“Felicity is Iris’s daughter.”
The words I didn’t want to hear.
“But why is she here?” I asked, bewildered.
“She targeted you, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Who do you think has been leaking those photos to the press?”
“Madison,” I responded, for the first time doubting my logic.
“Guess again.” He crossed his arms. “Who’s controlling your pills, huh? Who do you really think slipped something in your drink at Coco’s? You know it wasn’t me. Why would I do that? I’m producing the movie. I need you insured and ready to shoot. And now Mary Elizabeth—who you hired Felicity to care for—has disappeared, causing you to miss the ferry? Why do you think that is?”
I bit my lip, turning it over in my mind. I didn’t want to believe it, but the math added up. God, I needed a drink. “Maybe she knew we were important to her mother and wanted to get to know us?”
He snorted. “Sure. The same girl who accused me of killing her mother years ago just wants to get to know us.”
My head snapped up. “What the hell? You never told me that.” His jaw tensed as he studied my face, clearly weighing whether to elaborate. I crossed my arms to match his as another crack of thunder exploded overhead. “For Godsake, spit it out, Cole.”
“I didn’t drive Iris to the hospital,” he said evenly.
My blood ran cold. “What? But you—”
He placed his hands on my shoulders. “She was already gone. There was no saving her. I knew driving her to the hospital would only raise questions we didn’t want to answer.”
I shrugged his hands off. “What did you do, Cole?”
“I wrecked her car into a tree and put her in the driver’s seat, then walked to a gas station and took a car home.”
I stared daggers at him. “You let her die.”
“She was already dead, Stella. News of an overdosed hooker in our house would have been worse for you than it was for me. I wasn’t the one having an affair with her.”
My breath caught in my throat. I reached for words, but none came.
“Yeah,” he taunted over the howling of the wind. “I knew.”
“How?” I managed.
“Oh, come on.” He rolled his eyes. “She just happened to be in the house cooking dinner the night I wasn’t supposed to be home? How did she get in unless someone gave her a key? And you lost your damn mind after she died, remember?”
I reached for memories of the time after Iris’s death, but they were buried by a sea of booze and drugs. “But you never said anything.”
He shrugged. “You were a wreck, and it was over between us anyway. I didn’t want to fight. All I wanted was to get past it and get divorced. But then you got pregnant, and I had to stick around until that mercifully ended.”
“Fuck you.” The lights flickered as I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why did Felicity accuse you of murdering Iris?”
He sighed. “She was in the car.”
I inhaled sharply. “Felicity was?”
He nodded. “Hiding in the back. I didn’t know she was there. But she told the police I’d been driving the car and that Iris was already dead. No one believed her, but they still had to question me. Jackson corroborated my story about being home with him, and I asked the police not to bother you with the details because you’d been sick and didn’t need any stress.”
I could barely hear him over the blood rushing in my ears. “And they went along with that?”
“Of course they did. I’m Cole Power. I took pictures with them and signed autographs for their kids afterward. It was like they’d won tickets to Disneyland.”
I took a deep breath, trying to still my rattled nerves. “And Felicity…What else did she see?”
“I don’t know. I assume she was hiding in the car the whole time. She probably overheard us arguing about which hospital to go to.”
“And then you didn’t take her to one.” I dropped my head back on the cold leather pillow. “The fentanyl…She wants revenge.”
He nodded. “This entire time she’s been giving you too many pills and leaking photos, developing the story that you’re an addict that can’t keep clean, so that when she slips you the fentanyl, it’ll look like you accidently overdosed, just like her mother did. Symmetry.”
The whole thing sounded somehow familiar—like the plot of a movie. Though I couldn’t recall doing a movie with that plot. Had Cole? Maybe it was only something I’d seen on TV. At any rate, I’d had nothing to do with Iris’s death, and Felicity had had ample opportunity to kill me and she hadn’t. It made more sense for Cole to be the one she was after—if she was in fact after anyone at all. “How do you know she wasn’t going to kill you?” I challenged. “You’re the one who didn’t take her mother to the hospital.”
“Does it matter?” he asked. “She was going to kill someone, and logic states it’s one of us.”
Rain pattered on the skylights above us. “We’re jumping to conclusions,” I pointed out. “Maybe we should ask her.”
“You think she’ll tell the truth?” He laughed. “She’s a fantastic actress. I’ll give her that.” He dropped his smile. “We have to get rid of her.”
“What? No!” I protested. “Jesus. You’re not serious.”
He caught my gaze and held it, his eyes hard. “She was going to kill you, Stella.”
“You don’t know that. And anyway, she didn’t.”
My mind drifted to my conversation with Felicity last night. I’d been so drunk I didn’t remember most of it, but I knew I’d disclosed my relationship with Iris to her. Which meant she had to understand I could never have had any part in Iris’s death. So why hadn’t Felicity confessed her true identity to me when she’d had the chance? I’d practically opened the door for her, and she hadn’t stepped through it. My heart sank. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, maybe Cole was right about her.
“The fact she hasn’t killed you yet doesn’t mean she’s not planning to. That’s why we have to get to her first,” he said gently.
“Are you insane? This isn’t some movie we’re in. This is real life, and I’m not killing anyone. She can’t do anything now anyway. We have the pills.”
He waved the baggie before me. “How do you know this is the only trick she has up her sleeve? A hurricane would be the perfect cover for killing someone. No authorities on the island, no witnesses—”
“That’s the end to The Siren—”
He shook my shoulder. “Wake up, Stella. I know you don’t want to believe it because in that delusional head of yours you still think she’s your friend, but she let Mary Elizabeth out knowing that you wouldn’t leave the island without her.”
Mary Elizabeth. My little darling, lost out there in the wind and the rain. Something inside me hardened. I wanted to punish Felicity for that injustice. But in no world would I have any part in killing her, no matter what she’d done. The very fact that Cole was suggesting it with a straight face was chilling. “We can report her to the authorities, give them evidence to put her in jail, but I’m not murdering her. That’s insane.”
“Okay.” He scratched his chin, thinking. “If you insist. But we should at least put her somewhere she can’t try anything on us for the duration of the storm, until we can get someone out here to pick her up.”
“She’s one small girl,” I protested. “You’re the Gentleman Gangster. You do your own stunts. You know jujitsu, for godsake. Between the two of us, I think we’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad you think this is funny.” His gaze was flinty. “But you’re forgetting Jackson.” The lights flickered again, then went dark. Gray light filtered through the skylights, leaving us in murky gloom.
“What about Jackson?” I asked.
“He’s wrapped around her little finger; we have to assume he’s on her side.”
I didn’t like the idea of colluding with Cole against Felicity and Jackson, but I didn’t see any choice. “So what’s your plan?”
I asked, wishing I could see his face better in the darkened room. “Because you obviously have a plan.”
“We’ll have to knock her out, then—”
“No! Can’t we just lock her in a room or something?”
“How do you plan to do that without sedating her?” he challenged.
“Me?” I shook my head vehemently. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“You have everything to do with this. It’s your fault she’s here. I can’t get near her. She hates me. You made sure of that.”
It was true. Felicity loathed Cole as much as I did. I’d thought her dislike of him was on my behalf, but I now realized it ran much deeper than that. “What are you suggesting?”
“You have sleeping pills, don’t you?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“To drug her. You can put them in her drink. Then, once she’s out, we’ll lock her up somewhere safe till the storm clears. We’ll have to knock Jackson out too.”
I considered, uneasily listening to the rain patter on the roof. “But how are we going to explain who she is to the police?”
“There’s already a record of her claiming we were responsible for her mother’s death,” he says calmly. “It works for us. She’s an obsessed fan who stalked us because she wants revenge for something we were never involved in.”
It was hard to wrap my mind around the idea that Felicity had targeted me with the intention of killing me. I knew logically that she wasn’t my friend and I shouldn’t feel any attachment to her, but she’d been so kind to me until now. And she was Iris’s daughter. Iris, whom I’d loved. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Okay, how’s this: give her the sleeping pills, and we’ll talk to her when this is all over. We don’t have to make any decisions about what to do beyond that.”
It wasn’t like Cole to be diplomatic. I assessed him, trying to read his features in the shadows. “Why not talk to her now?”
“Because we are literally the only people on the island. If it goes wrong, it could end very badly.”
I nodded. “All right, but only as a stalling tactic. And we’ll put her somewhere safe until the storm passes.” As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. With the storm coming, we simply couldn’t take the risk. We would have to do it his way.
Felicity
Jackson and I are drenched and muddy by the time we place the last sandbag outside the restaurant. The two of us have put up a barricade in front of every doorway into the main building without any help from Cole or Stella, who are nowhere to be seen, and my muscles are wasted from lifting the forty-pound bags.
“We should go clean up and get back here before the storm gets any worse.” He raises his voice over the wind, surveying our work.
I brush my wet bangs out of my eyes for the millionth time. I can’t wait to grow them out when all this is over. “I hope Stella’s okay.”
“It’s been what, four hours?”
We exchange a weighted look, and guilt snakes around my chest. “I shouldn’t have left her alone for this long.”
“You stayed in the path of a hurricane for her.” He gestures at the rain coming down on us, growing heavier by the minute. “Let the guilt go.”
“You did the same for me,” I point out.
He hooks his finger through my belt loop and pulls my hips toward him. “And I’m glad I did.”
I consider him. Once I’d realized he didn’t hold my lies against me, I’d come clean, laying everything at his feet. He took it remarkably well; but I wonder, once the storm has passed and this is all over, whether he’ll change his mind. “Really?”
He pulls me in for a lingering kiss, his gaze steady when he releases me. “Really.”
Something strange happens inside my chest, like a bird beating its wings. I turn away so he doesn’t see the idiotic smile I can’t seem to repress as we make our way down the stairs beyond the pool, dodging flying palm fronds and debris. Fighting our way through the increasingly horizontal rain toward the bungalows, I realize the storm has intensified far more quickly than we’d planned for. My heart sinks at the thought of Mary Elizabeth out in this weather. She could so easily be swept away, if she hasn’t been already.
The water beneath the pier to the bungalows is startlingly close, sloshing up through the slats in the wood as we hurry over the slick boards to my bungalow.
“I’ll be back for you in fifteen,” he yells over the wind when we reach my doorstep.
Before he can depart, the door to the bungalow swings open, revealing a trembling Stella. Her puffy eyes are ringed with smudged mascara, and she’s wearing some kind of gauzy swimsuit cover-up that’s completely inappropriate for the weather. She waves both of us inside.
“I’ve gotta go clean up and grab my stuff.” Jackson excuses himself, but Stella will have none of it.
“Come in, for just a minute,” she says as a tear slides down her cheek.
Jackson and I step into the dimly lit living room, where the television blares a series of weather warnings as the anchors on the Weather Channel excitedly discuss the rapid approach of Hurricane Celia. I’m shocked we still have power—it’s already gone out at the lobby. “We need to get up to the shelter as soon as possible, or we’re gonna have to swim out of here,” I say. “Any sign of Mimi?”
She shakes her head, wiping her tears. “I’ve been waiting for you. I made lemonade. I knew you’d be thirsty.” She gestures to the table, where two highballs of pale-yellow liquid wait for us, the glasses sweating as the ice melts. Odd. But then, Stella is nothing if not odd. “Where have you been?”
“We’ve been placing sandbags up at the main building,” Jackson says.
Stella grabs the cups from the table and hands one to each of us. Off our looks, she sighs. “I feel so bad I made you stay in a hurricane. It’s the least I can do.” She seizes a rocks glass off the side table next to the couch and rattles the ice, then drains what’s left of it. “I added gin to mine.”
Of course she did. Forcing smiles, we each take a tentative sip. The cold liquid is sweet and tart on my tongue, and I drink half of it in one draw. “This is delicious,” I enthuse. “I didn’t realize how thirsty I was. Thank you.”
“I made it using the lemons from the tree by the pool,” she says proudly.
Jackson takes another long sip. “It’s great.”
The television draws our attention with a prolonged discordant tone over color block. When the picture comes back, the weatherman is serious. “Hurricane Celia has been upgraded to a category two with sustained winds of 105 miles per hour and is likely to strengthen over open water as it moves west-northwest at a speed of thirty miles per hour toward the islands of Barbados, and Grenadine, and Saint Ann, now less than a hundred miles away. Storm surge in excess of ten feet is expected in low-lying areas. Please take shelter immediately.”
“I gotta go.” Jackson drains his glass and sets it on the table. “I’ll be back for you in ten. If you’re ready first, come get me on your way.”
“See you then.” I blow him a kiss, and he disappears out the door, into the deluge. “I’m gonna take a quick shower,” I say to Stella. “You probably want to change. It’s pretty nasty out there.”
In my bathroom, I shed my muddy clothes and step into the shower, where I shampoo my hair and scrub the dirt from beneath my nails, feeling my tired body begin to relax as the hot water warms me. Poor Stella. I know losing Mary Elizabeth is a terrible blow to her, especially now that I’m privy to the details of her years of suffering. Though I do find solace in knowing my mother was so loved and mourned, my heart breaks for her.
They say time heals all wounds, but I know firsthand if you repress your trauma it only festers, becoming a poison that slowly turns your insides black with rot. It was such a relief to come clean with Jackson. Maybe I should throw caution to the wind and do the same with Stella now, rather than waiting until the “time is right.” She’s trusted me with her story; if I trusted her with mine, perh
aps we could work together to bring Cole down. But there’s no time now. We need to get up to the shelter, and presumably Cole will be there with us. I’ll have to wait.
A wave of exhaustion rolls over me. The water feels divine, but I’m so drained that once I’ve conditioned my hair, I turn off the shower. I can take a pillow and blanket with me to the wine cellar and sleep there. I wrap myself in a plush white towel and wipe the steam from the mirror with my hand, starting when I catch my reflection. One of my brown contacts has fallen out, revealing one bright blue iris. I’ve grown so accustomed to my dark-eyed look that my natural color is shocking, more unreal than the counterfeit version.
My contact must have come out in the shower—it had to be; Jackson or Stella would have noticed if I’d lost it before. I open the drawer where I keep extra lenses and reach into the back, realizing as I come up empty-handed that my contacts are packed in the bag I meant to take to Guyana. Shit. But the bag’s in my room. No harm done. I throw open the door to my bedroom to find Stella sitting on my bed, now dressed in yoga pants and a T-shirt. I jump. Since we’ve been here, she hasn’t once come into my room.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
My hand flies to my blue eye to cover it. “I hurt my eye,” I say. “I think some sand may have gotten in it while we were doing storm prep.”
“Hmmm.” She crosses her arms, watching me intently. “Did you finish your lemonade?”
Why is she acting so strange? “Yeah, it was great. Thanks again.”
I drag my suddenly heavy limbs to my suitcase and unzip it, overwhelmed by the prospect of choosing what to wear. I just want her to leave so that I can search for my contacts.
“How are you feeling?” she asks again. “You look kinda tired.”
“Yeah.” I face away from her so that she won’t see my eye as I pull on my underwear and the first T-shirt and jeans shorts I see, then turn back to her, rubbing my eye. “I’m gonna take a blanket up to the main lodge.”
I take a step toward the bed, but suddenly the floor isn’t where it should be, and I find myself staring through the glass floor at the turbulent dark sea below. The room spins. I grab on to the bed to steady myself, noticing without judgment the strange sensation of my brain detaching itself from my body.
The Siren Page 32