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Sara glances toward me and runs her hand down over her hair, twisting at the end before sitting in the chair Jane has set out for her.
“Each team, will start a fire in their pit, using the magnesium striker provided. Once the fire has burned the bridge above your flame, you’ll run to the front of the line and pull a ticket from the bucket. Each ticket has another task. Are you ready?”
“What about me?” Sara says, her voice shaking.
“You’ll see, dear,” Jane says smiling. “You’ll have fun. How couldn’t you with all these men?”
My stomach bottoms out. She has something sick planned, and I need to be the first on the list for whatever it is to protect Sara from Kemp.
Jane raises a red flag, then lowers it, backing away from Sara.
“We have a great start to the fire building competition with Brad against Kemp.” Jane announces as I hurry into the sand and strike the head of the metal against the magnesium. “Each of the men are building higher, though it looks like Brad is in the lead, the fire of love building his flames.”
Fuck, this woman is a tyrant. I let the fire build slowly, watching it come to a head as the flames finally start to touch the bridge and crumble its thin wood planks into the heat. Kemp hasn’t gotten a spark yet. Finally, the bridge collapses and I run up to the fishbowl beside Sara, my gaze on hers before I pull anything.
“We don’t have to do this,” I say. “We can leave this island and I’ll take care of you.”
“I know you would,” she says, reaching out for my hand. “But I want to be able to take care of myself.”
I want to respect her wishes. She’s a grown woman whose had a life for the past twenty-some odd years. She doesn’t need me butting in and rearranging everything, though that takes just about every effort I have left in me. All I want, all I’m thinking about as I hold the tag up to read, is how badly I want to toss her over my shoulder and find an island of our own to hole up in for eternity.
“In order for your team to continue, you must find a key.”
“What key?” I ask toward Jane whose grin is still plastered wide on her face.
“Think, Brad,” she says. “But hurry, it looks like Kemp is catching up with you.”
I flip the paper over. “The water where your life is stored, immunity sits on board.”
I repeat the rhyme again and again, mumbling it aloud as I study Kemp’s fire which is now getting higher. If I weren’t being distracted by that, I could focus harder, but the thought of him pulling another tag while I’m off running around for a key has my heart racing.
“It’s the well, Brad,” Zane growls.
I don’t bother looking toward him, I only run back into camp and follow the trail up toward the well, though I do hear Jane call from behind me that the whole team has to retrieve the key. This was her goal, to separate us from Sara and get her alone with Kemp.
A sharp rock pokes into my bare foot as I storm up the side of the hill, Colin and Zane behind me. I don’t stop to pull it out, but I feel it come dislodged after another few steps with no damage to note.
“She threw something else in the bowl when we left,” Colin says, his breath catching. He works construction, and while his body is built large and muscular, it’s all from lifting wood planks and bags of cement. There isn’t much cardio involved.
“I saw it too,” Zane says as we reach the well. “She’s fucking with us. We need to get back down there. What’s the clue say again?”
“The water where your life is stored, immunity sits on board.”
“On board,” Colin says, reaching for a plank that rests just below the surface of the well. It looks like it’s meant to block part of the opening in case someone was to fall in.
He pulls the molded board up from the crumbling rock wall and turns it over, pulling a gold skeleton key from the bottom. Tossing the board aside, we all jog back down the hill and into the next scene of the show that’s playing out in front of us. A green flag is high in the air, Jane’s signature grin aimed at us like a shotgun.
“Too little, too late boys. I’ll be seeing you at elimination tonight.”
Sara isn’t in her chair anymore, she’s standing next to the other men, her face long, though I can tell she’s trying to hold up a good front as she waves toward us.
“What just happened?” Zane booms, barreling down into center ring. He doesn’t waste time gathering Sara and moving her back to our camp.
“She’s been won,” Jane says, her tone harsh. “She belongs to the other team now.”
Zane sets Sara down in the bamboo hut and kisses her head, running his hands down either side of her body as though she’s a baby bird that needs care. Sara doesn’t flinch, she only closes her eyes and breathes him in before he closes the door and walks back down the beach toward Jane his biceps flexing.
The cameramen angle in and watch him carefully as he moves, a few reaching for their security pistols in their holsters. Jane, though, doesn’t look intimidated. In fact, she puffs out her chest and stands taller.
