Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural mystery novel, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Eleven of Season Two. Start Here.
Previously, a rescue was mounted, motives were explained, and a relationship shifted…
In this episode, Caroline and Reyville dig deep to bring Project Dark Lion—and Flora—to justice…
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
Caroline stood at the bow of the old trawler as it cut through the waves, aware of Reyville’s eyes on her back as he sat up in the pilothouse. Her arms hung loose at her sides, open to the blue and the wild as the wind cooled the land’s warmth from her skin and the afternoon sun glinted off the surface of the water, a glittering trail leading them west, away from the safety of the island’s coast.
It was strange to her how the same stretch of saltwater can look so different, from one day to the next. How the landmarks change; sometimes closer, sometimes further away. The tide’s rise and fall remaking the world, up and down, back and forth, fill and empty.
If the sea can change, then maybe anything can.
Reyville cut the engine and the world went quiet. Awareness traveled up through the decking below, traveling into the soles of Caroline’s feet and rising all the way to her scalp. Even if it looked different, this was certainly the same place. She could feel it.
She leaned down and started to remove her shoes, her socks, her shorts. She lifted her shirt away, set it neatly on the pile of clothes, and Reyville’s voice said, softly, “Are you sure?”
She turned, and he had joined her on the deck as the Princess of the Weathers drifted. There was a part of her—small, but swelling—that wished she could take the hand of this man, lead him into the cozy darkness of the cabin behind them, and continue to map the earnest, unfamiliar geography of each other instead of doing what she was about to do.
But she nodded, shrugged. “Big problems need a big plan.”
They had contacted island police as their first port of call, but the wheels grind slowly, and there was not much that the authorities could do without evidence of any wrongdoing at Hoodman’s, especially since Flora owned the building fair and square.
And of course, Caroline had the strong instinct that Flora would run, again. Would pack up her whole operation and find a new place to set up shop, as soon as possible. They couldn’t delay.
So, it came down to this.
Caroline made her way to the port side of the pilothouse where the gunwale was low enough to jump over, and Reyville followed.
“If it’s longer than a few minutes, I’m coming in after you,” he said.
She smiled up at him, reached out her hand, and he met it with his.
“I’m not even sure if this will work. But my guess is that it takes as long as it takes,” she said. “Don’t do anything hasty. I’ll be back soon.”
With firm resolve and shaking legs, she carefully climbed up onto the wide, paint-peeled gunwale and crouched there, feeling the solid beams underneath her hands, the shifting of the trawler in the water.
She truly did not know if this was going to work. But in many ways, it had to.
Caroline drew a deep breath, straightened up, and dove, trying to put enough distance between herself and the Princess so as not to accidentally collide with the boat’s underside.
Nothing ever prepared her for the deep cold of the water around here, the shock-splutter of every cell pulling into itself like a snail withdrawing into its shell. Caroline took only a moment for surprise before she oriented herself as best she could, swimming in the direction of the underwater spire of stone that she knew waited ahead of her somewhere.
Though she swam with steady purpose, it did not take long for her lungs to begin to burn, prompting the slight panic that she needed to surface and get a breath. She tried to dip further down, to draw the attention of the bright otherworldly eye she hoped was watching her, but nothing happened except increasing tightness in her chest.
Caroline surfaced, sighing fresh air into her ribcage, and Reyville watched from the side of the Princess, clutching tightly to the gunwale as though he was preparing to vault over it, to swim to her.
But Caroline shook her head at him. “Nothing yet,” she called. “Give me a minute.”
She knew he was going to tell her to come in, so she did not wait for his response. She inhaled deeply and then slipped under again. Without the momentum of a dive it was more difficult to pull herself under, but she raked at the water, trying to go further. She felt like a worm wriggling on a hook, a tiny lure in the vastness. Last time, this had been an accident, a fluke. She started to worry that maybe an encounter like this wasn’t the sort of thing you could invite.
Caroline surfaced again, a little further away from the trawler. This time, she heard Reyville’s voice calling across the surface.
“It’s too cold,” he said. “Caroline, come in. We’ll think of something else.”
He was certainly right about the cold; it was already seeping into her skin, insidious numbness taking hold of her fingers and toes. She opened her mouth to respond to him.
But as she did so, something—something firm, strong, and fast—grabbed her foot and pulled her under, leaving barely a ripple as the darkness closed over her head.
*******
This vast void was now a familiar place—the dark screen upon which the visions had played for the last few weeks—and yet Caroline still trembled violently as the strong grip on her leg intensified, pulling her deeper and deeper into the crush of endless Nothing, the kingdom of the Sisters.
She waited. For the visions, the images, the voice-like thoughts of underwater gods. But there was only nothing, a quiet beyond quiet, and black. She did not need to breathe here, and yet the crush of water against her lungs felt like a threat.
For the first time, Caroline started to panic.
This is a mistake.
She tried to kick her leg out of the grip of the monstrous tentacle, but it was like trying to dislodge a heavy steel chain. Her limbs would not obey. She simply floated, as if she had flown off the world and hovered in space.
The time stretched. Reyville would worry. He would try to come and find her, and he would not be able to. Caroline knew that she was in between worlds, even though she didn’t know how she knew. She was lost, adrift.
“Please.” She formed the word with her mind, speaking without speaking as she had learned to do, last time. Speaking with her thoughts. “Please don’t leave me here. Please speak to me.”
The response to her words was a tremble of disapproving red through her vision, glaring in its suddenness, a flash of magenta pink, a crazed thread of fluorescent green. The overwhelming feeling of tension, anger. A grudge.
“You have returned to Us.”
Caroline felt relief flood through her at the voice thrumming through her brain, at once familiar and yet alien. Despite the clear lack of pleasure in the tone, the presence of another being was enough. She could have wept.
The voice added, sharply, “We have nothing else for you. We gave you what We could.”
“I need your help,” Caroline said. “The power that you gave me…I need it back, just for one last thing.”
She realized as she said it that she was asking favors of unseen beasts; in old stories, such things had a steep price.
She expected to see the visions boiling through her, the same underwater landscapes she had been shown before, seeing through the eyes of something she could never fully understand. But there was nothing of the sort. The Sisters were not letting her see through their eyes, not this time.
“What you were given was not always Ours to give,” the voice said. “What you were given was a blessing. You ask that We bless you, again? And why? We watched you. Our Eye was upon you as you walked. You used the gift unwisely. To steal, to eavesdrop, and to waste precious time that your kind do not have. Why should We bless you again?”
Caroline thought, fleetingly, of the moonlike eye in the hole at the bottom of the resort swimming pool, and her stomach did flips. She thought of consuming Reyville’s memories in great gasps, of choosing to take instead of confess.
“You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t know what you had given me, and when I found out, I misused it for my own gain. I’m truly sorry.”
The voice did not respond. Calculating, perhaps? Judging?
So Caroline said, “Search me, know my thoughts. Sift through every inch of my mind, and see what the murderer has done with your prophets. I would not return if it was not important.”
At her invitation, she felt the curious, probing fingers of the Sisters combing through her memories, the maddening tingle of thoughts being picked through like so many old photographs in a dusty box. She felt nausea rising, the crush of weight on her lungs pressing even harder.
But she could feel when they paused, when they focused in. The image of the room of cages, the door marked SPECIMENS, rose into her mind and stuck there, curling at the edges as though burning.
“What is this?” the voice said.
“Your prophets are being held and tortured here,” Caroline said. “I want to save them. I want to make it right. But I will need help.”
The Sisters held onto the image for longer than Caroline liked, the smell of the cage room filtering into her senses somehow, old feces and fresh fear.
And then, all of a sudden, an image of Flora, sitting in the folding chair, hands in her lap.
“This is the murderer.” The voice said it calmly, but with a seismic rumble underneath that reminded Caroline of Reyville’s voice when he was righteously angry.
Caroline said, “Yes. With your help, I will seek justice.”
The images vanished, and there was a flicker of colors to replace it, blues and greens and golds, a kaleidoscope.
“This is the last time,” the voice said. “We have found agreement, and We consent to bless you again, because there is nothing so dear to the Sisters of the Tides, to We Who Watch the Moon, than a peacekeeper. You land-dwellers do such things very poorly.”
Caroline said, “Yes, we do. You’re right. But at our best, we try.”
The voice seemed to agree. There was a pause, and then—suddenly—a searing heat and light touched Caroline’s forehead, spreading to her eyes, down to her hands, to her feet. She opened her mouth to scream, but could not, and when it was over she felt dizzy and weak, her limbs tingling.
“This is the last time,” the Sisters repeated. “Bring justice to Our prophets. Return the living to Us, and mourn the dead. But beware: this final gift is potent, stronger than the one before, and will burn out fast as flame. Do what you must do, but do it quickly. Do not fail.”
Stars swirled around Caroline’s head in the void, a mad galaxy wheeling overhead, and she shook. “Thank you,” was all she could manage before the grip on her foot loosened, her lungs remembered that she was suffocating, and she rose struggling to the surface, reaching for the open air.
When she burst out into the sunshine, Reyville shouted for her, the panic in his voice like a sweet song of familiarity.
Caroline mustered the last of her strength and swam for the Princess, heading for the stern where Reyville had dropped a short rescue ladder. He reached out his hand to help her, but she shook her head firmly.
“No,” she said. “No, don’t touch me. You can’t touch me. Not yet.”
He recoiled, stood back as she climbed up and out of the water and lay on the deck, breathing life back into herself, scouring the heavy weight of the void out of her mind. She felt Reyville lay a blanket over her, and she pulled the corners around her shoulders, sitting up.
The power of the Sisters’ gift was like a hum, like ever-present tinnitus, so electric that she fancied she could hear the old beams of the Princess singing a song of itself beneath her. So strong that when she looked up, she could catch glimpses of Reyville’s ghosts holding onto the edges of his shirt, hanging from his shoulders, trailing from his ankles. The whole world was suddenly alive with spirits, tumbling in the water, riding the breeze. It was terrifying.
Reyville watched her, patient as ever. He hovered over her, but did not get any closer.
“Did it work?” he asked, finally.
Do not fail, the Sisters had said.
Caroline chuckled, and stared down at her hands, and nodded.
“I’ve been blessed,” she said. “One last time.”
*******
They waited for the quiet of nightfall in the warmth of the Princess’s cabin, tied in the Port Salish marina, sipping tea and making phone calls. To Dan, the Port Salish Harbormaster. To Andy, who had a particular part to play in all of this. The pieces moved across the chess board, and Caroline felt the trawler humming, the sea singing. It was bliss and it was pain, to be so aware. For each cell of her skin to be awake and alive. There were no welts, this time; her whole body was a scar, sensitive and alert. She longed for the cooling caress of the sea, the softness of the ocean floor, as if her mind was not her own. Her thoughts kept wandering to alien landscapes, to places no human should ever see.
Reyville kept his distance, and Caroline was glad. She did not know—did not want to know—what would happen, if they touched. Not like this.
When night fell, they climbed together into the little white dinghy that trailed behind the Princess. In the little boat they left the marina, the safety of the trawler with its golden galley lights. They headed out into the open sea, hugging the shore in the unlit dark, curving around Port Salish, the homelights of Orchard Beach glittering ahead.
There was only one entrance into the Dark Lion facility that they knew Flora would not expect them to attempt. Only one impossible way in, but it was their best option.
This has to work.
Reyville navigated the dinghy to the beach, dragged it up onto the shore out of reach of the tide, and then he followed Caroline’s lead as she walked them both down to the water’s edge.
The waves whispered against the rocky beach, an isolated place below the Orchard Beach bluff, and Caroline stood looking out at the black smudge on the horizon that she knew was the Brack, across the strait. Then, she whistled. It was the same invitatory, singsong tune she used to draw little Vee to herself, to feed her table scraps. But this time, it was not Vee who appeared.
Instead, the water agitated and four adult fishmaids climbed out of the waves on their strange slender arms, whipping their tails.
They all had a scattering of welts on their dappled skin, some on their arms, some on their tails or across their torsos. The mark of the Sisters’ prophets. Wild animals, yes, but with something else in their seal-like eyes: an understanding that they should not have, that no being should have.
No words were exchanged. Only the shiver of recognition, Caroline bearing a borrowed authority. The fishmaids beckoned Caroline and the Captain into the water with slaps of their tails, tapping of their strange hands on the rocks, and the two followed, wading up to their shoulders, then allowing the fishmaids to take their arms and plunge them under.
It was shocking and fast, the way the fishmaids swam in unison, taking turns pulling Caroline and Reyville through the darkness to the place in the rocks where the underground river spilled out into the sea through an open, cavelike mouth.
They lifted the two humans to the surface only once, to allow a deeper breath, before plunging up into the rocky tunnel, against the current.
*******
Caroline and Reyville spluttered, their heaving breaths echoing in the cavernous room as the fishmaid prophets lifted the two up so that they could grab the sides of the manmade canal and climb into the room filled with the crates, where Caroline had been kept prisoner only a day or so before. It was strange to see it now, unlit; all of the lights were off, and the door was ajar.
The fishmaid prophets pulled themselves up onto the edge of the canal and settled in, curling their tails around themselves, their wide eyes glinting in the dark. Waiting, watching, to see this through.
Voices were audible through the open doorway, and Caroline and Reyville kept to the wall. It was clear that Flora’s staff were packing, the sounds of crates and cases being moved, desks and shelving being dismantled. For all that, it sounded like a skeleton crew, perhaps only a few researchers at most. But Caroline had the sense that many, many more were elsewhere in the tunnels.
Caroline thought, fleetingly, of Andy. She hoped he was doing his part. There was no going back, now.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps approached the open doorway. Caroline and Reyville froze against the wall as a young lab assistant entered with a tablet, staring into the glowing screen. She flipped on the lights and absently closed the door behind her, starting to count a stack of crates just inside for an inventory, when she looked up from the screen and saw Caroline, Reyville, and four dark-eyed fishmaids staring at her.
Caroline startled. She knew this girl.
It was Noah Banfield’s girlfriend, from the haunted plant shop.
“Amanda?” Caroline said.
The girl flinched at the sound of her own name, and then—to Caroline’s shock—she burst into tears of quiet misery.
“It's you,” Amanda said, shoulders curling inward with shame. “I didn’t know about any of this, okay? I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t.”
Reyville kept an eye on the door while Caroline drew a little closer. “What are you doing here, Amanda?”
The research assistant clutched the tablet to herself, trembling. “I thought RUMOR would look good on my resume,” she said, tears still glimmering in her eyes, voice shaking. “I had no idea any of this was going to happen. Dr. Burnside seemed so nice. She’s a botanist, like I want to be. I really thought it would be different. But then she asked me to join a special project, and…I couldn’t tell anyone, about what’s going on here. She said I would go to jail. She said I’m, like, complicit.”
Caroline glanced at Reyville, whose eyes were soft with empathy.
“Flora says a lot of things,” Caroline said, gently. “We’re here to fix it.”
Amanda looked at them, then at the fishmaids. “What are you going to do?”
“We need to release the specimens,” Caroline said. “Someone on the outside is getting the authorities involved.”
At least we hope so.
“Oh. You’ll need this,” Amanda said, quickly. She reached into her RUMOR-issue coat pocket, pulled out a slim keycard. “Take mine. Please. I want to help. Can I do anything?”
“Best way you can help is by staying safe,” Reyville said. “Can you go out through the mausoleum entrance and make sure the coast is clear for us, and for the specimens? Our friend Andy should be waiting there.”
She blinked, nodded, relieved to have marching-orders. “Yes. I can do that, yes.”
Caroline took the keycard and gave Amanda a smile. “Everything is going to be okay,” she said. “I promise.”
The young assistant smiled and then scuttled from the room, doing her best to look casual—and failing—as she rounded the corner and out of their sight.
Through the open door, Caroline recognized the room beyond as the main laboratory area she had seen when she had been here previously, and the door marked SPECIMENS was across, at a diagonal.
The room was mostly empty except for a pair of assistants talking in a far corner, packing up some equipment into boxes. Reyville led the way and Caroline followed him, as quickly and quietly as they could, across the lab to the door marked SPECIMENS. They swiped the keycard and the door chimed, allowing them entry.
No packing had been done here, yet. The room was the same as it had been when Caroline first saw it. The clamor started up as soon as they walked in, the manic complaints of terror from the animals and birds. The humans mostly sat tense, traumatized, yet thin ripples of hope ran through their faces.
Caroline went straight to the cage containing Longshank.
“Well, now,” said the old man, curled in a too-small cage, slender fingers still holding the bars. “Escaped the lion’s jaws, did we?”
Caroline said, “We’re here to get everyone out. Will you help us?”
Longshank’s lamp eyes seemed to gutter like a low flame, his sharp teeth visible behind his thin lips. “It’s hunger, you know, that speaks loudest. The lion has forbidden me from transforming. This cage; too small. I would harm myself to be myself. And yet, hunger weals.”
He pinned her with his strange gaze. “If you let me free, I will satisfy myself.”
“But not with us,” Reyville said, that tenor of island authority, something Caroline felt deeper now than ever before. “And not with the rest of these, in the cages. We need you to clear the way out. Up and out, to your home in the woods, if you like. Will you do it?”
Longshank smiled, but there was deep exhaustion and pain behind it. “If you let me out, I will do what I must, and should it please you…let it.”
Caroline paused. It was a gamble. Longshank was not given to direct answers.
“Will you swear,” she said, “on the memory of the woman who loved you? That you’ll do no harm to the innocent, that you’ll lead them up and out?”
This, at last, had a strange effect on the old man. His shoulders seemed to straighten, his gaze heavy on Caroline but his mind traveling back, back centuries.
“Clever,” he said, but with a genuine smile. “Yes. I will swear on the memory of the woman who loved me. I think, perhaps, she would have honored you. She was a clever wit, too. A pure-hearted maiden of mischief. Yes, I will swear.”
Caroline glanced up at Reyville, but he returned it with his usual trust. So she reached out with the keycard, scanned it on the digital lock, and the door of the cage chimed and clicked. Reyville pulled the door open and the two stepped back to let Longshank emerge, tongue sliding over his sharp teeth.
“Well, now,” he said, stretching his long limbs as if he had been sleeping. “Well, now. Well, now! This is better.”
He stood before them and bowed low, like an actor on a stage.
“It seems I have a debt to repay,” he said as he straightened back up. “Go and do, and watch me clear the path!”
He opened the door to the laboratory and then, in a nightmarish blink, he shifted easily and horrifyingly into his form as a giant spider, the spectacle even worse up close. But the monster scuttled through the door into the wider laboratory amid shouts of horror from the assistants. An alarm was raised, a harsh klaxon screaming through the tunnels. Doors opened all around the facility, Dark Lion staff running to investigate.
It had begun.
With trembling hands, Caroline began to scan the keycard on all of the locks, throwing cage doors open as Reyville helped people climb out, pulled animals from their enclosures, shooed birds into the tunnel. Caroline tossed the tops of tanks open for the fishmaids to climb out, sliding down onto the stone floor. The alarm blared, the screams and shouts from the outer laboratory echoing madly as Longshank laid waste to the room in whatever way pleased him.
In the midst of the chaos, Caroline looked down the tunnel at the far end of the cage room only once, and saw her: Flora.
Flora, coming to see what was happening, and then realizing.
She appeared at the far end of the cage room for a moment, white lab coat gleaming in the low light, before disappearing down a passageway.
Caroline handed the keycard to Reyville, careful not to brush his hand with her own.
“I’m going after Flora,” she said. “Stick to the plan.”
She did not wait for him to respond. Instead, she tore off down the tunnel, away from the noise and the mayhem of escaping specimens, of freed victims, deeper still underground.
*******
Ghosts flickered in the tunnels, watching Caroline as she passed. Hollow-eyed ghosts of Dark Lion’s victims, animal and human alike. They stood beside mournful shades, vintage and perplexed, their lives claimed by tuberculosis. The two populations met and mingled in this place, watching the goings-on with silent disapproval.
Caroline felt them follow her as she pursued Flora through the maze.
She did not know what to expect. She thought, perhaps, Flora would try to escape through a back entrance, that she and Caroline would burst out into the night together, down a suburban street, the nonsequitur lending an eerie quality to their chase.
But no. It all ended abruptly, Caroline turning the corner into a small room.
It was Flora’s office. There were boxes on the floor; she had been packing. But on the walls were personal flourishes, personal touches. There was a small cot bed, and shelves with books. It was an office, but also a home away from home.
Caroline remembered how spare and empty Flora’s real house in Orchard Beach was, except for the upper floor, the museum of collected oddities. And suddenly, she pitied Flora, for making this tiny space underground a home, only a few twists and turns from a room full of imprisoned victims. How many ways could Flora Burnside have turned out, had she made different choices?
It felt jarringly pathetic. It made Flora seem very small, somehow.
Flora herself stood against the far wall, holding a syringe out like a weapon. For the first time since the night they captured Longshank, she looked afraid, those brown eyes steely like a trapped animal.
“Caroline,” she said. “You can’t do this to me.”
“It’s already done.” Caroline held out her hands, proving she was unarmed. “Longshank and the others are free. Reyville is going to lead them out. And when they show up at the mausoleum entrance, the police will be waiting.”
With Andy. That was Andy’s role. She hoped beyond hope he had been able to do it. But that was just it: she didn’t live in Flora’s world. Her friends were dependable. Family. They would do their best, and so would she.
“The police can’t do anything,” Flora said, but it was a feeble excuse, and her voice betrayed her uncertainty. “All of Dark Lion’s work is encrypted. There’s no evidence to prove it.”
“They’ll take one look at the starved and mistreated people escaping out of that tunnel, and they’ll have no choice but to come in and raid everything,” Caroline said. “They can take all the time they need, after that. It’s done, Flora. Come with me, out of here. If you come quietly it’ll be better for you.”
Flora laughed, and it turned into a whimper, almost a sob. “You’ve ruined it. All of it.”
“What did you think you were going to get?” Caroline asked. “Money? Was there that much money in whatever pharmaceuticals you thought you could make, out of Reyville’s DNA?”
“The fact that you can sound so flippant proves to me that you have no idea what you’re talking about.” Flora’s voice went low, icy. “Yes, the money would have been substantial. You’re crazy if you think otherwise. The drugs, the cures, the potions, the poisons…the fountain of eternal youth, maybe. Yes, it would have been a windfall. But that’s not why I did it, and you know why.”
Caroline waited.
“I wanted…everything.” Flora blinked, wistful. “I wanted this island to tell me her secrets. I wanted to know her, beyond the stories. Maybe she would choose me. Maybe I would make her choose me.”
She shuddered a breath, whispered, “And I was so close.”
“Come with me.” Caroline stepped forward, ever so slightly. “Come quietly. It’ll be better. You know it will.”
Flora shook her head, held out the needle. “I’m not going anywhere. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Caroline ignored that, stepped a little closer. “Flora, it doesn’t have to end in pain. Please come with me. I understand what you were trying to do. I can help.”
Flora lowered the syringe by a fraction. “You can’t help.”
“I can.” Caroline’s heart thundered in her ears as she held out her hand, slowly closed the gap between them. “Take my hand. I’ll show you. What it means for the island to choose you. I can show you. Then you’ll know.”
For one wild moment, Caroline thought Flora was going to rush her, to plunge the needle into her with a war-cry, one last attempt at rage. But instead—too tempted by the opportunity to know—the researcher reached out.
Their hands clasped, and the world heaved.
The gift seared through Caroline’s bloodstream, visions racing through her mind in a horrible parade. Flora’s entire life, all of her thoughts, filling her brain in gallons. And she felt the tearing of her own thoughts and memories, ripping out of her mind and rushing into Flora’s, the passage of everything, a two-way street.
And then—oh, then—Caroline felt the soil beneath her feet churning, the island’s ancient memory using her as a lightning rod, rising up and through their touching fingers into Flora’s very skin, into her nerve endings, into her marrow.
It was giving her everything, just as she asked.
Flora screamed, terror and pain and grief all at once. Caroline wanted to let go, and she couldn’t. She felt the ghosts crowding into the office, felt the trembling of the island’s foundations, a great chorus. It was all she could do to keep her hand on Flora’s, to let the island do its work, to let this play out, a conversation that had gone beyond her, away from her. She was merely a conduit, a witness to the island’s justice.
It became unbearable. The tipping backwards, as if she might disappear into the void, as if she might never find her way back. A great eye upon her, like the moon, and a great blackness beyond.
And then, Caroline felt hands on her shoulders, strong and gentle, and the touch slammed her back into the present. She released her grip from Flora’s palm.
The researcher swayed, eyes fluttering back, and crumpled into a heap on the floor, syringe falling from her limp fingers.
Caroline sank back into Reyville’s arms as he lowered her down carefully, terrified to touch him. But what had been given had also been spent—the fire doused, never to return—and his face filled her vision, and her skin was only skin, and his eyes were so blue, and so good, and so full of relief and home.
“Did they get out?” Caroline asked. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.
Reyville nodded. “Everyone's out.”
Behind them, in the tunnels, the pattering of feet and the shouting of authoritative voices told her that Andy had done his job. The police were inside the facility.
It was over.
Reyville swept a stray curl from her cheek.
“You did it,” he said, softly.
But she shook her head, pulled him as close as he could get. It would never be close enough. She wanted this forever, this scent and these eyes and this scarred lip. This man. This Captain.
“No,” she sighed, drawing his forehead down to rest against hers. “We did it.”
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This was SO GOOD! What a satisfying climax! I love seeing how Caroline and Reyville’s kindnesses and connections keep coming back to them.
I mistakenly thought the prior episode was the season finale up until I saw this in my inbox, but no the showdown is now. Enjoyed the bits of negotiation. You know, Flora strikes me as being similar to the villain from Goldgreen now that I think about it.