Surviving the Refuge (Survivalist Reality Show Book 2) Page 21

  “Uh-uh, gun first or she doesn’t go in that window,” Virginia said.

  Wolf stepped forward, nodding to Fred who reached out and grabbed Lily with his long arms. The second Wolf dropped the gun, Fred hoisted Lily through the window with strength Regan never realized he possessed.

  “Get off my island!” Wolf shouted, his voice booming in the small room as he reached out, pushing Lily behind him.

  Everyone moved forward, enveloping Lily in a human circle meant to protect her from the spray of bullets if it was to come. No one had to ask for it to happen; they just instinctively did it, protecting the girl the best they could.

  “It isn’t yours! This was my dream. Our dream! You took it all away.”

  “I gave you everything!” Wolf shouted, his shoulders tense and his body coiled as if he wanted to jump through the window.

  Regan had never seen him so angry. He’d always had an inner calm about him. She had seen him irritated, but this was a different level of pissed. RC looked like he wanted to smash through the window, as well, though his arm was still wrapped protectively around Lily, who was glaring at the window with a new level of anger that Regan hadn’t seen in the past, much as she’d thought she’d seen the girl at her moodiest. And both Wolf and RC, usually so serene and calm, looked as if they were ready to kill. That alone put Regan on edge. If they were this upset by the woman’s appearance, that was a bad sign. Nothing ever shook the Henderson men up.

  “Nice hair color, Virginia!” Lily said, stepping out of the protective circle and moving toward the window, though her grandfather’s hand didn’t leave her shoulder.

  Fred reached out and pulled her back, stepping between her and the window. “Stay back,” he whispered.

  Lily obeyed, and stopped. “It’s my ex-stepmother,” she told him quietly. “She’s crazy. Like seriously crazy. It’s why my dad dumped her.” Lily turned from Fred and looked out the window. “He dumped you because you’re crazy, Virginia!” Lily shouted, making Regan even more nervous.

  It didn’t seem wise to anger a crazy person surrounded by mercenaries with guns who were clearly loyal to her. The others seemed to think the same, Fred nudged Lily back toward RC, and the look on his face was enough to make her bite her lip and stay where she was.

  “Virginia, I don’t know what you want, but you need to let us out of here. We’ll talk, work something out,” Wolf was saying, clearly struggling to calm himself down. “We can work out an arrangement, share our resources.”

  Virginia ignored Wolf, and instead looked past him to Lily. “Did you miss me, Lily? You sure have grown up a lot since I saw you last,” Virginia replied, completely unbothered by Lily’s words. “I bet you miss having a woman around.”

  “Why would I miss you? And you stole my hair dye!” Lily shrieked, stepping forward. “What’s wrong with you? Who does that?”

  Wolf shot a look at his daughter, demanding she be quiet, but it was too late.

  “Lily,” Tabitha hissed. “Sit down. Let your dad deal with this.”

  Virginia laughed. “It’s such a pretty color, Lily. I think it looks great on you. What do you think? Does it suit me?” she asked, fluffing her hair. “I think it makes me look younger.”

  Regan watched the scene unfold, completely at a loss for what to do or what was happening. They were talking about hair color, and the crazy woman had locked them in a room. A very small room. The color of her hair didn’t seem like the most pressing topic. Lily’s declaration that the woman was crazy rang true, sure, but that didn’t help them right now.

  Wolf and Virginia began shouting at each other, neither of them listening to what the other was saying, and Regan closed her eyes in frustration, trying to block them out and think of what might make sense.

  “Has he ever mentioned her before?” Tabitha whispered.

  Regan turned to look at her, shaking her head. “Obviously, it’s the ex-wife, but he hasn’t said much beyond the fact that she exists. I’ve heard Wolf mention her name before, but that’s it. He’s never talked about her. I’ve asked, and he’s shut down the conversation. I had no idea there was this much animosity between them. I wonder how long they’ve been divorced.”

  Tabitha frowned, her eyes darting toward the yelling match happening at the window. “I think you know why he’s never talked about her. I’m guessing the marriage didn’t end on a high note.”

  “Virginia, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to let us out of here!” Wolf yelled over her then, stepping close to the window.

  “I told you what I’m doing. I’m taking my house. This is mine and you’re the one who needs to leave. I’m taking it all,” the woman sneered, her blonde hair blowing around her as she looked at the men standing to either side of her.

  Regan could see rain coming down harder now, soaking the group of them and banging into the slightly open window.

  “Fine, we’ll leave,” Wolf said, holding up his hands. “Unlock the door and let us go. We’ll leave and you can have it all.”

  Virginia threw her head back and laughed. “Sure, you will. I know you, Wolf. You’re not going to go without a fight. You’re going to say one thing and do another—isn’t that what you always do? That’s why I brought reinforcements. I think we know the only way you’re leaving this place is by force.”

  Regan gasped when Virginia waved her hand and the men responded my raising their guns.

  “Wolf?” she whispered.

  He looked at her and gave a slight shake of his head. “It’s fine.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Regan warned. “They have guns and they know how to use them.”

  Wolf turned back to look out the window, ignoring Regan’s warning. Obviously, he knew there were guns, but she’d really felt like she needed to point it out, just in case he’d missed the barrels aiming at him. He needed to stop thinking of this woman as his ex-wife, and start thinking of her as a psycho.

  “Let us out of here!” Wolf shouted, lunging up for the window and hitting his fist against it in a flurry of motion that surprised everyone in the room.

  One of the men slammed the window shut in response, and slid the locking pin into place before Wolf could reach out to stop him. Wolf grabbed the window handle, trying to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. He slapped the window with his palms, and Regan saw Lily burying her head into RC’s chest.

  Observing, trying to calm her own panic, Regan knew the window wouldn’t break and wasn’t worried he’d be hurt. Wolf had talked non-stop about how sturdy these windows were…about how tight their seals were. And suddenly she realized why a spear of panic had shot up her spine when that window had slammed shut.

  “We’re locked in here? There’s no way out?” she demanded. “Do we have enough air? How long are we going to be okay?” she asked, her eyes darting around her to faces that clearly didn’t have answers to offer.

  The room suddenly felt much smaller, the lack of airflow making it feel hotter than it was. She could feel a fresh sheen of sweat breaking out over her body as the familiar panic began to bubble to the surface.

  Tabitha put a hand on her arm. “Relax. We’re okay,” she soothed. “We’ll get out of here.”

  Regan looked at her, focusing on her warm brown eyes. “How?”

  Tabitha met her eyes and took a grip on her arms. “I don’t know, but we will. Come on, let’s sit down over here,” Tabitha said, taking Regan’s hand and leading her to a corner of the room. Together, they sat down on the floor as the rest of the adults in the room all began talking at once, with Lily’s soft sobs echoing along with the chatter.

  20

  Regan’s panic had begun bubbling over, making her palms sweat and her skin feel clammy even as the argument had died into quiet conversation. She could taste bile rising in her throat, but she refused to acknowledge what she knew had happened. She couldn’t. If she admitted it to herself, the claustrophobia would take hold and she’d probably hyperventilate.

  “What
do we do now?” Fred asked.

  Geno walked up to the window, smacking it with his open hand. “Can we smash these?” he asked. “We can take apart those shelves and slam into it.”

  RC shook his head. “It won’t do any good. These windows are meant to withstand trees slamming into them in a hurricane, designed to withstand up to Category Four winds. You can hit it all you want, but it won’t break.”

  “Well, I’m not going to sit in here and rot!” he argued.

  Outside, Virginia was still standing outside the window, laughing at them. Regan watched her turn to talk to the men before stepping close in to the window.

  “What’s it feel like to know you are going to lose everything, Wolf?” Virginia shouted through the closed window.

  Wolf stared at her, refusing to answer.

  “Remember when you kicked me out? Told me you never wanted to see me again and then took everything? You served me with divorce papers without even giving us a chance to work things out!” the woman screamed. “You owe me!”

  Regan watched her pacing in front of the window, her pain evident in the way her face had begun twisting. Whatever had happened between her and Wolf had not been good. Regan’s attention went to Wolf. He appeared to be unaffected by the woman’s apparent grief, almost cold in response to it—to the extent that she couldn’t help being alarmed by how unfeeling he was toward someone he’d once been married to.

  As Regan watched, Virginia reached down to crack the window open again, though she felt no difference in the air—apparently, she’d realized it was too small for all of them to exit out of anyway, and decided she wanted to chat with Wolf more than she wanted to make them feel totally closed in.

  “I divorced you because you are selfish and crazy,” Wolf said loudly, his back to Regan as he looked out the window.

  “I’m not crazy, Wolf. You were the one who couldn’t stand to see me winning all the time. You hated that I was better than you. You made up all the drama and then tried to have me committed to the psych ward.”

  He made a choking sound. “I was trying to help you! You were having a manic episode. You heard what the doctor said. You’re bipolar. You need meds, Virginia.”

  She was shaking her head. “No, I’m not. You couldn’t handle me outsmarting you, outrunning you in your own stupid survival training courses.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been a long time, Virginia—don’t you think you need to let it go?” The exhaustion and frustration in his voice helped Regan understand a little more what the end of his marriage must have been like, and how he could be so flat toward her now, but she still felt shocked by how totally different Virginia seemed in comparison to him. How could he have fallen in love with her? Enough to marry her?

  Virginia stepped closer to the window, slamming her fists against the glass. “No! Look what’s happening! I helped you get here! It was me who supported you and got that show off the ground. Without me, you wouldn’t have any of this! This is mine, Wolf, and I am taking it back.”

  Wolf shook his head with a sigh of resignation. “You were holding me back. You and your incessant need for competition—to be better than everyone.”

  “I was the one who helped plan all this!” Virginia screamed. “I was the one who said we needed to create a bunker, a refuge for us to take shelter in when the time came,” she said, spreading her arms wide.

  Wolf turned to look back at the group. Regan could see the embarrassment on his face. All his dirty laundry was being aired out. She’d had no idea he’d been carrying around so much baggage, and there was no doubt that she’d gotten closer to him than any of the other newcomers to the island. Clearly, his marriage and ultimate divorce had been far more intense than he’d ever let on. He’d never talked about his ex-wife. Regan had always assumed it had been a brief marriage and that the two had parted ways without looking back. And yet, the relationship had apparently exploded. Seeing the truth of that, Regan couldn’t help feeling a little hurt and betrayed over the fact that he hadn’t shared this part of his life with her. She had told him all of the important, even horrible details of her life while he’d sat quietly listening, pretending he had nothing significant to share beyond what he’d already told her.

  “Virginia.” Wolf’s voice had gone low, and was filled with angst. Regan doubted the woman on the other side of the glass could even hear him. “I gave you everything else. This island was the one thing I fought for. You don’t deserve this. You didn’t earn the right to be here. It’s mine. It was my hard work that built this house. My father, Lily, and I have worked every day for the past five years to make this what it is. You had no part in any of it.”

  Regan felt herself scowling, wishing she could do something to alleviate Wolf’s pain and help him understand that this woman was beyond reason. As if the woman cared whether she’d earned the right to be on the island. Wolf really needed a lesson in bad guys. Bad guys took. And, obviously, they didn’t deserve what they took, which made them bad.

  Virginia’s loud scream snapped Regan’s attention back to what was happening outside the room. “I do, too! I deserve this! I earned the right to be here!” she yelled, banging her fist against the window so that it shook.

  Regan leaned back into the wall behind her, shocked by the reaction. Maybe Wolf did know what he was doing, and was egging this woman on.

  “Fine, Virginia. It’s yours. Open the door and we’ll be on our way. You and your little group of degenerates can have it all,” Wolf said, throwing his arms up. “We give up.”

  She was shaking her head. “No way. I want to fight for it.”

  Regan felt like slamming her own head into the wall. This woman was batshit crazy. She wanted it, and then she didn’t want it. At least, if nothing else, the anger and frustration Regan had begun feeling was quieting the claustrophobia.

  Wolf stepped closer in to the window. “No need to fight for anything. You can have it. I don’t want it.”

  His willingness to roll over was making Virginia more agitated, and Regan started to see what he was doing.

  “He’s making her mad on purpose. She wants the rush of winning. She must be an adrenaline junkie,” Regan whispered to Tabitha.

  Tabitha nodded her head, her eyes focused on the window. “She’s looking for a fight, and he knows it, so he’s backing down. Wolf seriously never mentioned her before? She seems like a woman you would want to warn others about.”

  Regan shook her head. “Nope, not a word.”

  “I guess I can see why. It has to be a little embarrassing for him.”

  Both women turned back to watch the window like a screen in a movie theater. Virginia was pacing, her fingers running through her hair, and it looked like she was muttering to herself even with the rain pounding down around her. Regan couldn’t hear her talking, but her lips were moving.

  In a flash, Virginia bounced back to being calm, cool, and collected. “You’ve done a great job here. I’ll give you that. We’ve been taking things left and right. You didn’t even realize it because you have so much. You really outdid yourself,” she complimented him, her eyes grazing over the group.

  Tabitha grunted in acknowledgement of what Virginia had shared. “It was her!”

  “I loved sabotaging you. I loved watching all of you scramble, especially your little girlfriend,” Virginia said, looking directly at Regan.

  Regan flinched as the man who’d come up beside Virginia again burst into laughter, leering at her. It gave her the creeps.

  “I’ve had fun messing with you the past couple weeks. Stealing things, breaking things, and watching you,” she continued. “You and your girlfriend there aren’t so sneaky. Do the rest of them know where you two sneak off to when you think no one’s looking?” Virginia asked with a disgusted sneer.

  Regan could feel the blood draining from her face, her stomach rolling with nausea. There had been so many times when she had thought they were being watched. She’d chalked it up to paranoia. And now, Lil
y’s head had whipped around, glaring at Regan with serious hatred. Regan wanted to fade into the wall and hide her face from everyone. Humiliation wasn’t a strong enough word to describe how she felt. Her mind was doing a quick rewind again, thinking about all the times she had felt like she was being watched, when her senses had been on high alert, and what she had been doing in those moments.

  “The window! Wolf, it was her!” Regan blurted out as the other mercenaries returned to the window, peering in through the rain.

  Wolf turned back to look at Regan, confusion on his face. “What do you mean?”

  “The storm that night. I told you someone had been tapping on the window. It was you, wasn’t it?” Regan demanded from her place on the floor.

  Virginia smiled and turned to look at one of the men on her right. “Not exactly.”

  Regan suddenly felt ill, realizing Virginia hadn’t been alone in her peeping.

  “They’ve been watching us this whole time?” Tabitha breathed out.

  Virginia looked at Geno, staring at him as if he were on stage at a strip club. “I’ll have your baby if she won’t,” she said with a laugh.

  Geno lunged up and reached for the window, shouting obscenities at the woman. The men behind her burst into laughter, making obscene gestures as they stared at Tabitha. If anyone was going to break through the window, it would be Geno.

  “Virginia, I’m not surprised in the least. You could never do anything for yourself. You’ve always relied on everyone to do everything for you. You always carry on about earning everything you have and working hard to be at the top. You’re a fraud. You don’t have the skills you claim to. I suppose you’ve told these guys you’re some trained survivalist or something,” Wolf said, laughter in his voice. “None of this is yours, but you know what, I’ll let you have it because I know you’ll never survive on your own with your so-called skills. I’m a nice guy and I would hate for you to die,” he sneered.

  Virginia’s eyes narrowed. “I have all the necessary skills to survive. I don’t need you.”