The Island (13 page)

Shaw slowed down for him. His trainers were caked in mud, and Lee was struggling in his bare feet. The day was hot. The air was humid under the thick canopy of trees. The mud was black, and the air buzzed with insects.

They weren’t even halfway up when Shaw made the decision to turn around.

“Come on,” he said to Lee.

Lee was too weak for this. Eight weeks of malnourishment and torture had stripped his strength. He was gasping for breath.

Shaw took his water bottle out of his pack, unscrewed the cap, and passed it to him.

“Thank you, sir,” Lee murmured and swallowed gratefully.

“When we get back,” Shaw told him, “you’re going to walk up and down in the shallows until your feet are clean. Any cuts, you make sure you get salt into them.”

It wasn’t exactly first aid, Shaw knew, but it was better than nothing. And he had some antiseptic cream somewhere in his suitcase.

Lee’s green eyes flashed with fear. “I don’t want to go back!”

Shaw raised his eyebrows. “And what’s your alternative?”

He hadn’t meant for it to sound that harsh, and he was afraid Lee would react badly. It surprised him when Lee only frowned slightly, squared his shoulders, and nodded.

“Good boy,” Shaw told him.

And then Lee ran.

Shaw was surprised by the suddenness of it but only for a second. Then he barreled off the path as well, chasing him down.

Lee couldn’t go up hill, wouldn’t go downhill, so he headed across it. Shaw could hear him just ahead, thrashing away, but couldn’t see him. The bush was too thick. Snappy branches whipped Shaw in the face. Vines tangled around his legs. Thick undergrowth obscured the ground. Shaw was afraid he’d snap an ankle at every step.

He didn’t shout. There might be guards nearby, and he didn’t want them to catch Lee instead. He didn’t even want them to know this had happened. He had to find Lee and return him before anyone found out, because it was hopeless. He had no strength and no shoes and he was on an
island
. How far did he really think he’d get?

No more than about fifty meters, as it turned out. Lee was tangled in a vine when Shaw stumbled across him. He was whimpering and thrashing.

“Don’t move!” Shaw recognized the vine. He’d had run-ins with it, or a variation, in his youth. It had barbs. “Christ, Lee, don’t move.”

Lee froze.

Shaw couldn’t see the main clump of the palm, but didn’t need to. Lee was caught in the chaotic tangle of vinelike stems that sprouted from the palm like flagella. Both the leaves and the tendrils were covered in backward-facing hooks to enable the tendrils to reach the canopy. Many of these hooks were caught in Lee’s thin pants. Some were digging into his flesh. One tendril raked across his face. It drew tiny pinpricks of blood from his right cheek that coalesced into a single droplet. The blood slipped down Lee’s pale face like a tear.

Shaw hissed in sympathy. “Don’t panic. Don’t move.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry!”

For running, Shaw wondered, or for getting caught?

Shaw approached him carefully. He caught one of the tendrils between his fingers, avoiding the barbs, and drew it away from Lee’s face. “Okay, put your arm up. This one’s going to spring back. It’ll sting, but you don’t want it on your face again.”

“I’m sorry.” Lee squeezed his eyes shut. His chest heaved. “God, so sorry. I try not to. I try not to!”

Shaw rubbed the small of his back. “Try not to what, Lee?”

Lee sucked in a breath. “I try not to panic!”

Shaw rubbed Lee’s back again. Around them, insects chirped in the dense rainforest. It was almost tranquil. Might have been, except for the adrenaline still flooding Shaw’s body.

The island is beautiful. It’s dangerous. It’s a trap.

Difference is, Lee knows he’s caught.

“Keep your arm up,” Shaw murmured.

Lee obeyed, wincing as Shaw carefully repositioned the tendril against his bruised forearm.

“Okay?” Shaw asked him, and Lee nodded.

Shaw couldn’t see the ocean or the white beach from here. He couldn’t see the glass-and-steel house either. This was the real island. This was the island that had been thrown up from under the sea by a volcanic eruption a million years ago. It teemed with life; it stank of decay. Insects and spiders devoured one another. Vines strangled the trees they climbed. The rainforest consumed itself endlessly.

Shaw flicked a green ant off Lee’s hip before it stung, and began to work on the vines caught around Lee’s legs. He eased each hook free, careful to hold the tendril away as he worked so it couldn’t reattach.

“They have these at home,” he told Lee. “They’re called wait-a-whiles.”

Lee didn’t answer.

Shaw moved around behind Lee, feeling a tendril snag in his shorts. He didn’t pull on it, only moved back the way he’d come to get free. He tried the other side, working the vine slowly free from Lee’s pants.

“You shouldn’t have run. It’s dangerous.” The words were out before Shaw realized how absurd they were.
Dangerous
? Shit, he was losing it.

“Couldn’t help it,” Lee said, his voice no higher than a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“You will be by the time we’re finished here.”

Lee tensed.

“Because of the wait-a-while” Shaw said, shaking his head. But, Jesus, of course Lee was confused. How could he know what to expect from Shaw, when Shaw blew hot and cold? When Shaw had listened to him in private, reviled him in company, promised to call his people, threatened to break his neck, and held his hand at night under the sheets? Shaw had never hurt him, but, if he had, at least Lee would know where they stood. This was just another form of torture.

Shaw worked another hook free, pulling threads as he did.

“I’m sorry,” Lee whispered again.

Shaw rubbed his back as he worked. “I know.”

Me too.

It took over twenty minutes to free Lee, but at last Shaw was able to take him by the hand and guide him out of the thorny tangle. He was bleeding from a multitude of tiny puncture wounds. Death by a thousand cuts, Shaw remembered, and it seemed apt.

All the fight had gone out of Lee by that time. His head down, he followed Shaw meekly back to the path that led down the hill to the bungalow.

* * * *

It wasn’t a bad thing in the end, Shaw realized, that Lee got tangled in the wait-a-while. His back and chest were covered in angry welts because of it. Even his face was swollen. In the end, it looked like Shaw had taken Vornis’s advice and played harder. Vornis was full of praise when he’d borrowed Lee again for an hour that afternoon.

Irina, when she brought Shaw his dinner, couldn’t look him in the eye. So now she thought he was as monstrous as Vornis. So what?

Shaw checked his watch. It was only an hour. What could happen in an hour?

Shaw wanted to know and didn’t want to know. He couldn’t offer Lee any comfort, he couldn’t empathize, so what was the point? He was just glad Lee had no more broken fingers when he was returned.

When night fell, Shaw took Lee down to the beach, and they sat together below the high-tide mark and looked at the stars. Shaw rubbed antiseptic cream on Lee’s back and chest, on the marks left by the wait-a-while and by Vornis, careful to keep watch for security patrols.

Lee’s breathing was shallow. He was trembling despite the warmth of the Pacific night. Shaw hated that. He hated not being able to fix it, and he hated the part he was stuck playing in this sick game. He wasn’t even sure himself what the hell he was doing. Christ only knew what Lee thought of him.

Small waves washed onto the beach and back again, a gentle, endless murmur. Shaw looked up at the moon and thought of the pull of the tides and a boat and an imaginary escape he couldn’t offer Lee.

“Thank you for looking after me,” Lee said at last. It was the first thing he’d said since being returned.

Shaw didn’t answer. Lee’s quiet gratitude turned his stomach.

Lee surprised him by turning around to face him. “Thank you.”

Shaw opened his mouth to say something—he didn’t know what—and suddenly Lee’s warm lips were pressing against his. Shaw jolted with surprise. He put his hands against Lee’s shoulders, mindful of the welts, and pushed him away gently.

“Don’t do that,” he said. Surprise made his tone harsher than he intended.

Lee hunched his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

Shaw shook his head. “Christ. Just don’t, all right?”

“I’m sorry,” Lee whispered miserably. “I thought you wanted it.”

“I don’t,” Shaw told him brusquely. Jesus, in any other situation he’d be begging Lee to get closer, but this was beyond wrong. This was Lee responding to the unexpected kindness of a monster, and Shaw didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be that. Not for anyone.

“You’re the only one who looks me in the eye,” Lee said. He turned away again. His breath hitched.

Shaw sighed and ran his fingers down Lee’s spine. “Don’t be upset.”

Lee hunkered down farther. “Sorry.”

“And don’t fucking apologize,” Shaw murmured. “It is what it is, Lee.”

“I know,” Lee whispered.

They watched the black ocean together.

Chapter Nine

Another night and he was on his knees again. Another night in the room he hated. He couldn’t hear the ocean from here.

“And how is Shaw treating you, boy?”

Lee winced as Vornis gripped his jaw tightly and twisted his head to face him. “Please,” he murmured. “Oh, please.”

Vornis gave an exasperated sigh.

Lee lowered his eyes quickly, his heart racing. He’d miscalculated. It was too early for begging. He wondered how many more broken fingers that mistake would earn him. He tasted bile, and his stomach clenched. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to fight or to run, but experience was a better teacher than adrenaline. He struggled not to move.

“I asked how Shaw is treating you, boy,” Vornis said. His eyes were dark, almost black. Like a shark’s. “Tell me what happens when he takes you into the shower.”

Lee tried to swallow. “I give him blowjobs, sir.” His voice cracked.

Vornis raised his eyebrows and released Lee’s jaw. “How very adolescent. Is that all?”

Every instinct in Lee warned him to lie. He owed it to Shaw to lie, but it wasn’t all about gratitude. It was about self-preservation as well. Because whatever game Shaw was playing, he’d made Lee play along, and Vornis would punish him for that.

Shaw
trusts
you. Don’t fuck it up.

“He, um, he pulls my head back under the water, and I can’t breathe.” Lee fixed his eyes on the floor, hoping that was enough. He prayed he hadn’t given Vornis any new ideas. A shudder ran through him.

“Ha!” Vornis sounded pleased. “I told you Shaw has potential.”

Lee closed his eyes briefly.

Hanson laughed from somewhere behind him.

Lee hated sessions like these. He preferred it when he was drugged. He’d hoped they’d drug him tonight—the cabinet where the syringes were kept was open, but so far neither of the men had made a move toward it. He always panicked when he was lucid, but sometimes that was just what Vornis wanted.

Sometimes he wanted the drug-fucked Lee, dazed and compliant, but sometimes he wanted to see real fear. When he was drugged, Lee whimpered from the pain but didn’t understand its cause. When he was lucid, he screamed and begged when he saw it coming, his eyes rolling in his head and every muscle straining, and that made Vornis laugh.

He’d been drugged last night and the night before. That meant tonight they wanted his every reaction.

Oh God. He needed something. He couldn’t do this. Not again.

“Please,” he gasped, his fear breaking him like it always did in this room. He shuffled forward on his knees, his cuffed hands making it difficult. He bent toward Vornis like a supplicant. “
Please.”

Vornis reached down and stroked Lee’s hair with his blunt fingers.

Lee responded to the gentle touch gratefully. He pushed his face against Vornis’s trouser leg. Like a fucking dog. He hated himself, but he was too desperate not to beg.

Vornis’s voice was soft and beguiling. “That’s a good boy. Show me how well behaved you are.”

Lee shivered.

He hated this. He hated to see himself as Vornis must have: on his knees, begging, nuzzling the man’s trouser leg. He wished he could say he didn’t recognize himself, but who was he kidding? Every time he entered this room, they turned him into a fucking slave.
Yes, sir. No, sir. Anything you want, sir.

He’d played games like this once. Just games. Cuffs and blindfolds and pretending to be master or slave without laughing too hard. Tim, his boyfriend from college, had been more into it than him. He’d ended up getting into leather and discipline and the whole deal. It had been a little too weird for Lee. Playing was fine, but he could never do it with a straight face. He couldn’t beg a man and make it sound real. He couldn’t have imagined it would be one day.

“Please, sir, please don’t hurt me!”

It turned out the only thing holding him back had been his consent. Take that away and he was a fucking natural. On his knees, bending toward Vornis and begging with every fiber of his being for mercy he knew he wouldn’t get. And later, of course, he’d beg for pain as well. Just because Vornis wanted to hear him do it and had the ability to make it happen.

He choked back a sob.

Oh God, oh God.

He skated close to the edge of mindless panic.

No.

Fishing for gar and green sunfish at Round Lake.

Counting the cracks in the sidewalk on the way home from school.

The Vikings pennant on his bedroom wall.

Hold on to that. Hold on to what you were. What you
are
. You’re not nothing. And when this is done, Shaw will look after you.

Shaw looked him in the eye, and Lee had never seen anything like disgust there, and that was something else to hold on to. Vornis could try to make him forget the man he’d been, but Shaw wouldn’t let that happen.