New Year Island (18 page)

“Give it here,” JT said. “Don’t make me come get it.”

Juan shook his head and dropped into a wary crouch.

JT was surprised. “You sure you want to do this, motherfucker?” He let the NVD case and gloves fall to the ground and circled toward Juan, arms ready.

Juan circled away, keeping his distance.

Shit,
JT thought. But he needed those points. The yellow case had been closer to him than Juan, anyway.

Movement in his peripheral vision—other contestants coming their way from different directions. JT was reminded of high school and the crowd of rubbernecks that always gathered whenever there was a fight. He himself had never been among them; he’d usually been the one fighting.

“That’s enough,” Brent said, taking his hands out of his vest pockets. He moved in on JT’s right.

“Stay out of this,” JT said.

Brent stopped.

Behind him, Veronica stood watching JT with an expression of disgust. Her intense silvery-blue gaze bored into him.

He ignored her and locked eyes with his opponent. Juan’s face was neutral, his eyes alert with calm readiness. Why did he look so relaxed? JT reached down one-handed to pick up a brick-size rock. Juan’s face didn’t change. No fear.

“Last warning,” JT said, but now he was wishing he could defuse the situation somehow. Cameras or no cameras, things were about to get ugly.

There was no chain of command here. Nobody official to step in and resolve conflicts. No one was going to decide this for them. All the contestants were hungry, thirsty, and fixated on winning. With five million dollars at stake, they would take stupid chances, just as Juan was doing.

Feeling trapped, JT started toward him, unable to back down now.

Juan held the yellow case with one hand and ripped the tag away with the other. “Points or prize, JT—which’ll it be?”

JT stopped. “Points.”

Juan tossed the tag toward him. He caught it and scanned it, sensing the others relaxing around him as he did. Someone released a breath they had been holding.

“What’s in the box?” JT shouted, glad things hadn’t gone further.

Juan shrugged and knelt to pop the latches. He lifted the lid of the yellow case and let it fall back.

JT and the others moved in closer to see. A foot-long orange cylinder nestled inside, topped with a thick, black, rubbery wand.

Veronica tossed her hair, shaking blond highlights out of her face, and squatted next to Juan. “What the hell is it—an ice-cream maker?”

“An eepurb.” Juan pulled out a folded paper instructions manual and read the cover. “GME AccuSat 406 Cat 2 EPIRB.” He looked up. “An emergency position-indicating radio beacon.”

Veronica snorted, stood up, and walked away.

JT gave a barking laugh. “I was hoping for a George Foreman grill and some burgers,” he said. “But we can fire this up instead and tell the Coast Guard to bring pizza when they get here.”

Ten more days like this, together, stuck here?

His eyes met Juan’s. The dive captain regarded him with the same lazy, unshakable calm as always.

You and me,
JT thought,
we’re going to have a big fucking problem
.

J
ordan wiggled her toes in the cool sand and looked back up the wooden stairs. The bluff’s edge cut off her view of whatever was going on up above. From down here, she couldn’t see any of the other contestants. The beach around her was as crowded as St. Tropez or Majorca on a hot July day, but instead of European tourists on towels, she had seals and sea lions lolling all around her.

Across the channel lay the mainland, its sandy bluffs and sea grass-covered dunes sloping up into the redwood-covered hills of Big Basin and Chalk Mountain beyond. Her parents’ home in Woodside, where she had grown up, was less than thirty miles away—just on the other side of the mountain range. So was most of the Bay Area’s population of seven million. But from where Jordan stood, she could see no signs of civilization other than a lonely, abandoned-looking farmhouse a mile inland. This particular stretch of coast was mostly protected wilderness, so it was like traveling back in time.

After the rocks and gravelly dirt of the island’s elevated surface, the beach sand felt soothing under her feet. She would be able to move fast here.

She eyed the dark shapes of the elephant seals in the distance. In the surf, three or four large males basked in the sun while keeping their distance from each other. One raised its head to shuffle a few yards up the beach, and Jordan’s breath sped up slightly. Now that she was down at their level, the alpha bulls looked impossibly huge—monsters that weighed forty times what she did. She would have to be careful.

Stepping around a cluster of sea lions, she moved north, scanning the surrounding beach. Just ahead, one branch of the elevated wooden walkway crossed her path. Extending from the bluff staircase, it ran six feet above the sand, stretching all the way across the beach to where it ended over the water. Creosote-log piers supported the walkway every fifteen feet or so. Beneath the walkway, next to the concrete base of a pier, something gleamed white.

She wove through the seals and sea lions, getting closer, until she could make out a large white Tupperware container tucked next to the pier.
Food!
Gray elephant seals surrounded the pier, but they were smaller ones—females, not the huge, aggressive males.

Jordan crept forward. The elephant seals shifted nervously as she approached, watching her with suspicious eyes. She slowed, changing the rhythm of her steps, and the seals seemed to relax.

Pushing through the last group of seals, she knelt in front of the container. The seals around her suddenly erupted into motion, scrambling away in a panic.

She scooped up the slick plastic carton, shot to her feet, and tossed it onto the walkway above her head. A deep basso roar sounded from behind, vibrating through her chest and shaking the beach beneath her feet. Grabbing the walkway’s edge with both hands, she pulled herself up in a single smooth motion, her waist at the level of the wooden beam. Her legs dangled below, vulnerable.

No judges here, no trophies, and no second place—she would only get one shot at this.

Certain that she would feel sharp teeth closing on her ankle or calf at any moment, Jordan kicked her legs out to the sides and thrust herself up with her arms—executing a perfect straddle beam mount. Her bare feet thumped onto the walkway.

She crouched there, arms outstretched for balance, and gasped in relief.

A massive dark shape slammed into the pier below.

The impact shook the boards beneath her feet and tumbled her to one knee. The Tupperware container lay on its side in front of her. She grabbed it and tucked it under one arm as a wet bulk rose three feet above the rim of the walkway next to her.

Kneeling, Jordan found herself staring a bull elephant seal right in the eye. It roared, blowing a blast of foul breath into her face.

Go!

Gagging on the smell of rotting fish, she sprang to her feet and sprinted down the walkway toward the bluff.

The bull’s teeth splintered the boards behind her, sending chunks of wood flying.

Jordan hurtled along the catwalk, leaping over the gaps where the planks were missing, her bare feet slipping and skidding on the slick gray-and-white bird droppings. Roosting birds launched themselves out of her way and went flapping into the air.

Churning through the sand alongside the walkway, the elephant seal tried to head her off. She felt its teeth tear into the wood just behind her bare ankles as she bounded from board to board, desperately trying not to fall.

Reaching the edge of the bluff, she hurled herself up the stairs that led toward the flat ground above. The elephant seal roared again in warning and turned to shuffle back to his harem.

Breathing rapidly, Jordan collapsed on the steps. Adrenaline coursed through her body.

She watched the seal retreat, and her breaths slowed to a calm evenness. Eyes narrowing in concentration, she replayed the encounter in her head. The elephant seal had been surprisingly fast, given its bulk—she had no doubt it could outrun her in a straight line on open ground. But its reaction times were slow. It wasn’t very smart.

Looking down at the Tupperware container in her arms, she peeled back its lid. A couple of dozen candy bars lay stacked inside, “Snickers” written on their brown labels. Her shoulders stiffened. Reclosing the lid of the container, she pulled the scanner from her belt and scanned the container’s tag, earning eight points.

Jordan stared after the departing bull seal again, and her jaw hardened with resentment.

When an elephant seal lifted its chest to charge like this one had, it wouldn’t be able to see what was right in front of it.
Her
seal had a distinctive zigzagging scar under its right eye, and a pale patch on its trunk.

She’d be able to recognize it again.

Mouth tight, she sat on the steps watching the seal that had chased her for a long time.

L
auren stood beneath the rusted framework of the fallen lighthouse tower, flexing her fingers and looking up. A cylindrical bundle hung from one of the tower’s higher spars, thirty feet off the ground.

She could climb it, no problem. But the spars were rusty steel, badly corroded and flaking from the salt air—would they hold her weight? She bounced on her toes and looked around to see what the other contestants were doing.

Some sort of huddle was breaking up by the breakwater. Juan closed a yellow plastic case and stood up. Then he, Veronica, Brent, and JT all headed their separate ways.

Lauren looked up again. The bundle was about the size of a liter water bottle, and that decided it for her. Grabbing the nearest spar, she levered herself up onto the scaffolding. She scanned for hand- and footholds, ignoring the ominous creak of metal, and soon was twenty feet above the ground.

Glancing down, she tensed. Right below her, a tangle of rebar spikes stuck out of the broken concrete. She would be impaled if she fell. She reset her feet and pulled herself higher on the fallen tower, angry with herself. Why was she sketching out? This was nothing.

A burst of liquid, sexy laughter from below startled her, and she tensed again. Veronica better not be laughing at
her
.

She wasn’t. Lauren watched her pull something from a section of broken red-clay sewer pipe and hold it up, still chuckling. Rolls of toilet paper, still in their plastic wrap. Veronica scanned the tag and stood up, brushing the dirt from her jeans. With a moue of disgust on her face, she inspected something smeared on the arm of her sweater.

A high-maintenance type for sure, forty but trying hard to look twenty. She wouldn’t last much longer here. Lauren felt a brief twinge of sympathy for the older woman, then turned her attention back to the bundle above.

A couple of minutes later, she released her grip and dropped the last short distance to the ground, landing lightly on her feet. The cylinder in her hand—a plastic mailing tube—was disappointingly light. She shook it but didn’t hear anything. She scanned the tag for five points, then tore the end cap off and peered in.

Disappointed, she scissored with two fingers and pulled out the sealed envelope rolled inside. She squinted at it in confusion. The plastic address window was taped over with black friction tape, but she could read the letter’s return address:

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
2100 Peabody Road
Vacaville, CA 95696

Lauren frowned.
What the fuck?

E
ven though Travis wasn’t visible right now, Mason knew he was still lurking close by, shadowing him. In the distance, JT, Juan, Camilla, and Lauren made their separate ways across the rocky northern end of the island. Mason watched them for a few seconds, then hopped down into the cracked concrete catchment basin. Shifting a piece of broken concrete that lay in the shadow of the dome overhead, he pulled out a briefcase-size white plastic case with a red cross painted on top.

Mason laughed. He stood up inside the concrete basin, like a man waist-deep in an empty swimming pool, and a shadow fell across him from the rim above.

“A first-aid kit.” Travis rubbed his chin, grinning down at Mason. “Why, I reckon that’ll come in handy sooner or later. Hand it on up or you’ll be needing it yourself real quick.”

Mason looked around. No one else was in sight.

“And while we’re at it,” Travis said, “I’ll take anything else you’re carrying, too. I don’t suppose you’ve scanned them, so according to the rules, they ain’t really yours.”

“I wonder if there’s any baking soda in this first-aid kit?” Mason kept his voice easy, conversational. “That’s supposed to provide relief from pepper spray.”

He brought his other hand into view, holding the black cylinder, and smiled. “But this is
bear
spray, actually, so it’s a little more powerful. Not really intended for use on people. I suspect it’ll cause some lasting damage—leave you blind, maybe?”

V
eronica reached up and tore the padded envelope loose from under the eaves of the small concrete blockhouse, where it had been taped. She turned it over in her hands and scanned the attached tag. The scanner registered zero points. Sweeping the blond tips of her hair out of her face, she scanned it again. Zero points.

A wordless growl escaped through her gritted teeth.

Frustrated, she looked around her. From where she stood, hidden by the corner of the blockhouse, she couldn’t see anyone else. She tore the end off the padded envelope and fanned it open, letting the compact object inside slide out into her hand. An old-fashioned black text pager—the kind Blackberries and smartphones had made obsolete—sat on her palm. Her eyebrows rose.

She checked that the pager was set to vibrate rather than beep, and turned it on. The display lit up, and a short text message ticked across it:

STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS…