“It doesn’t really matter who Mab left her fortune to,” I finally said, rolling up the paper and sliding it back into the tube. “Just that we have the will and Clementine wants it. We can use it for leverage.”

Owen shook his head. “She’s not going to let the hostages go, if that’s what you’re thinking. You know that as well as I do. Not now, when everyone’s seen her face and knows exactly who she is. She can’t afford to let any of them live.”

“That’s what I thought at first too. But I think good ole Clem has a slightly different plan in mind.”

I told Owen about the bombs I’d found on the bridge and under the bumper of the moving truck.

He frowned. “Okay, I understand about the destroying the bridge to help with their escape, but why would Clementine want to blow up the moving trucks?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But it doesn’t really matter, because the only way she’s leaving this island is in a body bag.”

Owen studied me in the moonlight. “Because of what she and Dixon did to Jillian?”

I didn’t say anything, but he could see the answer in my cold, angry eyes—along with the guilt.

“That wasn’t your fault, Gin,” he said. “It was a mistake, her having on the same dress as you. Just a stupid, simple, cruel twist of fate.” He hesitated. “She was a friend, but you don’t have to avenge her for me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

No, he wouldn’t. Owen preferred to handle such things himself, just like I did. It was one of the many things I admired about him.

“I know you wouldn’t ask me that,” I said. “But I need to avenge Jillian for me. Because it should have been my face that got blown off, not hers.”

“I’m not blaming you for Jillian’s death, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No,” I replied, weariness creeping into my voice. “You just blame me for Salina.”

His ex-fiancée’s name hung in the air between us, writhing around and around like a poisonous snake. But I’d said the words, and there was no taking them back. Despite the danger we were in, the danger we were all in, Eva, Phillip, and the others were right: Owen and I needed to start talking, to start figuring out where we stood and what kind of future we might have together. If I was going to die tonight, if we both might die tonight, well, I wanted to clear the air between us—about this, anyway.