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He comes back with his iPad. I can’t help but relish the view, considering he’s buck naked too. “Alright, everything is working, and it’s on Netflix, all lined up to go.”

He climbs into bed with me, places the iPad against a pillow, and presses Play.

I squeal with delight as the TriStar Pictures logo comes up.

“Thank you,” I whisper to him.

He leans over and places a kiss on my cheek. “You deserve it. Something to take your mind off things. You’ve been through so much, Syd. And I am so proud of you for how you’ve been handling it.”

Wrapping it up in a box and shoving it aside, I think, and turn my attention back to the movie.And I can keep doing it for a few more days.

Just a few more days.

Morning rolls around with a bang.

At around 6:00 a.m., the bed started shaking, the bumpers squeaking relentlessly against the dock as the boat was lifted up and down out of the water by the swells. Neither of us could sleep after that, so we got up, and Kincaid went outside to add more lines to secure the boat to the dock.

“It’s probably best you go back to the lodge,” he says as we drink our coffee, rain lashing the boat. “There will be nothing but squalls all day. It won’t be very pleasant to be down here.”

I sigh. I’m still feeling embarrassed about the other night, even though I know what I saw, even though it was Everly who drugged me and tried to take me somewhere, Everly who made me look like a crazy liar.

“I talked to your friends yesterday when you were having a nap,” he assures me. “They asked about you. They’re all worried about you. You matter to them, Syd.”

“Fine,” I say, finishing the dregs of the coffee. “I just wish I could tell them I saw a movie last night.” It turns out, at about the point where Mike Meyers starts doing his slam poetry about Harriet, that I remembered I had seen the movie before. It still was enjoyable though. And to see Kincaid laugh, like hunched over, full-on belly laughs, was completely new to me.

I think that brought me one step closer to falling in love with him.

“You can tell them, but only if you feel the need to make them hate you with jealousy,” he jokes.

He’s probably right.

After breakfast, Kincaid walks me up to the lodge, and I’m absolutely soaked by the time I get there. He leaves me, tells me to come find him at his office or the boat later, and it takes a lot of courage to step inside the common room.

But the moment I do so, everyone who was sitting there comes running toward me. It’s not even Lauren and Munawar and the usual gang; it’s Christina and Toshio and Albert, people I don’t normally talk to.

“We were so worried about you.”

“We thought you were sent home.”

“Gosh, that was so scary.”

“I thought I would never see you again.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to Clayton?”

I do my best to explain what I can, leaving out the part where Michael and Everly wanted my brain examined. I tell them I’m adamant that I saw Clayton in the trees though, that it wasn’t some cougar.

“So the place got locked down because Clayton escaped?” Munawar asks.

Good question. “I have no idea. Maybe there was a cougar. Maybe Clayton took the opportunity to run.”

“So where do you think he’s being kept?” Lauren asks. “Do we need to, you know, stage an intervention?”

I think about the shadowy figures running around with guns. I think about Kincaid’s warnings about how dangerous Madrona is. I think about lawsuits that would ruin every single one of us.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough. Kincaid is bound by NDAs. He can’t talk about what’s happening.”

“But did he confirm it was Clayton that you saw?” she asks warily. “That he’s still here?”