The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4) by Gregg Dunnett (best love story novels in english .txt) 📗

feels that none of this is real, but then why is my hand shaking so much? Why, when I look outside, is there a rental car – taken out in the name of Hans Hass?

I force myself to drink the coffee, and tell myself I have to make sense of this. And slowly I do. There’s been an explosion at the site. The chances of it happening when I was in there are incredibly slim, because I wasn’t doing anything to trigger one – but there’s no other explanation. An industrial accident. And when it happened, James and Oscar must have thought I was caught in it, maybe they even thought I was killed. I had the keys to the car in my pocket, which is why they didn’t go back there – they thought it was useless to them, so they tried to escape on foot. Or maybe they were caught by the security guards, I can’t really make sense of it.

I try to work out what to do. Coming here was smart. James and Oscar were here with me, earlier in the day, so they might come here, if they think I’m still alive, so I should stay here, stay awake, in case they turn up. They’ll be cold.

But that’s crazy – they left the car – so they won’t think I’m here. They think I was blown up. Maybe they’ll be in that bar we waited in. No – that’s closed, it’s what, four in the morning now. I have a horrible fear about them, stuck out in the snow, all night, but I don’t know what to do. I ring James’ number again. Still the same dial tone. I don’t have a number for Oscar.

Somehow I sleep. I have to. I wake super late – about eleven, and everything comes rushing back to me, and abruptly I’m sick. I just about get to the toilet in time. After that I decide I have to work out a plan. Somehow James and Oscar must have made it. They must have. They’ll be on the boat, headed back to Boston. I’ll do the same. I’ll catch the ferry back to college. I’ll tidy up here, so that Dad doesn’t know I was ever here. And hopefully I’ll see James and Oscar on the ferry, and all of this will be OK again. Well not OK exactly, because we’ve had the incredible misfortune to break into the Fonchem site just when it happened to blow up. But it wasn’t our fault, and everyone will see that.

And if they don’t. Thank God we were careful, with the false papers and everything.

A half hour later, and the house looks like I left it. I even take the time to put the drone back, and pick off the gaffer tape from the vent holes, so there’s nothing to show I was here. Apart from the tire tracks in the snow outside. I suppose Dad might think it was just a delivery, or a sales call, when he sees them, and my footsteps going up to the door and back again. Either way, I can’t do anything about them, it would look worse if I tried to rub them out.

I lock up and walk back to the rental car. When I try to start the engine it protests, because of the cold I suppose, but eventually it catches, and I turn around to drive away. I expect to see Dad’s truck coming in the opposite direction the whole time I’m driving, away from Littlelea, and out to the Silverlea turning. But I don’t.

Then I head north again. Back towards Goldhaven, and the afternoon ferry.

Chapter Forty-Eight

I’m here early, the first car in the queue to board the boat. I have to show my ticket at the booth, the man there gives me a strange look, when he sees my name. I notice too, they have a camera pointing at the cars as they come through. I can’t avoid it, but I wish I’d thought to put a hat and sunglasses on. I could have taken some from home, if I’d thought of it. I wish I hadn’t used a foreign name now too. I should have been David Smith or something, no one would look twice at a name like that.

Then, while I wait to be allowed to board, I walk around, and check all the other vehicles. I have this crazy hope that somehow James and Oscar might have managed to get a car, and that everything will be alright. I walk up and down, and stare inside all the other cars, and some of the other drivers look back, like they’re angry at me for staring at them, but I don’t care, because none of them are James or Oscar, not even disguised. And it’s not even hard to be sure. The sailing is only about a third full, the dock bleak and cold. I run over to the foot passenger waiting area, in case they’ve somehow managed to walk here, but they’re not there.

I go back to my car just before we get called forward. I’m not very comfortable, driving onto the ship, even at the best of times. I don’t like the way the metal plates clank under the tires, and it feels like you could easily drive off the side by accident and then the car would sink in the black, cold water before you’d have a chance to get out. But now it’s worse. There’s a finality to it, that suddenly closes in on me, like the steel hole I’m driving into. I’m leaving. I’m getting off the island, leaving James and Oscar here. And I’ve no idea what happened to them. I just left them. I left them in the freezing cold, in the middle of the night, miles away from anywhere. I killed…

“Hey! Lookout!” I’m shocked back to reality by a bang on the hood of my car. Then the ferry worker that