I give myself a minute. “Can you pass me the key?” I ask.
“Of course.” His voice is low. “Amelie, I—” He stops, because he doesn’t know how to go on, and because he’s waiting for me to open the padlock with the key he’s just pushed under the door.
I pick it up, get to my feet. And then I walk away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I sit on the beach at French Bay, oblivious to the cold wind that whips in off the sea. How could I have been so blind, so unaware? But I’d thought he was dead.
I replay his murder in my mind, wondering if I’d missed something, something that would have told me it was only an act. But there’s nothing; from the way he was pulled from the car to the sound of gunshots, to the blood pooling from him, everything had seemed genuine.
It’s the humiliation that is the hardest, because he would have heard my anguish at the moment he was shot. My anger is deep, searing. If Hunter and Carl had thought about me at all, they might have guessed I’d assume that Lukas was involved both in Hunter’s murder, and in the kidnapping. And then they might have guessed that I’d think Lukas was one of the men holding us. But they had never thought about me, about what I might presume, about what I might feel. If Hunter had felt any remorse about what he’d subjected me to in the woods, sometime during the two weeks I was held prisoner, he would have told me who he was. But he hadn’t. And neither of them, once, had considered my pain at losing my friends.
I don’t feel guilty for walking away from him, for leaving him locked in the shed. It wasn’t about him experiencing something of what I went through, although I’m glad there are no windows, and that he won’t be rescued until the woman with dark hair, who I presume is his partner, wonders why he hasn’t turned up for dinner. What I can’t bear is the thought of him hearing my distress when I believed him to be dead. He has seen too much of me.
I call the airline, and arrange my return journey for Sunday, two days away. I’d like to leave tomorrow but I will have to see Hunter, because there are still things I need to know. But he can come to me. He’ll guess that I’m staying in Akaroa, it won’t take him long to find me. And he will come and find me, because we have unfinished business.
But he doesn’t come, not that evening nor the next day. Early on Sunday morning—my flight is at eight in the evening, and I still need to pack—I march up the hill to the house, burning with resentment that I’m having to go to him. I’m hoping the woman will be there; I want her to know the truth, that she’s living with a man who kidnaps young women.
The truck is there but there doesn’t seem to be anyone around, so I sit down to wait. It’s awhile before it dawns on me that everything is exactly as it was when I left two days before. The truck is parked in exactly the same place, the door is still open and, when I take a closer look, Hunter’s phone is there on the dashboard. I feel a flash of fear—is it possible that no one has come, that Hunter is still in the shed? What if the woman wasn’t his partner but someone involved in the building project, or a friend, someone who wouldn’t worry if they didn’t see him for a few days? My fear spirals; it will have been stifling in the shed, what if he didn’t have water?
I have the key to the padlock, I’ve had it with me since Hunter pushed it under the door.
I hurry to the shed, scared to go inside, scared of what I might find.
My fingers tremble as I insert the key into the padlock. I snap it open, push open the door, sending a shaft of light into its dark interior. At first, I can’t see anything. But as my eyes begin to adjust to the gloom, I see him lying on the floor under a piece of tarpaulin.
“No,” I whisper. “No.”
Shaking with dread, I force myself forward, crouch down, pull back the tarpaulin. A wave of relief washes over me. There’s nothing there, it’s just tarpaulin, it only looked as if there was a body underneath.
“A trick I learned from you.”
I spin around. Hunter is standing in the doorway.
“If I hadn’t been able to knock out a panel, I’d be dead.”
“I thought—”
“That you’d leave me to die?”
As he starts to move toward me, I grab a plank of wood from the floor.
“Don’t come any closer!”
He stops, raises his hands.
“Start talking,” I say. “From where you left off. And if you so much as move, I swear I’ll kill you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX