Page 126 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

“Does that mean youhave?”

“That’s private. Not a secret. Private.”

“That means you did!”

The doorbell rang, and they all stared at each other. Then Violet started shrieking and ran up the stairs. Blake gave Adele a look, amused, curious, but then he followed his sister. She didn’t call them back. She knew curiosity would get the better of them.

Thiswas going to take time.

She walked toward the door, toward her future. And for the first time in a while, she smiled.

50

ANGELINE

After the Game

She stood on the edge of the dock and looked down into the cold, gray water. Above her the sky was cerulean, towering cumulus clouds piled high. She loved this moment, before the plunge. The water, she knew, would be freezing. When she dove into its depths, a shock would move through her. She’d emerge to draw breath more awake, more alive than she had been before. Still, she waited, counting her breaths, feeling alive in her body.

“Are you going in?”

Maverick sat on the Adirondack chair behind her. She didn’t turn to look at him.

Instead, she looked out at the island closest to theirs. Had she seen movement on its shore? It was far, a good ten minutes by boat. There was a house, bigger than theirs, all windows that glowed golden in the early morning. It belonged to some tech billionaire, according to the gas-station attendant at the marina. Hadn’t been there in years. Anyway, it was too far for anyone there to see her, naked on the dock.

She’d grown used to it quickly. Living without eyes on her, without voices, without chatter.

It had taken Maverick longer.

She turned back to him, and his eyes were closed. His body was toned and tan, wearing a sweatshirt and the navy blue swim trunks they’d picked up at the general store in the nontown on the mainland. He might join her in the water. Or maybe not.

She took a long, deep breath, put her hands over head, and dove into the gray, the cold. There was always that moment going down, breath held, when she wondered if she’d break the surface again.

When they’d first arrived, part of her had wished that she could just keep swimming deeper and deeper until the world was just a memory, a trick of light.

As soon as the storm had cleared on Falcão Island, they’d bribed the air traffic controller to let them leave. As the plane taxied down the runway, she half expected to see Petra and her men chasing them in their ATVs. But no, nothing. Just a smooth liftoff.

The dirty secret about private airports like the one they landed in outside Toronto was that no one asked questions. There was a kind of person that came and went at places like this, passage greased with hundred-dollar bills. There was no stop at customs. No passport control. When they landed, there was a car waiting for them—a beat-up old Land Rover, sky-blue and with a definite cool factor despite its age, the rust around the wheel wells, the tilted bumper.

Maverick handed the pilot an envelope stuffed with cash. They exchanged nods. And Angeline didn’t ask what had transpired between.

Maverick threw the two duffel bags in the back. And other than what they were wearing, that’s all they had with them.

“Were you planning this?” she asked.

He laughed a little. “Not this exactly, no. But I did promise you a retreat, right? Just the two of us?”

“I didn’t think you meant it.”

“I meant it.”

They drove past the city in silence. And then they were on winding roads through thick forest, night falling. And they drove and drove, Angeline drifting, dreaming about the masked person on the trail, the falling building, Alex’s body broken, falling. She dreamed of him washing up on some beach, body turned to flotsam, everything he was to them gone. She woke up crying.

Maverick put a hand on her leg. “We’re here.”

A marina. It was late, past eleven, so the shop was closed. The harbormaster showed them to a boat at the end of the dock. Another envelope of cash changed hands.

The water was dark, but Maverick seemed to know what he was doing, where he was going. And she trusted him when it came to things like this. He could drive the thing, whatever vehicle it was. Get them where they were going. When she needed him, he came in for the rescue, guns blazing.