In the background of an art show, a silver-haired man sported a much younger wife, the wife looking excited by all the attention of the press. But it wasn’t his wife I was interested in. It was him. He was familiar—who was he?
The answer came to me. He was Wilson Carlisle, the man in the photographs Rosemary had shown me.
It was him. I was sure of it.
He was still in Australia when Rosemary last checked. But he was here now.
Instant revulsion crawled up my spine. He was the man that Kara had been staying with. Most likely, he either owned or rented an apartment near the Sydney casino that his wife didn’t know about—the apartment Kara had lived in.
I needed to find out what Mr Carlisle was doing in London.
Somehow, I had to follow him.
If Rosemary was here, she’d know exactly how to do that. But she wasn’t. It was all up to me.
THE FOURTH CHALLENGE
44. Evie
JUST BEFORE SUNSET, THE MENTORS GATHERED all of us on the edge of the cliff to hold a memorial for Saul. We tossed flowers from the garden down into a fissure where the ocean rushed in.
Poppy and I held each other while we cried for Saul, who’d had no idea that this island would be the place he’d draw his last breath.
I watched as Poppy cast an anxious look at Brother Vito as he passed by us. I guessed she was feeling pretty embarrassed at what she’d done and at Brother Vito’s rejection of her. I’d already decided not to judge. Richard and I had done the wrong thing, too. Saul’s death had left us all shaken and looking for easy answers.
I fell asleep that night in a black despair. None of us knew how or when we’d die.
Only the numbers knew.
I woke near midnight, the calls and screams of the peacocks shaking me from sleep.
I’d been inside a nightmare of my girls being at the monastery.
I’d turned a corner to see Lilly standing there, alone in a corridor, a cough hacking through her small chest, her eyes reddened and weepy. As I rushed to her, a voice called her away. Suddenly I caught sight of Willow standing at the other end of the corridor. “Come on, Lilly”， Willow said. “You can’t be with Mummy anymore.” Lilly ran to her sister before I could reach her. I heard the two of them running, until they were on the other side of the wall from me. No matter which room I ran into, they were on the other side of the wall. The sound of their footsteps turned into scraping, rustling noises. I screamed their names. “Lilly! Willow!” When I spun around, I saw a man dressed in hooded monk’s clothing, staring at me.
Sitting up, I folded my knees against my chest. I missed my girls. I desperately needed to see them, to hold them, to know they were okay. My fingers ached to touch their soft skin, their silky dark hair, their little hands. So much of what I did with the girls was touch: hugs, washing them in warm baths, changing their clothes, snuggling on the sofa with a well-loved book. And I missed Gray. In some ways, my need for Gray went even deeper. He wasn’t my other half—he was my whole. When I met him, for the first time I saw myself whole, too. I could see myself reflected in his eyes, in his smile and the things he said to me when we were alone.
The fourth challenge was almost here. Just this one and then two more. And I’d be gone. Or sooner if I didn’t make it through a challenge. I allowed myself to think about the house that Gray and I could buy and what colours we’d paint the rooms to make it ours.
I wondered what Saul had been dreaming of doing with his money. Whatever it was, those dreams died with him.
I waited in my bed for the bells. It seemed that hours passed. And the metronomes never stopped ticking. They were soldiers marching in some crazy, eternal war.
The challenges were nothing like I’d expected. These were no fuzzy, feel-good puzzles. They were strange and even dangerous. Who were the mentors, really? Why bring us all this way to a remote island where an order of silent monks designed the challenges? The monks weren’t psychologists and didn’t even have contact with the outside world.
I tried to doze and rest my mind and body, but I couldn’t relax a single neuron or muscle. My fingers entwined in the bracelet Gray had bought me. The bracelet grounded me, calmed me.
But when the sound of the bells crashed through the room, I jerked upright, immediately tense.
The lamps in the room flickered on as they always did at midnight. The faces that stared at me and each other looked the same as I felt. No one had slept well, with the possible exception of Ruth, whose face held the same hard-set expression as always.
Raw anticipation needled my back.