by Paul Draker
Camilla ducked away and rolled onto her back, eyes wide. Had Jordan been about to shoot her with a speargun? She slid her body a few feet and cautiously peeked over a different part of the roof edge.
The point of the speargun was jammed into the ground again. Jordan reached up and swept her hood back, looking around her with an icy, remote expression on her face. But she didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge Camilla. She turned her back on the buildings and limped to the edge of the bluff, where she sat at the top of the wooden stairs that led down to the beach. She lay the speargun across her knees.
They just needed to talk.
Camilla slid down the sloped roof of the Victorian and swung her legs over the edge, lowering herself to hang from her arms. She let go and dropped. Her landing was a little clumsy, but she stood up and dusted off her hands and knees. Then she walked over to sit on the steps beside Jordan.
Jordan stared out over the water, toward the mainland. She never looked at Camilla. Through the thickening clouds, a band of sunlight made a stripe of ocean glow silver, bright enough to make Camilla squint. Seabirds hopped near their feet. Jordan’s ankle looked swollen. Painful. Camilla wanted to ask about it. But instead, she just watched the waves, the changing patterns of brightness, and held her tongue. She would leave it up to Jordan to break the ice first.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
Jordan flicked her wrist and two blue envelopes fluttered to the step at Camilla’s feet. She spoke without much life.
“You were under a collapsed freeway for four days? Is that true?”
Camilla nodded.
Jordan looked away toward the north. The silence stretched between them again.
Camilla swallowed. As difficult as it would be, she was ready to talk about what had happened to her, if that was what Jordan wanted. She would answer her questions. She didn’t want it to be another source of awkwardness between them.
Jordan spoke again.
“I want to go home.”
CHAPTER 142
Jacob sat cross-legged at the end of the dock, with his back toward the island. He waited patiently, facing the churning, frothing vastness of the Pacific Ocean. The most essential pieces of his research were piled beside him on the dock, next to his thigh. He stared out at the roughening water, not thinking much, reminiscing about surfing—he had done a lot of surfing in high school.
San Diego had some good surf spots. Maybe on the weekends he’d take it up again, once he got settled in down there.
There was a great surf break off the south side of the island here, too. No one really surfed it, though. For the life of him, Jacob couldn’t imagine why.
A footstep sounded behind him on the dock. A shadow fell across him.
He turned his head to look over his shoulder and smiled, reaching to take the offered hand.
“You’re the San Diego director?” he asked.
In answer, a bulky gray pistol shape like a power drill was pressed lightly against his forehead.
Jacob frowned.
His confusion disappeared in a wet, splintering thump that echoed off the rocks of the breakwater.
CHAPTER 143
Camilla stood facing the corner of the Greek Revival house, steeling herself. A black gap yawned in front of her, close to her feet. The structure had settled, separating from its foundation, leaving a seal-size opening into the darkness beneath. She didn’t want to go in there.
Jordan had limped away without another word, leaving her alone at the top of the steps, so she had slipped back inside the Greek Revival house for another peek at the scoreboard.
Now she could afford to play the waiting game again, but her rooftop hiding place was no good anymore. Jordan had seen it, and Jordan would tell Juan. So Camilla would go underground instead. She could watch both entrances and the entire flat area surrounding the houses, through the small gaps in the foundation.
The others all knew about what had happened to her when she was seven. Hiding underneath the house was absolutely the last place anyone would expect her to be. To win this game, she would face her terror, her childhood nightmare, head-on.
Juan and JT were the only two left. Travis had to be JT’s target, but JT had ignored him for some reason, probably saving him for the very end. But whichever of the two—Juan or JT—prevailed, when they returned she would surprise them by firing from the darkness below.
She looked at the hole again, steeling herself to enter it. The longer she stood here in indecision, the greater her risk of being seen. But it was difficult, oh so difficult, to make herself enter that narrow, black space. She squatted in front of the gap and closed her eyes.
Sliding her legs through, she rolled over onto her belly and eased backward through the gap. Her breath caught in her chest as darkness closed over her head. She turned and crawled deeper under the house to check the view from the other gaps, but the pinholes of light where they opened to the outside seemed dim and distant now. The blackness she moved through felt suffocating, like a blanket. Her heart sped up, thudding in her chest and throat. She looked back over her shoulder. The entrance was still visible behind her, but it seemed faraway and fragile.
Oh god, what if it disappeared? What if something blocked it? She stopped crawling and froze. Dread flooded her limbs with weakness, and she bit her lip. She had to get moving again. But she couldn’t force herself forward.
Keep going. You can’t freeze up now. Arms and legs. Move!
A bulky shape emerged insect-eyed from the darkness beside her.
One strong hand clamped over her mouth, holding her head immobile. The other hand reached out and took her paintball gun from her. Camilla’s eyes bulged with fear as an inhuman face with green, telescoping eyestalks leaned into hers. Its mottled skin made it impossible to make out other features.
“Brave girl, coming down here,” JT said. “Where did Jordan go?”
The night-vision goggles and camouflage facepaint made him look alien and terrifying. The hand over her mouth relaxed slightly.
Sagging against his fingers, Camilla sucked in a ragged breath. Her heart felt like it was going to explode. “I don’t know,” she gasped, muffled by his palm.
“I never figured you for a cheater. But I guess money can do that to anyone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You took out Jordan,” he said. “I think you’re a free target now, Camilla. Five points for anyone.”
“But why? She was my assigned target.”
“Show me.”
With shaking fingers, Camilla rummaged in her pockets. She pulled out two envelopes, thankful that Jordan had left her Veronica’s envelope as well as her own. Camilla had transferred Veronica’s target card into her own envelope—one of the two she held out now in the near darkness.
JT plucked them away, and she heard paper crinkle. The stalks of the night vision goggles aimed downward, and JT chuckled.
“Jordan was after Juan. I wish I could’ve seen that.”
Then he opened the other envelope. Hers. He stared at it silently for a while. Then his fingers released her face.
Camilla fell to her hands and knees in the dark crawlspace, gasping. She strained to see. She could hear paper crinkling again, then JT spoke in a cold, emotionless voice that sent a chill down her spine.
“Look at this.”
“I can’t see.”
“Shit.” He laughed. “I forgot. Come over here, then, where you can see.”
A large shape blocked the light from the gap momentarily, and her heart constricted. Then the shape shrank as JT crawled away. She followed.
In the slanting light from the gap, he held three envelopes. One was labeled “JT,” and another was hers. He slid the target cards out of them.
Both cards said “Jordan.”
“Something is wrong here,” JT said.
“Just about everything is wrong here,” she replied.
He nodded. Then he turned over the third envelo
pe—Jordan’s—and pulled out the target card with Juan’s name. JT slid it into his own envelope and tucked that into his vest pocket.
“I’m going to go talk to Juan…” He pushed his night vision goggles up onto his head, and his eye held hers for a moment.
“…but for you, Camilla, I’m afraid it’s game over.”
CHAPTER 144
JT picked his way across the breakwater, staying low, the waves foaming at his feet. Passing the empty dock, he looked up at the angry clouds gathering above the island. Thunder rumbled in the distance. He stood still for a moment, watching the changing sky. Without being obvious, he used his peripheral vision to scan the terrain behind him.
There was no sign of the small shape he had noticed earlier, flitting from rock to rock behind him, keeping low and in the shadows, trying to stay out of sight.
There’s no reason to follow me, girl.
He pulled Camilla’s paintball gun out of his combat vest. Wrapping a hand around the frame of the gun, he squeezed hard, feeling the plastic splinter under his fingers. He folded the wreckage of the gun in half and tossed it out into the water.
I hope you saw that. You weren’t going to get it back, anyway. Now, leave.
He pulled out his own paintball marker and scanned the rocks ahead.
This was between Juan and him.
He stepped onto a rocky finger that jutted out into the water. Kelp and foam rose and fell in the narrow channels on each side, swirling just below his feet. JT looked south toward the dock again, his paintball marker held in a two-handed grip. Then he looked down at the water below him. Something glinted near the bottom, catching his eye. Taking a few steps forward, he aimed the paintball gun at it.
Something struck his leg on the other side—his blind side—followed by rapid impacts to his hip, chest, and arm. He whipped his head around in time to see the last paintball fly up out of the water from the opposite channel, striking his shoulder and spattering him with more yellow paint. Shit. Ambushed.
But now I’ve got you, amigo.
Overlapping ripples spread across the dark water where the paintballs had erupted from the surface. JT could see nothing beneath. He stayed still, waiting, watching.
Water dripped on rock behind him. He turned very slowly.
A dark, wet shape hauled itself up out of the first channel and onto the ledge, crouching there for a moment. Then Juan stood up to face him, silent and ready.
JT inclined his head. “No bubbles.”
“I can hold my breath for a long time.”
“Where’s your air tank?”
“If I had a tank, I would have been out of here a long time ago.”
“You’re a liar.” JT rolled his neck from side to side, cracking it. He dropped his paintball marker, letting it slide down into the water. “I’ve seen you out here with a tank on. Sneaking around, night after night.”
“Now who’s lying, JT?”
JT shifted, holding his arms out to his sides, ready. “I want my gun back.”
“Not going to happen.”
“We’ll see about that.” JT inched toward Juan, who stood at the edge with the water behind him.
“What did you think of Brent’s superdrug talk?” JT kept his voice casual.
“Brent’s lost the plot,” Juan said. “But I do have a couple questions for you.”
JT took another step, and Juan aimed the paintball marker at his good eye. “Last warning.”
JT stopped fifteen feet from him. “Ask away.”
“Why was your final mission classified?”
“‘Classified’ means I can’t tell you, hombre.”
Juan fired, and JT whipped his face sideways to protect his eye. He felt the sting and the spatter of paint against his ear, but he didn’t flinch. Then he slowly turned his head back to face Juan again.
You just killed yourself, amigo.
“Why was it classified?” Juan repeated.
“Because the shot that brought the chopper down came from one of our own. Friendly fire. It happens, but the unit that shot us down wasn’t supposed to be in that valley. They were operating off the books—without official sanction from our so-called regional allies. It would have been a political shit storm if it got out, so they covered it up. For my silence, I got to walk away.” JT’s hand drifted to his pants pocket. “You’re not going to walk away from this, though.”
Juan tucked the paintball marker into his BC vest. “How did Veronica get hold of your court-martial transcript?”
“You put it in her luggage.” The Benchmade tactical knife was in JT’s hand. “She’s a killer, but she’s not Julian’s spy, Juan. You are.” He flicked his wrist, and the blade locked open.
Juan’s hand whipped toward his thigh and the grip of the Glock, but stopped in midair. He crouched, his other hand dropping toward the dive knife sheathed on his ankle. But again he froze, and pulled his hand away. He straightened up slowly.
“Afraid of me?” JT asked. “Force Recon trains killers—you should be.”
Juan shook his head. “It’s not that.” His hand drifted to the buckle of his weight belt. “I’m trying to figure out how to avoid killing you.”
He whipped off the belt, and let the heavy lead dive weights dangle from his right hand. Eyeing JT, he shifted the belt to his left hand.
Shit.
Juan now held the belt on JT’s blind side.
CHAPTER 145
A minute later, JT lay crumpled at Juan’s feet. Juan pulled a blue envelope from JT’s pocket and stepped back. Blood dribbled from the slash across his shoulder and upper chest where the tactical knife had sliced through his wetsuit. Backing up to the edge of the water, he buckled the weight belt around his waist again. Then he slid JT’s target card from the envelope and read his own name.
He and JT had been each other’s targets. Full circle. Juan was now the last person standing—the winner of the assassin game.
He wouldn’t have to face Jordan.
His shoulders sagged in relief, but his throat felt tight again.
JT was moving, pushing up to his hands and knees. Juan found it surprising, considering the blows he had taken from the lead weights.
JT shook his head as if to clear it. Then he raised his neck, and his one-eyed gaze met Juan’s. He got his legs under him, getting in a position to spring.
Time to go.
Juan stepped backward and let himself fall, half-turning as the dark water closed over his head. Pushing off the rocks with his feet, he coasted parallel to the bottom. Corkscrew rolling twice, he pulled the fins from his shoulders and slipped them onto his feet as he spun. Then he slipped the mask over his face and cleared the water from inside it with a sharp exhale through the nose. He knew JT would see the bubbles, but he was already a dozen yards from shore. With powerful kicks, he headed away from the ledge.
• • •
Thunder rumbled overhead. Juan sat alone on the large boulder, three meters above the churning waves. Año Nuevo Island lay in the near distance behind him, silent under the darkening sky. He had hauled up onto the last of the scattered rocks that trailed away through the rough water at the island’s northern end, very aware of what patrolled the deeper blue beyond.
Sitting where he and Lauren had found the water jugs three days ago, Juan now raised a full jug to his lips and drank. Then he set it aside.
A chill wind blew through his hair, drying it. He let one leg dangle over the edge. Raising his other knee, he rested his chin on it, leaning forward to watch the roiling sea. The swim fins hung behind his shoulders once again, out of the way for now. He glanced back over one shoulder at the island, separated from him by a hundred meters of whitewater. Nothing moved there. Even the seals had abandoned the rocks.
Paradise lost.
Juan faced forward again, looking out to sea and sitting very still, taking in the seething tumult of the ocean before him. The light of day was fading, even as the angry clouds closed over it, blotting out the sky.
A large cormorant flitted down to settle on the water twenty meters beyond the boulder. He watched it dispassionately.
A splash from below his feet made him look down. A lone seal wriggled onto the rocks below, hauling its rear flippers as far out of the water as it could. It looked around, nervous, and Juan smiled a grim smile, understanding why.
I know you’re out there right now.
Ripples spread across the black water in concentric circles where the cormorant had been moments before. A single feather floated at their center. The large seabird was gone, taken silently when Juan had looked away. He leaned forward, focusing intently on the open water in front of him.
Show yourself.
A dozen meters out, the ocean rippled. A large gray fin broke the surface. His eyes tracked it as it slid below the waves again.
We have much in common, you and I.
Thunder rumbled. Distant lightning fired the clouds. Another fin, larger than the first, sliced the water off to his right. Then a third.
You are also a survivor. Sixteen million years of evolution have left you unchanged.
The water roiled, and a juvenile elephant seal struggled to the surface in a spreading circle of red. A flash of white belly slid past as meter-wide crescent jaws clamped onto the seal to drag it under.
Untroubled by conscience, unburdened by remorse, impervious to pain… What would you teach me if you could speak?
Great whites passed before the boulder. Fins crisscrossed the waves in front of Juan. Tails slapped the water, warning other sharks away when they came too close.
Lightning flashed.
Sharks fed.
The sun sank lower and lower in the sky.
And then it was dark.
Juan stood on the boulder, facing the island again. Año Nuevo hunkered against the dusky sky, a silent black outline now, willing to kill to protect its secrets.
But soon enough, he would have the answer to one of them.
CHAPTER 146