Power Games

by Victoria Fox

  When she reached the plateau, she looked out to the west. It was darker this side. The sea churned and the rocks were craggy and sharp. A thin line of sand snaked along the base of the cliffs and she was about to turn away and shout his name when something new registered: something she had not noticed before.

  At the furthest reach was a cluster of caves. She had observed these during previous excursions, gouged out nubs whose innards were dark and dripping—but the biggest, an almost vertical slit in a face of hard grey rock, had eluded her until now.

  The cave seemed to live and breathe. It seemed to stare back.

  Eve lowered herself onto the beach, careful to hold the shoots and sprays that broke the descent. Down on the sand, the cave seemed bigger.

  Leading into it was a trail of footprints.

  Eve stopped. It was strange to see the mark of a person anywhere except at camp. Unease climbed in her stomach.

  Corrigan? But another possibility surfaced.

  The woman they had lost, the flight attendant. She had become magical and threatening in Eve’s mind, polished and smiling when they had boarded at Jakarta, then a terror-stamped mask when they had fallen from the skies. She was the dark shake of the trees, the whisper of the wind, the question mark they could not face.

  Eve pulled herself together. She was no longer that frightened little girl, afraid of the dark and the monsters it could bring. Her monster was locked up in jail. He was gone. He couldn’t hurt her again. There were no other monsters.

  Closer to, she saw the prints were big, the size of a man’s, and couldn’t decide if this was a comfort or not. Their trajectory was unusual: they didn’t go direct into the mouth of the cave but, rather, seemed to step around it, changing direction.

  If only Angela were with her. Angela would apply reason and sense, not let her imagination run away. It was a Silvers trait, Eve realised, and what had attracted her to Orlando in the first place. You just felt they knew how to handle things.

  ‘Corrigan?’ She stepped inside.

  His name sounded weird in the dark, throwing itself back at her. She felt as if she were disturbing a creature that had been slumbering a thousand years.

  The walls of the cave were damp and freezing. Water pooled at her feet. A crab scuttled over her toes and she put her hands in front of her to feel the way.

  Something shifted in the dark. ‘Who’s there?’

  No response. She had not come prepared—no light, no defence. Alone.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she echoed, staring into the chasm.

  Again, something moved. Eve felt the wall behind her, fingers touching daylight, and stayed where she was. The shape came closer. She could sense its approach in the dark.

  ‘Corrigan, is that you …?’

  But the sight that met her eyes was not Mitch Corrigan.

  It was something else entirely.

  All morning, Tawny refused to stir. She lay on her bunk, clutching the diamond chain around her neck as if it were the last vestige of a familiar world.

  She thought of LA, of New York, of glamorous fashion galas and starry-eyed fans, of margaritas at Nobu and dancing at the Barrio, of runway shows and make-up chairs, of sharing a penthouse with her croupier lover and screwing until dawn, of photographers who eyed her ravenously even though they saw dozens of models a week, because she, Tawny, was the ultimate.

  She wanted her manager. She wanted her car and her Security. She wanted Minty and JP. She wanted her hairdresser.

  Angela tried to rouse her, but she barked at her to get lost. Celeste attempted an olive branch, but Tawny blanked it. Why should she play nice?

  That witch had stolen from her, humiliated her—and, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, she had seduced her man …

  I don’t like you any more.

  Tawny could spew when she remembered Jacob’s words.

  No man had ever said that to her—as far back as she could recall, no man, married or divorced, single or attached, old or young or tall or short, had been able to resist her. And now Jacob had shunned her in favour of … of that thieving cow?

  Tawny would not—could not—accept it. A long time ago, in a distant hospital bed, she had pledged that her days of being the victim were over.

  She wasn’t about to start again now.

  She would find a way to deal with Celeste Cavalieri.

  No one crossed Tawny Lascelles and got away with it.

  65

  Over a week in the cave had left him ravaged and delirious. He was emaciated, his eyes sunken and his lips cracked. His ribcage strained. He was naked save for a pair of underpants, blotted now with sand and grit.

  Eve went to touch him and he flinched out of reach. The Mitch Corrigan who glared back at her was part animal, part man. His skin was bleached from the darkness of his hideout. He hunched beneath the dripping arches.

  ‘Corrigan …’ She held out water. ‘I’m here to help.’

  As her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she could make out the pit of his lair. Fish bones littered the sand; and the remains of a fire, chalky and black.

  He regarded the liquid suspiciously.

  ‘Come with me,’ she urged. ‘We’ll look after you, Corrigan.’

  He didn’t trust her. Why should he?

  ‘Get out.’ His voice was rusty, like a car engine spluttering to a start.

  Eve held her hands up, to show she meant no harm. ‘Not unless you come with me.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You can’t stay here.’

  ‘I can’t stay anywhere.’

  A flash of the old senator—on TV or at the White House, his pristine smile and the smooth cap of his hairpiece. All decorations had been stripped.

  ‘Come outside,’ she said. ‘Into the sun.’

  He coughed, hacking and grisly. ‘No. They’re waiting.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They’re here. I feel it.’

  Eve took a chance. ‘I feel it too.’

  His hands were shaking, the fingernails blackened and torn. ‘You lie.’

  ‘It’s with us,’ she said. ‘Something in the trees.’

  ‘No. Here.’

  ‘In the cave?’

  ‘In the sky.’

  ‘What are they waiting for?’

  ‘Me. And I’ve been waiting for them. I’ve seen their footprints.’

  ‘Those are your footprints.’

  ‘They weren’t the first time.’

  Eve swallowed. ‘The first time?’

  ‘I saw them, on day one. From the mountain.’

  Your eyes must have tricked you.

  Eve wanted to say it but didn’t, partly because it would break his confidence and partly because she didn’t know if it was true. She hoped to God it was true.

  ‘If I come back, they’ll know where to find us.’

  ‘We’ve got a better chance together, haven’t we?’

  He laughed. ‘You mock me, Eve Harley. Do you think I don’t know it was you who followed me to Italy? I know. You think you’re clever but you’re not. You all do, but you’re the ones in the dark.’

  ‘Corrigan …’

  ‘And now I’m here, so why don’t they take me?’

  Without warning he ran past her, out onto the beach, imploring the empty sky.

  ‘Take me, you bastards!’ He punched the air; his arms aloft, pleading with such savage abandon that for a moment Eve half believed the dome was about to part, revealing a shaft of light through which Signor Rossetti’s bizarre creation sprang forth.

  Nothing happened.

  Corrigan buckled to his knees at the altar of his faith.

  ‘Put me out of my misery! Take me!’

  Eve watched as the desperation of the last nine days, and all the days that had gone before, came pouring out. At last, unanswered, he wilted.

  The storm passed. Eve came to him. This time he endured her touch. ‘Please come back,’ she said again.

  Corrigan was defeated. ‘It’s too late.�
��

  ‘It’s never too late.’

  He glanced at her. For the first time, his eyes were engaged. He regarded her differently, softly, almost human again.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ he said, out of the blue.

  ‘Yes,’ Eve said, smiling. ‘I am.’

  66

  Every bone in Noah’s body hurt. There was a shooting pain in his side. He hadn’t dreamed, nor had he been aware of time passing—just a big black gulf between then and now.

  What was then?

  What was now?

  Where was he?

  He opened his eyes and saw he was on a stretcher, the white cotton beneath him starched and clean. A basic arrangement, a square cabin, and other beds like his, rigged up to saline drips and sachets of liquid. Noah thought of war films he had seen. Ailing soldiers.

  The throb in his head didn’t help, the kind of throb that made him conscious of the shape of his sockets and the dips and troughs of his skull: all that mechanical stuff he wasn’t supposed to think about. It was hot: inescapable heat that filled the nostrils and the ears, and he recognised the heat, sort of, at least the smell of it, dense and tropical with a shave of lime peel. He could hear the ocean. A band of sunlight eased through a crack and he tried to sit up but the sting in his side was too much.

  He needed water.

  A face hovered over his. The nurse smiled, and brought a bottle to his lips. ‘Don’t move,’ she said in English. ‘Stay here.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  He wasn’t sure if he asked it, if the words came out. They must have, because she replied: ‘You were hurt. We brought you back.’

  A spread of crimson bloomed at his waist, staining the sheet, and he groaned, went to sit again but the pain forced him back. His knuckles were split and cracked. His lower lip was bust. The skin around his eye was shiny to touch, grape-smooth, and when he closed his other eye he could barely see at all.

  He peeled back the sheet. The knife had gone deep. Surrounding a thick white compress was a livid purple welt, and the tail end of a trail of stitches.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘One week,’ said the nurse.

  A week! Despair crashed over him.

  And then he remembered.

  We can help each other, the man had said, I have a lead, let’s talk …

  The man had introduced himself as a friend of Angela’s … How could Noah have been so careless?

  He had wanted to believe it. A friend of Angela’s, someone to help: someone who trusted as strongly as he did that they lived. He remembered the liquor, sour and salty. His senses fading, his reactions slowing …

  The fight.

  Flashes of the brawl assailed him in bursts, beaten up and left for dead.

  MOVIE STAR NOAH LAWSON FOUND SLAIN IN ISLAND PARADISE.

  They would say it was his fault. Trying to play the hero.

  Come on, come on, come on. No time to waste. Think!

  Noah had known the man’s face, had seen it in a paper sometime. Who was he?

  The Angela connection had thrown him. It had directed him off the scent and he hadn’t thought to associate the man with anyone else. But that was it.

  Of course, that was it.

  Tawny Lascelles.

  Definitely the same man, Noah was sure. He had been Tawny’s boyfriend, for a time, in the weeks before the party disappeared. They had posed together, been snapped in the weeklies—some guy from Vegas.

  What was he doing here?

  Did he have something to do with the crash?

  Why did he want to get rid of Noah?

  Realisation struck. Suddenly, it was clear. The man knew, like he did, that the passengers on board that jet bound for Salimanta were still breathing.

  Noah tore the bandage off. A bolt shot through his abdomen.

  ‘No,’ the nurse saw, ‘you mustn’t—’

  They would have to kill him before they stopped him.

  He could rest when he died for real. Right now, Noah was alive. And he had to find Angela before somebody else did.

  67

  Day 25

  It was a day of the week but nobody knew its name. The sun beat down, spilling lava between the glades. The forest floor was arid; leaves turned to brittle crunch, while up above the canopy thronged with life. Monkeys sprang from branches, tagging each other and hanging from their tails, howling against their course of ropes and plummets.

  They prayed for rain. The stream had dried up and the heat was unreal. Action was impossible at the height of the day and the group slumped beneath palm trees, torn between the temptation of the water and the threat of the blazing sun.

  Jungle creatures, semi-naked, their hair grown and their skin turned brown; the line between their old world and the acceptance of this new, feral state was obliterated.

  Mitch’s return seemed to have carried a curse—the sun brighter than ever, the sky closer, the heat hotter. Salt caked on their skin and around their mouths.

  On the molten horizon they thought they saw a ship, a cruel mirage, or heard on the thermals the engine of a plane.

  They were wrong. It was over.

  They would be here until they died. Some wished for an ending, something quick and painless; others still dreamed of home.

  Thirst made them mad. They needed water.

  The scorching day gave way to evening shadows. Tawny volunteered to set out to find a new source—anything but to be stuck with them.

  Much to her dismay, Jacob insisted on coming with her.

  They worked through the jungle, brandishing torches of fire, orange glow darting between the trees. Tawny didn’t speak to him. She couldn’t look at him. Celeste’s words swamped her mind, with every recollection growing larger and more horrible.

  You’re ugly in your soul.

  ‘Slow down,’ Jacob called from behind. ‘Wait up.’

  Tawny could leave him right here for all she cared, hope he got snatched and devoured by some awful creature. What had happened to the Jacob who had cornered her at the Rieux? Who had pursued her at the Tower Club and sent her flowers and jewellery and flooded her PA with messages? What had happened to that Jacob?

  He had lost more than his sight when the plane came down. He had lost his fucking mind.

  Jacob tripped and swore, but Tawny didn’t turn back. She would give him nothing. He and Celeste had been flirting ever since that shameful night. The way Jacob looked at her … No one had ever looked at Tawny like that. Sure, they lusted after her. They told her what a hot body she had and how much they wanted to nail her. But they never looked at her like she was the last woman on Earth, never looked into her soul—her ugly soul—and accepted and loved what was there.

  Maybe she had never given herself a chance. Shedding her old skin had meant absolute denial: a mystery siren with no past, no story, no family and no friends, and in a way it had been the making of her, the enhanced allure, the implied goldmine that had kept reporters like Eve Harley on her tail for so long. But at what cost?

  In burying the bad things about Tawny Linden, she had also buried the good. All those loveable parts that the woman she was today would never know.

  Tawny’s eyes filled with tears. Fleetingly she considered beginning an affair with Kevin—he was certainly the last viable option, what with Jacob losing his balls and old man Mitch’s crab breath—but there was no point. They would all be dead soon. And she would die alone … and ugly.

  Jacob wouldn’t care even if she did bone Kevin. For the first time since her reinvention, Tawny was ordinary: she had no power and no secret. In Jacob’s eyes she was just a girl, nothing more, nothing else, and that scared her more than anything.

  The further they went, the darker it became.

  Tawny hated the dark. When it was light she could still think of those bursts of brilliance: the flash of the paparazzo’s camera, the spot-glow on the runway as she flaunted the look of the season, or the spark of a magazine shoot when all she had to wear wa
s a plastic bikini and a slash of red lipstick.

  When it was dark, bad thoughts crept in.

  Perhaps she had died. Sometimes she persuaded herself that she had perished in that crash, they all had, and this was nothing but some limbo before their fates got decided. Who was there to say otherwise? They only had each other, and each was as deluded as the next. Who knew if her companions were even real? They could be figments of her addled imagination, or some residual flicker from the life she had departed when she flew out of Jakarta that day.

  A chill raced, quick-legged, up her spine.

  But wait. That wasn’t a chill.

  ‘ARGHHHH!’

  Frantically Tawny began slapping her back, tearing her vest off, her face a grimace of terror. ‘Get it off me, get it off me!’

  ‘What is it?’

  Tawny panted, gasping, and pointed shakily at the undergrowth, to where a dark shape was picking its way languidly through the bramble.

  Spider.

  The word didn’t do it justice. This wasn’t a teeny-weeny creepy-crawly she sometimes found in the corner of her Jacuzzi bathroom (and even then she got the maid to remove it): this was a monster. She had seen pictures of spiders like this, heard tales of their existence, witnessed them starring in their own fucking horror movie, but had never thought she would encounter one for real. It was huge and brown and furry. Its body was the size of a tennis ball and its legs were twig-thick limbs, bent at the knee in that revolting upturned V shape, and sprung with coarse hair.

  Its eyes were out on stalks. Stalks!

  Untroubled by Tawny’s screams, the spider navigated its way through the dry leaves and vanished from sight.

  ‘You’re OK,’ said Jacob, putting a hand on her back. ‘It’s gone.’

  She shrugged him off.

  ‘Touch me again and I’ll fucking kill you.’

  They walked on.

  At last they came to a creek and filled the bottles. Jacob was so thirsty he scooped handfuls of water into his mouth, not caring if it made him sick. She hoped it did.

  They loaded as many as they could carry. It would be enough to see them through until dawn, when the others would return for more.