“Why do you suddenly like bread?” Mike asked in doubt.
“They’re delicious.”
“Really?”
“Why are you asking so many questions? All I want to do is eat bread!”
“All right, I’ll bring you bread tomorrow.” Mike said. He looked meaningfully at Anna before leaving, sending chills down her spine.
The wind howled outside the cave at night. Tracy fell asleep after Anna told her a story. Anna tucked her in and walked cautiously into the woods. She still tried to repair the raft.
“Are you planning to leave?” she heard someone ask as she struggled to lower the raft into the water.
Alarmed, Anna asked, “Who is it?”
Mike stepped out of the forest. His shadow appeared extraordinarily long and slender in the moonlight. And he gave Anna a cold stare as if she were prey.
In a fluster, Anna explained, “No, it… it’s not what you think it is. I’m not trying to run away. I’m helping your daughter test this raft to see if it works. She wants to get out of here, so I need to make sure she’ll be safe.”
“Would you believe that excuse yourself?” Mike sneered.
Anna began to shake all over. She gritted her teeth and said, “I can give you the money you want if you let me go.”
“Come with me.” Mike said.
Anna had no choice but to follow him. They arrived at another shore a few moments later. She noticed a fishing boat anchored in the water with a young girl inside. And Anna recognized that it was Tracy.
Mike said, “The raft will not work in this river, and it will sink before reaching the shore. You can leave the island if you use this boat.”
“Do you want me to bring your daughter?”
“If you want to go, you have to bring her with you. I already put some things I want to give her on this boat. Don’t ever come back after you leave. If she asks you where I am later, just tell her I’m dead.”
“You don’t want her to leave the island, do you?” Anna asked, surprised.
“Yes, but she can’t spend the rest of her life on this island. I don’t want her to end up like her mother.”
By then, it was almost dawn, and Anna didn’t dare to waste any time. Mike pushed the boat hard against the shore after she got into it. The boat then swayed and moved toward the river’s center.
Anna sat on the boat’s bow, looking at Mike, who was standing on the river, feeling conflicted. But she was only sorry for a moment before being overcome by the joy of getting out of here. She was ecstatic because she didn’t believe she could escape.
After the boat left the shore, Anna noticed smoke rising from the island’s far side shortly. As if the entire sky had been set on fire, golden fire spread throughout the island.
She stood up as her heart skipped a beat. She thought to herself, What’s happening?
She could hear underwater engines starting up around her at that moment. Then, with a “bang,” someone shot a hole through the boat, causing it to shake violently. Anna screamed in shock as water poured into the cabin, leaving her at a loss for words.
“Tracy! Tracy!” She tried to wake Tracy up. But Mike had given her a strong sleeping pill that made her fast asleep. Anna kept tapping her, but she didn’t wake up.
The boat was rapidly sinking. Anna yanked Tracy’s hand and tried to drag her to the shore. She drowned in the river after choking on the water. Then she passed out.
“Those on the boat aren’t drug dealers! There are two women there!”
Several people jumped into the water right away.
When Anna was floating in the water, she felt someone pick her up. She was so used to this person’s embrace that she gave up fighting and closed her eyes and instead. In her dream, she discovered that both Tammy and Matthew had been kidnapped by drug dealers.
“Ah!” She sat up abruptly and broke out in a cold sweat.
The man beside her shook her hands and said in surprise. “Anna, you’re awake!”
Anna turned her head in a daze and saw the person in front of her. “Jasper, is that you?”
Jasper took her hand in his and said, “It’s me. How are you feeling? Does your chest hurt?”
Anna only had a slight headache. She took her hand out of Jasper’s, felt her forehead, and asked, “Where am I?”
“My house. You stayed in the hospital for a few days after you fell into the river. I took it upon myself to bring you back here after the hospital said you could go home.”
Anna gradually regained consciousness after noticing that the room’s layout appeared familiar. She gave a thoughtful nod and said, “I fell into the water. Right?”
“You left the island in a boat. The police thought you were drug dealers, but they didn’t dare to take action. So, they shot the boat and sank it.”
Anna gradually remembered everything: she escaped from the island in a boat. Someone shot the boat and broke it just as she was rowing. Then both she and Tracy fell into the water.
“Where has Tracy gone?”
“Who?”
“The little girl who fell into the water with me. She’s about this tall, and she’s twelve years old. She was in a coma, and she can’t swim either. Where is she?”
Jasper handed her a glass of water and told her, “Relax, we saved her. She was in better condition than you and woke up after a short stay in the hospital. She is currently taking a statement at the police station.”
“That’s great,” Anna said, taking a sip of water to soothe her parched throat.
As soon as Peace knew that Anna woke up, she hurriedly came to the room and told her, “Thank goodness, you’re alive! You know what? That night, all the drug dealers on the island started fighting, and no one was even on patrol. The cops barged in. But before they could do anything, the island began to burn. The fire was so large that it engulfed the entire forest. When Emily and her classmates arrived at the scene to clean it up, they discovered more than twenty bodies inside the house.”
“More than twenty people?” Anna’s eyes widened in surprise, asking, “There were about twenty people on the island. Who started the fire?”
“I have no idea. Thank God you left! It would have been a disaster if you were still there.”
“Has anyone survived?” Anna remembered that the fire had only recently begun when she left, and Mike was still watching her from the shore.
“I heard they caught a man with a big beard. He told the police everything.”
“What did he say?”
“He claimed that a woman had burned down the entire island.”
“A woman? Who?”
Peace asked, blinking. “Do you really believe that? When they cleaned up the bodies, they discovered over twenty men and one woman. Could this woman have burned them all to death and then died?”
“A woman died?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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