The distance between the quiet lakeside road where they had picked up Noor and Soraya and the dealership consumed a considerable stretch of Hell's Paradise Island, enough that the limousine seemed to glide for a long while through a corridor of darkness with only its headlights and the scattered amber lamps along the asphalt pretending to be civilization.
On either side of the road, the night lay thick and almost liquid, swallowing the trees, the slopes, the distant shapes of private estates and whatever else the island wished to hide from polite company.
The roadlights offered small pools of gold that looked comforting at first glance, but comfort was often just darkness wearing better manners, and the farther they drove, the more those gentle lights seemed less like protection and more like decorative mercy placed there so rich people would not feel abandoned while traveling through the teeth of their own private paradise.
