She felt better when she stepped out, fumbling for the towel. She wasn’t tired, despite the fact she’d had no sleep again last night. Those old exhausted days that had felt like a bruise seemed so long ago, though she would have gone back to them now in a heartbeat. The gritty eyes, pounding head, furred tongue and dizziness would have been better than … this. The feeling that her brain was being continuously doused in water so freezing it made her eyes sting.

Too awake.

What kind of society would it be if everyone always got a perfect night’s sleep? Thea wondered. All those bright-eyed people skipping about, being polite to each other, being considerate and patient and making calm, measured decisions. Freaky.

She quickly dressed and it was when she sat on Moses’s bed to put on her socks and shoes, lost in a utopia of well-slept citizens, that she noticed the little lumps in Moses’s pillow.

Little round, tablet-shaped lumps.

They tumbled into her hand when she shook them out. His old sedatives. Whoever had been giving them to him before they arrived had clearly not checked that he had been swallowing them because here they all were. Thea realized that for the whole time he had been with them in the lighthouse Moses had been steadily getting more and more alert.

Something fluttered in her stomach.

She ran back into the kitchen to tell Ethan … only to find him unlocking Moses.

Chapter 36

‘Ethan?’ Panic gave an edge to her voice.

He didn’t respond, but kept crouching at Moses’s feet, fiddling with the shackles. Moses looked at her though, his gaze clear and attentive. He smiled bemusedly and raised his eyebrows as if this was a joke they were all in on.

‘Ethan?’

Cold water dripped down her neck from her shower-wet hair. Ethan casually glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes glassy.

‘One mission objective located and secured.’ He wasn’t talking to her; it was like he was talking into an imaginary headset. ‘Other hostages still not found.’

He pulled the shackles away and Moses sighed with relief, rolling his ankles round and round and flexing his toes.

With mounting horror, Thea watched Ethan reach for the wrist cuffed to the radiator.

‘No!’ she yelled, her body acting on instinct.

She ran the few steps to him and was about to try and yank the keys from his hand, but Moses was quicker – and nearer. With a grunt of effort, he kicked his feet up hard, right into Ethan’s face, connecting with such power it snapped Ethan’s head back. As he toppled backwards, clutching at his nose, Moses delicately plucked the keys from Ethan’s hand.

But it wasn’t only the keys he’d taken from Ethan.

Moses pointed a gun at her.