New Year Island (28 page)

Lifting the back of his jacket, Mason fished a roll of duct tape from behind his belt. He looked at Camilla and gave her a wide wolf’s grin.

She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
Take him out of play.

She gave Mason a thumbs-up.

He jumped down after Travis.

“Y
ou can think of it as getting benched for unnecessary roughness.”

Someone was jostling Travis’s body, rolling him over and over—sharp grains of sand pressing against his forehead and cheeks, then daylight shining bright orange through closed eyelids, then a faceful of cold, dark sand again… the continuous rip of tape coming off a roll, like an icepick in his ears. Hands lifting his legs. He groaned, every muscle of his body throbbing and tingling with remembered agony.

“I mean, we can’t start behaving like savages, can we?” Hands rolled him onto his back and Mason leaned into view, squatting next to his head. Smiling.

Travis lurched to grab him but managed to rise only a few inches off the sand. His arms didn’t move. Neither did his legs.

Tilting his chin, he looked down his own body and saw a man-size cocoon of silver. Panic jolted through him like another blast from the stun gun. Cocksucker had him wrapped up like a mummy in duct tape: legs together, arms against his sides, wrists behind his back—had to be a couple of rolls’ worth at least.

He sucked in a breath to shout, and gagged as Mason trickled a fistful of sand into his mouth.
“Mmmphh.”

“What?” Lifting Travis’s head, Mason pressed duct tape against his lips. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

Choking, he tried to shake his head loose, but Mason pulled the tape tight, looping it several times around his jaws and the back of his hair. Pasty sand scraped Travis’s gums and trickled into his throat, tasting like mildewed salt packed against his tongue. Something small—a worm or a tiny sand crab—wriggled against the roof of his mouth.

Thrashing helplessly, he sucked air through his flared nostrils. He narrowed his eyes and stared into Mason’s shit-eating grin.
“GGGILL OOO, GGAAGGGTHUGGERR!”
Kill you, cocksucker.

“We don’t want to end up like the Roman gladiators here,” Mason said. “Still, you’re lucky Camilla gave me a thumbs-up. Thumbs-down, and I might have misunderstood. I might have done
this
…” He slapped a strip of tape across Travis’s nostrils.

Arching his back, eyes wide with terror, Travis scanned the unbroken line of the bluff top above. Nobody was there. Nobody could see him.

His lungs spasmed. Bright spots danced in his dimming vision.

He was going to die.

Laughing, Mason ripped the tape loose. Travis nearly passed out anyway, unable to suck air through his nose fast enough.

“Hope you don’t catch a cold before your teammates come find you.” Mason pinched Travis’s nostrils shut and looked into his eyes. “But then again, maybe they won’t bother. I don’t think they like you too much.”

Letting go, he stood up and dusted off his hands. “You know, you look kind of sexy there, all wrapped in gray, like a female elephant seal. It’d be funny if one of the big bulls came along and thought so, too, wouldn’t it? I’d give up half the five million just to see that.”

Icy terror gripped Travis, sending a jolt down his arms and legs. He managed to roll onto his side, accidentally snorting sand into his nostrils. Eyes bulging, he blew his nose clear and rolled onto his back again.

“Well, what have we here?” Mason’s voice came from the direction of the bluff, sounding genuinely surprised. Then he was back, smiling down at Travis. “Looks like you’ll be sitting out the rest of the game.”

Lifting Travis’s feet, Mason dragged him into the shadow of the bluff and crammed him through a foot-wide vertical crack in the rocky wall. He tumbled into darkness, thumping his head against rough stone.

A humming sound vibrated through the rocks beneath him. Light from the narrow opening reached a few feet into the cave, illuminating uneven walls of sandstone that stretched into foul-smelling darkness.

Then the light dimmed as Mason’s silhouette filled the entrance, heaving the first rock into place to block the bottom of the opening.

C
amilla and Veronica stood at the top of the ramp, staring down at their own base. The blue flag waved, lonely and unattended. Jordan was missing.

“
Now,
where is she?” Camilla asked, alarmed.

Frowning, Veronica paced along the bluff with impatient strides, staring down at the narrow strip of sand below. Camilla followed her. The strip widened to join the large mainland-side beach, and they scanned the seal-covered expanse of sand. Veronica suddenly laughed her throaty laugh and pointed.

“There.”

Jordan sprinted barefoot along the beach, hugging the face of the bluff, weaving between the harems of elephant seals as she headed their way. She held the red flag in her arms, its cloth banner rippling and flapping behind her as she ran. A great bull rose from the sand with a roar to lurch after her, but she was already out of reach.

Racing across the high ground above, JT and Lauren paralleled Jordan below. They pointed and shouted to each other, looking over the edge as they ran. Camilla knew that the steep bluffs hid Jordan from them most of the time. She would be visible only when crossing below ravines or diverting around clumps of seals at the cliff base.

Realizing they would never catch her, Lauren slid to a halt, her features contorted in fury. She grabbed JT’s thick bicep to stop him, too, before they got close enough for Camilla and Veronica to tag them.

Camilla looked down again, seeing Jordan round the corner below. Then she ran toward the ramp, arriving just in time to watch Jordan plant the red flag next to their blue one.
Score!

Blue team and red team were now tied, one to one.

Camilla laughed out loud as Jordan waved to her, beaming that dazzling smile. Their team captain had evened up the score single-handedly. But
how
?

“W
hat the fuck, Juan?”

Lauren jammed her fists onto her hips and stared down at Juan, lying prone at her feet. JT stood beside her, arms crossed, not saying anything.
Him
she could count on, at least.

Juan groaned. He shoved himself up onto his hands and knees, letting his head hang for a moment. Then he tried to stand but sank back to his knees, one hand pressed against his temple. Blood smeared the side of his face, spreading in a sand-caked trickle from beneath his hairline. He swabbed angrily at it with the tail of his black dress shirt.

With his other hand, he indicated a jagged piece of broken concrete that lay nearby.

“She cold-cocked me with that. How’d she get past all of you? She’s
barefoot,
for Christ’s sake!”

“Same thing she did yesterday,” Lauren said. “Dropped down to the beach, stayed close to the cliff so we wouldn’t see her. That’s gotta be against the rules—out of bounds or something.”

Juan laughed, then doubled over in pain, holding his head. “Against the rules? It doesn’t look like there are any.”

He pushed to his feet. “Still no sign of Travis?”

“Fuck him,” Lauren said. “We don’t need his type.”

Juan looked at her, surprised. Then he pointed to the rock again.

“Jordan’s completely out of control. Now I’m really wondering about Travis. Maybe that crazy bitch killed him.”

C
amilla skidded to a halt next to the fallen lighthouse tower, her sneakers sliding on dirt. The island’s highest point gave her a 360-degree view across the rocky surface and most of the large beach below. Jordan ran along the beach now, holding the red flag again. She had said she would stay to defend their own flag, but clearly she hadn’t.

Mason had taken way too long to tie up Travis. Camilla was glad to see him climbing the breakwater toward her. But now Veronica was in red territory, too. Why wasn’t anybody protecting their base? Teamwork was breaking down; everyone was doing their own thing. She needed to get them working together again before it was too late.

Sure enough, Lauren came tearing up the ramp from the blue base, holding their blue flag. She sprinted toward the barricade, crossing blue territory unchallenged.

“Mason, we’re defending!” Camilla shouted. “Tag Lauren!”

Action down on the beach drew her eye. JT now stood between Jordan and the blue base, blocking her. Juan rounded the other corner, and they had Jordan trapped.

Dodging and weaving among the seals, Jordan cut toward the water as the red team closed in from both sides. Then, to Camilla’s surprise, she threw the red flag into the surf and sprinted away, leaving JT and Juan staring at their soaked banner—and the angry bull elephant seal she had thrown it in front of.

How did
that
help the blue team? Camilla felt disoriented again, as if everyone else were playing a different game from the one she was playing, with rules no one had explained to her. She closed her eyes and concentrated. What was going on?

The first team to plant the flag twice more would win, but nobody was defending their bases. Nobody was trying to tag members of the other team coming after their flag. Her fellow players were smart, too. What was she missing here?

In her head, Camilla heard Reuben’s words after she won her
Teambuilder
award:
“It shouldn’t always be about the team.”
And Mason’s last night:
“The grand prize isn’t a team award.”
Oh god, it was all so clear now. Julian had been clever, calling this capture the flag game a
team
challenge. Because it wasn’t really a team game at all. Her own team-oriented mind-set had blinded her. Julian’s scoring rules meant that only three things really mattered to your own individual score: planting the flag yourself, tagging someone carrying your flag, and not getting tagged while carrying theirs.

Camilla opened her eyes and grinned. She needed to tag Lauren before her teammate Mason did. She sprinted toward Lauren as Mason closed in from the other side.

Lauren’s face crumpled, realizing they had her trapped against the edge of the bluff.

JT’s voice drifted up from the beach. “Lauren, throw me the flag.”

“No,” Lauren shouted back. “I’m taking it all the way.”

“God damn it, girl, they
have
you.”

Throwing the flag off the bluff, Lauren spun on Mason and swatted him hard in the ear with her open hand, knocking him to the ground.

“Tag.” She stalked off.

Camilla helped a stunned-looking Mason to his feet. “You didn’t have to do that,” she called after Lauren. “You really hurt him.”

“Whoops.” Lauren didn’t look back.

Mason shook his head to clear it, and a trickle of blood ran from his ear. Picking up his glasses, he stumbled to the bluff. Camilla followed, and they stared down at the beach.

Juan had recovered the red flag, avoiding the elephant seal somehow. JT now held the blue flag Lauren had thrown him. Together, they ran around the corner.

Camilla’s neck tensed as cheers erupted in the distance; JT had planted their flag.

They were now losing, two to one.

If the red team scored again, the game would be over.

R
unning along the beach, staying close to the bluff, Camilla followed Mason as they dodged around clusters of seals. He was laughing, with the red flag gripped in his hands—they had found it unguarded, and he had reached it seconds before she had. Jordan stood on the raised walkway ahead, waving them forward. They rounded a corner and skidded to a stop, almost colliding with the red team coming the other way.

Lauren, JT, and Juan slid to a halt ten feet in front of them. The blue flagpole was clenched in JT’s fists.

The two teams faced each other, holding each other’s flags. Whose territory were they in? Camilla glanced up at the bluff, trying to figure out which side of the seal barricade they were on. She couldn’t see.

Jordan jumped off the walkway and ran toward them.

“Give me our flag,” JT said. “Don’t make me come get it.” The threat in his voice was clear.

“Here you go,” Mason said, still laughing, and suddenly the air between the two teams was filled with a cloud of orange.

Camilla spun toward Mason, who held the black canister one-handed, waving it back and forth, spraying Lauren, JT, and Juan. Screaming in agony, all three dropped to the sand holding their faces, the blue flag still entangled in JT’s arms.

Too shocked to say anything, Camilla slapped Mason’s arm aside.

He didn’t stop laughing. Tucking the black cylinder of bear spray into his belt again, he ran forward, gave Lauren a friendly clap on her shoulder where she knelt choking, and scooped the flag out of JT’s arms in the same motion. With a flag in each hand, he took off down the beach, running toward the blue base.

Coughing and gagging, the red team scrambled to their feet with tears streaming from their eyes. Lauren seemed to have gotten the worst of it. It looked like she was having trouble breathing. Juan threw her arm over his shoulder, and they stumbled toward the surf line. Cursing, JT stood and ran after them.

“Oh god, sorry,” Camilla called after them. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Jordan had stopped twenty feet away. Hand over her mouth, she stared after Mason, her eyes widening in shock.

White-hot anger coursed through Camilla’s body. Mason shouldn’t have done this; it was totally wrong. She sprinted after him.

• • •

Camilla caught up with Mason as he rounded the corner onto the limestone bench at the southern end of the island, where their base lay. Without letting herself think too hard about what she was doing, she dived at his legs and wrapped her arms around his shins. He crashed to the ground, glasses flying, dropping both flagpoles as he tried to break his fall with his hands.

She scrambled forward, grabbed both flags, and slid to her knees in front of the blue base. Dropping the blue flag, she used two hands to jam the red flagpole into the base. Then she picked up the blue flagpole and stood it vertical, but her hands were trembling now. She couldn’t believe what she had just done: she had tackled her own teammate.