Run.
Fucking. Run.
“What do you mean she set us up?” I ask, my voice deceptively calm.
“She told me we’d be welcomed here with open-fucking-arms.” Snot bubbles from Wilcox’s nose. I’m too frozen to feel disgust. “She painted this place to be a goddamn sanctuary. If I had known…” He mewls and pushes his face so hard against the bars, his forehead turns stark white.
“Who set us up? Raven?” I ask, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. He got their contact from his brother. He reached out to the cult, to the Head Keeper. How could she set us up when we’re the ones trying to get in?
He closes his eyes and cries. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I only ever talked to her through email. I don’t know who the bitch is.”
“Why do you think she set us up?” I ask, though deep down I know. I can feel it in the turning of my gut, in the blood draining from my face.
He cries but doesn’t answer. I’m wasting too much time.
When I turn and take a step away, Wilcox makes a primal, agonized sound that only causes me to walk faster.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
Now.
Yesterday.
Last week.
“They wantedyou,” he yells. I pause but don’t turn around. “She said they needed you to fix a problem. She swore this place was just like the island, and fuck man, I wanted to go home.”
I close my eyes as a wave of nausea comes over me, nausea that only comes when you realize something you should’ve known all along.
Aurelius’s words telling me he heard I wasthe best. I should’ve known then. I should’ve seen it immediately.
Wilcox didn’t find this place.
He was shown it.
Purposefully, directly, manipulatively.
By them. To get me.
“Is there even a stash of money here?” I half turn..
Wilcox cringes, but I see as another man points down the tunnel, into the darkness past the cells.
Four seconds.
That’s how many I waste.
“You better get me the fuck out of here, Hansley,” Wilcox growls as I march past the cells. “Sawyer! Sawyer!”
I ignore him, walking, then running toward the abyss until a soft glow slices the walls. I nearly walk into the heavy curtain covering the candles, but when I pull it back and step through, I forget everything that came before it.
Money. So much money. More than I’ve ever seen in my life in one place that wasn’t my bank account.
Thousands and thousands of one hundred dollar bills are stacked until the piles reach the ceiling. My foot knocks over acandle as I step toward the mound, and I gasp while hunching forward to catch the flame, far more protective than the maniacs guarding it with open flame. My head hangs with a sigh as smoke rises to my nose, the flame snuffed by the dirt.
