Clay glanced up at the night sky, lips twisting in a bitter smile. If he’d known that Harley had Jasper on the island with her, things would have gone down differently. But every still he’d captured from the bank security camera in the village had shown Harley alone. When he’d learned that she’d chartered a plane from Ko Tao to Bangkok, he had anticipated having to deal with one woman. One woman who would be easily put down with a tranquilizer dart and shuffled into the bed of his truck.

The airstrip was only for private use; so few planes came in or out that there wasn’t even an air traffic controller to monitor the area. Recon on the strip had assured Clay that the only person who might observe him kidnapping Harley was the pilot waiting in the plane and he wouldn’t be able to get across the field fast enough to stop Clay from driving away.

When a little blond boy had tumbled out of Harley’s car, followed by a tall man with dark hair, Clay had been forced to put away his stun gun and reassess the situation. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain to the son he’d never met why they would be building a life together without his mother in the picture, but he knew he couldn’t let Jasper’s introduction to him involve being yanked into a truck after seeing his mother and her boyfriend collapse onto the ground.

That was the kind of thing that scarred children for life, and Clay was sure the poor kid was plenty scarred already. After being raised by a sociopath, there was no way Jasper could have survived completely intact. But he was only six years old, still young enough to get help, get healthy, and have a normal life.

Clay had only known about Jasper for six months, but six months was long enough for him to realize he wanted to give his son the world. And if not the world, then at least a chance to grow up without being haunted by the ghosts of his mother’s mistakes. As soon as they were back in the States, he and Jasper would go to therapy for as long as it took to put Harley Mason and the shit she’d put them both through far behind them.

Now it was just a matter of getting Harley to cooperate.

The ferry landed a little after two in the morning. By three, Clay had Harley tucked away in the hold of his fishing boat and was headed south. They docked at the black site’s hidden cove just as the sky was graying, and by sunrise, Harley was tied to a cot in one of the officer’s cottages.

For the first time since carrying her to his truck, he had a chance to study her and see how she stacked up against his memories.

She was still beautiful, her long brown hair framing a face that belonged on a 1950s movie star, with a plush mouth and a chin that came to a sharp point, making her look almost feline when she smiled. She was in better shape than she’d been when they were younger—there were defined muscles on the arms stretched above her head—but still a little too thin, lending her the same air of fragility she’d always had. That delicacy had made it easy to believe her when she’d claimed that people had hurt her.

But she’d been the one doing the hurting. She was a monster, a devil with a pretty face, the kind of evil you never saw coming until your life was shattered and by then, she was already gone, moving on to her next victim.

But not this time.

This time, one way or another, Harley was going to pay for her sins.

Clay settled onto the small couch beside the bed, threaded his fingers together, and watched the morning sun creep across the white sheets, waiting for Harley to wake up and realize there was a bigger, scarier creature in the jungle.

Chapter Five

Harley

The first time Harley woke up, the world was blurry, her head throbbed like a finger with a splinter shoved beneath the nail, and her mouth was so dry she would have sold her soul for a drink of water. She blinked heavy lids as her head lolled first to the left—a large window with a view of palm trees and a smudge of ocean beyond—and then to the right—a man sitting on a couch.

An enormous man.

Harley swallowed, her bone-dry throat clutching at itself as she fought to focus. She made out sandy hair, a square jaw, and finally the finer details of his face. His face.

His face.

“Good to see you.” Her words were a cross between a mumble and a croak, but it didn’t matter. This was a dream, she realized with a pang of sadness. That was the only time she saw Clay, in dreams where little things like alive or dead didn’t matter.

Dream Clay leaned forward¸ his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She was already being pulled back under, into a deeper, more fragmented sleep.

There she dreamed of staircases stretching into the sky with sweating glasses of water waiting at the top for her to drink them. But every time she reached the top and stretched her fingers out to close around the glistening tumbler, the stairs would flatten and she would slide down, down, down to where she’d started. She climbed the stairs again and again, her thirst growing until it was a screaming need clawing at her throat, until she wept and in her desperation smeared her own tears back into her mouth, sucking the salty wetness onto her tongue.

She woke with a moan and a shudder in her chest, her tears following her into the waking world.

“Water,” she croaked, her damp lashes sticking together as she opened her eyes. Her head didn’t hurt anymore, but the thirst was torturous. If this was how her captors meant to kill her, her death would be terrible, a slow descent into madness. “Please, water.”

“Here,” a deep voice said from beside her. “Just a sip.”

Harley’s head rolled to the right, her lips parting in a silent “oh.” If her throat weren’t so dry, she would have cried out with a sound equal to the shock of seeing a man risen from the dead.

It was Clay and this was no dream. He was here. Now. With her in this room.

He’d aged since the last time she’d seen him. His deeply tanned skin was lightly creased around his eyes and across his forehead and he had acquired a long, jagged scar above his left temple. It was where he had been bleeding the night of the crash, the night she had touched his cold face and been certain that he was dead.

“H-how,” she rasped, eyes wide as she scanned his face, searching for clues. There was something different about him, something more than the fine lines and the scar, but her fogged mind couldn’t figure out what it was. “I th-thought you were dead.”

“I have been,” he said, holding out a cup with a straw in it. “Do you want a drink or not?”

Blinking fast, she leaned over, closing her lips around the straw and sucking greedily until Clay grabbed the top and pulled it from her mouth.

“Not too much,” he said, setting the water back on the table by the bed. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

Harley lay back on the pillows, flexing and releasing her fingers as her thoughts raced.

Clay was alive.

Her arms were bound above her head.

Clay was alive.

She’d been kidnapped from her house.

Clay was alive.

There had been a needle in her throat and then the world had gone black.

And now she was here, wherever here was, and Clay was alive, sitting beside her bed, waiting for her to wake up.

“Wh-why….” She shook her head, trailing off as she swallowed hard, forcing the water trying to crawl up her throat back down again. “What—”

“I don’t remember you being this slow on the uptake.” Clay leaned in, his elbows resting on his knees. “Come on Harley, use that clever brain of yours. You know why. And you know what this is.”