Mr. Corporate (Mister #3) (13 page)

He disappears. Dives right between two rocks as waves crash over them. I’m getting sprayed with the leftover mist even though I’m a good ten feet away.

“Weston?” I call out as I try to see below the surface of the water. “West?” It’s no use. The water is agitated and murky even though two hours ago it was calm and clear.

I wring my hands and look up at the sky. The rain stings my cheeks and makes me blink. The clouds are gray and black and the purple ones are closer than ever.

That mass of swirling air has to be something bad. Something very, very bad. Like a tropical storm or a hurricane.

Oh, God. What if it’s a hurricane?

I look around the island and realize how vulnerable we are. How many feet above sea level does the little house sit? Twenty? Thirty?

We could be swept away. This whole island could be swept away. Already the sandbar we swam out to is gone. The tree is gone too. Jesus Christ. The little tree got swept away! We’re totally fucked!

Keep calm, Victoria
.

I look back at the spot where West disappeared. He could’ve been bashed up against the rocks when he dove. He might be down there drowning right now. I’m going to get stuck here all alone. No one will ever come back for me. West will die and I will die and—

He pops up out of the water, gasping for air. But just as I’m about to let the relief wash over me, he dives back down.

“Weston!” I yell. “You asshole!” I’m so mad at him. So fucking mad at him. He’s always been this way. Completely oblivious to how his actions affect other people. Does he care I’m up here ready to freak out because he feels the need to play provider? No. He doesn’t. He has never cared about anything but his grand plan. He has never cared about anyone but his family.

And those stupid fucking friends of his. Those stupid men who dragged him into all that controversy ten years ago.

The Misters.

I hated them for making him into something he wasn’t. Weston Conrad was good before those men in that house made him into this man today. He was good.

I want to cry right now. How the hell did this job I didn’t even want turn into a life-or-death situation?

West pops up again and I hold my breath to wait and see if he’ll go back under again. But he doesn’t.

“I got them,” he says, laughing like a boy who has never had a care in the world. What must it be like to be him? So confident, and powerful, and…
happy
.

“I got them.” He laughs again. This time he holds up his white dress shirt. He’s made it into some kind of catch bag and inside are… things. I guess lobsters or whatever it was he went down there for.

The waves crash over him and slam him into a rock. I gasp, but he ignores it, even though his head is bleeding.

He throws the makeshift sack towards me and I catch it instinctively, but almost drop it when the things inside wriggle and twist.

“If you drop that, Victoria,” West says, pulling himself up out of the raging sea, “I will be pissed.” He hops from one rock to another until we’re on the same one. I look down at his feet. He’s lost his shoes and there’s blood pouring out of a wound on his ankle. “Come on,” he says, grabbing the sack from me. “Let’s get inside and dry off.”

We are soaked. And the fact that we have no clothes to wear as we get dry doesn’t escape either of us.

West is unfazed. He strips out of his boxer briefs and walks around naked like he’s some kind of Jungle Boy. He even starts cooking the lobsters. He got two of them this time.

“Tomorrow,” he says as I stand in the middle of the room, hugging myself and shivering like crazy, “I’ll get us something different.”

“W-w-we’re going to be here tomorrow?” I ask through my chattering teeth.

“Would you take those fucking clothes off, Victoria? You’re soaked. You can’t warm up wearing wet clothes.”

“You d-d-didn’t answer my question.”

“Well,” West says, looking out the window as he deals with the simplicities of cooking lobster, “it’s not looking good, Tori. We have to assume no one is coming until this storm passes. It could be a day or two.”

“A day or
two
?” I take a deep breath. “Which do you think?”

“There’s no way to tell. Take those fucking clothes off. There have to be towels somewhere. People who put up beach houses with off-grid electricity will definitely have towels.”

I look around, still shivering. But he’s right. There has to be more to this place. There are two doors we have not checked yet, so I walk over to the one closest to me.

I’m hoping for a bedroom with a nice soft bed when I open it, but no such luck. It’s a closet and it does have towels.

“Cool,” West says, reaching past me. But he doesn’t pick up a towel from one of the shelves. He picks up snorkel gear from the floor. “I’ll use this stuff next time. Then I’ll be able to see better. The fucking visibility is shit right now.”

“Here’s a first-aid kit,” I say, picking up the little white box with a red cross on it. “For your ankle. And your head.”

“I’m fine,” he says, walking over to the other door. He grabs the handle and pulls, but… it’s locked. “What the fuck? They leave everything unlocked, including the house, but they lock
this
door?”

I’ve stripped out of my wet clothes, including my bra, and I wrap the towel around me before West can catch a glimpse. I take one for him too. I can’t have Naked Man walking around all night.

He’s not even paying attention to me, so I had nothing to worry about when I stripped. He’s just staring at the locked door.

“What do you think is in there?” I ask, walking over to him and holding out the towel.

“Hmm,” he says, taking the towel without looking at me. He wraps it around his waist and says, “Something good, obviously.” He scans the room, finds something he likes, and walks away.

He grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall and comes back to the door.

“What are you going to do with that?”

He bangs the tank on the doorknob, bending it and breaking the lock.

“Oh,” I say.

He messes with the handle for a few seconds and then pulls the door open. “Ho-lee shit.”

“What?” I ask, leaning past him to see. “What’s in there?”

West turns around and looks at me. “Guns.”

Chapter Eighteen - Weston

I realize she’s been wearing skimpy clothes all day, but goddamn. I can’t take my eyes off Tori in this towel. She looks the way she did when we took that trip. That honeymoon practice trip. That’s what I called it. I made reservations for that resort on Great Exuma Island and we spent a week just acting like we were the only two people in the world. Like honeymooners.

I turned her into Naked Woman that week. Two of those days we rented a sailboat and just took our clothes off and acted primal as we cruised around all the different cays.

It was probably the best two days in my life.

There is a nice collection of guns. Four AK-47’s, two AR-15’s—I lean in to get a better look at the pistols and see a .45, a 9mm, and a little .380.

“Why do you think this is here?” Tori asks as I notice a stash of tactical knives. I pick up one, unsheathe it from the nylon case, and find a serrated blade.

“Hunting. Probably.”

“What do you hunt on a deserted island?” Tori asks, annoyed with my answer.

I want to say,
People
. But I don’t want to freak her out. So instead I say, “Sharks.”

“Sharks?” she asks, as I put the knife back and pick up another one, which does not have a serrated edge to it. “Nobody hunts sharks with guns, West.”

I shrug. “I’m sure there’s lots of people who hunt sharks with guns.”

“OK, whatever. Is this weird?” she asks. “That we have ended up on an island with a closet full of guns?”

Weird doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Nope,” I say, taking the two knives and closing the closet door back up. “I think whoever owns this place is…” I search for the lie I need. “Some kind of survivalist. This is probably like, a cache, you know? A place some paranoid freak might bring his family if the shit ever hit the fan. Probably some nerdy accountant by day and zombie apocalypse prepper by night.”

“So it’s not weird that we’re here?” Tori isn’t buying it.

“It was a mistake,” I say, walking back to the kitchen to get back to the food. “That pilot probably dropped us off at the wrong cay. In fact,” I say, looking out the window and pointing to the many scattered islands, “I bet Wallace Arlington is probably somewhere within a five-mile radius. I bet he’s on another island and we’re so close to him, we’d be able to smell his money if there wasn’t so much wind.”

Victoria follows me into the kitchen and plants a hand on her hip.

She’s not buying it, Weston. Say something. Quick
. “We’re gonna laugh about this when we get back to Miami, don’t you think? We’ll probably still be laughing about this in ten years.”

“I don’t think it’s funny. In fact, it’s all very unusual. We get dropped off at the wrong cay on the same day a huge storm is supposed to blow in? Our pilot had to know the storm was coming, right? That’s things pilots look into when they’re flying around in a tiny, unsafe place in the middle of hurricane season.”

“It’s really… the end,” I say. “Of hurricane season.”

Victoria ignores that. “And then we get here to find this little house with some kind of power grid and a closet filled with weapons. And you expect me to believe that this is just overzealous preparation by a pencil-pushing family man?” She has one of those,
OK, buddy
looks on her face. “Really?”

I smile sheepishly. “Yes?”

“And it’s not the end of hurricane season, we’re dead smack in the middle of it—about to go into the most active part, actually. I might not be some kind of weather expert, but we have beaches in Brooklyn, West.”

“Don’t overreact, Victoria. We’re only gonna be here a day.”

I know what I’m doing. And I know what effect the word ‘overreact’ does to her. But it’s all I’ve got left.

“I’m not taking your bait,” she says. “And I know you well enough to see your mind working. What aren’t you telling me?”

“What do you want me to say? Huh? I don’t know who owns this island. I don’t know why there’s a closet filled with guns. I don’t know why this house is here with a rain-catching cistern and solar panels on the roof. But it’s an island in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The Exumas are nothing but a playground for the rich, Tori. Rich people get bored and do weird shit like this. But I
do
know that you often overreact. And I
do
know that I’m not the least bit interested in dealing with one of those overreactions while we’re stuck here. So you can wonder about all this all you want. I’m going to make dinner.”

She walks away with a huff and I take my attention back to the lobsters. “I’m fucking hungry. I only got two, which means we only have food for one night. And if the storm gets bigger before it’s over, then tomorrow I’m going to have to go fishing again.”

Victoria says nothing. Just picks up all our wet clothes and starts hanging them over the chairs pushed up to the breakfast bar. “At least your pants are dry.”

“And you have your scrap of a skirt.”

“A lot of good that does me. Unless I want to go topless.”

I shoot her a grin and a wink.

She doesn’t grin back.

“Tori,” I say, filling the pot up with water again.

“What?” she says, looking out the window at the purple clouds.

“Don’t worry. We’re fine.”

She nods, but doesn’t look at me. And I know her well enough to understand what that means. She doesn’t believe me.

I’d give her more reassurance if I really thought we
were
fine.

But I don’t.

We’re fucked.

Chapter Nineteen - Victoria