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Chapter Twenty-Seve n

A bigail covered Charlie with her white towel, but the resulting ghostly impression made him look even more horrid.

She tore it off and used a black T-shirt.

With each passing minute the sky morphed into a darker shade of crimson and her anxiety increased. A knot sharpened in her stomach when she glanced at the fire and noticed the dwindling smoke. She couldn’t be alone in the dark, never had, never would.

The thought was terrifying.

Abigail tossed every piece of timber she could find onto the embers and within a couple of minutes a huge fire raged. But this presented another problem.

Charlie was too close to the flames.

If he catches on fire, I’ll go raving mad.

Her heart thundered as much from fear as exertion as she tilted Charlie’s leather lounge. The combined weight of Charlie and the chair required all her strength to drag him backward. When he was about three metres from the fire, she sat his chair back up and made sure he was secure. She couldn’t handle it if he slipped onto the ground.

Soon complete darkness surrounded her, and the isolation struck as swiftly as a poisonous dart. The light from the fire burned flame-images onto the backs of her eyelids and Charlie’s ghastly figure haunted her. She willed herself not to look at it, staring instead at her trembling knees. The tension and hunger pains in her stomach made her nauseous. Mackenzie had been missing for hours. What if something had happened to him, too?

With sudden clarity, she knew a rescue party would never come. She was destined to die alone in this godforsaken place. A heavy sob racked her body.

“But I’ve never really lived,” she murmured through her tears.