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Panic laces my veins as I consider what may have happened to allow Wes to make his escape, to cause him to be so obviously hurt in a scuffle.
Wes laughs. “I’m not his keeper, Claire. I thought you were.”
I don’t take the bait on that, sliding my hand against the door slowly until I feel the cold metal knob hit the base of my hand. I just have to wait for the right moment to get a good grip on it, and then I can move out of the way to throw it open. Wes’ eyes are too focused on me right now to make a move like that, though I have my doubts about how well he’d be able to chase me.
He looks rough.
“It’s my day off,” I tell him, matching his sarcasm with my own. “Is it your day off from being his prisoner?”
Wes laughs, but his grin turns to a grimace when a wave of pain hits him, making him clutch his side. “I escaped last night.” He says. “While Boudreaux was upstairs pouting over how you wanted to fuck me, the absolute morons he hired to secure his party staged a coup.”
“A coup?” I feel the doorknob under my palm as I grab for more of it, letting my fingers close around it. I hadn’t even considered until now that he may not be alone here.
I let my eyes trail around the space, looking for anything that may indicate there’s someone else with us.
That’s when I notice all the blood.
There’s practically a river of it just on the other side of the island, and a trail going from there to the spot where I’d first found him leaning on the counter. If all that blood is his, there’s no chance of Wes getting up and chasing after me. And yet, I don’t run. My feet don’t get the message that my brain is screaming. “Your men?”
“No,” he laughs and winces again. “No, my dear old dad didn’t send help for me. This was just a wrong place, wrong time situation. I got away, but that bastard stabbed me in the fray.” He uncaps the whiskey and stares at it a moment before lifting it to his lips and taking a sip straight from the bottle. It’s just a small one, but it’s enough to make him pull back, sputtering and coughing and wincing some more. “I knew I wouldn’t get far on foot, so I hid. But I wasn’t counting on how much blood I lost.”
“You’re a surgeon.” I say, as if he doesn’t know that. “Shouldn’t you know how to survive a stab wound?”
Wes stares at me deadpan. The green of his eyes is eerily beautiful, almost neon, but there’s no life in them. No fire, no teasing, no care. He must be in agony, his brain shutting down his necrotic personality to protect him from the edge of insanity. “If I could get to a fucking needle, sure. Not out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“So, you’re dying.” I surmise, choosing not to mince words.
“Bingo.” He musters a lift of his lips, something I imagine is supposed to be a smirk. “It’s your lucky day, Monroe.”
“My lucky day?”
“I saw that look in your eyes yesterday. You want me dead; you just didn’t want to be the one who did it. Scared I’ll haunt you when I go?”
“Wrong.” I don’t want to kill him because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the first murder I committed, though I’m not going to tell him that. And now that he mentioned it, the thought of Wes haunting me from beyond the grave is horrific—not because I’d live in fear, but because he’s the most insufferable person I’ve ever met and if death can’t even get him out of my life, it means there’s no hope for me. “I don’t want you dead, Wes. I want you suffering… the way you made me suffer. I want you to scream for help that never comes. I want you to rot from the inside out until this version of you on the outside matches your black and dying heart. And I want you to live knowing that you didn’t’ fucking break me.”
“Big words for a woman who stabbed an immobilized man through the hand last night.” He lifts his hand a little, showing the bandage that Dimitri had wrapped around it, covered in the blood of his other wounds. “If it’s any consolation, getting stabbed by you was a lot sexier than taking it from a man my size.”
I almost laugh at that. It’s absurd, but I can’t help it. Something about the sincerity with which he said it strikes me as hysterical, and while I do a good job at reigning it in, I crack a small smile.
I’m not sure what sort of extradition laws exist between the U.S. and Costa Rica, and I don’t know if I could ever pursue any sort of legal justice against Wes without implicating Remy and making a mess of everything. But I do know that I want the chance to see him behind bars, locked in a cage, treated like the animal he is.
My hand closes on the doorknob and I throw it open, just the way I planned, slamming it shut behind me. I don’t go for the dock, though.
I don’t know what comes after this life. Heaven, maybe? Hell, probably. But I know that there can’t be anything that comes close to the amount of suffering this world and all of its monsters are capable of inflicting.
I can’t let him die.
I run to the wheel and dangle the keys in front of me, looking for one that looks like it belongs to a boat—not that I have any concept of what that would look like.
I don’t hear Wes open the door until he’s behind me, a hand pressed firmly against the slash in his shirt. “You know how to drive this thing?”
I glance up at him. In the mid-afternoon sun, he looks even more pale than I thought he was. Even if I can figure out which key goes in the ignition and get it close enough to the city to get him to a hospital, it may all be for nothing. I can’t tell how much time he has left. “No.”
Only three keys on this ring have the old-fashioned rubber grip I associate with car keys, so I pick one and try to jam it into the ignition. It scrapes against the metal, too large and blunt. The next one seems like it may fit, but only the tip of it slides in before it doesn’t budge any further. Wes shakes his head and holds his hand out expectantly.
It’s stupid to give him the keys, I guess. But it’s equally as stupid to try and save him instead of letting nature take its course here. “You’ll flood the engine messing around like this.” He mutters as I pass them over.
“Like you care.” I snap, watching him thumb through the keys. He settles on one and holds it up to the light to get a better look at it before sinking it into the ignition and turning it. The boat barely makes a noise as it purrs to life.
