His spirits sank. There was no boat in sight. He was trapped on the islet. There was no way out.
To try to swim across, in his current state, was out of the question. In such treacherous waters, in the dark, he’d be sure to drown.
Unless . . .
Maybe there was a way. Something that was staring him in the face, and yet was at the same time too terrifying to consider. He shuddered.
He had caught sight of something at the back corner of the beach, half-hidden in some scrub: an empty, half-rusted oil drum like the one he’d knocked over in the cave. God only knew how long it had been there. Though rusty, it looked otherwise in decent enough shape—not full of holes.
Looking out across the channel, Roberto spotted a cove on the far side, into which the wind and tide appeared to be driving the waters. With the oil drum as a makeshift raft, he would surely get there—it was only a few hundred yards away.
In theory, it was simple.
But he couldn’t do it. The voice inside Roberto Lobeira’s head mocked him.
Forget it. You know it’s impossible,it whispered.
Roberto gulped. It was one thing to get in the water in daylight, as he had done to retrieve the bundle a few days earlier. This was entirely another matter. To be out in dark waters, clinging to some ad hoc flotation device, would mean reliving the very trauma that kept him awake so many nights. It would mean turning his recurring nightmare into a reality.
And he was seriously thinking of submitting to that torture.
No. No way . . .
Instinctively, he took a step backward, but then the image of Varatorta entering Antía’s room, a lazy smile on his face, jolted him.
Sometimes you have to take back control of your life,he’d told Varatorta. Which Varatorta had, in his idiosyncratic way, taken quite literally.
Now he had to follow his own advice. There was no other choice.
Roberto let out a roar, a mixture of fear, despair, and defiance.
Don’t think about it. Do it. Do it.
He rolled the drum down to the water’s edge. It was instantly snatched by the undertow, and he flung his arms around it. Before he knew it, he was out of his depth and being swept out across the channel.
There was no turning back.
Roberto gritted his teeth and concentrated on not letting go. Without the drum to keep him afloat, he knew he’d be a dead man. A wave crashed over his back, and he let out a shriek. He screwed his eyes shut, trying to control his breathing.
When he opened them again, it seemed that things were working in his favor for once, as the current was indeed taking him directly toward the main island. He just let himself be carried along, bobbing up and down at the mercy of the waves, while the landmass ahead loomed progressively larger.
But then, one of his hands slipped. As he regained a hold, he took a gash from one of the drum’s edges. Inside his head, he heard drowning people all around him, flailing, battling with the waves. Reality had turned blurry—his heart was pounding even harder on account of the amphetamines, while panic, that ravenous monster, was dragging him toward the seabed ...
At that very moment, as he was doing battle with every single one of his inner demons, he saw something he hadn’t accounted for.
A few hundred feet away, a powerful spotlight and a pair of lights, one green and one red, were dancing across the waves. A speedboat was approaching Ons, in spite of the conditions.
There was no doubt about it. Someone was about to land on the island.
And in the midst of his nightmare, a spark of reality exploded in his head.
Because Roberto knew perfectly well who it was.
And what was about to happen.
37
The Speedboat
