I Died In His Sick Game novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Lake

Bradley flies to the island to see the body, and a pull in Abby's chest drags her spirit to a hospital bed where her own body is still breathing.

Bradley grabbed his assistant by the shirt.

"Whose body?"

"Nobody knows, sir. The site manager says it's been down there a while. They wrapped it in a tarp and called the sheriff."

Kendra had gone very still by the window of Tilly's room.

I watched her.

She put her palm flat on the glass, and when she took it away, it left a damp print.

"Get the helicopter," Bradley said.

"Bradley, it's almost midnight," Kendra said. "Let the police do it."

"It's my island."

He walked out.

I stayed by Tilly's bed.

I tried to.

Then the hallway stretched out long, and I was pulled after him.

Kendra ran to catch up with him in the elevator.

"I'm coming with you."

She said it fast.

Too fast.

The helicopter lifted off the hospital roof and swung out over the black water.

I hung in the air beside Bradley's knee.

His knuckles were white on his knees.

Kendra held his arm and talked into his ear the whole way.

"Whatever it is, it isn't your fault. You gave her every chance. You gave her food. You gave her time."

I'd have spat on her if I'd had spit.

Pelican Key came up out of the dark under work lights on tall poles.

I knew every rock of it.

The lake was gone.

Where it used to be was a pit of gray mud with a puddle at the bottom and dying fish flipping in it.

A blue tarp lay on the bank.

The site manager met them on the boards.

"Sir, I'm sorry. The deputies are twenty minutes out. I wouldn't look."

Bradley looked.

He crouched and lifted one corner of the tarp.

I came down beside him and looked too.

There was a shape, and hair, and a white rubber boot, the kind every fisherman on this coast wears.

I'd never owned boots like that.

I'd gone into the water barefoot.

"It's been in there too long, sir," the site manager said. "There's no telling who."

Bradley dropped the tarp.

His hands were shaking.

"It's a stunt," he said.

"Bradley," Kendra said.

"It's a stunt. She found some poor dead woman and dumped her in my lake so I'd stand here like this."

He laughed, and it came out wrong.

"She's out there somewhere watching me. She wants me on my knees."

"Honey." Kendra took his face in her hands. "The note. She said she couldn't go on. It's her. You have to let her go."

She didn't look at the tarp once.

Not once.

Then she turned to the site manager.

"Was there anything with it? A bag? A phone?"

"No, ma'am. Just what you see."

Kendra's shoulders came down an inch.

I was the only one watching her, so I was the only one who saw it.

"I need a minute," she said. "I'm going to be sick."

She walked off up the path toward the fish camp.

I followed her.

The tin roof. The plank table. The heap of sea grape leaves where Tilly and I slept.

On the table lay the slate I'd written on with my own blood before I put her on the raft.

Bradley, take care of Tilly. I'm sorry I couldn't.

Kendra read it.

She took a bottle of water out of her purse, wet a tissue, and wiped my words off the slate in three long strokes.

Then she took a folded sheet of paper from the same purse.

She tucked it under the rusty coffee can in the middle of the table.

I screamed at her.

I put my fists through her face and her hair and her pretty white dress.

She tucked the tissue into her bra and looked up at the rafters.

Up there, in the dark, a tiny red light blinked.

I'd found that camera in March. For a month I held Tilly up under it every single day and begged.

Nobody ever came.

Kendra smiled at the red light, a small private smile.

Then she walked back down to the lake with tears already shining on her face.

"Bradley," she called. "Bradley, there's something on the table."

The deputies came. The flashlights came.

A deputy read the note out loud under the work lights while Bradley stood there with his jaw tight.

"I can't do this anymore. I didn't feed her. I'm sorry."

It was signed with my name.

Bradley stared at the tarp for a long time.

"Search the bay," he said at last. "All of it. Every mangrove."

Kendra leaned her head on his shoulder.

That was when I felt it.

A tug, low in my chest.

It pulled east.

Away from Bradley, away from Kendra, toward the mainland.

I fought it.

It pulled harder.

The island dropped away under me, then the black water, then the lights along the shore.

I went over roofs and palm trees and through a wall.

The room I landed in was dim and full of beeping.

It wasn't Tilly's hospital.

A woman lay in the bed with a tube in her throat and a machine breathing for her.

Her hair had been hacked short with a shell.

Her left forearm, on top of the blanket, was lined with thin pink cuts.

The whiteboard on the wall said UNKNOWN FEMALE.

It was me.

My chest went up and down.

I was breathing.

And in the chair beside the bed, with salt dried white on his shirt, a man I'd never seen in my life was asleep.

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