by Paul Draker
He tapped the inside of his elbow. “I’m also relying on the modafinil to counteract the high levels of opioid analgesics I’m injecting. That isn’t a factor for the rest of you.” Reaching into a pocket of his fishing vest, he withdrew a handful of foil pill packs and dropped them on the bed.
Juan picked up a few and pocketed them. Camilla dubiously did the same, followed by Mason and Dmitry.
Juan dusted off his hands. “Well, if that’s it, then—”
Camilla grabbed his wrist. “Juan, people are betting on us right now. Illegal gambling.”
“It fits.”
“And Natalie—Veronica may only be trying to protect her, but what if we’re wrong? What if Veronica herself took Natalie?”
Mason laughed. “You really haven’t figured Veronica out. She’s a mystery to you, isn’t she?”
Camilla stared at him surprise.
“She’s very high functioning considering what she is,” he said. “I’ll grant you that.”
“Mason, it’s been a long day…”
“Veronica’s a sexual predator, Camilla. She likes to kill men.” Mason grinned. “I’m lucky, I suppose. For some reason, she doesn’t really consider me a man.”
Was this another one of his morbid theories? Camilla looked at Brent.
Brent shrugged. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I suppose it could make sense.”
“But that means Natalie…”
“…is safer with her than with us,” Mason said. “Because if JT or Jordan didn’t take Natalie, then somebody in this room did.”
Troubled, Camilla thought about it. Travis’s paint color—brown—had been smeared on Natalie’s sweatshirt. Whoever had taken her had probably also freed Travis. And then deliberately framed him, using paint from his spare ammunition cartridge the same way Camilla had used hers on Juan after JT destroyed her paintball gun.
Juan spoke. “Veronica’s a danger to Camilla and Jordan as well.”
Remembering the sneaky way Veronica’s eyes had skittered away from her earlier, Camilla felt the skin at the back of her neck tighten. Veronica hadn’t wanted Camilla to catch her looking. And there had been something dark and calculating in that silvery gaze, hadn’t there?
“I think Juan’s right,” she said. “Veronica wants the ten million, and we’re both ahead of her in points.”
Mason nodded. “I hadn’t considered that. But it’s scary, given what she learned tonight by killing Travis…”
Camilla finished his thought.
“There’s more than one way to move up the scoreboard.”
CHAPTER 156
Veronica stood at the window. Staring through a narrow gap where the clear plastic had pulled away from the frame, she scanned the rain-washed darkness outside. A flash of lightning illuminated the open ground before her. All clear. She walked briskly through darkened rooms to another window at the back and checked the flat area behind the houses. Clear.
Natalie was upstairs. Resting. She was safe.
He—whoever he was—wouldn’t get past Veronica again.
She felt guilty. The lure of money had caused her to lose track of her priorities, and poor Natalie had suffered for it. The person who had done it… Veronica would punish him as soon as she found out which of them he was. She would make him crawl. Make him beg. Make him bleed. Her breathing sped up, and tingling warmth spread through her body.
She found herself hoping it was Juan.
After all, a man who could do a thing like that to his own sister, to his own mother—abandoning them to die… A man like that might be capable of doing anything to a woman. Her chest heaved. Anything at all.
Painful things. Disgusting things. Sick things.
Things that would make her bleed.
Letting her eyes unfocus, Veronica raised a hand and traced her mouth with her fingertips, brushing them against her lips.
Things that would leave permanent scars inside her.
Things she couldn’t even imagine.
The tingling intensified, localized, sharpened. She could hear herself panting now, and she hated herself for it.
A small noise came from the other side of the room. From the stairs.
Her gaze hardened, snapping into focus. The ground around the houses remained clear. Face warm, mouth dry, Veronica continued to stare out the window.
“Where do you think you’re going, dear?” she asked the room behind her.
No answer.
She turned around.
Natalie held the banister, swaying slightly, unsteady on her feet.
“You should be resting right now,” Veronica said. “You have to give your heart time to recover.”
“I’ll be right back.” Natalie wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I won’t be long.”
“Natalie, you can’t go outside. It’s too dangerous for you. Whichever one of them it was, he’s going to try again.”
Natalie looked at the floor. “I know.”
“So why are you doing this?”
“I need to.”
“No. Absolutely not. I forbid it.”
Natalie shuffled her feet, pulling the sleeves of her paint-stained hoodie over her hands. She looked everywhere but at Veronica.
A ribbon of fear, bright and electric, laced Veronica’s spine.
“Please, Natalie.” Her voice broke. “I can’t protect you if you won’t listen to me.”
CHAPTER 157
Jordan pulled her sealskin cape tighter around her. Lightning illuminated the backs of seals sleeping on the dark beach that stretched below the crack in the bluff where she had made her shelter.
The blue canopy overhead kept off the rain, and the sandstone walls on each side kept the wind away. The greasy smell of cooking seal rose from the small fire in front of her. She avoided looking at the fire, which would blind her to anything sneaking up on her from the darkness beyond, making the speargun across her knees useless until her eyes adjusted again.
She reached up and twitched a corner of the sloping blue cloth she had spiked between the walls above her—the game flag, which she had cut from its pole. The curtain of water cascading from its surface parted to give her a clearer view of the beach, where small groups of seals huddled together for warmth. There were fewer of them than before, and she wondered about that a little. Why were they leaving? The seals didn’t seem to notice the little bit of hunting that she was forced to do for survival, or even the crazy thing she had done, angry, earlier tonight. She didn’t think it was the sharks, either. The seals would be used to them—a natural and familiar hazard here. Something different was thinning their crowds on the island.
Juan could probably explain it to her. He could sit by her side here, his arm around her, and they could talk about it. He could point things out to her in that calm way…
Worthless lying bastard.
She didn’t care about the fucking seals. She wanted to go home.
Jordan’s broken ankle hurt. Her toes, purple and swollen under their covering of dirt, looked like cocktail sausages. When she got back she might need surgery to avoid permanent damage. But for now, there wasn’t much she could do beyond binding it as well as she could. And she would just have to deal with the pain, but pain was something she had taught herself to ignore.
Her finger had hurt when she broke it, too.
She rubbed the crooked pinky, remembering. She had caught it on the bars in a bad transition during the state semifinals, in her senior year of high school. She had landed and looked at her hand, eyes going wide with shock at seeing her pinky poke sideways with an L bend where there shouldn’t be one. Covering it with her other hand, she had walked to the locker room before the tears could start. Sitting on the bench, she kept it covered when the coach brought her parents in.
Her coach looked apologetic. “I can drive her to the emergency room for you—”
“Hold on.” Her father held up a hand. With the other, he raised his phone to his ear again and turned away, listening. Malcolm Vaughan r
an a tech hedge fund, and the phone was stuck to his head most of the time.
“I can’t right now; I’m watching my daughter win a trophy…” He paused, nodding. “Of course we are. We’re shooting for 2008, but 2012 is more likely. No point rushing unless she’s ready to win the gold… Look, can I call you back—wait a minute, they want to what?” He waved the coach away, and stuck a finger in his other ear. “No, they can’t do that! Tell them Kleiner and Sequoia committed already…” He walked out into the hallway, his voice growing heated. Shaking his head, he waved her mother forward to deal with her situation.
Jordan realized that her father hadn’t looked at her once. She turned toward her mother.
Colleen Vaughan spoke to Jordan’s coach in a voice ripe with concern.
“Does this mean she won’t qualify for the finals?”
Jordan’s eyes narrowed, and she stood. Grabbing the athletic tape off the bench, she marched into the restroom, into a toilet stall. Steeling herself, she looked at her hand, ignoring the knock at the stall door.
“Are you all right?” Her coach.
“A tantrum doesn’t solve anything.” Her mother.
Jordan lowered the lid and sat. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed her injured finger with her good hand and yanked the bent pinky straight. The bolt of pain made her arm shake, and her elbow slammed against the side of the stall.
“Kicking the wall?” Her mother again. “Very mature, Jordan.”
Silent tears ran down her face as she wrapped her throbbing pinky and her ring finger in layers of tape, binding them together.
“Answer me when I’m talking to you. Remember our conversation the last time? Do you want me to sell all the horses?”
Jordan scrubbed her forearm across her face and composed her expression. Then she opened the stall door, ignoring her mother.
“It was only sprained a little. I’m ready now.”
Her coach shook her head. “I saw your finger.”
Jordan looked at her with contempt. “Get the fuck out of my way.”
On the way home in the back of the Bentley, Jordan ignored her parents’ questions. She had qualified for the all-state finals, using the pain that throbbed up her wrist to her elbow to drive herself relentlessly, winning every event. She held her trophy on her lap as she looked out the window, her fingers manipulating the little golden figure on top. Jordan kept her face expressionless as she snapped off its plastic arms, legs, and head.
She never spoke to her father again.
CHAPTER 158
Inside the station building, Camilla sat on a cot with her back against the wall. She huddled under her space blanket, trying to stay warm. The scientist Heather had been taken from the adjoining building—a fact that never left her mind. But at least she wasn’t alone now. Brent, Mason, and Dmitry crowded the room around her, lounging on the other cot or sitting on the floorboards. Nobody spoke much.
She held in her hands a bound report, Archaeology and History In Año Nuevo State Park, which she was reading by the light of Lauren’s LED lantern. She had found it among the zoology surveys, and Dmitry hadn’t recognized the Parks & Rec Cultural Heritage publication. She turned the pages, partly to keep her mind occupied but also to look for anything that might help. Exactly what she was searching for, she had no idea, but anything was better than letting her thoughts run wild in frightened and exhausted circles, as they had for the past few hours.
Julian had made an offhand comment about tomorrow’s game, calling it “a most dangerous game indeed.” At the time, she hadn’t thought anything of it, but now his words haunted her. Camilla had an awful suspicion that she knew what tomorrow’s game was going to be. But she didn’t dare to discuss it with Brent or Mason, for fear that either of them might be Julian’s spy.
The Most Dangerous Game…
Long ago, she remembered reading a short story of that name. Written in the 1920s, it was a classic about a famous big-game hunter who falls off a ship and washes up on an uncharted island owned by an exiled general. Claiming he hunts only “the most dangerous game,” the general invites the hunter to join him. Upon learning the intended prey is human, the hunter refuses, only to find that he himself has become the hunted.
Was Julian planning to show up tomorrow with a pack of dogs and a hunting rifle? Would there be multiple hunters? Would the spy unmask himself or herself and join the hunt at Julian’s side?
The pages rattled in her hands and the Mylar space blanket crinkled around her arms and shoulders. Closing the report, she grabbed her knees to hide her shaking. A few hours ago she had been ready to kill Julian herself, and couldn’t wait until he arrived so they could grab him. She had been so hopelessly naive.
Vita Brevis didn’t blink an eye at murder. Quibbles about terminology aside, Mason was right: Julian had brought them all here to die.
All but one of them.
Who was his spy?
Veronica was the only one who could see the monitors. Julian could be speaking to her right now, giving her instructions. She was a multiple murderer. She had killed Travis right before their eyes, with no more remorse than if she were swatting a fly. She had nearly killed JT—a Force Recon Marine—with her bare hands. She was lethal enough without a weapon, but if Julian gave her one…
The only gun they had was in Juan’s hands. What proof did she really have that he wasn’t the spy? It was even possible that he had grabbed Natalie himself, then brought her back to confuse them. And he had said something very odd to Camilla during the flag game.
He had mentioned Cory, the missing shipboard guest. When she asked if he thought Cory had jumped overboard he said, “Maybe he had some help.” At the time, it had vaguely reminded her of a story. With growing terror, she now realized that the story was “The Most Dangerous Game.”
She had seen Juan fight. JT had a knife and had clearly been trying to kill him. Even though Juan had the gun, he hadn’t even felt the need to draw it, subduing JT with a diver’s weight belt instead. Maybe she was blinded by her inability to think anything bad about someone who had risked his life to save a child.
JT had never come back. What if he and Juan had crossed paths again after she left Juan and returned to the houses? Where was JT? Had Juan killed him? Or was JT lurking outside right now, staring at their window, walkie-talkie in hand, speaking to Julian?
And Jordan—what if Camilla was wrong about her? Had her cheerful personality been an act all along? It hurt to believe that, but she could easily picture this new, cold-eyed version of Jordan side by side with Julian, hosting another of these terrible games together.
Brent and Mason were in the room with Camilla, seemingly lost in their own thoughts. They seemed oblivious of her inner struggle. Could one of them be faking it—watching her secretly from beneath half-closed eyes?
Or even both of them? What if Julian had more than one spy?
Dmitry would seem to be the only one she could trust for sure, but earlier, she had heard him admit that he was new to the shark research team. Could he be a Vita Brevis plant?
Even without the modafinil she had taken, there was no risk of her falling asleep.
They would see Julian tomorrow.
Pushing aside the space blanket, she rose and walked through the doorway into Heather’s empty room.
There was something she had to do.
CHAPTER 159
Kneeling on Heather’s cot, all alone in an empty room lit by a single flickering candle, Camilla took out her iPhone. Watching the dark doorways, she thought about little Avery, waiting for her to come see him. Like she had promised.
Right after he said he wished he was dead.
She pressed the power switch on her phone. The battery indicator showed only a narrow sliver of red—she had a few minutes left at most. No signal, but she hadn’t expected any. Brushing her hair away from her forehead, she took a moment to compose her face and held the phone out in front of her. She activated the camera app, centered her candlelit live imag
e on the small screen, and pressed the record button.
“Anyone finding this phone, please make sure this message gets to Briana Kent. Her contact info is in the phone’s address book.
“Briana, if you are listening to this, it means that I’m… I didn’t… It means you need to take charge of the foundation. I’m counting on you, and so are the kids. With this message, I’m leaving you whatever money I have. I know it’s not much, but it’s enough to pay yourself a salary and cover expenses. Please tell Avery I didn’t…”
She had to look away. Gaze roaming the ceiling, she fought to control her face. She took a deep breath and looked into the phone again.
“Tell him I didn’t abandon him,” she said. “Tell him I would have done anything to get back. I tried, Avery. I tried so hard—”
Unable to continue, she tucked her chin into her shoulder and stared at the floor, pressing her other wrist against her nose and mouth. She lowered the phone and pushed Stop.
Angrily, Camilla erased what she had recorded. Holding up the phone at arms-length, she pushed the button again.
“Anyone finding this, make sure it gets to Euclid House and someone plays it for Avery Sanger, seven years old.”
She forced a smile onto her face. Made her voice sound cheerful.
“Avery, I really wanted to be there with you. If there had been any way I could, I would have. But something bad happened, and I couldn’t come. You already know life isn’t always fair to us. People get taken away from us sometimes, and it’s not our fault. When it happens, it’s okay to be sad for a little while. But you can’t stop trusting everyone. You can’t give up hope—”
The battery indicator blinked three times.
The phone went dead in her hand.
CHAPTER 160
Sensing someone standing in the doorway of the blockhouse, Juan looked up from the map spread on the table in front of him. Seeing who it was, he relaxed and slid his fingers forward, pushing the Glock out of sight beneath the map again. He put down the pen he held in his other hand.