New Year Island (32 page)

Another thought occurred to him. He crossed the blockhouse and crouched near the wall, sweeping his hands along the ground until he located the pile he remembered. Sorting through the things his fingers brushed against, he collected an armful of soft, rubbery objects and slipped these inside the hiding place as well. Then he lowered the cabinet floorboard into place again, using the pommel of the dive knife to hammer it until it was wedged tight, and closed the cabinet doors.

Jordan would be getting impatient by now.

He walked to the door and swung it open, letting light into the blockhouse.

Jordan strolled in, pulling her travel bag. She stopped in the center of the room and turned in a complete circle, almost twirling.

“The presidential suite, I see. You take me to all the nicest places.”

Juan reached outside for his duffel and dropped it inside the door. He slid the EPIRB beacon case onto the cabinet top. The countertop work surface ran the length of one wall, its rough cabinets painted an ugly green. A flimsy yellow tube-steel-and-formica table stood against the wall, surrounded by three lightweight plastic chairs. A pair of wooden cots anchored the blockhouse’s far corners—makeshift wooden frames covered by threadbare blankets. Closer to the door, a pair of sawhorses supported a ten-foot board: a drying rack. Several black wet suits hung from the rack above a pile of equipment on the floor: dive fins, gloves, dive knives in scabbards, collection bags, a speargun.

Jordan dragged her bag over to one of the cots and sat down. She rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin on her hands, facing him, kicking her ankles up behind her. Her feet were bleeding again, he noticed.

“They forgot to put the champagne on ice,” she said.

“The Four Seasons it’s not.”

“How did you know this was here?”

“The night after we cleaned out the houses, I did some exploring.”

A hopeful look crossed her face. “Did you find some food?”

Juan shook his head.

Suddenly, she was crying. “Oh my god, Juan. I’m so hungry. I’m dizzy and my head hurts. What am I going to do?” Tears streamed down her cheeks. She pointed in the direction of the warehouse buildings. “I’m sure Julian wants me to go pound on his door and beg, but I won’t do it. I can’t quit, especially now.”

Her eyes were so green. Juan liked looking at them. He didn’t say anything.

Just as abruptly as she had started crying, Jordan stopped. She regarded him curiously.

“O-kay, then,” she said.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes.

Jordan looked at the wet suits. “Can you catch me a fish?”

He thought about it, watching her face.

Her mouth curled into a smile. “Any time now, my chivalrous knight.”

“No air tanks,” he said. “And no fish close to shore, because of all the seals.”

“Crabs? Lobster?”

Juan shook his head again. He walked over to the wet suits and picked up something from the floor. Time to find out how badly she wanted this.

“I’ll get you something to eat,” he said. “But don’t expect it to be pleasant.”

Her eyes widened as he slid a narrow stainless-steel shaft into the long barrel of the speargun. Sunlight glinted on the sharp point with its vicious barbs. He stepped into the doorway.

“No,” she said in a small voice. She shook her head. “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

“You’ve got to eat. It’s been three days. Wait here for me.”

Jordan stood up, and the color drained from her face. She walked across the room and put her hands on the counter. Her back was to him, but he could read the tension in her arms and shoulders. Throwing her head back, she stood there for a long moment, arms trembling. Her breath hitched.

Moment of truth,
he thought.
Let’s find out who you really are.

Then she was coming toward him fast, stopping in the doorway next to him. One slim hand wrapped the barrel of the speargun, and she raised her chin, thrusting her face toward his.

From inches away, Jordan’s eyes held his. Cool and arrogant. Unsmiling green steel.

“Give me that and get out of my way,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”

T
ravis stood in the darkened hallway, rubbing his wrists. He stayed in the shadows, watching Lauren through the archway. Half-Chinese bull dyke was just sitting there, with her head in her hands. JT moved across his field of view, pacing. Big black dude looked pumped, pissed off—but not half as pissed as Travis was.

His hands still tingled—the duct tape around his arms had cut off the blood flow for hours. It had taken most of the day to work free, scraping himself against the rock.

Staying hidden, he watched his former teammates. He knew that Natalie was in there with the others, hiding in the corner. He had heard the shouting earlier and seen Juan exit, so it was just the three of them in there. Travis wasn’t entirely clear on why they had kicked Juan out. But it would make things easier, because he knew one other little Judas who had also turned against her own team—and who was now keeping quiet about what she had done.

He remembered how the little bitch’s eyes had followed him as Mason rolled him off the bluff. No expression, as if she were watching Mason drop a bag of garbage into a dumpster. She had said nothing to the rest of the team while Travis lay trussed and helpless in the cave’s darkness for hours.

He shivered, rubbing his arms. Being tied up like that had brought back unpleasant memories. His mind had drifted away for a while, and he was back in the narrow darkness behind Cell Block 4’s laundry machines. The noise of the washers had been very loud, thudding and rattling next to his head. They had masked the sounds of violence, the laughter and grunts, and Travis’s screams. The guards had known exactly what was happening, but they waited several hours before pretending to discover him, bleeding and half dead. The prison infirmary was not equipped to deal with the extent of his internal injuries, so they had rushed him to an outside hospital for surgery—almost too late to save his life.

But after he had healed, inside and out, he had gotten payback. If there was one thing Travis believed in, it was payback. One at a time, he had gotten to all of them, paid them back with interest. Always when they were alone, not expecting it.

He had put Deacon in a wheelchair for life. Angel had lost both hands in the machine shop while Travis whispered into his ear. The bleach had torn DelRay’s insides apart. And Plug now spent his days in a low-security ward, staring sightlessly out the window and drooling. Nothing could be proved, but word got around, and nobody had messed with Travis after that.

After making parole, he had tracked down Lyle, the shift guard, too. He wouldn’t be rattling any more cell bars with his baton. Lyle’s baton was buried in the mud at the bottom of the Sacramento Delta now, wedged inside Lyle himself.

Travis thought of Natalie. That little bitch, he knew exactly what to do with. He’d take his time with her. She might even enjoy it.

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.

J
uan 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.

L
auren 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.”