New Year Island (55 page)

“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 envelope—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.”

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.

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.

M
ason looked out a window into darkness. “It’s going to rain soon,” he said.

Lightning flashed, lighting up the rocky ground outside. He turned away and walked through the living room of the Greek Revival house, passing Brent, who sat in a corner. He went upstairs.

Coming down the stairs a few minutes later with five empty jugs, he passed Jordan, sitting on the bottom step with one leg stretched out in front of her, a dead expression on her face. She held the speargun draped over her knee, its point resting on a stair.

“That ankle looks bad,” he said. “Why don’t you have Brent look at it?”

Jordan didn’t respond, didn’t even glance at him, so Mason continued down the stairs and walked over to Brent.

“I need something sharp.”

Brent regarded him for a moment with eyes that were almost normal again, and then lifted the first-aid kit onto his lap. He opened it and held out a scalpel.

“One of those jugs is mine, I presume.”

Mason used the scalpel to cut away the top of each jug. “Yours, mine, Camilla’s, Natalie’s, Veronica’s. Hope you don’t mind. They were all more or less empty.”

Brent shrugged. “Veronica is next door, I think. You can ask her for permission if you like.”

Mason grinned. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

Carrying the jugs outside, he looked up at the faint outlines of the roof, silhouetted against the roiling clouds. He placed the jugs below corners where the planes of the roof met to form valleys. They would collect a lot more water this way.

The shingles up there weren’t clean, though. He ducked back inside.

Ten minutes later, he was on top of the dark roof with a roll of clear plastic sheeting in one hand and a staple gun in the other. Working by the light of the LED headlamp he had found in Lauren’s bag, Mason lined the valley between dormers with clean plastic. Something caught his eye: a footprint discoloring the brick chimney. He raised his head to shine the light on it and grinned, because he recognized the sneaker tread.

Camilla.

She was easy to underestimate. A lot of people here had already made that mistake. But he wouldn’t.

Once he was back in the main room, he looked at the scoreboard.

“Hey, Brent,” he said. “Travis is still in play. What do you make of that?”

“I have no idea, and I can’t say I much care.”

Brent shifted positions to look up at the scoreboard. His eyebrows rose. “It does look as though your boyfriend is showing you up, however, Jordan.”