sleeper, and she knew that once he began to snore, waking him was extraordinarily difficult.
Go kill him.
She ignored that voice in her head, loosened her grip on the knife.
It would be easy, though, sneaking out of the closet, plunging the knife into his chest while he slept. But how would that help her?
He tortured you.
And it would feel good.
It wouldn’t help her get off this island.
One less person looking for you.
She loosened her grip on the knife, stretched the muscles in her neck.
Imagine how it would feel.
So she let herself imagine it. Standing above the bed, Bruce on his back, the way he usually slept, one hand touching the side of his face. She’d have a choice: either the exposed neck, or straight to the heart. But it wasn’t what she wanted to do. Her goal right now was to survive. To tell her story. Tell people what they’d done to her, and what had happened to Jill.
She settled herself back onto the pillow, then realized she was hungry. She ate half the cheese, almost passed on eating an apple because of how loud it would be, but then did it anyway, chewing quietly and making sure she could hear Bruce’s snores while she was doing it.
She wrapped all the food back up, hoping that the smell of the cheddar cheese in the small space would dissipate, then closed her eyes again, drifting in and out of sleep until she heard a loud knock on the bunk door.
“You found her?” came Bruce’s querulous voice, muffled but clear. Abigail could hear the hope in his question. He was out of bed and at the door.
There was a response, but she couldn’t make out the words, then Bruce said, “You searched the girls’ camp?”
Again, she couldn’t hear whoever he was talking to. “Fine, I’ll be right up,” Bruce said, and then there was the sound of the door closing. He moved about the bunk, using the bathroom, grabbing some food from the kitchen. She thought maybe she was going to be spared the terror of his going through the closet, but he swung open the door, quickly rattled through some of his hanging clothes, grabbed something, and left, leaving the door open. She held her breath, then listened as he opened the front door and shut it behind him.
Abigail stayed crouched, barely moving, in the closet for what felt like an hour but was probably only fifteen minutes. Bruce had been headed to the main lodge, probably to discuss strategies for finding her. It was possible that he’d be back, but she doubted it. The search was the most important thing, and if they didn’t consider it a possibility that she was back in her own bunk, then she was safe, at least for a while.
It suddenly occurred to her that Bruce had opened the closet in order to get some clothing. She wondered if after she’d been subdued at the airfield he’d come back to the bunk and unpacked again. Or had he never packed in the first place, simply bringing along his empty suitcase as a ruse? And where was her suitcase now? Somewhere in this bunk, or in the lodge? She’d been thinking so much of the nightmare by the firepit that she’d almost forgotten that horrible moment at the airfield when she realized that she was simply a pawn in a cruel game. A bunch of men wanting to humiliate a woman. Or two women. Her and Jill. First play with them, then humiliate them, then make them think they were about to die. Abigail briefly thought about that moment, the fake knife, the certainty that her life was about to end, and the cold helplessness she had felt. And then she pushed it from her mind. What she needed to think about was how to get off this island. She wondered if she could play a waiting game of sorts. Hadn’t Chip said that a bunch of guests were due soon? No, that was most likely a lie. Even though this place probably had genuine guests, the real purpose of this island was as a place for a bunch of rich, sadistic men to toy with women. It was off the grid. No doubt the staff had to sign nondisclosure agreements. She would need to get off the island, one way or another.
Why had she not figured it all out earlier? Why had she not been immediately alarmed by the fact that the island was almost entirely