by Paul Draker
Then he pictured Mason’s grinning face. I got something you might like, too.
His fist tightened around a handle wrapped in layers of the same duct tape Mason had tied him with, and he looked down at the shiv he had sharpened out of a split piece of steel rebar.
Four inches of jagged, rusty metal projected from his fist.
CHAPTER 79
Juan knelt at the base of the concrete seawall, making the fire.
Jordan held the little seal’s lifeless body in her arms. She sat cross-legged on the ground with her back to Juan, rocking soundlessly back and forth, looking away. The steel spear still protruded from the seal’s neck, and her clothes were soaked with its blood. For some reason, she didn’t want Juan to see her face right now. He felt an unfamiliar tightness in his stomach every time he looked at her.
The fire crackled, its orange tongues dancing as he fed it a dry piece of driftwood. The seawall sheltered it from the wind. Juan was very aware of the boarded-up factory building directly behind them, its featureless two-story facade looming over his shoulder.
I know you’re watching us right now, Julian. You and I will talk soon. You know things you shouldn’t, and you’re going to tell me how. And why.
He stepped over to Jordan, and she turned her face away from him. Was that wetness glistening on her cheek? Kneeling beside her, he gently tried to take the seal from her. She hugged it tighter to her chest, shaking her head stubbornly. But she still refused to look at him.
Juan shrugged and handed her the dive knife. Then he stood up and walked away.
CHAPTER 80
Lauren sat on a rocky slab at the island’s highest point, beside the wreckage of the lighthouse tower. Año Nuevo Point was visible a half-mile away, across the wave-churned strait that separated the island from the California coast. JT sat behind her, facing the other way, not saying anything. She leaned back against his broad, muscular back. He felt solid, dependable, and rock steady behind her, and she needed that right now.
The setting sun painted the dunes of the beach and the rocky bluffs around them with its orange light. The water was a little calmer today, gleaming silver in the oblique rays of sunset. Patches of sea grass and coyote bush waved in the gentle wind that ruffled her hair. She reached down, running her fingers through the dirt.
On the beach, looking small in the distance, the seals were oddly quiet. They did that around sunset, it seemed, and the island became relatively peaceful for an hour or two. Lauren found Año Nuevo’s rugged and barren beauty taking her by surprise. She tried to relax and forget about everything that had happened, enjoying JT’s silence and his company. His mood was different now. It had scared her earlier, the way he had gone all calm and ready, eyeing Juan with dark, speculating looks. She had kicked Juan out because she was angry, but she had also done it to protect him from JT. She had been afraid of what might happen if he stayed any longer.
“Natalie’s moving to the other building,” she said.
“Makes sense.” JT’s muscles shifted against her back, his lats flexing. “If I was her, I wouldn’t want to stay near Travis.”
“I’ve been thinking about what Brent was saying last night. If he’s right, putting someone like Travis in the show might make sense, although it’s really sick.”
“Just ‘cause the doc lied to us don’t mean he’s wrong.”
“And Veronica. Christ! She killed her first husband ten years ago. Knifed him. But you’d never know it—she looks like a Menlo Park soccer mom now. Scary.”
JT didn’t say anything, but she felt him nod.
“There’s some reason they picked these people,” she said. “Julian said they screened thousands. Some reason they picked us, too. What were they looking for?”
“Hardcore competitors,” he said.
“Really? Natalie?”
“Okay, people willing to take chances, maybe. People who aren’t going to quit or cry foul when the game gets rough.”
“Somebody’s going to get hurt or killed here.” She closed her eyes. “I’ve seen it happen before. This feels exactly like it did then.”
JT turned his head. She could see the side of his face, his eyes roaming the shore. “You said you had a climbing accident,” he said. “What happened?”
Lauren looked out at the water, knowing she had to talk about this. History was repeating itself here. And she felt comfortable with JT. If anyone could understand what she’d been through, it was probably the big ex-Marine. She leaned her head back against his hard, shaved skull.
“I got my American Mountain Guides Association certification six years ago,” she said. “Started teaching rock climbing in Yosemite, but the Valley was too tame for me. I was good, JT. Really, really good. A couple of the other instructors—buddies of mine I was tight with—we always used to talk a big game, how we were going to do some adventure travel, tackle some really exotic walls together. The whole Yosemite scene had become like Disneyland, crowded with tourists, day-trippers—a real circus. Climb a half mile of granite, you don’t want to look down and see a traffic jam of Winnebagos and minivans. The three of us, we were ready to step up to the big leagues, make a name for ourselves.
“One of the crew, Matt… he cooked up this crazy trip to the Baltoro Glacier in Pakistan. At first it was just campfire talk, but we kept egging each other on. Then he actually got the permits, and suddenly it wasn’t a joke anymore. We were going to do this thing—blaze a new route up Trango Tower, come back celebrities. How hard could it be, right?
“Next thing I knew, we were in Pakistan, on the road from Islamabad to Skardu. A twenty-eight-hour bus ride, but nobody could sleep. Matt kept talking names—climbers who’d pioneered famous routes. It was going to be talk shows for us. We’d write books, get gear endorsements. But by the time we were actually trekking into Paiju, after seven more hours of bumping along in a jeep, reality was starting to sink in.”
Lauren’s eyes went out of focus as she remembered how it had been. Her chest was starting to tighten.
“This was a whole different ball game than we were used to. JT, these mountains were bigger. Much more intimidating. Jagged, pointy peaks like shark’s teeth. Covered with giant ice fields, cracks the sun never reached.
“All the climbers we passed were world class. They made us feel like amateurs. After the first couple of conversations, we stopped telling anyone what we were planning. But for each other, we were still putting on a brave face. I wasn’t going to be the one to back out, and neither was Matt, and neither was Terry.”
“Trango Tower itself was like nothing I’d ever seen before. This giant granite finger pointing into the sky, as tall as a couple of El Capitans stacked on top of each other. Sheer drops on every side. We were in way over our heads, and I knew it. So did Matt and Terry, but we kept talking ourselves into it. We’d be okay as long as we were extra careful.
“I almost backed out on the last day’s approach to the Tower. Even getting to the base was hairy, trekking across a glacier and then the couloir, avoiding crevasses, constantly watching for rockfall. We couldn’t breathe properly—hadn’t acclimated to the altitude—and we hadn’t even started to climb yet.”
“As things were, we actually got fairly far up before the accident. We started up the southeast face—a route called Eternal Flame. Terry was the weakest climber of the three of us, so Matt and I traded off leads for the first few days. I was terrified the whole time, but I told myself that was good—it would make me careful. I think the others were telling themselves the same thing. We almost made the summit, JT.
“It all came apart for us on the fifth day.”
Lauren stopped and took several deep breaths. Oh Christ, her chest was so tight her back hurt. Pressing her spine against JT, she forced herself to go on.
“It was bound to happen. The three of us really had no business being up on Trango. Terry popped off a foothold and his arms were pumped, shaky from the altitude and four days on the rock. He came off the face. But
he’d also been sloppy—hadn’t placed enough protection to hold his weight in a fall. He peeled Matt, and then me, off the wall with him. My pro held all three of us. We bounced off the face a few times, dangling from the ropes. Matt and Terry were both killed in the fall.
“I was luckier, but I’d cracked three ribs and ruptured my spleen. I’d also hit my head hard. The helmet saved my life, but I had a skull fracture and a concussion, and hanging upside down didn’t help things any.
“When a climber falls in Yosemite, a couple hundred people see it happen. Rescuers are on their way before you stop swinging. A helicopter scoops you up and whooshes you to a hospital. But we weren’t in the Valley. We were in the middle of Bum-fuck Nowhere, in a remote corner of Pakistan, and the southeast face of Trango can’t even be seen from any of the camps below.
“JT, I hung there upside down for two days. The nights were awful. I don’t remember most of it. But there’s worse.”
She was going to throw up. Her back was shaking now, her arms. She could manage only a whisper.
“Even after I got right side up again, I couldn’t pull myself up the rope to get back onto the rock. Matt’s and Terry’s bodies were three hundred fifty pounds of dead weight hanging on the line attached to my harness, dragging me down. It was windy, and cold—we swung and twirled against the face like a wind chime. I knew I was going to die. I had no choice.”
Her chest heaved. Once, twice. She was going to puke for sure. Why didn’t he say something, anything at all?
“I cut them loose. Oh Christ, I cut ‘em loose. I had to. Their bodies fell thousands of feet to land somewhere on the rocks and ice below—they were never recovered. I watched them go, getting smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see them anymore. Then I jumared up the rope—a hundred, hundred twenty feet. I was in a lot of pain, but after dozens of rappels off shit anchors, I managed to make it down off the face. Alone. I think I was hallucinating the whole way down.”
Lauren gritted her teeth, clamping down on a whining sound that wanted to escape from her throat. Her hands were shaking. She put them in her lap and knotted her fingers together, forcing the words out.
“I kept seeing Matt or Terry. They’d be right below me or above me on the wall, not moving, watching me go by. Sometimes they would talk to me, but mostly they just looked at me, and there was something wrong with their eyes.
“I don’t remember too much after that. There was a Polish team at the base. They got me out of the mountains, and the embassy flew me back home, where I spent three weeks in the hospital.
“And I lied to you when we first met, JT. I haven’t done any real climbing since the accident.”
She took a deep breath, and her face pinched together. But she felt relief, too, as if she had puked out something rotten—something that had been choking her, poisoning her inside. JT stayed silent, but that was all right now. He hadn’t stiffened up, hadn’t pulled away from her. Feeling his deep, slow breaths through her back, she felt a swelling of gratitude toward the big lug, knowing that he was thinking about what she’d said. Maybe together they could figure something out, because things were going to shit here, fast, and if they didn’t do something about that, people were going to end up dead.
JT spoke. He sounded tired, older, to Lauren.
“My second tour in Afghanistan ended when our chopper got shot down over the Korengal.” He didn’t say anything for a while after that, and she thought of the pink network of scars she had seen, traced across his shoulder and left arm.
“Some tribesman hit the pilot with a lucky shot from the ridgetop. Copilot was hungover, in no condition to fly, so even though we’d logged him as flight crew, he stayed back on base. Long story short, the chopper went down the next valley over, about ten klicks outside the pacified zone.”
“We came down hard. My arm was busted in two places—open fractures, bones sticking through the skin. Scapula was shattered; they had to screw it back together—final screws just came out last year. My face was all bashed up, lots of other little shit, but I was in good shape compared to the others. Three other guys survived the crash. It was pretty clear DiMarco wasn’t going to make it. He was messed up real bad—just about cut in half. Collins’s back was all fucked up, and one of his legs. Sanchez—he was this nice kid—both his legs were busted bad. All three were conscious, but they couldn’t walk. I didn’t know whether to go try to get help or stay there with my squad mates, but I had to decide fast. In that valley, the smoke from the crash was going to draw the wrong kind of attention real quick.”
She felt him shifting behind her, and turned her head again to see him staring across the water. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Toughest decision I ever made, leaving my guys. But they knew it and I knew it—we were all going to die if I stayed. This way, there was a chance.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched, smoothed out, twitched again.
“Three days in that heat, my arm got infected—swelled up like a sausage. Talib were looking for me… knew I was out there. Once they even found me, but I got the dude with a rock—pancaked his head before he could yell for his buddies. Eventually, I stumbled across the One-sixtieth, running a patrol. Spooked ‘em—after making it through all that, I almost got shot by our own guys.
“Maybe being in a situation like that changes you somehow, I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it just lets you find out who you were all along, what you’re capable of doing to survive.”
Lauren nodded to herself, staring into her lap. There was nothing more to say. Without looking up, she reached out to the side and found JT’s hand on the ground beside them. He laced his fingers thru hers. Neither of them said anything. They just sat there, back to back, watching the sun’s rays fade and the shadows lengthen around them.
CHAPTER 81
“Belongingness,” Julian said. “Being part of a community, tribe, or family. These group-focused survival needs form the third level of Maslow’s hierarchy.”
Camilla watched their host on the monitor. She kept her gaze away from the doorway, where Jordan and Juan now stood like uninvited guests.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Veronica had said when they showed up a few minutes earlier. Then she had turned her back on them, and the rest of the blue team had pretty much ignored them, also. Camilla was still angry with both of them, even though she now realized that Juan had tried to warn her yesterday.
Still, they needed to hear Julian out, she reminded herself. Listen to what he had to say first. Then, as they had discussed last night, they all would decide together what to do.
“For today’s challenge,” he said, “it’s time to slow things down. Today’s competition will be a quiet one. There will be no physical contest. Today is all about emotional intelligence instead.”
Camilla exchanged a glance with Brent and relaxed. They had discussed this last night with Veronica and Mason, and the four of them had agreed: if any of them felt that what Julian proposed was too dangerous or risky, they all would refuse to play. She had watched her teammates’ reactions carefully and felt that Brent was with her all the way. She wasn’t too sure about Veronica, who hadn’t had much to say—Julian’s insensitive profile of her hung over them all like a cloud, making any conversation awkward. Mason had just grinned as usual. But he had nodded—while rubbing his injured knees, which only made her feel guilty all over again.
What Julian was talking about here sounded pretty tame, though. Even better, it sounded like a competition geared toward Camilla’s own strengths. She listened closely.
“As I said, the theme of today’s activity is belongingness. Gift-giving traditions have evolved in every culture, to celebrate belonging, and our little island community will be no different.”
Julian’s voice took on a conciliatory tone. “Yesterday things got quite intense—maybe a little out of hand, even. So relax, everyone. Merry Christmas. No teams today, no running around the island, no high-energy stuff. We’ll keep it low ke
y—just a small group of friends exchanging presents. But I warn you, you will have to think today.
“Fifty small gifts are distributed along the edge of the seal barricade. There’s no time element here. For this game, it really doesn’t matter which gifts you take. Just grab the first five you see, and head back—no more than five per person. Then we’ll all gather for the gift exchange.”
Fifteen minutes later, Camilla stood in the main room of the Victorian house, looking down at the small collection of objects she held: a plush toy—a stuffed blue cartoon Porsche with big eyes—a small pocketknife made of silver, a refrigerator magnet shaped like a Coke bottle, an elaborate platinum friendship bracelet, and a snow globe with a miniature Golden Gate Bridge inside—which was especially dumb since it never snowed in San Francisco. The gifts definitely hadn’t been out there yesterday. Julian’s hidden crew had been busy in the night again.
All ten contestants were gathered in the great room now. Tension buzzed in the air, but Camilla was glad to see that everyone seemed subdued and quiet today—yesterday’s descent into violence must have sobered everyone. Looking around the room at the items the others held, she tried to anticipate what the game would be. Each gift was monogrammed—silk-screened or printed or engraved—with a player’s name.
Each gift also had a miniature two-sided LED flashlight attached to it. Camilla flicked the switch on one, and green light splashed over her hands. She flicked it the other way, and the light glowed red. Shutting it off, she met Brent’s gaze. He raised his eyebrows, looking more curious than concerned—apparently he didn’t see much to worry about here, either. But she would reserve judgment until she heard the rules of the game.
She glanced at the others, reading the dynamics. Juan and Jordan were isolated from everyone else. They were unquestionably a couple now. It still hurt to see them, so she moved on.