‘Absolutely.’
‘OK.Two hours.’
Roman Sorrenko lies on his side, his head in Lachlan’s lap.It must be awkward and painful, but he desperately needs rest.
‘Two hours,’ Lachlan says gently, another lie.
The dark shadows are moving in.Lachlan guards his body all night.
?
Madeline Delacroix’s screams wake the island.
Lachlan was only lightly dozing but the shrill outburst jolts him anyway.Roman is still there, safe and unharmed.Lachlan used his bare feet to gently nudge away any curious crabs that came close in the night, kept respectfully still when the pit vipers crawled by.
The same cannot be said for the Delacroix twins.
Roman wakes, looking wildly around, struggling to rise with his hands behind his back.‘Chto ne tak?’he gasps.
‘You’re OK, Mikhail is fine,’ Lachlan tells him, helping Roman to sit up while turning him away from the scene.‘Ro, look atme.’
‘What is it?What—?’
‘Just look at me,’ Lachlan instructs calmly.
Madeline Delacroix won’t stop screaming, pulling hungry crabs off the blackened, poison-bloated corpse of her brother until she’s dragged away.Lachlan doesn’t need to look to see.He knows what happened in the night.
Prescott rolled onto a pit viper, never woke again.
The crabs and the rats were waiting.The men who study what was once Prescott Delacroix gag loudly.‘Fuckme,what did that?Snakes?’
‘Little snakes don’t eat humans, thicko.This was crabs and… ugh.Fuck, that’s ripe.Let’s just chuck him in the sea.’
‘Keep looking at me,’ Lachlan intones.‘You’re doing so well.’
Roman’s eyes fill with tears.
‘What was it?’he whispers.‘Tell me.’
‘Everything’s going to be fine, I promise.’
When they’re gone, Roman drops his head onto Lachlan’s shoulder.
Lachlan has no hands free with which to hug or hold, so he bows his head against Roman’s, keeps telling him everything is going to be OK.
Lachlan always was a good liar.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
‘We’re going to have a little Q and A,’ Craig Fenwick says later that day, pouring water into his own mouth from above, letting it spill down his cheeks and chin, swallowing with relish.‘Ahh, that’s the stuff.One question at a time.Everyone ready?’
No one speaks.
Richard, Madeline, Mikhail, Roman and the medic are with Lachlan in the room where Prescott Delacroix was slowly eaten in the night.
Fenwick kicks Roman in the middle.
Lachlan doesn’t react.
