The Isle Of Sin And Shadows - Keri Lake Page 0,117

fucking mess.”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“Yeah, well. I guess we’ll see. Do you know how many people I’ve scared off in my life? Too many to count.”

Pushing up from his chair, he plants his fists at either side of me and leans in. “I don’t scare easily, moiselle.”

28

Céleste

Beams of radiant heat draw a slick layer of sweat across my skin. Gaze fixed on Moses’s two evil eyes protruding up from the water’s surface, I shove a slice of orange into my mouth and lick the sticky juice from my fingers.

The annoying buzz of a mosquito tickles my ear. One hard smack leaves my palm wet, and I flinch at the chasing sting across my neck. Everything is ten times more annoying when you’re sober. The heat and humidity are so miserable, I feel like I’m breathing in steam. What I wouldn’t give to dip even a toe into the water to cool off, but I have no doubt Moses would make an unsatisfying little snack out of it.

I could easily cool off inside the boat, I suppose, but a whole damn week in this place, without any contact with the outside world, has driven me to the point of absolute boredom. Boredom leads to cravings, and unfortunately, in addition to Thierry hiding away all the over the counter stuff, he’s also locked up the alcohol. And junk food. So here I’m left, eating a fucking orange.

In the last two days, in particular, I’ve wanted to climb out of my skin. And I’ve damn near eaten my weight in fruit. Although, I’ll admit, the restlessness has kept me distracted from the hallucinations, I know what waits. It’s only a matter of time before the white skull and horns slide back into my periphery.

The quiet has been the worst part of it, and unfortunately, it’s in the quiet that my mind begins to wander back to four nights ago--when he held me in his arms, keeping me warm. I try not to think how safe I felt in that moment. How easy and right, in spite of the mortification of knowing he saw me at my absolute worst.

Since then, Thierry seems to have been scarcer, though.

Which hasn’t really done much for my psyche in all of this. The isolation and loneliness of this place is a symptom in itself, always clawing at me. We haven’t spoken much at all in passing, and he’s gone before I get up, arrives back home after I’ve gone to bed. During the day, I nose through all of his things, mostly looking for the knife Russ gave me, but I haven’t stumbled upon it yet. What I’ll assume is his office is kept locked, and Thierry must have some kind of deadbolt on it, because I haven’t been able to pick the damn thing yet. If the feds ever cased this place, the only evidence they’d find linked to the guy is his friggin’ toothbrush, and even that gets wiped clean every night in the spaceship. Not a single picture, piece of mail, or even a notebook with doodles, exists on this entire boat.

In the rooms I’ve had access to, anyway.

The guy might as well not even exist, and I’m guessing that’s intentional.

Passing time in this place is like counting the cracks in Purgatory, waiting for something. Some news. Some explanation, or reason, for keeping me here. In spite of my being free to move about the boat, it’s a prison, with its gator-infested waters and small stretch of woods that’s probably crawling with all sorts of venomous snakes and animals that are foreign to me.

And for what? Because some emotionally detached germophobe claims that bad people are after me?

What the hell does that even mean at this point?

In the few, brief moments of passing, the last few days, when I’ve asked him to elaborate, all I’ve gotten in return are grumbled sounds of irritation and some short, cold response, before he exits the room.

As much as I appreciate having a place to stay, where I don’t have to worry about those big-ass rats I read about--nutria, they call them--or some random, Louisiana bug crawling into my sleeping bag, I didn’t come all the way down here to be some lonely swamp captive. And at this point, I don’t even know if the guy is telling so much as the truth. He could’ve made this whole thing up just to keep me here. For what? I don’t know, given he hasn’t done much of anything the