The Burning Island Read online

  ALSO BY HESTER YOUNG

  The Gates of Evangeline

  The Shimmering Road

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Hester Young

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Young, Hester, author.

  Title: The burning island / Hester Young.

  Description: New York, New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018038078 | ISBN 9780399174025 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698190795 (ePub)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3625.O96435 B87 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038078

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my mama

  contents

  Also by Hester Young

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  BeforeChapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  MondayChapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  TuesdayChapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  WednesdayChapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  ThursdayChapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  FridayChapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  SaturdayChapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  AfterChapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  In the dream, I wear his eyes like a pair of sunglasses. His gaze colors my own. His thoughts—so focused, so clouded with desire—overpower mine.

  I leave the woman that I am behind and become him.

  The first thing I see is the girl, her face and chest lit up by the flashlight in her lap. She’s stretched out on a hammock, arms splayed above her head in a posture that communicates boredom, a certain impatience. A slouchy teenager, Asian, with a ponytail and a thin, delicate nose. Her dark, thick eyebrows hang like marks of punctuation above her seemingly pupil-less eyes. She wears a gauzy white shirt with buttons going down the front. Even in the dark, I can see her bra beneath the fabric.

  The girl sways side to side in her hammock, suspended between trees, surrounded by warm, dense forest. The rocking beam of her flashlight makes me feel seasick. Around us, the night is alive with the sound of frogs, but I scarcely notice their chirping, scarcely register the plants tickling my arm or my knees caked in dirt as I crouch on the ground, watching.

  Watching her.

  She rocks back and forth, waiting. When nothing happens, she rolls off the hammock, annoyed. Points the flashlight to the sky and then switches it abruptly off. For a moment, we’re in total darkness.

  The light blinks on and off again. On and off. Three times, in slow succession. A signal, though not to me. She isn’t expecting me here, though she should be.

  It’s all been leading to this night. Her and me. Alone together at last.

  My feet are beginning to tingle, deprived of blood too long by my awkward position. I rise slowly to my feet. Giant leaves brush at my cheeks, and a mosquito pierces my neck. I dispatch him with a quick, silent pinch. Listen for any indication that someone is coming, responding to her flashlight. The forest remains still but for the song of the frogs.

  She flips off her light with a sigh.

  This is your chance, I tell myself. If you’re going to do this, it will be here and now. I push slowly through the brush, advance on her in the dark. Her flashlight flicks on when she hears me coming.

  Hey! Her beam bounces around the trees, trying to get a lock on me. I’ve been waiting forever. I didn’t think you’d—

  And then she sees me. Sees who I am. Her lips part, and we both know what will happen.

  Oh, she says. Oh, shit.

  I let it sit between us. “Oh, shit” is right. There’s no turning back. It’s going down now. I have fought against my urges long enough.

  She points the flashlight at the ground, so that I can’t see her expression. I guess . . . you knew I’d be here.

  I nod. Of course I knew. I didn’t know if she’d be alone, but I knew exactly where she’d be. How many times have I watched her out here, watched her laughing, arguing with her sister, hanging on her stupid boyfriend? I’ve tried to keep my distance, to do nothing more than watch, but it isn’t working anymore.

  I move in toward her. Her shape is so strangely familiar. The height, the slope of her shoulders, the texture of her hair. But she smells different, like baby powder and something floral. I wind a lock of her hair around my finger.

  It’s just us now, I say. What are you going to do about it?

  You should let me go, she whispers, but my hand cups her face and my lips graze her forehead and she knows she’s not leaving.

  Stay, I say, stroking her ear with my thumb.

  She goes perfectly still. Considers her options and realizes, as I have, that there is only one way this can end. That it’s pointless to fight.

  You’ll regret this, she says. You’re going to hurt a lot of people.

  She’s right, of course. I will hurt a lot of people, and probably me, too, in the end. But people get hurt, that’s just a fact of life. If I worried about who I was hurting, I’d never get what I want. And I want this.

  I undo the top button of her shirt. What else can I do? I tell her. I think about you all the time. I tried to stop.

  She says nothing. I wonder if she can feel it, this electricity that runs through me whenever she gets close, this crazy, giddy feeling where I want to touch her so badly. I’m not supposed to want that, but I do. Maybe this is the way to do it. Maybe this will get her out of my system.

  I lean closer, inhaling her h
air, and undo another button.

  before

  Tucson, Arizona

  one

  We gotta turn around, Charlie.”

  I jog ahead, pretending not to hear Noah, although I know he’s right. I know from the chilly air, the canyon’s lengthening shadows, and the beleaguered glances he keeps casting me that we can’t go on much longer. The dark is coming.

  I take a sip from my canteen and feign optimism. “This looks familiar,” I call, although the rocks and scraggly trees around us look like all the other rocks and scraggly trees we’ve seen today. “I think we’re getting close.”

  Behind me, Noah groans and wipes his forehead. His dark hair is getting long, edging toward his eyes, and the man needs a shave.

  I wait, listening for the slow trudge of cowboy boots through rock and dirt. When it comes, I can’t help but smile. My fingers go reflexively to the engagement ring he gave me three years ago.

  This man would follow you anywhere, I think. You guys should really get around to making this official.

  One glance at the sky, and my smile fades. The sun hangs low over the canyon, a glowing orange period that moves ever closer to the end of an irrevocable sentence. Soon, I will have to admit defeat. I dart uphill to get a more commanding view and begin to scan the land below me.

  “We gotta get back to the trail before dark,” Noah says, and his Texas twang suits the rugged landscape. “Last thing we need is to get lost out here.”

  I squint down at the ravine. “I just need a few more minutes.”

  “We don’t have a few more minutes,” Noah tells me. “It’s almost dusk. That’s huntin’ time for cougars. If we had any goddamn sense, we woulda left an hour ago.”

  I can’t argue with Noah’s logic. If we had any sense, we wouldn’t be here at all. Sabino Canyon has been closed to visitors for a week now after aggressive behavior from the local mountain lion population. Normally, that would be quite enough to dissuade me from setting foot on any piece of land. I have a healthy respect for authority and zero interest in a mountain lion confrontation.

  But there’s Alex to consider.

  Twelve-year-old Alex Rocío, missing four days, his face splashed all over the Tucson news. Last seen biking furiously from his home after a fight with his parents. A runaway, authorities thought. Just trying to scare Mom and Dad. But when he didn’t come back, the possibilities began to darken. Ominous words began appearing in the newscasts.

  Kidnapping.

  Abduction.

  Conventional wisdom says Alex Rocío shouldn’t be anywhere near Sabino Canyon, a full ten miles from his house in Casas Adobes.

  But I know what I saw last night.

  I dreamed of these familiar rocky gorges, these desert foothills, recognized them from half a dozen hikes I’ve taken in the park. I dreamed of a boy’s bicycle lying abandoned in a ditch, an orange Mongoose Ledge, just like in the newscast. I dreamed of his Nikes, blood-red against the mountains’ muted greens and browns.

  I felt his fever. I felt his thirst. And after years of seeing and feeling things with unsettling accuracy, I could not dismiss this dream.

  It’s Saturday, and Noah and I have plenty to do without traipsing illegally around a cougar-infested park. We have two girls at home, a household to manage, and strange new professional paths to navigate. Noah’s missing a board meeting tonight for Desert Garden, the nonprofit he founded last year to bring urban farming to low-income kids. And I need to get started on my next article for Outdoor Adventures magazine, to prove I’m worthy of my recent upgrade to contributing editor.

  You want an outdoor adventure? I think, gazing out at the mountains. I’ll show you an outdoor adventure.

  But I can’t write about this. The twisted paths my dreams lead me down—this is not a side of myself that I want the world to know.

  I don’t want to be clambering around this canyon any more than Noah does, but I can’t return to the trail, not without Alex. Not after we discovered his orange mountain bike a couple of miles back, its front tire blown out. Whatever doubts I had about our slapdash search party evaporated in that instant.

  There’s no one else coming for him. We’re all this boy’s got.

  I peer down at the ravine, my eyes suddenly drawn by a brief, flickering motion.

  “There. Did you see that?” I point to a trio of trees about a hundred yards off. “Something moved.”

  Noah’s hand goes to his side, feeling for his nine-millimeter. “Could be a cougar,” he says grimly. “We need to get outta here. Now.”

  “No, wait.” I crouch down, trying to escape the sun’s glare. “Right there. Look.”

  Though it’s hard to tell with the encroaching shadows, I think there’s a spot of red down in the brush. Two spots of red, in fact, like a couple of cactus fruits growing out of season.

  “I don’t see anything.” Noah’s already consulting his compass, trying to determine the quickest way back to the trail.

  The temperature is dropping as fast as the sun. I shiver. My hand drifts to Noah’s sleeve, and I think about our girls, safe at home right now with our friend Pam. “There,” I say, pointing again. “Use your binoculars. That half-dead tree in the middle. Look just below it.”

  Noah sighs and holds up the small pair of field binoculars that dangle from his neck. “What am I even looking for?” he begins irritably. And then stops.

  “The Nikes,” I say. “Those are the red Nikes, right?”

  He releases a breath. “Not just the Nikes, Charlie.” His voice has gone hoarse. “The boy’s still wearin’ ’em.”

  That’s all I need to know. I take off, ignoring Noah’s warnings to be on the lookout for cougars. I have to get to Alex, have to take advantage of the sunlight while we still have it. The only question that remains in my mind is what state I’ll find him in.

  A living, breathing twelve-year-old boy? Or a body? That movement I saw beneath the tree could’ve been a scavenger.

  Only one way to find out.

  My feet are nimble and steady as I scramble across the craggy earth. Adrenaline kicks in, erasing whatever exhaustion I might feel after a day spent trekking around the canyon. Bounding over the rocky terrain, I realize I am not the New Yorker I once was, a woman who jogged for fifteen minutes along the paved roads of Central Park and found herself winded. Three years of living in the desert—shaking your shoes each morning for scorpions, braving temperatures of 115 degrees—will toughen up even the softest of city girls.

  That doesn’t mean I’m tough enough for whatever’s waiting.

  Please be alive, Alex, I think. Please be alive.

  I have two young daughters. Less than five years ago, I buried a son. I know what it means to lose a child. I don’t want Mama and Papa Rocío to learn.

  As I draw closer, I get a better look at the red shoes. Black laces. A stripe that identifies them as Nikes. And somewhere, barely visible through the trees, a flash of jeans against the ground. A gray sweatshirt. My pulse quickens.

  Did Alex crawl under the tree seeking shade? Or was he dragged there? Was he abducted by some sick stranger and left for dead? Mauled by a mountain lion? What gruesome sight is waiting for me?

  “Alex?” I shout. “Alex, can you hear me?”

  There’s no reply, but his foot twitches.

  I break into a run.

  When I arrive, he’s curled up on the ground, huddled in the shadow of an ash tree. I scan the surrounding dirt but find no signs of a water bottle. If it were a summer month, he’d already be dead. Southern Arizona has no pity. Even in early November, his face and neck are pink with sunburn, his lips cracked and bloody. Dehydration has left him delirious and barely coherent, and the crisp desert nights haven’t done him any favors, either.

  “I saw one,” he mumbles as I lift him up. “I saw a mountain lion take down a deer. You have to tell
my friends.”

  I unclip my canteen and remove the cap. Press it to his lips. “Short sips, okay? You don’t want to choke.”

  He drinks like an animal, his swollen tongue probing for water. I try not to think about how much longer he would’ve survived out here, try instead to think of his parents, how their boy will grow to be a man. Still in rescue mode, I search the kid for any signs of injury—dried blood, an arm or leg bent at a wrong angle, anything the medics might need to know about.

  Noah appears behind me, having finally slogged through all the rocks and ground cover. At the sight of Alex slurping greedily from my bottle, his broad shoulders slump with relief. “Thank God.” He watches the boy drink, touches the kid’s greasy hair, and turns to me with the kind of expression some people reserve for prayer. “You found him,” he says. “You were right.”

  I don’t know why, at this stage of the game, Noah’s still so awestruck. We’ve seen it plenty of times these past few years: messages about children that come to me in waking dreams. Sometimes, under their guidance, I can make the difference. I can stop the little girl in Walmart from leaving with a hovering older man. I can break a window and call police when I find the toddler crying in a hot car. I can show up at a teenage boy’s house, pretending to represent a local youth group, before he ends his life over a breakup. Those are the good days.

  But sometimes my dreams are not enough. One night a boy took my hand and led me through the wreckage of a car accident, wordless and frightened. I knew the intersection—it was less than a mile from my house—and when I awoke, I went running off into the night trying to prevent the crash. It was too late. Emergency responders had long since cordoned off the site, and the two vehicles involved had already been towed. I learned later that the boy was pronounced dead at the scene. There was never any way for me to save him, and yet as I stared at the twisted metal that littered the street, watched the road glitter with broken glass and the flashing lights of a police cruiser, I felt myself a failure.