New Year Island (50 page)

“You utter bastard.”

It was a hiss—unexpected, grating, filled with hate. He had never heard Jordan sound like this before. He whipped around, and the pair of black neoprene scuba booties smacked into his chest, sending him staggering back. Jordan had thrown them hard, and the thick rubber soles hurt.

“You had these the whole time.” She hefted a metal can in one hand, reading the label. She picked up another and looked up at Juan, her green eyes slits, incandescent with fury.

“Tuna? Beans? Peaches?”

He ducked as heavy cans thudded against the door frame around him. Jordan threw with force and accuracy. A can hit him in the midsection, knocking the wind out of him. Juan sat down hard. Another can spanged off the concrete wall next to his head. He crabbed along the wall to get away, but Jordan was out of cans.

“You worthless son of a bitch.” She grabbed the speargun.

Juan’s eyes widened. She thought he was with Julian? Reflexively, his hand crept behind him, where the Glock was a hard lump under his belt. “No, you don’t understand…”

“I actually thought…” Her whole body shook, at the edge of control. “I actually thought you and I, we—”

“It’s not what you think.” Juan raised a hand, fingers spread in supplication. “I
found
the food and the booties on the first night. I’m not Julian’s spy.”

She spotted his other hand moving toward his belt, and her lips spread in a horrible rictus, baring teeth. The speargun came up, and he froze.

Jordan’s beautiful features were unrecognizable now, distorted with hate. She spoke very slowly, each word a sibilant hiss.

“
Spy?
You really think I care about that? You just don’t get it, do you, Juan?” She leveled the speargun at him. “Good-bye.”

Staring at the spear point aimed at his face, he realized she was about to kill him.

But Jordan spun away, scooping up her paintball marker and blue envelope with her free hand. In the doorway, she paused one last time, looked at the envelope she held, and then back at Juan with a depth of hatred that chilled his spine.

Then she was gone.

“I
know where Heather is. She’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Jacob’s comment caught Dmitry by surprise. He looked up from the reports he was tying into a bundle, wrapping them in both directions with a length of twine, the way he had carried his books to school as a boy. But instead of relief, he felt a deepening concern at Jacob’s words.

The voice of the bad man—the criminal—came from the room next door.

“I told all of ‘em I didn’t touch your friend.” Chains rattled. “Now, let me loose before I get mad!”

Dmitry’s eyes flicked to the keys on the counter. But he ignored the criminal’s voice and focused on Jacob.

“
Slava bogu,
” he said. “We are very worried, with all these crazy people here. Why you didn’t say before where she is?”

“I just figured it out myself,” Jacob said. “It’s where I’m headed, too, just as soon as we finish packing up.”

“But where is Heather? Where she is gone?”

“San Diego.” Jacob smiled, and Dmitry felt a spike of fear shoot through him.

“No, Jacob, listen to me.” Dmitry tried to read his eyes but couldn’t. “Heather is not in San Diego. She was here on island yesterday. With us.”

Jacob patted him on the shoulder and gave him one of the patronizing looks he disliked so much. “That’s just what she wanted us to think, Dima. But she left for San Diego already. She doesn’t like the way Karen sold us out any more than I do.”

Dmitry grabbed both of Jacob’s upper arms.

“You are confuse,” he said. “Nobody is in San Diego. We don’t know where Heather is, but I am thinking maybe she is dead. We are in bad trouble here, Jacob. Bad trouble.”

Jacob blinked, and an expression of mild frustration crossed his face. “Have you not been listening to what I’ve been saying, Dima? Heather made the right decision. I don’t blame her for leaving. Karen compromised our work here with sloppy protocols. She brought in all these other scientists from God knows where—no integrity at all.”

He pulled loose from Dmitry’s grip and barked a laugh, waving a hand toward the room where the criminal was chained.

“Did you see these people? I mean, really? No proper scientific discipline—worse than first-year grad students. I’ve never heard of any of them before. This is who the Institute is hiring now? Jesus, Dima, the blonde one didn’t even have
shoes
on.”

Dmitry shook his head.

“No. You have to think, Jacob. Remember. These people making reality show. Not scientists. Yesterday, boat is broken.” His voice was rising, and he fought to control it. “People are hurt, people are
dead!
”

“See, that’s exactly the kind of talk we don’t need.” Jacob walked over to the window of the science station and looked out. “You have to face reality sometime, Dima. The tracking study is ruined now. There’s no further reason to stay.”

He pointed in the direction of the breakwater and the dock beyond.

“The San Diego director’s sending a boat. They’re damn glad to have serious researchers like us. We need to hurry to the dock, before we miss them.”

Dark wings of fear unfolded in Dmitry’s belly. He looked closely at Jacob’s face, trying to make sense of what he was saying. He could see a sheen of sweat glistening on Jacob’s forehead. It didn’t match the unconcern in his expression and voice.

“Jacob, please try to understand,” Dmitry said. “I am your friend telling you this. You are upset, thinking wrong. Nobody is coming. We need Coast Guard,
politziu
.”

Jacob shook his head. “Well, then, that’s your choice. You can come or you can stay, but I’m going to the dock.” He picked up an armful of binders and bound reports and tucked them under his arm. In the doorway, he turned to face Dmitry.

“I don’t think I can convince them to wait long. So if you want to come, you better hurry.”

“W
ho’s your target, Natalie?” Veronica looked out the window, cradling the paintball gun in her hands. Her back was to the large foyer of the Greek Revival house, where she and Natalie had returned to prepare. She scanned the open ground outside, watchful for movement. But most of her attention was focused on the sounds behind her. The slow, careful tear of paper. She tilted her head, aligning her ear to catch the slight intake of breath. It came from farther to the right. Natalie had moved a few steps in that direction.

“Maybe we should split up now,” Natalie said.

Veronica spun, snapped her arms up, and pulled the trigger. The snick of compressed air was loud in the room.

Natalie staggered back, a splatter of red paint dead-center on the chest of her hoodie. She drew a couple of gasping breaths and stared in shock at Veronica.

“Sorry, Natalie.” Veronica lowered the gun and walked toward her. “But it’s just a game.”

“But you can’t do that! I didn’t try to shoot at you first. You didn’t
know
you were my target.”

“I knew. I heard it in your voice. It’s a righteous kill. Now, give me your gun.”

Head down and shoulders hunched, Natalie held it out to her.

Turning, Veronica fired a shot from Natalie’s gun. A starburst of blue paint appeared on the wall beside the monitor, and she handed the gun back.

“Besides, you
did
shoot at me first,” she said.

Natalie looked at the gun in her hand, at the blue paint on the wall, and then her face crumpled like a sheriff’s subpoena in an angry woman’s fist.

Veronica snorted in disgust. “Grow up, Natalie. I don’t have time for this. If you want to make a big deal out of it, you can go complain to Julian.”

The monitor on the wall flashed, and the scoreboard appeared. The cell around each of their scores was outlined in white again, rather than the red or blue team colors. Veronica stared, mesmerized, watching her own score spin up ten points.

Natalie’s cell blinked. Then the outline around it faded from white to gray. She slid down against the wall, hugged her knees to her chest, and buried her face.

Veronica turned her back on the room and marched upstairs, ignoring Natalie’s sobs.

She didn’t have time to babysit.

Women in need were counting on her.

• • •

A few minutes later, Veronica stood in her room. The paintball gun and envelope lay on the cot in front of her, but she was looking at her hands, turning them this way and that. She realized she had been doing that for several minutes, spacing out while her mind wandered. She had been thinking again about Leo, her second husband… Time to get with the program here. Her French manicure was a mess—nails split and cracked. She had forgotten to put her makeup on this morning. Her hair was filthy, knots of it hanging in front of her eyes. She was falling apart. At this rate, she’d look like a street person soon, dreadlocked and disgusting.

Ah, Leo, dear, I’m sure you would have loved to see me in this state.

She raised both arms and tried to comb through her hair with her fingers. They caught, hung up in the knots and tangles.

Her eyes snapped into focus and zeroed in on her Louis Vuitton travel bag. She crossed the room with aggressive strides, flipped it open, and unzipped the upper compartment where, four days ago, she had been surprised to find JT’s court-martial transcript tucked away. Reaching inside, she dug deep until her fingers closed around the black Spyderco tactical folding knife she had brought.

Veronica flipped it open with a practiced one-handed motion, and three inches of matte-black case-hardened steel locked into place. With her other hand, she reached up to grab a tangled lock of hair.

B
rent loosened the surgical tubing he had wrapped around his upper arm, and rolled down the sleeve of his plaid shirt. Letting out a pent-up breath, he picked up the three syringes, now empty, that lay on the step beside him. Out of habit, he turned his head, looking for the sharps disposal, but of course there wasn’t one. He chuckled and let the syringes fall from his fingers to roll down the steps, their bare needles pointing every which way.

He dumped a packet of pills into the cup of his hand and slapped his palm to his mouth, dry swallowing them. Reaching into his vest pocket, he grabbed another packet and tossed them down, too.

“Stop it. Please stop.” The voice came from the top of the stairs.

Brent looked up to see Camilla standing there, eyes huge, like a little girl who wanted to go downstairs at night but was afraid of monsters. She held something white in front of her chest, two-handed, the way a Japanese pharmaceutical rep held a business card. He squinted. It was a folded-up wad of paper—perhaps the one that had been in her pocket earlier.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Her face was sad. “Something I wanted to talk to you about, but it’s not important now.” She tucked it back into her pocket and came down the stairs to sit beside him.

She looked into his eyes and winced. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Brent?”

He didn’t have an answer for her.

She laid a hand on his arm. “Talk to me.”

Brent looked toward the distant windows. The light streaming through the plastic sheeting shimmered and danced, making patterns on the floor. Across the room, the scoreboard glowed from the wall monitor.

He pointed at the paintball gun tucked under Camilla’s arm. “Can you imagine what those scientists think, seeing us running around with those things?”

“I don’t want you to die.”

Brent laughed. He could imagine how it probably looked to her, what she thought. He squeezed her knee.

“You needn’t worry about this old man. I’m not killing myself.”

“I don’t believe you. I saw.” She pointed at the syringes, the empty pill packets scattered on the steps. “So many…”

Brent sighed. “I suppose that would be enough to kill somebody—probably even enough to kill the rest of you put together.”

He leaned toward her, trying to see her face clearly.

“Tolerance builds up over time, you see. Your physiology adapts.”

“What if you make a mistake? Out here, that could kill you.”

She sounded like Mary now. Loneliness washed over him, and he looked away.

“I’m a survivor, Camilla. I’ve faced my own mortality. Death doesn’t scare me anymore.”

He stared at the shimmering, dancing light again.

“Living the rest of my life alone does.”

M
ason leaned against the wall inside the chicken coop, shrouded in shadow, watching the two houses through the open doorway. Glancing at the blue card in his hand, he read the name of his target: Juan. A half-smile played across his face. The paintball gun hung loosely in his hand, loaded with balls of neon pink—Julian’s sense of humor on display once again.

Mason wondered what Camilla was doing right now.

Motion at the entrance of the Greek Revival house caught his eye. A woman stood in the doorway, bracing her fists on the edges of the doorframe, her own paintball gun gripped in one hand. Her body vibrated with restrained energy as her fierce silvery gaze swept the open area outside, probing the shadows.