“If it was broken you’d still be on the floor. Can you bend it?”

“No.”

“Keep going.”

Kane unlocked the bungalow. The boy looked around curiously when they were inside.

“You’re staying here?”

“For now. The hotel’s shut down.”

Connor leaned against the wall of the hallway.

“Can you see okay?” Kane asked.

“Yeah.”

“They got your head pretty hard. You’re not dizzy?”

“No.”

The floor was already spattered with blood. Kane told the boy to go stand in the bath and rinse his feet. The boy knew where the bathroom was. Kane caught his own reflection in the hallway mirror and there was a speck of blood on his forehead where he’d headbutted the man. He wiped it off and stood there for a moment, listening to the taps run, thinking: I’ve fucked up already. All he had needed was to remain relatively incognito. This would be everywhere by morning. Had he needed to do that? Had he enjoyed it? Rory had come to this island unwell, and Kane had followed him without due consideration to his own state of mind.

He got his first-aid kit and cleaned the dirt out of the boy’s foot before bandaging up the worst of it. Any deeper and the glass would have severed a tendon. The boy had been lucky. Kane used tweezers to get some of the worst grit out of the side of the boy’s face and applied some antiseptic, then had him extend his injured leg and checked mobility.

“Know who they were?” Kane asked.

“No. Who are you?” Connor asked.

“I just got here. You need to get the cuts properly treated or they’ll get infected.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Where do you live?”

“On the base.”

“The American one?”

“That’s right.”

“Think you should go to the police?”

The boy laughed. “No.”

“Why’s that funny?”

He shook his head, then exhaled softly through his teeth, making a whistling sound, wincing.

“What was the fight about?” Kane asked.

“It wasn’t a fight. They just went for me.”

“That’s true. Why’d they do that?”

“Because they’re arseholes.”

Kane nodded. No more information was forthcoming, and he didn’t want to appear too curious.

“Are your parents on the base?” Kane asked.

“Yes.”

“Got any way of contacting them?”

“No.”

“They’ll be worried about you.”

“Yeah.” The boy winced again, looked at Kane. “Do you have a car?”

“No.”

The boy looked disappointed. Kane stood up, an ominous sensation in his gut, realizing what he was about to do.

“Wait there.”

He walked out to one of the cars he’d seen with keys in the ignition—a Honda Accord from the nineties, parked outside a house with no lights on. Kane knocked at the house. No answer. He eased the driver’s door open, climbed into the trapped heat, started the engine. No one came to stop him.