“And what? Fished out my stash?”
“We can’t rule it out,” Marsden said.
“Chase, Olivia,” Charles said. “Go up to Adam’s room and search it.”
“What are we looking for?” Olivia said.
“Anything suspicious,” Charles said. He looked at Adam. “Are they going to find anything? Do you want to tell us about anything before they look?”
“No,” Adam said. “There’s nothing there. And I can’t believe you’re actually doing this. I’ve given none of you any reason to suspect me of anything since I arrived. I’ve done nothing but work with you and help you.”
“That isn’t true,” Kathryn said. She turned to the McTerrells. “He’s eaten our food. He’s taken advantage of our hospitality. And if he’s been lying to us—”
“I haven’t been lying to you!”
“Well, what are we supposed to think?” Charles asked. “Who else would have done this?”
Adam opened his mouth, ready to tell them what he knew, ready to turn Chase in for what he’d done—
Ella caught his eye. She looked frightened.
Calling Chase out isn’t going to help, Adam realized. The McTerrells would deny that Chase had done anything wrong and would be angry with Adam for making the accusation. The Birkins would be angry with Adam for failing to report Chase’s theft the moment it had happened, especially in light of the fact that he’d turned Rhett in. They might suspect him now, but they would think a lot less of him if he came forward with the truth.
He had to keep walking that center line. He had to stick to the plan he and Ella had developed to keep the peace in the house.
So he said nothing.
Richard seemed to take his silence as some kind of capitulation. “You see?” he said, somewhat triumphantly. “It couldn’t have been anyone else.”
“Hang on,” Ella spoke up. “It could have been anyone else. This is all still just circumstantial evidence, and it’s not very compelling circumstantial evidence at that.”
Adam couldn’t believe she was speaking on his behalf. Ella, who was always so insistent that the best strategy was to stay quiet and keep their heads down, coming to his defense?
“Did you take the drugs?” Marsden asked Ella.
She looked at him coldly. “No. Did you?”
“Careful now,” Charles warned.
“Ella didn’t do it,” Kathryn spoke up. “Ella’s been with our family for years. If she was the sort to steal drugs, we’d have encountered the problem already.”
“That’s what it comes down to,” Richard agreed. “Even if you leave out Adam’s history of drug use…the rest of us know each other. Nobody in my family would do something like this. I assume you can say the same for yours?” he asked Charles.
“Of course,” Charles agreed.
“There’s only one new person,” Richard said. “There’s only one person here who has no prior connection to any of the rest of us. There’s only one person with no one to speak for him.”
“You can’t pin this on me just because I don’t have friends or family here,” Adam argued. “That doesn’t make me guilty.”
“But you have to admit that it doesn’t look very good,” Charles said. “Richard is right. We all know each other. I know what my brother and my children are capable of.”
Do you? Adam thought bitterly.
“You’re the only unknown quantity,” Charles went on. “You’re the only one we can’t be sure of. Don’t you see how that makes it hard for us to trust you?”
“Yes,” Adam said. “I get that. But you can’t just decide I’m untrustworthy because you find it hard.”
Marsden looked doubtful. “Maybe he’s right,” he said to his brother. “There’s really not enough here to go on. Isn’t it possible that Kathryn just misplaced her pills?”
“I didn’t misplace those pills,” Kathryn said. “I always keep them in the same cupboard in the bathroom, and now they’re gone. Someone took them. It’s the only possible explanation.”
“Well,” Marsden said, “We can’t exactly throw the book at Adam without any real evidence. Why don’t we—”
But he broke off. Chase and Olivia had returned to the kitchen. Olivia looked pale and upset, but Chase seemed to be suppressing a grin.
“Did you search his room, kids?” Charles asked.
“Yes,” Olivia said.
“And? Did you find anything?”
Adam understood, suddenly and far too late, what was about to happen. His heart sank.
Chase reached into his pocket and pulled out an empty pill bottle.
“That’s mine!” Kathryn darted forward to claim it. “Look, it has my name on the label. Kathryn Birkin.” She looked up at Chase. “Where did you find it?”
“It was under his mattress,” Chase said. “He must have been stowing it there until he could figure out a way to throw it out without getting caught.”
“But all the pills are gone.” Kathryn frowned. “He couldn’t have taken all of them. He’d be dead if he had.”
“He probably hid them somewhere else,” Chase said. “That’s what I would have done.”
Adam could hold his tongue no longer.
“That is what you did!” he shouted. “You and I both know who took those pills, Chase. I covered for you! I kept your secret! And this is how you repay me? By setting me up?”
Chase shook his head sadly and put an arm around his sister’s shoulders, steering her away. “He’s out of his mind,” he said sadly.
Richard nodded. “That’s good work you did, Chase. Ella, go and finish searching Adam’s room. See if you can find the rest of those pills.”
Ella didn’t move. She stood staring at Adam, her face a mask of horror.
“I’m telling you, I never touched those pills!” Adam shouted. He heard the way he sounded—crazed, manic, out of control. He sounded the way Cody had in the last days on the yacht.
“Boys,” Richard said quietly. “Restrain him.”
Rhett and Langley stepped forward.
“Restrain me?” Adam cried. “Your son killed someone, Birkin!”
Richard turned away, apparently unwilling to watch any more.
Adam wrenched his arm away as Langley moved to grab him, but he had no chance against the two of them together. Rhett pinned his arms behind his back, and Langley shoved his shoulder down, forcing him to his knees. Each taking one hand, they dragged him across the kitchen floor. Adam scrambled his feet against the tiles, struggling to get up, but they were too strong for him.
“Where are you taking him?” Ella asked.
“The cellar,” Rhett said. “Until we can decide what to do with him next. He’s too dangerous to keep in the main house.”
They came to a door Adam had never seen opened before. Langley pulled it open, and together they shoved him forward. Before he could get his balance, he was falling, hips and shoulders banging against the stairs as he toppled down.
He reached the bottom with a bone shattering thud and looked up just in time to see the door slam shut.
Chapter 18
The sounds of furniture being dragged into place to secure the door closed were all too familiar.
Only now did Adam realize how generous the Birkins and the McTerrells had been with him the day he’d arrived. All right, so they had held him at gunpoint and forced him into a quarantine, but they had given him a bedroom. He had slept comfortably that night.
He hadn’t even imagined a place like this cellar existed.
It was damp and cold. The floor was hard concrete and there was no light to speak of. He shivered, wishing for one of the warm flannel shirts up in the bedroom where he’d been sleeping—or better yet, the soft comforter. How long were they planning to keep him down here?
He examined his body for injury. His shoulders ached from being wrenched by the Birkin twins, but he didn’t think any serious or lasting damage had been done there. Of more concern was the pain in his lower back
on the left side, where it had struck the stairs as he fell. He probed the area gently with his fingers. There would be a mighty bruise there, he was sure. He also noticed that his cheek stung, and when he touched his face, his fingers came away wet. He was bleeding. He must have scraped his face when he’d landed.
He doubted the floor down here was very clean. Would the scrape become infected? And if it did, would he be able to acquire treatment from the families above? It was impossible to know.
What were their plans for him? They couldn’t possibly intend to just leave him down here forever. Apart from anything else, it would be more trouble than it was worth to them to go on feeding him and not allow him to contribute anything to the community. Perhaps they would decide to let him go, he thought hopefully.
Then his heart sank. Where would he go? Even if they dismissed him from the house, he would still be stuck on the island with them. He would have no source of fresh water and no means of getting food. That would be as good as a death sentence, too.
He should have turned Chase in immediately. How stupid he’d been to try and protect the kid! He had made the same mistake he’d judged others for so many times—he had assumed that the world still operated according to the old rules.
In the old days, he would never have spilled the beans on a fellow addict. He would have considered that to be unforgivable. But times had changed. He couldn’t protect other people the way he had before. He had to look out for himself. He had to put himself first.
“Like you did with me?” Cody’s voice echoed in his mind.
Adam shuddered. It couldn’t be denied that he’d put himself first when it came to Cody. And one could easily believe that that was why Cody was now dead.
No, he told himself firmly. That isn’t my fault.
But in so very many ways, it was.
He curled up on the floor and closed his eyes, confused and afraid, huddling against the cold and wondering what was going to happen to him now.
Chapter 19
“Adam. Adam!”
The voice in his ear was hushed and half frantic. Adam opened his eyes, but the world around him was pitch dark. He couldn’t see anything. He struggled to sit up.
A hand rested on his shoulder, small and gentle. “Don’t move,” the voice said. “Don’t get up. Are you hurt?”
“Ella?”
“Quiet. They can’t know I’m down here.”
“You shouldn’t be. If they catch you—”
“They won’t. It’s the middle of the night. Everyone’s gone to sleep. God, I wish I had a flashlight.” Her other hand found his. “Is anything broken?”
He assessed himself. The bruise on his back was almost certainly in full bloom now—it hurt to move—and his ankle was throbbing. The raw spot on his cheek hurt a little less. Maybe it was healing. “I think I'm okay,” he said.
“I was terrified,” Ella said. “I couldn’t believe they were so rough with you!”
“You’ve seen them do it before,” Adam said. “You told me they’ve always been violent.”
“I know,” Ella agreed. “But seeing the Birkins treat each other that way is one thing. Seeing them do it to you—”
“I’m all right.” Now he did sit up. “Listen, Ella, about the pills—”
“I know you didn’t take them,” she said.
“You do?” The relief was palpable in his voice.
“Of course,” she said. “You should have seen your face. It was obvious you’d had nothing to do with it.” She gripped his shoulder a little more tightly. “Besides,” she added, “you wouldn't do something like that. You wouldn’t steal someone’s drugs.”
“No,” Adam agreed. If he had been inclined to steal drugs from anyone, he would have taken the party drugs that Cody and his friends were ingesting on the yacht and thrown them overboard. At least that would have been useful.
“Were you really an addict?” she asked.
“I still am,” he said. “It’s not something that goes away. But I’ve been clean for years. What I said up there was true. The magazines just seem to keep getting the story wrong, that’s all it is.”
“Were you also telling the truth about Chase?” Ella said. “You really think he was the one who stole them?”
“He was,” Adam said. “I saw him do it. I thought about telling somebody, but I didn’t know who to tell. It seemed like anyone I talked to would have just caused more trouble. And then, this was right after Rhett shot the man on the boat…we just had bigger things to worry about.” He sighed. “I had no idea it would come back to bite me like this.”
“There was nothing you could have done about it,” she said. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d told someone. Or who you’d told.”
“You don’t think so?” he asked. In a way, it was freeing to think that there was nothing he could have done. Nothing would have saved him from his current predicament. That would mean that this wasn’t his fault. It was something to cling to, at least.
“You see how they are with each other,” Ella said. “The Birkins and the McTerrells, I mean. They hate each other. And it’s for such stupid reasons. Because they’ve had their money too long, or not long enough. Because they’re well connected, or not well connected. Because they work, or because they don’t work. Those are reasons not to get along with somebody, maybe, but definitely not reason enough for this kind of violent hatred.”
“What are you getting at?” he asked.
“I’m saying that the reason they hate each other is that they aren’t each other. They mistrust and dislike anyone who doesn’t belong to them. And you and I, we’re even more on the outside. The Birkins don’t like the McTerrells because they’re new to the country club, but we never belonged to the country club.”
“You’re saying they don’t like us because we aren’t country club members?”
“I’m saying when they need to put the blame for something on someone, that someone is going to be whoever they trust least. And we’re the ones they trust least. Me because I don’t have money, and you because you’ve only been here for such a short time.”
“That’s so screwed up.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing conscious on their part,” Ella said. “They just can’t conceive of any of their own stealing drugs, so in their minds, it has to have been you.”
“Well, that’s no real comfort to me,” Adam said.
“I wouldn’t expect that it would be,” Ella agreed. “I’m just saying…there’s no point in trying to reason with them. There’s no point in trying to convince them. They’re never going to be able to hear you. As far as they’re concerned, you’ll always be the stranger. The interloper. They’re never going to trust you the way they trust each other. And when something goes wrong, it’s always going to be your fault. Or mine.”
“Have they even done anything about Rhett?” Adam asked.
“No,” Ella said. “Everyone’s just acting like that never happened.”
“Even the McTerrells?” Adam couldn’t believe it. “He shot a man, Ella. I watched him die.”
“I know,” she said. “But the feeling seems to be that at least everyone has finally found something they can agree on.”
“You mean, what to do with me.”
She didn’t answer.
“What are they going to do with me?” he asked, suddenly fearful. “They’re not going to shoot me too, are they? Or leave me down here to starve?”
“They aren’t going to do anything to you,” Ella said, her voice suddenly steely.
“They’re not?”
“No,” she said. “We’re going to get out of here.”
“We?”
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “I can’t stay here with these people anymore. It’s only a matter of time before they turn on me, too. I can’t sit around and wait for that to happen. We’ve got to get out while we can, both of us, right now.”
“But—” Adam swallowed. His heart was racing and adrenaline was
suddenly coursing through his body. He couldn’t even feel the pain in his back or his ankle anymore. “Where are we going to go?” he asked. “Where can we go?”
“We’ll take the boat,” she said. “We’ll try to get back to the mainland. I know you don’t think it’s safe there, but it’s got to be better than here. Especially if the virus is gone now. If people back on the mainland know about that, then they’ll have calmed down some. Maybe they won’t be violent with each other anymore. Maybe they won’t shoot on sight.”
“And there’s more room to spread out there,” Adam said. “We might be able to find a place. Somewhere we can hide out for a while.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“But what are we going to do for food and water?”
He felt her hand on his, pulling it forward, guiding him to something. Something broad and made of canvas.
“I packed a bag,” she said. “It’s got enough food and water for a few days. That ought to be long enough to make the trip back to shore. We’ll have to scavenge after that, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find something.”
Adam wasn’t sure of that at all. Finding an empty building was one thing, but finding unclaimed food seemed unlikely. Here on the island they had the garden, and they had fish to catch and deer and rabbits to hunt. If they returned to the mainland, it would probably be much more difficult to find fish and game. And he didn’t have any hope at all of finding nonperishable food. That would have all been taken by now.
It was a slim chance. But it was a chance. And, Adam thought, that was better than what they had here. Because Ella was right. These conflicts were going to keep coming up. Tensions between the families—and between the families and the outsiders—would only grow. And Rhett Birkin, for one, had already shown that he was willing to kill people he didn’t trust.
They weren’t safe on the island. Not anymore. It was only a matter of time before the violence was turned against them.
“Okay,” Adam agreed. “I’ll go with you.”
Escape The Dark (Book 2): Fearful World Page 14