Chapter Twenty-One

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SAND SPILLED THROUGH SULLY’S fingers as I once again scooped up a handful and placed it into his palm.

He hadn’t twitched or showed any sign that he recognised his home or his islands.

But I wouldn’t give up on him.

I refused to believe he’d vanished, leaving only his body behind.

His mind was in there, somewhere...it has to be.

“Feel that, Sully? That’s your beach. No more people or cities. No more Drake or wars. It’s over, and we’re home.”

I kicked off my sneakers as the doctors struggled to push Sully’s stretcher through the heavy sand.

After what the doctor had told me, I was careful not to take my touch off him for too long. I remained close. I spoke often. Now that he was home, I would be his constant shadow until he opened his eyes and gave me permission to collapse in exhaustion.

I would not rest until he came back to me.

I will fight for you, Sully...even if you can’t hear or feel me.

A squawk sounded as the doctors pushed Sully toward the pathways leading toward goddess villas and an island that’d been touched by death and decay.

The palm trees still swayed in the glittering sunshine. The sand still twinkled gold and silver like micro-diamonds scattered on the shore. The sea glowed with turquoise, and the occasional flitter of jewelled fish darted in the spangles of sunlight.

Hibiscus lived on the muggy air along with lush greenery and island sweetness. Sully’s wonderland seemed both apologetic and welcoming, as if it needed to erase the pain and demise that’d happened here and promised the power to reverse the anarchy that Drake had brought.

I tripped as my body urged me once again to sleep.

This fatigue was different to the catatonic urge to shut down after enduring elixir. This wasn’t just mind fatigue but physical, emotional, soulful.

I’d done what I could for Sully.

I’d killed his brother on his behalf.

I’d spent his money via Dr Campbell to fly him home.

And I’d stupidly, stupidly hoped that the moment Sully smelled his tropical jungle and heard the licking waves, he’d remember. He’d wake up. He’d be healthy and mine again.

I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t disappointed.

And I couldn’t stop my heart from breaking all over again as Pika shot from the glossy bushes and zipped straight to Sully, lying like a warrior who’d been carried from battle to be buried amongst family.

If anything could snap Sully out of the unwakeable sleep, it was the winged comedian with such attitude.

The tiny green, white, and apricot parrot landed on Sully’s chest. He squeaked and puffed up, his black eyes glistening with pure joy.

The doctors stopped wheeling Sully, all watching Pika as he rolled onto his wings and waved his scaly legs in the air. He chattered and chirped, slithering around on Sully’s chest, nuzzling into him, showing every possible affection.

When Sully didn’t react, Pika squawked with annoyance and flipped back to his feet. Marching up Sully’s chest, he pecked at his chin. He fluttered and landed on his nose.

I did my best not to get my hopes up.

I tried to prevent my mind from tormenting me with images of Sully sitting upright and laughing. Of him kissing the tiny bird and proving that he’d been faking his unresponsiveness all along.

However, the heart rate monitor didn’t register a pulse-kick. His skin didn’t flush. His lips didn’t twitch.

Nothing.

Oh, God.

I wedged a hand against my stomach as Pika switched from happy little tyrant into melancholy mope. His wings sagged, his puffed-up feathers fell, and his tiny questioning squeak made me cry all over again.

“Pika...” I scooped him from Sully’s face and kissed his sagging head. “It’s okay. He’ll be okay.” The tiny bird struggled to get out of my hand.

I let him go, only for him to fly back to Sully and sit on his forehead, pecking at Sully’s eyebrows, a string of chirps, cackles, twirls, and tweets falling from his beak.

You didn’t need to be an animal whisperer to see his absolute pain. His rejection. His panic that Sully wasn’t okay.

I stroked his tiny head, brushing aside my tears. “He’s just sleeping, little Pika. He’ll wake up soon. You’ll see.”

Pika suddenly hopped onto my finger and let out a heart-stabbing screech. He whipped his stare from me to Sully and cocked his head until horizontal.

And then, he exploded off my finger in a burst of green.

He zoomed into the jungle and vanished.

“Everything okay?” the female doctor, who I’d learned was named Louise Maldon, asked. Her colleagues began wheeling Sully down the pathway leading toward my villa.

I swallowed back the pain that’d lodged tight in my throat. “Pika just doesn’t understand. Sully is his soul-mate. I guess he’s a little heartbroken that Sully didn’t respond.”

So am I.

Louise nodded, sweat breaking out on her brow as they continued to battle against sand and heavy stretchers. “If he means a lot to Mr. Sinclair, you need to keep him close. I suggest you gather everything that means a lot and surround him with as much familiarity as possible.”

I made eye contact. “In that case...I was going to suggest going to my villa as its closer and not as far to push, but...we should take him to Nirvana.”

“Nirvana?”

“His waterfall.” I trailed my fingers over Sully’s forearm resting over the white sheet covering him. IV lines still punctured his body and oxygen tubes still stuck beneath his nose, but for once, his skin wasn’t icy.

It’d warmed thanks to the island sun.

Please, please wake up.

“He needs to hear the falls. He needs to feel the water.” I looped my fingers with his. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make him come back—to me and to Pika.”

* * * * *

I sat on the bed with my hand on Sully’s chest and blurrily watched the commotion as the doctors set up an in-home triage. Dr Maldon was a good leader, precise and kind, traipsing with her colleagues to gather the medical supplies and equipment they’d brought from Geneva with them to monitor Sully.

I’d thought they’d leave the moment they’d shifted Sully from the travel stretcher onto his mosquito-netted bed, but she’d pulled me aside and asked if I would object to them sleeping in cots in the lounge for a few nights to monitor Sully’s condition after such a long journey.

I’d nodded and plopped heavily beside Sully. Him lying with tubes and sensors tracking his heart and me swaying by his side, linked by our hands...even if only one of us was aware of the contact.

The setup was like a dance. A choreography of wheeled machines and medical equipment that slowly transformed Sully’s bedroom into a hospital.

The sugar glider who lived in Sully’s rafters blinked nocturnal grumpy eyes and did its best to go back to sleep. The beetles and geckoes kept their distance but were too reluctant to leave, and the heron and kingfisher on the balcony watched with intelligent eyes, weighing up the likelihood that the monitor wires were eels to snatch.

“Have a shower. I’ll keep an eye on him.” Louise arched her chin at the bathroom.

I blanched.

How could I have a shower alone when the last time I’d stood in his open-air bathroom and listened to Nirvana splashing, I’d just enjoyed the best day of my life? Sully had stripped down his masks, told me he loved me, and spent the day with me naked in the natural pool.

We’d reached a level of sweet domestication, even if our blood was full of deviant desires. If I showered on my own, I was effectively erasing the best day of my life with one of my worst.

“Go.” She patted my shoulder as I blinked away my haze. “You’ll feel better. Once you’ve washed the flights off, you can sleep beside him. He’ll sense you’re there, and you can rest.”

I nodded blankly, allowing her to pluck me from the bed and shoo me into Sully’s bathroom.

* * * * *

I slipped into one of Sully’s business shirts and tied a bronze tie around my waist as a belt. Clean body and clean clothes helped me perk up a bit.

Yes, I’d hoped Sully would have a miraculous event and wake up the moment he felt he was home. But just because we weren’t in a storybook where the villain fell asleep and the hero was reborn didn’t mean he wouldn’t open his eyes soon.

Tomorrow maybe...or the day after.

The point was, I had to stay positive.

With my head held high, I strode back into Sully’s bedroom and jerked to a stop.

Five policemen stood at the foot of Sully’s bed all muttering in Indonesian and waving at Sully’s prone form as if he was an obstruction of justice and deserved to be arrested.

Louise and her doctors faded into the background, running diagnostics and settling their patient into a new routine.

“Can...can I help you?” I crossed my arms over Sully’s black shirt and narrowed my eyes.

“We have questions, ma’am.” One of the uniformed men stepped toward me. “We are not permitted to leave these shores until our questions have been answered.”

I braced my shoulders. “You’ve been staying here?”

“Our superior’s orders.” The man who seemed in charge wore a badge stating his name was Susilo and had a bigger array of emblems and insignias on his uniform than the rest of his decorated team. “When will Mr. Sinclair be awake for questioning?”

“Like I told you before,” Louise muttered, “he’s in a coma. That means his brain is operating at the lowest levels of alertness with minimal recognition and abilities.”

The policeman looked her up and down. “How long will the coma last? We are busy men. We have other things to investigate.”

“I told you.” Louise threw me an exasperated look before brushing aside her sweaty auburn hair. “Mr. Sinclair cannot initiate voluntary actions in his current state. That means he will not respond to any stimuli, such as light, sound, or pain.” She finished pressing a few buttons on the heart rate monitor before adding, “We have no timeframe for when he’ll wake from the coma. This is not medically induced. Mr. Sinclair suffered a highly traumatic event with multiple heart failure episodes, and we are unsure if he will wake naturally. He might slip into a vegetative state where the chances of him being a fully functional individual diminishes to approximately eleven percent. Even if he woke today, there’s no saying his cognitive abilities won’t be damaged or he won’t suffer from amnesia. So, gentlemen...”

She walked toward the police. “I must request you stop harassing my patient because he is too unwell to assist you and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.”

I wanted to high five her. Instead, I took the baton and joined her fight. “I’ll help.” I stiffened as all five men peered at me. “You? You’re aware of Mr. Sinclair’s dealings and—”

“I’m aware.”

“In that case.” Dismissing his entourage, the leader, Susilo, waved his arm toward the deck outside Sully’s bedroom. “We talk outside, yes?”

I glanced at Sully.

His pallor had paled again, his pulse not as steady.

I shook my head. “In here.” Moving toward the bed, I sat beside him and linked my fingers with his. Like in the helicopter, it took a few moments for the monitor to register a stronger heartbeat, but it did. The rhythm steadied and vitality returned to his cheeks.

Damn you, Sully.

I didn’t know if I should be honoured that my touch had such an effect on him or terrified. I didn’t want power over his life or death. I didn’t want to go to the bathroom and return to find him in heart failure because I’d left.

I squeezed his hand as the police grabbed chairs from around Sully’s lounge and brought them into his bedroom. They arranged them as if I was the suspect and they were the jury.

Keeping my back ramrod straight, I asked, “What questions do you need answering?”

Susilo pulled out an electronic device from his front blazer pocket and pulled a stylus from the side. Turning on the screen, he brought up a document before looking at me with a suspicious stare. “Almost one week ago, Sullivan Sinclair—the man lying unconsciousness beside you—fell from a helicopter along with another man who’d been shot in the stomach.”

I stiffened. “That man was a mercenary hired by Drake Sinclair to kill Sullivan and everything he cared about.”

He scribbled something on his e-pad. “That is the reason for the three phone calls we received asking for our help?”

“Three?” My eyebrows rose.

He referred to his notes. “We received a call from Mr. Ross Grace via the American embassy in Jakarta. He said his daughter was in grave danger and gave coordinates to this group of private islands.”

Goosebumps washed over me.

Dad.

Oh, my God, he’d called. My hastily formed and frankly feeble plan had actually worked.

I need to call him. He needs to know I’m okay.

“The second call was from a local fisherman who spoke of bribes and bad karma. He mentioned he dropped a woman off on the request of the man you just mentioned...Drake Sinclair.”

“That’s right.” I nodded. “That was me. I hitched a ride back here after a misunderstanding meant I’d been flown away.” Not giving them time to ask more questions, I asked one of my own. “And the third?”

“The third was from a Mr. Arbi Pambudi who claims he is in the employ of Mr. Sinclair but is nowhere to be found on this island.” He pinned me with his black stare, his equally dark hair glistening in the sun. “Dr Campbell and Mr. Calvin Moor have been obtuse with their answers. They informed us that Drake Sinclair tried to take over this island and bombed another in the private cluster called Serigala.” His gaze returned to his notes, skimming other interviews no doubt extracted from Campbell and Cal while we’d been in Geneva. “They state that Drake Sinclair flew off with an Eleanor Grace, and that’s the last of their knowledge.”

“If you’re aware of the unwanted invasion and the illegal attempts at theft by Sullivan’s older brother, why are you still here? We did nothing wrong. Sullivan was protecting his shores and me. He was tortured at the hands of his brother.” I pointed at Sully’s still bruised and healing body. “See for yourself. He blinded him, drugged him, and inflicted as much misery as he could, all because Sully refused to give him what he asked for. We are not the criminals here, sir. Drake is.”

“I agree that Mr. Sinclair seems to be the victim, as are you. However, we need to account for the body we scooped out of the sea. We also need to verify why Mr. Sinclair refused questioning and left with multiple broken bones before he’d been cleared of any wrongdoing. The fact that he ran away from law enforcement after we were summoned here by three separate calls for help is...suspicious.”

“Not suspicious. He was chasing after me. I was in danger.”

“And how did he end up in heart failure and a coma?”

“His brother.”

“How?” He scribbled my answers down, poised for the next one. “I am unaware of a weapon that would cause cardiac arrest. Why not use a more common method of violence?”

Common?

I bit the inside of my cheek, swallowing any mention of Euphoria and the virtual reality weapon that’d broken a brother’s mind. No longer a human but a creature left on the couch, drooling and defecating, a vegetable beyond repair...until I had him killed.

Doing my best not to seem guilty of murder—even if it was justified and merciful—I said, “Sully’s system shut down due to overexertion. The stress of protecting me, of seeking vengeance for all the animals and human lives that Drake stole when he bombed Serigala, of doing his best to fix what his brother had ruined—it all took a toll.” I squeezed his fingers, my temper brushing aside my tiredness and making me snap. “The only enemy here is Drake. He would’ve raped and killed me if Sully hadn’t arrived in time. Sully gave up his life so he could save mine. Therefore, I would appreciate you close whatever report you need to and allow him to recuperate in peace.”

Susilo frowned. “Where is Drake Sinclair? Allegations of murder, rape, and kidnapping are serious, indeed, and he should be brought to justice.”

He’s in a million pieces buried around Geneva.

I stiffened. “I have no idea where he is.”

“None?” He studied me far too closely. “Where did he take you when you were kidnapped?”

Louise flicked me a glance. I ignored her and answered honestly. “Geneva.”

“So he’s in Switzerland?”

“No idea.”

“If you know something that you’re not telling me, ma’am—”

“I don’t know anything more.” I stood, breaking contact with Sully and crossing my arms. “You really need to leave.”

Almost on cue, the heart rate monitor spluttered with a flickering pulse. Dr Maldon might have told these policemen that Sully had no reaction to stimuli, but he reacted to me, and my lack of touch sent him into a free-fall.

The doctors leaped into action, ripping aside the mosquito net that’d fallen around the bed to check hastily on their patient.

The police officer never took his gaze off me, almost as if he could taste my dance around the truth and didn’t know how to rip the real story from my lips.

If they took me to Jakarta for questioning.

If they take me away from Sully...

Swallowing back my temper, I allowed my exhaustion to smother me, to etch my eyes and thicken my voice. I wasn’t above using weakness for sympathy. “Look, we’re happy to answer anything you need when Sullivan recovers. Leave your card and we’ll be in touch the moment he wakes...if he wakes.” I dropped my gaze to the floor, embracing every bit the grieving widow. “But please...if he doesn’t, he is not the one you need to hunt.”

Four of the policemen picked up their chairs and left the bedroom while Susilo stayed, his stare too shrewd. “It is not my intention to cause more distress after your ordeal, ma’am. However, I am also not an idiot.” He moved toward me. “Sullivan Sinclair is well-known to law enforcement in America. He has a file the size of encyclopaedia on vigilante behaviour, bribes, and even murder. I’m aware he has never been officially convicted, but where there are rumours, there is truth.”

Running his hands down his decorated blazer, he nodded brusquely. “We shall return...with a search warrant. There are secrets on this island that require deeper investigation. Until then, please do not travel. This is an on-going case, and your freedom has been restricted until we learn the full story.” Turning on his heel, he strode from Sully’s bedroom and out of the villa.

Shit.

Shit!

Sully was innocent in this mess...but he wasn’t in others.

He had purchased goddesses who were hiding on another island. Women who would gladly blab that he’d drugged them with elixir and rented them out to guests.

I doubted the police would be as lenient if they knew he traded in the black market and dabbled in trafficking.

If they find his goddesses...

It wouldn’t matter if he woke up, he’d die an old man in prison.

I need to see Dr Campbell...Cal.

I need to figure out a way to protect him.

He might have committed those crimes but...he’s different now.

He’s changed.

He has to.

“Eleanor.” A tap on my shoulder. “Eleanor.”

My panic broke, dropping me back into my current stress. “Yes?”

“Go back to him, please. His pulse is unsteady.”

Sucking in a breath, I nodded and returned to Sully’s side.

I sat beside the man I loved.

I slipped my hand into his and gave him something to fight for.

All while my mind raced with ways to fight on his behalf.

The old Sullivan had to disappear.

And to do that...I had to rip apart the very dynasty he’d created.