He touches my elbow and points to the service door at the back of this room. It is painted to disappear. It has the little square of plastic you push with a thumb. He doesn’t touch it yet. He watches the light and shadows at the bottom.
My heart tries to climb into my mouth.
Roman pushes the square. The door opens into a narrow service corridor that smells like bleach and citrus. A stack of folded robes sits on a rolling cart. A hamper waits under a chute. A green exit sign throws a weak glow at the far end. Somewhere beyond, a generator hums.
“Go,” he whispers.
We walk at first because running sounds like an announcement. The floor is tile and not kind to sandals. My steps click. I yank them off for silent steps. Roman moves like air. Halfway down, we hear a woman trying to be brave, the front desk hero who did not sign up for any of this. The woman says sir and please and then nothing. Roman’s jaw tightens. He does not break the plan to save a stranger he cannot reach without getting us killed too.
Roman moves. I move. We take the last ten steps fast. The back exit is for deliveries, one no one uses. He checks the latch and opens it with his body turned so I can slip through first.
Heat and daylight hit my face like a hand. The service yard is a rectangle of concrete and stacked crates. The generator sits behind a slotted screen letting out a steady growl that makes it hard to hear anyone coming.
We move to the side of the building, and the side gate sticks. Swollen wood and salt. He sets his shoulder to it, and the wood squeaks against wood, and opens to a narrow path that threads between a hedge and a row of storage sheds.
We run then because there is no one here to hear us. The path drops to a service lane that meets the beach farther down. I can see the pale line of the water through the gap. Our target.
I look back once because I am human. Roman’s hand closes on mine and pulls me forward. “Come on!”
We take the lane to a gate that opens onto a stand of palms. The light changes under their fronds. The world smells like sun on bark and wet sand. In another story, in another hour, I would ask him to stop here and forget the rest of the island exists. In this one, we move.
“Left,” he says, so soft I feel it more than hear it. We angle toward a maintenance path that skirts the back of the bungalows. The planks of the boardwalk show through the leaves. I can see the path to our door, but it’s a target—of course we’d go back to our bungalow where our things are. Vitaly would know that.
Roman squeezes my fingers once and lifts two of his own, a signal to someone I cannot see. The hedge rustles. A shape moves.
We push through into sun and salt and a strip of sand. The world looks the same as it did an hour ago. People drink from hollowed fruit. A child drags a shovel. A woman in a hat argues with a cloud.
They don’t know that a massacre just happened. Not yet.
Roman does not break stride. We cut behind a line of palms and reenter the maintenance path that heads to the bungalows. Our door waits at the end. He unlocks it with a hand that does not shake.
“Won’t he come here, looking for us?”
“Yes. That’s why we hurry. Grab anything important.” He produces a gun from beneath the mattress. I guess he followed his own advice.
20
ROMAN
The resort ison lockdown within five minutes of Vitaly’s attack. Doors close. Radios chirp. Managers make speeches. Guests stare at their phones and order drinks. Staff tape off areas and say this is for your safety. None of that secures anything.
It’s security theater, like the TSA at the airport making travelers pointlessly take off their shoes.
But if you are the reason for the lockdown, you use the confusion to leave.
My job is to get Mina off the island alive. That is the only outcome that matters now. I will not engage Vitaly with her present. I will not look for revenge. I turn off everything that is not the job.
Tanner is down on the boardwalk near the palm line. Marcus is down on the service path behind the spa. No sirens. No medics. This place is designed to make problems vanish with towels, free drinks, and apologies in the form of spa vouchers. They don’t know what they’re dealing with.
As we breeze past resort security, I hear the men on the walkies give instructions. The resort has sealed the guest pier. When we dart past, guards in polo shirts and shorts stand there and try to look like they matter.
As if Vitaly couldn’t get past them with nothing but a paper clip.
I stage the bungalow for absence. Curtains half-open. Two cups on the rail. Sandals where they can be seen. Burner phones on the table. The scene reads casual and lazy to anyone who looks from the boardwalk. It will buy us minutes of confusion when Vitaly comes here to wait for us.
Mina nibbles her bottom lip, looking around like she wants to help.
“Keep your hands free,” I tell her. “If I say drop, you drop. If I say left, you go left. No questions. Just like at the wedding. Understood?”
