Only once did I hope they’d succeed.

  I wanted to be down there.

  I need to know.

  Crawling closer to the open door, I held my breath to jump.

  I closed my eyes.

  I pushed off.

  But savage hands wrenched me back. “You’re not fucking going anywhere.” Drake held me tight, shoving me into the remaining mercenary’s control. He raked both hands through his hair, anger and greed covering him. “Fuck!”

  He wasn’t afraid of his brother’s demise. He was afraid that it’d happened before he’d taken what he wanted. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  “We can still get the four hundred vials already cooked,” the mercenary yelled. “We can’t go back. The police—”

  Another bullet lodged in the fuselage.

  “Fuuuucccckkkk!” Drake stomped his foot like a spoiled brat.

  “We have a goddess.” The man held me tight as I fought. “She’ll know how to load Euphoria. The last one did. You’ve got what you need, Sinclair. Let’s go.”

  Drake glared at me. He pondered. He agreed. “Fine. Get us out of here.”

  The pilots added power.

  Gravity made my stomach swoop.

  Sully...

  Thick tears tracked down my cheeks.