A voice sounds out again—some kind of shouted directive.
Still crouching, Elin pushes deeper, thorns catching in her neck, hair. She winces as one snags the soft skin of her scalp.
Between the gusts of wind, Caleb’s voice is audible again.
Panic flares.
She lifts her head a fraction, but all she can see is the undergrowth in front of her: spikes of pine needles, churned-up soil. Leaf litter, sodden and creased. Her nostrils are filled with the scent of fresh soil, undertones of decay.
“You see that?” Caleb’s voice sounds out: a shout that drifts in the wind. “Down there?”
Whether he’s talking to himself or Ronan, she has no idea.
A flurry of movement.
Heart racing, Elin lies frozen on the spot, eyes wide open, staring into the undergrowth. The effort of holding the position is too much; her muscles twitch. She’s going to have to move.
There’s a guttural rumble of thunder.
As it fades, Caleb speaks again. “Let’s go. Nothing here.”
The relief is instantaneous, but still, she lets a few minutes pass until she moves.
Slowly breathing out, she gradually hauls herself up, using the woodland as cover while she surveys the grass in front, the space around her. Her legs are numb and stiff; it takes a moment until they feel like hers again.
Still looking about, on her guard, she stumbles up the grass toward the main lodge. No sign of them, but she guesses they’ve continued in the same direction—away from where they’d exited the building, toward the rock.
Back to the wall, she moves slowly around the side of the building, once again struck by paranoia: that Caleb’s watching somewhere. Waiting. Fleeting glimpses of the interior of the lodge only heighten her unease: in the shifting shadows beyond the glass there’s movement everywhere.
Elin passes the base of the rock, about to start down the steps to the villas, when there’s a brief lull in the wind. The thrashing of the trees is stilled, the swirling sand and dirt settling to the ground. She catches the strains of speech, then a harsh, scraping noise. More speech. Short, angry sounds. Lost as the wind gusts again.
Heart pounding, she waits, poised, willing another moment of quiet.
Elin only has to wait a minute or so for it to arrive. A moaning noise: Ronan?
Straining her ears, she tries to isolate the source of the sound.
It’s only when the noise gets louder that Elin realizes that it’s coming from above her.
The rock.
98
Elin looks up, can’t see anything. But as she moves a few feet around the rock, she sees it: a ladder, propped against the stone.
More sounds: something scraping. Voices.
He’s taking Ronan up there.
Despite the acute pain in her ribs, she walks as quickly as she can to the base of the rock to find Caleb scrambling up the ladder, Ronan in front of him.
Elin ducks behind a small overhang, waits, silent, but Caleb gives no sign that he’s seen her. She’s about to reach for the ladder when it moves. He’s knocking it away from the rock.
The ladder sways precariously backward then forward before Elin manages to grab it, haul it back into position. She looks up, but Caleb either hasn’t spotted her or is already gone.
Gingerly, she steps onto the first rung, starts to climb. The wind has picked up again, violent gusts tugging at her wet clothes, her hair. She immediately feels its strength as she hauls herself upward, biting her lip at the pain sparked by every movement.
Inching herself up the last rung and onto a plateau, Elin exhales, scoping out the space. The rock juts inward here, the plateau formed by a natural shelf, about a yard wide, wrapping itself around the main body of the rock on her right, which continues upward, soaring above her.
Caleb and Ronan are nowhere to be seen. They must be on the other side of the rock.
Breathing fast, she starts moving around the plateau, but the stone beneath her feet is rough, slippery. A few paces on, the wind gusts. Swaying, Elin forces herself to look straight ahead. Focus on the tips of the trees in the distance.
Don’t look down.
The wind surges again. Fists clenched tight, Elin steps closer to the rock for shelter, arms outstretched for balance.
Rounding the corner a few moments later, she stops in her tracks.
Caleb, holding a gun, is pointing it at Ronan. Slumped at the base of the rock, a large gash splitting a ragged line through Ronan’s temple, trickles of blood snaking down toward his shirt. Below, a massive swelling around his eye has closed it to a slit. His lips are pressed together as if he’s trying to stop himself from crying.
Caleb doesn’t even look in her direction. He’s doing something curious: talking at Ronan, a stream of words with no pause or punctuation. A focused, verbal violence. He’s enjoying the sound of himself.