She pulls her phone from her pocket. It’s wet, the screen blurred with water droplets, but still functioning. Swiping at the screen, she looks for the signal bar.
Nothing.
It wasn’t just the islet. The storm has taken everything out.
For a moment, the wind dies, allows Elin to gather her breath and her thoughts, but the quiet is soon broken.
A gunshot, ripping through the silence.
95
Elin’s heart thumps in her chest: Caleb’s armed . . . this changes everything.
Still unsteady on her feet, she careers up the path toward the main lodge. The gravel is slippery, collected in uneven pockets. Every step, each jolt and jar, brings new pain.
The tarpaulin draped over the restaurant bar on her left has half come loose and is flapping in the wind; sharp cracks that cut right through her. Bottles jostle against each other, several rolling drunkenly backward and forward across the countertop.
As she reaches the automatic doors, a bottle loudly smashes to the floor. Elin plows on, slipping through the doors.
Inside, she slows, glancing around warily, no idea what she’s about to find. Yet the room is eerily empty; sofas bare, reception unmanned. There’s a strange sense of desolation. Total abandonment. A sharp contrast to how she’d seen it last.
Moving farther in, she notices a trail of wet footprints leading toward the corridor at the back. The prints are spread out, surrounded by a messy splatter of water and sand.
It tells a story: someone running from outside. Someone on a mission.
To find Ronan Delaney.
Elin pushes on, sprinting toward the event room. Halfway across, she tries to take a breath, but her chest is sore, searing jabs of pain around her ribs. By the time she reaches the door, she’s gasping.
No time to recover. Tugging her pass from her pocket, she puts it up to the sensor, then pushes.
An immediate resistance.
Shoulder to door, Elin shoves harder, but it only gives a few inches. Pain radiates across her diaphragm, but she attempts it again; steps back, then forward, slamming against it with the full force of her body, shoulder first.
The sudden movement makes her cry out, the throbbing around her ribs unbearable, but it’s enough: the door gives a little more—enough for her to see a thin sliver of what’s behind.
Table legs. Chairs.
They’ve barricaded themselves in with furniture.
Grabbing the edge of the door, she holds it slightly ajar, peering inside. The room is dimly lit, the space beyond indecipherable. Fumbling for her flashlight, she switches it on, directing it inward.
“It’s DS Elin Warner,” she calls. The beam of the flashlight bounces off the metal legs of the chairs, making it hard to see anything past the jumble of furniture. Just a blur of featureless faces in the dim light.
Despite the lack of movement, the fear inside the space is almost tangible. It’s as if everyone in the room is taking a collective breath.
Her mind runs riot. What if Steed hasn’t made it? It would make sense for Caleb to take him out first so he would then have free rein to do whatever else he had planned to Delaney.
But only a few moments later, she hears footsteps. The light of the flashlight picks out Steed’s face peering past the furniture, through the barricade.
“Are you okay?” she says quickly.
“We’re all fine, but Delaney’s gone.” His voice wavers as he starts tugging at the furniture to let her inside. “Nothing I could do. Jackson’s armed, let off a few warning shots. No way of taking him down.” He lowers his voice. “Delaney went willingly. Pretty clear what Jackson would do if he didn’t.”
Elin scrambles over an upturned table into the room. The group of people left are huddled in the far corner, their eyes locked on her, wide, frightened.
Taking her to one side, Steed’s gaze slides over her face, body, his eyes clouded with concern. “What happened? You’re soaked.”
“I was . . .” Swallowing hard, she re-forms the sentence. “Caleb—he attacked me, on the islet. I got away, but he cut the bridge down, I had to swim across.”
“Jesus.” He takes a breath. “And Farrah?”
“I found her over there. He’s hit her . . . she’s got a head injury, but she’ll make it.”
“She still over there?”
“Yes.” Elin shudders, feeling the unpleasant sensation of cold water dripping down the base of her neck from her hair. “I didn’t want to leave her, but I had no signal to contact anyone and I knew he was coming here. I’ve left her in the villa.”