Chapter 2

The next day, my suspicion was a live thing, a coiled snake in my gut. I watched Jax' s every move, analyzing his actions through the new, terrifying lens of the truth. When he said he was going to the other side of the island to check his traps, I gave him an hour' s head start.

Then, I followed.

Moving through the dense jungle with my broken leg was an exercise in agony. I leaned heavily on my crutch, sweat pouring down my face, but the image of him with the satellite phone pushed me forward. The jungle floor was a tangle of roots and vines, a hostile environment that seemed to want to hold me back.

I followed the barely-there trail he left, my skills in observation, honed from years of analyzing architectural sites, now repurposed for survival. A broken twig here, a footprint in the soft earth there. He was moving toward the rocky cliffs on the northern shore, an area he' d told me was too dangerous to explore. Another lie.

The trail ended at a solid wall of rock covered in thick, green moss. It looked like a dead end. I almost turned back, defeated, but then I saw it. A faint, perfectly straight seam in the moss, almost invisible to the naked eye. It was an architect' s detail, a line too clean to be natural.

My fingers, trembling, traced the seam. I pushed, and a section of the rock wall swung inward with a soft, hydraulic hiss.

My breath caught in my throat.

Beyond the fake rock door was not a cave, but a tunnel lined with smooth, metallic panels and recessed lighting. It was a short walk down a gently sloping ramp into a small, high-tech bunker.

The air was cool and sterile. In the center of the room was a desk with multiple monitors, a sophisticated communications array, and a keyboard. On one of the screens, a live satellite feed showed a weather map of the region. On another, a grid of small windows displayed security camera footage from hidden cameras all around the island-one of them pointed directly at the beach shelter where I slept. He had been watching me the entire time.

I felt a wave of nausea. He wasn't just my captor, he was my voyeur.

Suddenly, the speakers on the desk crackled to life. I dove behind a stack of supply crates just as Jax' s voice filled the room. He must have a remote link.

Then, Brittany's voice, clear as a bell, joined his.

"Are you sure the smartwatch is completely dead now?" she asked.

"Positive," Jax replied. "The beacon has been offline for three days. I swapped it out, just as you asked. The one I gave her was a dummy, identical in every way, but with a faulty emergency transmitter. It was designed to fail after ten days of continuous use. She could have pressed that button a thousand times, and no one would have ever heard her."

My blood ran cold. The watch. The one gift from Liam I had trusted. It wasn't just ignored, it was sabotaged from the beginning. They hadn' t just abandoned me, they had meticulously planned every detail to ensure I would never be found.

"Perfect," Brittany purred. "The board meeting is next week. With Chloe legally declared dead after being missing for this long, Dad will have no choice but to sign the inheritance transfer over to me. Her entire identity, her shares, her trust fund... it will all be mine."

The words hung in the air, dripping with venom. They weren't just trying to steal my inheritance. They were trying to erase my existence.

"And what about when it's done?" Jax asked, his voice softer now, with an edge of something I couldn't place. "What happens to her then?"

There was a pause. Brittany's tone became chillingly casual.

"That' s for you to handle, Jason. Just make sure it's clean. No traces. The island will take care of the rest."

Jason. His real name. The use of it felt like a final, intimate betrayal. He wasn't some nameless wild man. He was Jason Cole, Brittany's loyal servant, and now, my designated executioner.

Rage, pure and hot, burned through my fear. They thought they had won. They thought I was a helpless pawn in their game. But I wasn't. I was an architect. I built things. I understood systems. And right in front of me was a system I could use.

My eyes fell on the monitor with the weather satellite feed. A small tropical depression was forming a few hundred miles offshore. The forecast models showed it would likely dissipate or veer north, missing the island completely.

My mind raced, connecting a thousand different data points from my university physics and computer science electives. I knew about data manipulation, about how small input changes could cascade into massive output shifts. I was a designer, and this was a design problem.

With trembling hands, I crept over to the console. Jax-Jason-was still talking to Brittany, their voices a low murmur of conspiracy. I had to be fast.

My fingers flew across the keyboard. I found the input parameters for the raw meteorological data that fed the forecast model. It was a complex system, but the principles were simple. I started subtly altering the atmospheric pressure readings, tweaking the sea surface temperature data by a few fractions of a degree, inputting false wind shear values.

I was creating a digital illusion. I was architecting a storm.

I magnified the changes, compiling them into a new forecast model that showed the tropical depression rapidly intensifying into a hurricane. A monster storm. And its projected path was now a direct hit on the island.

I uploaded the falsified data packet to the public server that all regional maritime and aviation authorities used. It was a long shot, but if a rescue agency or even a civilian vessel saw a hurricane warning for an island with a known, active-though now silent-emergency beacon, they might send a ship to investigate as a precaution before the "storm" hit. It would force their hand. It would force his hand.

I wiped the command logs and slipped back out of the bunker, my heart hammering against my ribs. I pulled the rock door shut, leaving no trace that I had ever been there.

When I hobbled back to the camp, the sun was setting. I had created a phantom hurricane. Now, I just had to survive the real monster I was trapped with.