I managed to get in, “I hate...”
But that was all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alaric
It had to be that way. I hated drugging her again—especially after Eric had given her a sedative. It was risky, but not as risky as having her freak out on the helicopter.
I had to leave her in the dark because I didn’t trust Eric as much as I probably could have. I trusted him enough to do what I asked—but that was only because I knew that more than anything, Eric wanted to be out of the game, and he played by the rules, and at this moment, it was more dangerous for him not to do what I asked than anything else.
But that was as far as I trusted Eric. Maybe he had bugged the place. Maybe all that would ever happen is that he would say something that led to the island. Maybe he had brought something with him to detect the position, something that couldn’t be jammed by my security system. The main thing was he knew about Natalia. And I didn’t trust him anymore.
I wondered if she had something important that she wanted to bring along with her. I took everything I could find that had been hers: her old purse, her clothes. It wasn’t easy to get her down to the boat, and I worried about her waking up before the helicopter trip.
I used the motor until we were far out on the sea, so that I could look back on everything I was leaving behind.
But when I turned back to the rising sunlight, and thought of the girl below deck and the life she carried inside of her, I knew I had made the right choice. I needed Natalia, and it was time to quit the game.
From the fishing village, due north, in a direction that no one has any reason to travel, there was a small rocky island that would be gone in a few years anyway. On it there was a helipad, and most of the time, there was a boat moored off its shores.
I had sailed the boat, my first sailboat, a thirty-foot Catalina, solid but hardly a luxury boat and barely large enough to fare the seas, back to my island after leaving my helicopter on the helipad. I had sunk it with a heavy heart, about a mile out from Orel Island.
I would sink theSirenanow, setting it out on a course due north with a small explosive charge set in the hull. She would sink, and no one would ever have any reason to look for her—just to know that she was gone.
I carried Natalia carefully and strapped her into the seat of the helicopter. I gave her a tiny dose of sedative—as much as I dared, but enough to keep her at least hopelessly sleepy in the back of the copter. I kissed her forehead, set the boat out to sea, and then climbed into the helicopter.
As I rose into the air, I watched theSirenacutting through the growing waves in the high seas. She would sink, and that would be the end of the person I had been.
This was the beginning of a new life.
