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Riley didn’t seem to have the same kind of trouble, but then, he had probably gone through this maze so many times he didn’t even have to think about where he was going.

“How do you get around this place?” she asked.

“You get used to it,” he said. “We were running into everything the first few weeks. A lot of accidents, bumps, and bruises. But we’ve cleared up everything that isn’t nailed down and even took apart some of those that were. You should have seen it when we first got here. About fifty percent of all this open space didn’t exist.”

They passed a helicopter landing port to their right resting on its own raised platform. It was empty at the moment, but she could smell recently spilled fuel and was going to ask Riley where the aircraft was when there was a
clink
. She looked down just in time to catch a shiny lug nut skidding across the floor before disappearing underneath a machine painted blue and about the size of a car.

They had been walking for a while and didn’t look to be any closer to reaching their destination, and she was growing frustrated. That, and her legs were starting to tire, reminding her of just how good she had it back on the
Trident

God, how did I get so out of shape?

“You brought me here to talk,” she said. “So let’s talk.”

“We’re almost there…”

“No, Riley.”

She stopped in the middle of two machines with dials and conduits sticking out of them to both sides of her. One was red and the other was white, and she couldn’t even begin to guess what either one did.

Riley stopped five feet in front of her and turned around. “This is the kind of discussion that we should take inside, Lara. Besides, it’s cold out here.”

“I’ve never felt more clearheaded.”

“It’s warmer inside.”

“It’s warm enough out here,” she said, fighting back a grimace as a particularly cold wind whipped through the valley of machinery around them. “Tell me what I’m doing here, Riley. Tell me
now.
”

Riley nodded, his blue eyes focusing on her as if he was afraid of missing every reaction on her face in the next few minutes. “I need your boat, Lara.”

“I have six of your men on my boat right now that already told me that. So what else
do you want from me, Riley?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just the boat.”

“Why?”

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

His eyes had left her face and gone to her hip because her right hand had slid closer to her holstered sidearm. A year ago the notion that she would reach first for her gun when threatened—or even when she just
felt
threatened—would have terrified her. Now, she did it without even thinking.

“Don’t,” Riley said again.

“Don’t what?”

“Please don’t draw your gun.”

She didn’t know why, but Riley asking her not to do it made her
want
to do it. Again, without her realizing it, her fingers brushed against the grip of her sidearm.

“Lara,” Riley said, his eyes returning to hers, “I have a man on the crane, and he’s watching us right now.”

The crane…

“He can’t hear what we’re saying, but he can see everything,” Riley continued. “If you draw your weapon, he’ll shoot.”

It’s a trick!
her mind screamed, but she had to exert every ounce of willpower to keep from turning around and zeroing in on the crane.

“There is no man on the crane,” she said. “I looked.”

“His name is Peters,” Riley said. “Trust me, he’s up there. I had to keep him up there, just in case things went sideways. He’s my insurance. My
only
insurance. Everyone else is staying out of the way on purpose.” He held his hands steady at his sides, the palms facing her as if he wanted her to see he had nothing in them. “I’m not armed, Lara. I can’t stop you if you decide to shoot me right now. But Peters will respond if you do that, and he never misses. Never.”

He’s lying. There is no man on the crane. You looked, remember?

But how easy would it have been to hide someone up there? Very easily, because there were so many metal parts and angles it would be impossible to see every single section of the crane. All a sniper would need was to find a perfect spot, and depending on how long Riley and his people had been here, they could easily have figured that part out a long time ago.

Then again, even if there were someone up there, the distance was too great and the man would be shooting from a high angle. Not to mention all the machinery around her, including the two flanking her right now. There were a lot of reasons why a shooter wouldn’t be able to make the shot, even if he “never misses.” The odds were all in her favor.

Right?

Maybe…

Lara exhaled a slow breath, but she didn’t take her hand away from her hip, though there was now an extra inch of space between her fingers and the Glock. She sneaked a quick look to her left, then her right in case Riley’s men were trying to outflank her. She tried to pick up sounds of footsteps behind her, but there was just her slightly racing heartbeat pounding in her ear.

“So talk,” she said finally.

“We should do this inside,” Riley said.

“No. Out here. Tell me why you need my boat and why in God’s name you think I’m going to give it to you.”

He nodded reluctantly. “I have people on the
Ocean Star
. Civilians.”

“Faith told me you were all civilians.”

“Some people are more civilian than others.”

“Is that supposed to make sense to me?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. This place, this platform, it was an FOB until just a few days ago.”

“FO what?”

“FOB. Forward Operating Base. It was used to launch an attack on the mainland very recently. You probably don’t know anything about it since you’ve been out here the entire time.”

Is he talking about…Mercer?

Something must have registered on her face, because Riley tilted his head slightly to one side. “Or do you?”

“No,” she said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe.”

“Fair enough.”

“Get to the point.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Try harder.”

He sighed, took a breath, then continued. “I have people I need to transport off the
Ocean Star
and to safety.” He looked out toward the ocean in the direction where the
Trident
would have been if not for the wall of metal and tubes in his way. “Your boat showing up out of the blue was a godsend.”

“You have boats here. A lot of them.”

“I don’t have enough, and the ones I do have aren’t nearly big enough. If there were still bigger vessels at the ports, I might have risked launching a raid on them, but they’re gone. The collaborators sank them a long time ago.”

“So you risked boarding the
Trident
with six armed men.”

“I had no choice. It was the best and fastest option. I need your boat, Lara.”

She shook her head. “You can’t have it.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, I understand perfectly. You want something I have, and I’m not willing to give it to you. What I do have are six of your men. And they’re the only things you’re going to get out of this.”

“And I want them back,” Riley said. “All six of them. They only did what I asked them to. Hart had doubts, but…” He shook his head.

“You should have listened to him.”

“I had no choice.”

“You already said that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You’re still not getting my boat.”

He sighed. “Can I show you something?”

“What can you show me that will make me change my mind?”

“The Lara from the radio would change her mind.”

Lara walked toward him—saw his eyes go wide with surprise—and stopped only when she was less than a foot from bumping into his chest. Even though he was taller than her and she had to tilt her head to look him in the eyes, she could feel him wanting to take a step back, but somehow managing to hold his ground.

“Lara,” he began, almost stuttering out her name.

She cut him off: “You don’t
know
me. If you have any doubts that I’ve already given orders to shoot your men and throw them overboard and abandon this place when I don’t return within the hour, you should wipe it out of your mind right now. You may have heard something I broadcasted on the radio, but you don’t know me, or my crew. You don’t know what we’ve been through, or what we’ve done, or what we’ve lost. So when I tell you that you don’t know a damn thing about me, I want you to take it to heart, Riley, because you don’t have a clue what I’m capable of.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and glanced down at her watch. “You have thirty minutes left. I suggest you use them wisely.”

13

GABY

T
HE ONGOING GUN
battle between Mercer’s men and the collaborators took on a strange ebb and flow—a hellacious five or so minutes of back-and-forth followed by an hour (sometimes two) of long silence where nothing happened.

Danny had gone uncharacteristically silent since their conversation following his return to the room, seemingly content to listen in on the barely-audible chatter coming from the lobby—not that they could really hear anything with the closed door and the sudden spurts of violence beyond the walls.

After he left her, Mason had yet to return. She wondered if he was running around out there with the rest of Danzinger’s people, trying to put an end to Mercer’s fighters. It was an odd thing to think about, mostly because she had no idea if she cared who won or lost or if she was hoping they might end up killing each other, which would leave just her, Danny, and Nate.

Best-case scenario. Which probably means it won’t happen in a million years.

Nate had woken up a couple of times, but the longest he had stayed awake was only a few minutes. That was just enough time for him to see her and smile before drifting off again. She checked his bandages every thirty minutes to make sure he wasn’t bleeding again and always had at least one ear open listening for any irregularities in his breathing.

“They gave him sedatives,” Danny told her the first time Nate opened his eyes. “I guess they don’t want him waking up between now and tonight. Keep him out of their hair.”

“Mason said he saved him,” she said.

“Did he?” And when she nodded, “You believe him?”

“I don’t know.” She told him about Mason’s claims. “It sounded like Nate.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“Does this mean you’re going to go easier on him from now on?”

Danny chuckled. “I didn’t say
that.
”

She smiled, and spent the next hour or so watching Nate sleep. After everything he had been through, he deserved as much rest as he could get. She wanted nothing more than to pack him into a car and drive to the coast where Lara and the
Trident
would be waiting for them. They could have done that days ago if Mercer’s people hadn’t begun their crusade against the collaborators.

Mercer.

Was it possible he was the “he” that the blue-eyed ghouls were hunting? No, because it didn’t make any sense. She, Nate, and Danny had nothing to do with Mercer, and holding them hostage wasn’t going to lure the man here. He couldn’t care less if they lived or died, and she would be surprised if he even still remembered them after Larkin. For all he knew, they were already dead and buried underneath what was left of the airfield.

“Whatcha thinking there?” Danny said, his voice breaking through her thoughts.

“What?” she said, looking over at him.

“You look like me when I’m being all thoughtful and whatnot. What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

“Come again?”

“You’re not telling me everything.” She let the rest go unsaid but didn’t take her eyes away from him.

Danny shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“When is it not?”

“Well, this is even more complicated than usual.”

“What is it, Danny? What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

“That’s the problem, kid; I don’t know anything. Not for sure, anyway. At least, nothing that would hold up in court.”

“We’re not in court. It’s just you and me and Nate in here.”

“To be fair, Nate’s barely here…”

“You know what I mean. So just tell me already.”

“I think…” he started, but didn’t finish.

She could see that he wanted to say it—this thing that had been spinning around inside his head for the last few days—but for whatever reason, he didn’t go through with it. Maybe he couldn’t, or he didn’t want to.

“Danny,” she said.

He shook his head. “It’s too crazy.”

“
What’s
too crazy?” She could feel her patience with him slipping, even if he didn’t seem to notice it. “Just tell—”

He held his hand up to shush her just before shouting erupted from outside the door. It came first from inside the hallway next to them, then all the way from the lobby. Pounding footsteps immediately followed, then someone screaming in pain. The
cracks
of gunfire from outside, sounding the closest they had been since the day began.

Gaby stood up and walked to the door, pressing her ear against it. Danny did the same with the wall across from her. She glanced over at him, wondering if he was hearing the same thing, when a loud
boom!
cut through the noise and the door vibrated, along with the walls and floor and ceiling around them.

She took an involuntary step back, but Danny didn’t move.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Sounded like an explosion,” Danny said.

Gunfire exploded, this time clearly coming from the lobby just beyond the back hallway, the
pop-pop-pop
of automatic rifle fire drowning out every other sound, including more screams and shouting.

“That’s not good,” Danny said.

“They’re inside,” she said.

“Or coming in…”