Look Away Read online

  “Hurry—we’ll lose them.”

  “There’s only one place that boat goes,” he told her. “Castle Island.”

  Still, she forced him to speed up until she was certain the Merlin wasn’t headed out to sea. The fisherman was right; the boat followed the Intercoastal north into the sparsely populated area between Beaufort and Charleston.

  Here the Intercoastal widened but also became more treacherous, with small tributaries and marshes encroaching on the deeper channel. There were myriad tiny islands as well: some with houses, many that appeared empty of human habitation, others connected to the mainland by bridges, and a few totally separated, only approachable by boat.

  “Show me,” she urged the fisherman, as the twilight gathered on the water. He sighed and pulled out a laminated map—a chart, he called it—and pointed to a small island. “Castle Island. A hundred years ago it belonged to some rich oil man. He literally moved a castle from Scotland there.”

  “Camelot,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, that’s what some call it. There’s even a drawbridge.”

  “So there’s a road off it?” She traced her finger over the tiny bit of water separating Castle Island from the rest of the mainland.

  “You can call it that. CCC built the bridge way back when, but now it’s all private. So’s the road leading to it from Highway 21. Faster to go by boat, easier, too. Except…” His eyes dropped to the pistol in her hand.

  “Except what?” She gave her voice an edge that a smart man would not ignore.

  “Look. I’m sure sorry about your friend and whatever you girls are tangled up in. Those people, that boat…I’ve seen girls, all sorts, go out, but none of them ever come back. How’s about we turn around and you let me take you home? Safe and sound, both of us. No need for anyone to know.”

  “Except what?” she repeated.

  He sighed. “Except there’s only one place to dock on Castle Island. The rest of the island is surrounded by a twelve-foot-high sea wall. And there’s no way in hell we can get anywhere close to the dock.”

  They steered around a small island and beneath a bridge, following in the Merlin’s wake, far enough behind that with their lights off they were basically invisible to the other boat. But then the horizon filled with bright light, silhouetting the yacht as it slowed and docked.

  “See what I mean? Lights, guards, day and night. I’m telling you it’s a fool’s run. You’re never gonna get on that island, not without getting caught.”

  She bet Zoe had already known that before she hatched her insane plan. Zoe had been here months; probably knew about Castle Island but had no way of getting there so instead had focused on gathering evidence from the All American servers.

  Morgan grabbed Jenna’s camera from her bag and focused on the dock. Two guards armed with submachine guns. Kagan left the yacht with Zoe and her guard, then stopped and said something to the men with guns. Morgan watched as they shrugged and boarded the Merlin. The yacht slipped quietly out into the night, carrying everyone away, heading out to sea.

  Clearly Kagan wanted no witnesses. And he’d made the mistake of thinking one guard was enough to contain his prisoner. He had no idea who he was dealing with.

  The bright lights aimed out over the water blinded Morgan to any details of the castle. All she could make out was a hulking shadow beyond the dock. Once the yacht had sailed out of sight, a woman approached from the castle. She came close enough for Morgan to recognize her: Trish Mendoza, Kagan’s administrative assistant.

  Trish stopped, hands on hips, glaring first at Kagan, then at Zoe. Then she pivoted and slapped Kagan hard enough that the man went down on one knee.

  Clearly not an assistant. Could Trish be Camelot’s hidden leader?

  Morgan focused on Zoe’s face. The girl didn’t resist or struggle as her guard marched her past Kagan, following Trish down the dock toward the castle. Instead she was grinning so hard that even the damaged side of her face moved upward, twisting her mouth into a perverted, mutated facsimile of a smile.

  The quartet vanished beyond the spotlights. Then the lights went out, leaving Morgan blinking at the sudden darkness.

  “Huh.” The fisherman heaved out a syllable. He’d been staring over Morgan’s shoulder into her camera’s view screen. “Never seen them turn those off before. Can’t be good if they have to hide in shadows even from their own men.”

  “Get me close, as quietly as you can. Keep the lights off. Can you do that?”

  His hands flew over the controls like a concert pianist, using the current to drift them silently across the sound. “That yellow-haired girl, she your friend?”

  Morgan nodded. She was busy trying to map the castle using the camera’s thermal and infrared settings. It was a huge monstrosity of a building, awkward and clumsy, as if embarrassed to have been transplanted to this foreign barrier island. The stones held the day’s heat even though the sun had set, and she was too far away to get many details, but she got a general direction of where to go by following the human heat signatures.

  “Why didn’t you help them?” she asked. “Those girls you saw get on the boat?”

  The fisherman gave a grunt as he steered. “Them I didn’t know. But the men—them everyone knows. Rich men. Powerful men.” He paused. “Law men.”

  The current pushed them inland, and she caught a glimpse of the drawbridge. Not ancient like she’d imagined, but a metal and steel and cable creation that, like the castle it protected, appeared out of place. One side, the side closest to the island, was raised to allow ships to pass by—and to protect Castle Island’s privacy. There was a small cabin, where the bridge operator controlled the crane that raised and lowered the bridge, perched on a metal scaffolding level with the top of the bridge. The metal-gridded roadway hovered in the air at an unnaturally steep angle, giving the impression that it might fall at any time, a Damocles’ sword dangling from invisible cables.

  “You really would’ve used that gun? Killed me dead, I didn’t help y’all?”

  At night with only the faintest ghosts of light escaping the castle behind it, the ungainly drawbridge appeared like a black dragon, wings draped, muscles hunched, ready to spring on unwary prey.

  “No,” Morgan finally answered him, moving the 9mm back into her pocket. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  The fisherman eased the throttle forward, the boat’s engine blending into the night sounds as water lapped against the island’s steep seawall. They moved backward, away from the bridge and toward the dock. Then he cut the engines and allowed the current to push them against the dock.

  Morgan gave him a nod of thanks. He said nothing as she leapt from the boat onto the dock. Then the fisherman was gone, heading back the way they’d come, following the current into the dark waters of the sound before she even made her way off the dock and onto solid land.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Morgan’s night vision had always been exceptionally good. As she followed the walkway leading over the high sea wall from the dock to the castle, she made out features hidden by the murky images the camera had revealed earlier. The castle wasn’t actually that big; it merely appeared oversized, perched as it was on the narrow spit of sand that formed the island. There were palm trees and skinny pines that towered higher than its tallest spire.

  Two giant-sized wooden doors stood open, a glimmer of light teasing her from beyond their gaping maw. The imposing outer wall was just that—a wall. Behind it there was a wide space and beyond that stood the castle proper. The tall wall that ringed the castle gave it an impenetrable shield of privacy, but once inside the wall, light flowed freely from leaded glass windows. Another pair of doors greeted her, these human-sized and ajar just enough for her to slip past them like a ghost.

  The interior was a hodge-podge of Gothic, Medieval, and modern interpretations that seemed more Italian or French than Scottish, creating a confusing mix of materials and shapes. The only unifying force seemed to be opulence: expe
nsive Italian terrazzo floors gliding up to expensive marble columns and hand-carved rare-wood panels between elegant tapestries and draped fabrics hanging from intricate wrought-iron rods over modern-day insulated windows made to appear like old-fashioned leaded glass. The light came from gorgeous crystal chandeliers—electric, of course, just like the air conditioning providing a gentle breeze from hidden vents.

  Morgan didn’t waste time critiquing the décor. She scurried down the wide hallway, glancing into each room she came across. Given that the castle sat on a sand dune and was barely above sea level, there would be no dungeon, but she was certain that did not mean that there would not be any prison cells. The rooms here on the first level seemed to all be designed for party-goers to mingle: spacious and with little furniture except some scattered couches around the periphery, half-hidden by shadows, the center cleared for entertainment.

  Every room was empty, yet an air of anticipation lingered in the eerie silence, as if ghosts of past revelries haunted the castle—or expectations of future debaucheries. Morgan kept her footsteps quiet and her breathing controlled, her pistol at the ready and her guard up, primed for action. She swept into each room, her back to the wall until she was certain there was no threat, then moved on to the next.

  Then she came to the first body. It was the man she’d saved last night from the fire, the one who had brought Zoe off the yacht. He’d been garroted with a ziptie, his face bloated and red with burst blood vessels, the claw marks at his throat still oozing blood. His holster was empty. Zoe was free—and armed.

  Voices echoed against the castle’s stone walls. She followed them around the corner to a courtyard at the rear of the castle that opened onto a pool area and private beach. Trish Mendoza and Spencer Kagan were standing just inside one of three pairs of French doors leading to the courtyard. Morgan hugged the shadows and listened.

  “You idiot,” Trish said. “You had one job. Get the girl. Instead I have a burned-down trailer with dozens of witnesses, a man in the hospital I had to silence before the police could question him, and two more witnesses—a nurse and an old man with Alzheimer’s, no less—vanished God knows where. Do you have any idea how much danger your incompetence has put us in? We could lose everything. We need to know how much that girl knows and who she’s told.”

  “We will, we will,” Kagan said in a placating voice, one hand stroking Trish’s arm. “Trust me, baby. Everything will be just fine. I have it all under control.”

  Trish whirled away, throwing his hand off her body. “You? Trust you? Do I look like a fool?”

  “No,” came a voice from the other end of the corridor. Zoe rounded the corner, advancing on Trish and Kagan, a semiautomatic aimed at Trish. “You sound like a leader, Trish. Maybe even a king. Or should I call you the queen of Camelot?”

  Trish melted into Kagan’s arms, cowering and simpering. “Tell her, Spencer. I don’t know anything—he brought me here. He’s the one in control, didn’t you hear him?”

  In answer, Zoe raised her pistol and fired, and a shard of marble burst free from the column behind Trish and Kagan. “Which one of you wants to tell me the truth? And which one wants to die? First one to tell me what I want to know lives.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Trish insisted, one hand touching Kagan’s mouth, signaling him to silence. “Spencer simply got caught up with the wrong crowd.”

  Zoe’s face morphed from expressionless to bloody rage. She stepped forward, and without warning, shot Kagan. He screeched and fell to the floor, grabbing his arm, blood gushing through his fingers. Zoe kept advancing, firing three more times, the bullets slamming into the terrazzo, sharp slivers ricocheting around Kagan’s cowering body.

  Trish took the opportunity to run. Zoe looked up from Kagan, following Trish’s movement, ready to shoot Trish in the back before Morgan stepped into her line of fire. “Stop it, Zoe. No one needs to die here.”

  In answer, Zoe made a noise that sounded more animal than human and turned her aim on Morgan.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Zoe’s countenance was devoid of emotion as she aimed her gun at Morgan. Morgan took a chance and slid her pistol back into her pocket. “No one else needs to get hurt, Zoe.”

  Behind her, she heard Kagan moan as he stumbled to his feet and fled. Zoe’s stare didn’t leave Morgan’s face. “Why did you come? I told you I had a plan.”

  “A plan that almost got Alfie and Gladys killed. A plan that would leave you worse off than ever before. You know who I am, Zoe, where I came from. Believe me, killing is not the answer.” Morgan strained to channel every ounce of empathy Nick had ever shared with her during their sessions.

  When that failed, she tried to remember some of the soothing words Micah had used to calm her after he saw her kill someone. It had been self-defense, but the fact that he’d seen her true self had devastated her far more than killing the man.

  “You have a chance at a new life,” she continued. “Put down the gun and come with me. We can walk away, never look back. You can start over.”

  Zoe whipped her head back and forth, her aim never wavering. “Maybe you can, but I can’t. There’s nothing left.” She pounded her fist against her heart. “Nothing left. Not for me. He took it all.”

  Morgan risked a step forward, arms open and outstretched. “I can help you.” When Zoe stood silent, she continued. One more step. Then another. “If you let me.”

  She was almost close enough to grab the gun when Zoe blinked, her eyes refocusing. “No. You can’t help me. No one can.”

  She whirled and ran away, leaving Morgan alone, standing in Kagan’s blood.

  It was easy enough to follow Zoe—she’d made no attempt to hide her path following Kagan’s trail of blood through the castle. She was fast, though—Morgan could pace her, keep her in sight, but couldn’t close the distance. Maybe she didn’t really want to. Because how was she going to stop Zoe without killing or at the very least incapacitating her?

  Were Trish and Kagan worth it? Two sex traffickers who had destroyed the lives of countless girls and women simply for easy profit?

  The struggle in her mind seemed to tangle her feet, making her stumble and slow. Finally she reached the castle’s front door—a raised iron spiked portcullis that opened onto the road leading to the drawbridge. The bridge was lowering, a Mercedes already driving across even though it wasn’t fully down.

  Morgan spotted Zoe near the top of the ladder leading to the bridge controls. A moment later the bridge stopped and then reversed itself, rising up.

  Trish was in the Mercedes’ driver’s seat. She gunned the engine and actually accelerated despite the fact that if the car went off the end of the bridge it would still need to fly over twenty feet of open water before landing on the opposite side. Given the steep angle and short runway, it seemed a suicide mission.

  Morgan could do nothing to stop Trish, so she searched for controls for the bridge—there had to be a second set; otherwise how had Trish lowered it in the first place? There wasn’t enough time for her to climb to the controls and back down to the Mercedes before Zoe arrived.

  She spotted a sliver of light coming from a door inside the portcullis’ base and pushed it open to find a miniature guard station, complete with cameras and bridge controls. She hit the bridge controls just as the squeal of brakes skidding against metal screamed through the night. There was a safety lock for the controls, so Morgan slammed it into place, hoping it would be enough to prevent Zoe from reversing the bridge yet again.

  When she emerged from the guard station, she saw that the bridge was stuck halfway up, the Mercedes’ front wheels hanging over the edge. The bridge canted at a forty-five degree angle, too steep for Morgan to climb via the roadway. She jogged over to the ladder leading to the operator’s cabin, climbing it furiously even as she saw Zoe clamber over the safety railing and onto the bridge, waving her gun at Trish. Morgan spotted Kagan, his body folded in on itself as he tried to hide below the dash on the passenger s
ide of the car.

  “Get out!” Zoe shouted. “Now!” She didn’t wait for Trish’s response, pulling the door open and yanking the older woman out. The wind was fierce this high in the air, and rain began to ping off the metal. It quickly turned from drizzle to downpour, slicking the ladder Morgan clung to.

  By the time she reached the top and climbed over the railing onto the bridge, Zoe had Trish face down, clinging by her fingertips to the metal grating. The incline looked steep from below, but from up here it seemed more like a tall sliding board. At least that’s what Morgan told herself as she balanced against the wind and crossed in front of the Mercedes.

  Zoe had her pistol jammed into the back of Trish’s head. Execution style.

  “Zoe! Stop! You’re better than this,” Morgan shouted over the wind battering the bridge. The gusts were strong enough that she swore she felt the metal structure shiver. Hurricane country, she reminded herself. It was designed to do that. Sway and give, instead of remaining rigid and breaking.

  Unlike the oh-so broken girl in front of her. Zoe’s entire body shuddered as she hauled in a breath and turned to look at Morgan. She raised the pistol, first at Morgan, then at Trish, then finally at the clouds scudding furiously overhead.

  A wordless scream escaped Zoe, filling the night with a banshee’s wail of heart-rending pain. Then she ran for the railing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Morgan ignored Trish to race after Zoe. But the other girl was too fast. “Zoe, don’t!”

  “No,” Zoe screamed into the night, backing away from Morgan to the very edge of the bridge. They were at the top, the highest point—definitely a lethal drop. “Can’t you see? I’m not like you. I can’t go back to who I was. I’m stuck here. Angry and hurt and wanting—”