Chapter Eight
Vornis borrowed his toy back again the next night. Shaw tried to think of that as a positive. If Vornis wasn’t bored yet, Lee still had half a chance. But it didn’t look like a good thing when Lee whimpered as the men took him. When he was gone, Shaw watched television and tried not to count the hours. He fell asleep in the end and woke up when he heard footsteps on the bungalow steps. One of Vornis’s men hauled Lee inside.
Lee came back with his hands cuffed behind his back and his eyes downcast. He winced at every step and looked too tired to even care. Vornis had given him to Shaw not as any strange sadist’s welcoming present but as a way to prolong the boy’s torture. He probably never got a rest between sessions. He’d just drop one day soon, Shaw thought, and never get up.
He was wearing the key to the cuffs on a string around his neck, like a bow on a birthday present. Shaw took it and turned him around.
His hands were swollen. The two smallest fingers of his right hand were taped, and when Shaw knocked his hand against them accidently, Lee flinched. When Shaw turned him around again he saw that Lee’s eyes were filled with tears. It was reflexive. His body responded to the pain dumbly. His mind wasn’t even in the game anymore.
He stank of blood, sweat, and cum, and it turned Shaw’s guts. He drew Lee into the shower and stood him under the water. Lee’s eyes were unfocused again. Not even the shock of the hot water brought him around.
When he was clean, Shaw wrapped him in a towel and laid him on the bed in the bungalow.
A knock on the door surprised him. He crossed to it and slid it open.
“I have tape,” Irina said. Her pale eyes flicked to the bed and back to Shaw.
Shaw shrugged and let her in.
Irina crossed to the bed and sat on the mattress carefully. Her gaze slid down Lee’s body. She took a small pair of scissors from her pocket and drew Lee’s injured hand into her lap.
Two damaged things, Shaw thought suddenly, and they made a miserable tableau. Like the Pieta. Lee, brutalized and broken, and Irina, he saw for the first time, not much better.
Lee’s eyes flickered open, and he stared up into Irina’s plain face. His eyes shone with such sudden gratitude that Shaw guessed this wasn’t the first time Irina had patched him up. As he watched, Irina murmured to him in a sing-song voice in a foreign language. A lullaby, Shaw realized. She was singing him a fucking lullaby. Shaw wondered if it was the most pitiful thing he’d ever seen.
Lee sighed and drifted back to sleep.
Irina began to cut off the tape. Whoever had taped Lee’s fingers in the first place had made a mess of it. The fingers were broken. Irina re-taped them carefully, and the kid didn’t even move. Shaw couldn’t tell if it was shock or if they’d given him drugs again.
Irina lifted Lee’s hand from her lap and stood again. There was something challenging in her eyes when she looked at Shaw. “Thank you for letting me do that,” she said.
Shaw shrugged like he didn’t care one way or another, and Irina left the bungalow.
He wondered what Vornis would make of Irina’s Florence Nightingale routine. He didn’t have long to wonder. He’d just thrown a blanket over Lee when Vornis himself appeared on the veranda of the bungalow.
“Shaw!” he exclaimed with a smile. “Have a drink with me.”
They sat together at the table inside the bungalow.
Vornis lit a cigar. “So,” he said, nodding at the bed, “what do you think of my toy?”
“You play rough,” Shaw said with a smile.
Vornis laughed. “That’s the only way to play.”
Shaw had thought Lee was asleep but saw him tremble when Vornis spoke. Or maybe he was asleep, and Vornis was so far under his skin that he was manifesting as a nightmare.
“So I’ve heard,” Shaw said.
Vornis’s eyes gleamed. “But you don’t practice it?”
Shaw shrugged and sipped his drink. “I like to be in charge, but I don’t play at your level, Vornis. Why the broken fingers?”
Vornis leaned forward slightly. A look of satisfaction crossed his heavy features. “Because of the way it makes him clench, Shaw. Can you imagine?”
Shaw tasted bile and discovered that he could imagine. It could still surprise him how monstrous Vornis really was.
“You should try it,” Vornis suggested, “instead of all your hot showers together.”
Shaw laughed to show he wasn’t offended about being spied on. “He still cries for me, don’t worry! He knows his place all right.”
“Right on the end of your cock.” Vornis laughed.
The sly smile and the glint in Vornis’s eyes made Shaw uneasy. He wondered if Vornis would attempt to use this little conversation as a way to invite Shaw to join his games. And, if that happened, Shaw knew he wouldn’t like it. He doubted Vornis would try anything with him that he did with Lee, but it wouldn’t be a candlelit dinner and spooning afterward either. Vornis was attracted to strong masculinity, but only so he could force it to submit. And there was no way in hell Shaw would get down on his knees for Vornis. No, he had to reestablish them as equals, or he’d lose any advantage he had.
“And yours,” he said, raising his glass. “You’ve broken him in beautifully.”
Vornis gazed at the boy. His lips curled proudly. “You approve?”
Shaw settled back in his chair. “I know an artist when I see one.”
Vornis’s eyes flicked to Shaw. “I suppose you do.”
There was a question in Vornis’s eyes that Shaw refused to answer. If Vornis wasn’t going to ask directly why he’d let Irina tape Lee’s fingers, Shaw wasn’t going to tell him. It was dangerous to let him wonder, but no more dangerous than suddenly blurting out answers to an unasked question. That would be a sign of weakness to a man like Vornis, and Shaw couldn’t afford to show weakness.
Shaw sipped his drink, feeling his stomach twist. Nothing to see here, move along. He smiled wistfully. “This place is paradise. You’d better watch out, Vornis. You might never be rid of me.”
Vornis responded well to Shaw’s joke, as Shaw had known he would. His face cracked with a grin. “You ought to show more respect, Shaw, to a man who has made you ninety-five million dollars richer!”
Shaw laughed. “Then let me get you another drink.”
He stood and moved toward the bench. He glanced at Lee as he passed. No, there was no question. Lee was only pretending to sleep, but he was awake. He was too tense. His breathing was too shallow. His jaw was clenched.
Relax, Shaw willed him silently. Relax, and maybe he’ll forget about you.
Shaw rattled around with the bottles on the bench to draw Vornis’s attention away from the bed. It didn’t work.
“So you like him?” Vornis asked when Shaw returned. “My little American toy?”
Shaw leaned back in his seat and raised his eyebrows. “What’s not to like? He’s pretty, and he’s tight.”
That seemed like the sort of thing a monster should say.
“Yes,” Vornis said. “Not as tight as he was, but that’s to be expected. I kept a tally in the beginning, you know, of how many times he’d been penetrated, but then I lost count.” He frowned and then laughed. “By the end of the first week, we all got a little tired of him.”
Shaw laughed as well, not daring to glance across at the bed.
Don’t tell me, Vornis. Please don’t tell me the fucking tally.
He hated the sound of his own laugh. Did Lee think he was a monster because he would laugh at something like that? The thought took Shaw by surprise. What the hell did it matter what Lee thought of him? It didn’t matter at all. He had a job to do here.
It was a job he hated more and more by the minute.
“You let Irina tape his fingers,” Vornis said at last.
Shaw was surprised how relaxed he sounded. “I assumed someone sent her. Anyway, I didn’t want him whimpering all fucking night.”
Was it enough, he wondered? Was it the right answer?
“She is too soft.” Vornis drained his glass.
Shaw shrugged. “Women.”
Vornis’s laughed. “Ah, yes, women!” He set his glass on the table and rose to his feet. “I have calls to make. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Shaw walked with Vornis to the veranda and watched him disappear into the darkness of the path that led up to the main house. He was unaccompanied, and that was interesting. Vornis had let his guard down with Shaw. He trusted him. A glow of cautious satisfaction spread through him. He could do this. He could really do it.
When he went back inside, Lee’s eyes were open. They were more focused than the last time. He was running his hands over his flesh, searching carefully for fresh injuries. His eyes widened when he saw Shaw, and he froze.
Shaw picked up his towel from the back of a chair. “I’m going for a swim,” he said. “Come on.”
He wondered if Lee thought he was cruel, or if he suspected the truth. Shaw didn’t want to hurt him by making him move, but he didn’t want to leave him alone in the bungalow either. They’d drugged him before when Shaw wasn’t there. They’d taken him before. Shaw didn’t want Lee to just vanish.
Lee drew himself carefully up from the bed. He winced, and a hand went straight to his ribs. Shaw stepped toward him and then remembered the cameras. He leaned in the doorway instead and waited as Lee shuffled toward him.
Shaw stripped off his shirt and headed down the steps. There was torchlight on the beach as they headed for the water, but it was a fair distance away.
Shaw touched Lee’s shoulder gently, glad of the darkness. “You okay, kid?”
“Yes,” Lee said in a dull tone.
It was such a blatant lie that Shaw wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
“Wait for me here,” he told Lee, and Lee nodded and sank into the sand.
Shaw waded into the dark ocean. He didn’t go too far out. It was too easy to get turned around at night, and he already had a few drinks in him. Alcohol and night swimming: a dangerous combination Shaw had never been able to resist. It took him right back to high school. To simpler times.
He was homesick, Shaw realized as he let the swell of the ocean lift him. He was homesick, and not for Sydney or Los Angeles. He was homesick for a beach shack and a small country town, and for the kid he’d been then. Before he’d known that men like Vornis existed. Before he’d known that boys like Lee suffered. The kid he’d been back then wouldn’t recognize the adult he’d become. The adult who laughed with Vornis when he said he’d kept a tally.
But that was the price of ambition. You sacrificed things for ambition. Time or relationships or maybe even human decency itself. Ambition demanded it. If you weren’t serious about your sacrifices, you didn’t deserve to succeed.
A part of Shaw wondered if that was really true or if it was just a convenient philosophy he’d picked up somewhere as a crutch. And it didn’t really matter. He was here now. He was already committed.
Shaw looked at where Lee was sitting obediently on the beach. He couldn’t make out his face in the darkness. He could only see the pale, lean shape of him as he sat with his arms hugging his drawn-up knees.
A beautiful boy, a beautiful beach, a beautiful moonlit night, and it was a travesty.
It was none of his business what Vornis did with the kid, Shaw told himself. He couldn’t even tell if he believed it anymore. It was none of his business, it was not his responsibility, and the kiss in the shower had meant nothing.
Yeah, bullshit.
He should never have let it come to this. Should never have let Lee under his defenses. He’d known the second he saw him standing in the rain that Lee was fucking dangerous. Beautiful and dangerous, just like the island itself, and Shaw had let it happen anyway. What the hell was wrong with him?
Shaw sighed and let the waves carry him back toward the beach.
* * * *
Lee was a fucking mystery. Two nights in a row, Shaw had sent him off without a complaint to Vornis, and two nights in a row he’d come back racked with pain, and now, for some crazy reason, he was following Shaw up a fucking hill like a loyal dog.
The island had one hill, and, that morning, Shaw decided to climb it. He was bored, he supposed, and looking for an excuse not to be confined to the bungalow with Lee, so he asked Hanson if there was a way up. There was a path, Hanson told him, that the guards sometimes ran for training. But it was a hell of a climb, and it would be slippery after the overnight rain. From the top, though, Hanson said with a smile, scrubbing his scarred knuckles over his buzz cut, the view went on forever.
It was difficult to remember that Hanson was probably one of those who had raped Lee the night before.
Shaw put on his trainers, shoved a water bottle in his pack, and headed for the hill. And Lee followed him.
Shaw didn’t have the heart to tell him to go back to the bungalow. Because if Lee followed him, Shaw reasoned, then he wouldn’t be in a position to be abused. And that was probably what Lee figured as well. He was eager enough to keep up at the beginning, but a few hundred meters later, as the path began to incline steeply, he lost ground.
Shaw slowed down for him. His trainers were caked in mud, and Lee was struggling in his bare feet. The day was hot. The air was humid under the thick canopy of trees. The mud was black, and the air buzzed with insects.
They weren’t even halfway up when Shaw made the decision to turn around.
“Come on,” he said to Lee.
Lee was too weak for this. Eight weeks of malnourishment and torture had stripped his strength. He was gasping for breath.
Shaw took his water bottle out of his pack, unscrewed the cap, and passed it to him.
“Thank you, sir,” Lee murmured and swallowed gratefully.
“When we get back,” Shaw told him, “you’re going to walk up and down in the shallows until your feet are clean. Any cuts, you make sure you get salt into them.”
It wasn’t exactly first aid, Shaw knew, but it was better than nothing. And he had some antiseptic cream somewhere in his suitcase.
Lee’s green eyes flashed with fear. “I don’t want to go back!”
Shaw raised his eyebrows. “And what’s your alternative?”
He hadn’t meant for it to sound that harsh, and he was afraid Lee would react badly. It surprised him when Lee only frowned slightly, squared his shoulders, and nodded.
“Good boy,” Shaw told him.
And then Lee ran.
Shaw was surprised by the suddenness of it but only for a second. Then he barreled off the path as well, chasing him down.
Lee couldn’t go up hill, wouldn’t go downhill, so he headed across it. Shaw could hear him just ahead, thrashing away, but couldn’t see him. The bush was too thick. Snappy branches whipped Shaw in the face. Vines tangled around his legs. Thick undergrowth obscured the ground. Shaw was afraid he’d snap an ankle at every step.
He didn’t shout. There might be guards nearby, and he didn’t want them to catch Lee instead. He didn’t even want them to know this had happened. He had to find Lee and return him before anyone found out, because it was hopeless. He had no strength and no shoes and he was on an island. How far did he really think he’d get?
No more than about fifty meters, as it turned out. Lee was tangled in a vine when Shaw stumbled across him. He was whimpering and thrashing.
“Don’t move!” Shaw recognized the vine. He’d had run-ins with it, or a variation, in his youth. It had barbs. “Christ, Lee, don’t move.”
Lee froze.
Shaw couldn’t see the main clump of the palm, but didn’t need to. Lee was caught in the chaotic tangle of vinelike stems that sprouted from the palm like flagella. Both the leaves and the tendrils were covered in backward-facing hooks to enable the tendrils to reach the canopy. Many of these hooks were caught in Lee’s thin pants. Some were digging into his flesh. One tendril raked across his face. It drew tiny pinpricks of blood from his right cheek that coalesced into a single droplet. The blood slipped down Lee’s pale face like a tear.
Shaw hissed in sympathy. “Don’t panic. Don’t move.”
“I’m sorry,” Lee said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry!”
For running, Shaw wondered, or for getting caught?
Shaw approached him carefully. He caught one of the tendrils between his fingers, avoiding the barbs, and drew it away from Lee’s face. “Okay, put your arm up. This one’s going to spring back. It’ll sting, but you don’t want it on your face again.”
“I’m sorry.” Lee squeezed his eyes shut. His chest heaved. “God, so sorry. I try not to. I try not to!”
Shaw rubbed the small of his back. “Try not to what, Lee?”
Lee sucked in a breath. “I try not to panic!”
Shaw rubbed Lee’s back again. Around them, insects chirped in the dense rainforest. It was almost tranquil. Might have been, except for the adrenaline still flooding Shaw’s body.
The island is beautiful. It’s dangerous. It’s a trap.
Difference is, Lee knows he’s caught.
“Keep your arm up,” Shaw murmured.
Lee obeyed, wincing as Shaw carefully repositioned the tendril against his bruised forearm.
“Okay?” Shaw asked him, and Lee nodded.
Shaw couldn’t see the ocean or the white beach from here. He couldn’t see the glass-and-steel house either. This was the real island. This was the island that had been thrown up from under the sea by a volcanic eruption a million years ago. It teemed with life; it stank of decay. Insects and spiders devoured one another. Vines strangled the trees they climbed. The rainforest consumed itself endlessly.
Shaw flicked a green ant off Lee’s hip before it stung, and began to work on the vines caught around Lee’s legs. He eased each hook free, careful to hold the tendril away as he worked so it couldn’t reattach.
“They have these at home,” he told Lee. “They’re called wait-a-whiles.”
Lee didn’t answer.
Shaw moved around behind Lee, feeling a tendril snag in his shorts. He didn’t pull on it, only moved back the way he’d come to get free. He tried the other side, working the vine slowly free from Lee’s pants.
“You shouldn’t have run. It’s dangerous.” The words were out before Shaw realized how absurd they were. Dangerous? Shit, he was losing it.
“Couldn’t help it,” Lee said, his voice no higher than a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“You will be by the time we’re finished here.”
Lee tensed.
“Because of the wait-a-while” Shaw said, shaking his head. But, Jesus, of course Lee was confused. How could he know what to expect from Shaw, when Shaw blew hot and cold? When Shaw had listened to him in private, reviled him in company, promised to call his people, threatened to break his neck, and held his hand at night under the sheets? Shaw had never hurt him, but, if he had, at least Lee would know where they stood. This was just another form of torture.
Shaw worked another hook free, pulling threads as he did.
“I’m sorry,” Lee whispered again.
Shaw rubbed his back as he worked. “I know.”
Me too.
It took over twenty minutes to free Lee, but at last Shaw was able to take him by the hand and guide him out of the thorny tangle. He was bleeding from a multitude of tiny puncture wounds. Death by a thousand cuts, Shaw remembered, and it seemed apt.
All the fight had gone out of Lee by that time. His head down, he followed Shaw meekly back to the path that led down the hill to the bungalow.
* * * *
It wasn’t a bad thing in the end, Shaw realized, that Lee got tangled in the wait-a-while. His back and chest were covered in angry welts because of it. Even his face was swollen. In the end, it looked like Shaw had taken Vornis’s advice and played harder. Vornis was full of praise when he’d borrowed Lee again for an hour that afternoon.
Irina, when she brought Shaw his dinner, couldn’t look him in the eye. So now she thought he was as monstrous as Vornis. So what?
Shaw checked his watch. It was only an hour. What could happen in an hour?
Shaw wanted to know and didn’t want to know. He couldn’t offer Lee any comfort, he couldn’t empathize, so what was the point? He was just glad Lee had no more broken fingers when he was returned.
When night fell, Shaw took Lee down to the beach, and they sat together below the high-tide mark and looked at the stars. Shaw rubbed antiseptic cream on Lee’s back and chest, on the marks left by the wait-a-while and by Vornis, careful to keep watch for security patrols.
Lee’s breathing was shallow. He was trembling despite the warmth of the Pacific night. Shaw hated that. He hated not being able to fix it, and he hated the part he was stuck playing in this sick game. He wasn’t even sure himself what the hell he was doing. Christ only knew what Lee thought of him.
Small waves washed onto the beach and back again, a gentle, endless murmur. Shaw looked up at the moon and thought of the pull of the tides and a boat and an imaginary escape he couldn’t offer Lee.
“Thank you for looking after me,” Lee said at last. It was the first thing he’d said since being returned.
Shaw didn’t answer. Lee’s quiet gratitude turned his stomach.
Lee surprised him by turning around to face him. “Thank you.”
Shaw opened his mouth to say something—he didn’t know what—and suddenly Lee’s warm lips were pressing against his. Shaw jolted with surprise. He put his hands against Lee’s shoulders, mindful of the welts, and pushed him away gently.
“Don’t do that,” he said. Surprise made his tone harsher than he intended.
Lee hunched his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
Shaw shook his head. “Christ. Just don’t, all right?”
“I’m sorry,” Lee whispered miserably. “I thought you wanted it.”
“I don’t,” Shaw told him brusquely. Jesus, in any other situation he’d be begging Lee to get closer, but this was beyond wrong. This was Lee responding to the unexpected kindness of a monster, and Shaw didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be that. Not for anyone.
“You’re the only one who looks me in the eye,” Lee said. He turned away again. His breath hitched.
Shaw sighed and ran his fingers down Lee’s spine. “Don’t be upset.”
Lee hunkered down farther. “Sorry.”
“And don’t fucking apologize,” Shaw murmured. “It is what it is, Lee.”
“I know,” Lee whispered.
They watched the black ocean together.