C4 antho - Chamber Four

The Next Thing on Benefit ~257~
turned off onto a sandy track. When Patrick stopped and
shut off the engine, Sharon could see the surf in the distance,
and a beach, and she could see, closer, a tower rising
dark against the sky ahead.
Patrick got her out of the car and led her through a clearing,
past the tower, which she now saw must be some kind of
smokestack, past a couple of vacant iron buildings, toward
the shore. The tall woman from the other day, the Christian
woman, was waiting for them there. She had a rubber raft
pulled up on the beach. She held it by a rope, but when she
saw Sharon and Patrick coming, she pushed the raft into the
surf, splashing into the water after it. Her long dress was
soaked to the waist.
“Go, go, go!” the woman said.
Then Sharon and Patrick were in the raft on the water.
She sat at one end, looking back at the island behind them.
Patrick rowed. They were heading out into a little bay. Benefit
Island lay like a long shadow on the water behind them.
There were no lights on it that Sharon could see. Not one.
Patrick quit rowing. They were nowhere. They were between
the bay and the open sea. The island might have been
half a mile off. Sharon sat in the raft. She was barely awake.
She had promised to stay with Munro, and here she was in a
rowboat in the middle of the sea, without him. Patrick had
plucked her from her bed and pushed her right off the island,
and she hadn’t fought him to stay. She hadn’t pushed back.
They had given her nothing to push back against.
Now she saw ahead a little float or buoy, the size and
shape of a champagne bottle, bobbing on the low swell, with
a blinking green light on its end.
“Where’s Duncan?” she asked Patrick.
“Mr. Munro’s not ticketed for this trip, miss,” said
Patrick.