Chapter 7

No survivors. The words haunted me late into the night. The Coast Guard clearly wasn’t looking for anyone. They weren’t combing the waters for Toby Hawthorne. They thought he was dead.

Deep in my mind, a voice whispered, Is he?

The next morning, I had a shift at the hospital. I went, dressed in a fresh pair of scrubs, dark rings under my eyes. My supervisor pulled me aside the second she saw me.

“You don’t have to be here today, Hannah.” In all the time I’d shadowed her, this nurse had been about as no-nonsense as they came, but there was a gentle undertone to her words now.

She knows, I thought. About Kaylie. I hadn’t changed my last name. Had I been kidding myself this whole time to think that I could be invisible, that everyone at this hospital didn’t know exactly who my family was?

“I do need to be here,” I said, my voice as even as I could make it. “Please.”

“Go home, Hannah.” That clearly wasn’t a request. “Take a week—or two. I’ll talk to your advisor and make sure you aren’t penalized, but I don’t want to see you back here any sooner than seven days from now.”

I wanted to push back, but I didn’t. I left the hospital, fully intending to retreat to my apartment, but somehow, I ended up at the shack instead. I pounded three times on the metal door.

“What do you want?” That was Jackson’s paranoid version of Who’s there?

“It’s me.” I didn’t say what I wanted. I wasn’t even sure I knew. The door opened inward, halfway. I squeezed in, and Jackson shut it behind me. For the first time in a long time, I registered how big he was—at six foot six, the fisherman loomed over me, over just about everyone. But he’d never scared me.

I was much more afraid of what I would I see when I looked past him.

What I saw was a mattress on the floor. Toby Hawthorne was lying on his back on the mattress. His chest was still bare but for the gauze that had been used to dress his wound. There was a pile of damp rags on the floor beside the mattress.

He’s alive, then. If Jackson had been tending to his wounds in my absence, Tobias Hawthorne the Second was still alive.

“Did you get the silver cream?” I asked Jackson dully.

“I dug some up.” It wasn’t until he handed me the jar and I saw the dirt smeared across the label that I realized he’d meant that literally.

On the bed, Toby made a noise like the creaking of a door—half-moan, half-rasp.

“You came back,” Jackson noted.

I shouldn’t have, but I’d had to see for myself whether Toby was still alive. Based on that moan, he definitely was. I should have turned around and walked out the door, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Kaylie wouldn’t have wanted me to.

She’d never been the least bit capable of holding a grudge.

I forced my feet to move, bringing me closer to the person whose little game of arson had cost my sister her life. The authorities already thought there were no survivors. If Toby Hawthorne died, they would be right.

For the first time in my life, I felt like maybe I was capable of killing, like maybe I really was a Rooney. Blood for blood. It wouldn’t have been hard. All it would have taken was a hand over Toby Hawthorne’s mouth and another holding his nose.

In this state, he wouldn’t have been able to fight.

I knelt beside the mattress and glared bullets at the boy who had my sister’s blood on his soft, rich-boy hands. And then I swallowed, blinked back tears, and glanced back at Jackson. “I need some cool water.”

Soon enough, there was a basin of it sitting beside me, though how Jackson had managed running water out here was anyone’s guess. On a nearby table, I spotted a pile of clean cloths and the suitcase of medical supplies. I helped myself to more gauze with one hand and grabbed the cloths with the other, and then I got to work.

I soaked the cloths in cool water and thought, I hate you, Tobias Hawthorne the Second.

I peeled the dressing back from his wounds. I hate you.

I laid the cloths on his burns, and his chest rose with a ragged breath. His eyes never opened, not once as I repeated the process over and over and over again. Not when I unscrewed the top of the silver cream. Not when I applied it to his biceps, his collarbone, the third-degree burns on his chest and stomach.

I hate you.

I hate you.

I hate you.

My touch was gentle—far gentler than he deserved.

Pain was visible in the muscles of his chest, taut beneath the clean skin surrounding the burns. Good, I wanted to think. He deserves to hurt. But my touch was light as I continued cleaning and dressing his wounds.

And when I was done, I kept vigil. I checked on him, again and again, through the night, watching for any signs of infection.

“Hannah.” Jackson said my name quietly, his voice almost but not quite soft.

“Don’t,” I bit out. Don’t tell me that you’re sorry for my loss. Don’t ask if I’m okay.

Jackson went silent, and an hour later, the fisherman disappeared with the dawn. Left to my own devices, I went to change the dressings, wondering if Toby Hawthorne would consider this turn of events a very dark joke, like everything else.

A little game of arson, I thought viciously.

I peeled back gauze, and a hand flew up to catch my wrist. Toby’s grip was shockingly strong. His lips were moving. He was saying something.

I pried his fingers from mine. Despite myself, I leaned down to hear what he was saying.

“Let.” Even that one word, said in a ragged whisper, was labored. “Let,” he wheezed again.

I thought he was going to tell me to let him go, but he didn’t.

“Let,” he choked out a third time. “Me.” A breath caught in my throat. “Die.”

Fury rose up inside me like a beast with a life of its own. My sister was dead, and he had the gall to tell me to let him die?

I leaned down to whisper directly in his ear, and then I went back to work, my touch soft, hoping that what I’d said echoed in every nook and cranny of his depraved Hawthorne mind.

You don’t get to die, you bastard.