New Year Island (36 page)

Handing the phone back, JT grabbed a handle on the rim of the huge valve wheel and pulled hard, his arms and shoulders flexing with the strain. The wheel didn’t budge. It was frozen, rusted in place.

He grabbed it with his other hand, too, braced his legs, and grunted, straining against the resistance. It gave with a rusty creak, turning a few inches. Letting go, he stepped back and looked the machinery up and down.

“Beats me. I think I’ve seen something similar on old aircraft carriers, but I thought this was a lighthouse station.” He raised an eyebrow and looked at Brent. “Travis could probably tell us more. But I ain’t about to ask that piece of shit for anything.”

Brent thrust his hands in his vest pockets and shook his head. “He’s in no position to answer, anyway. I put him under before leaving—easier on all of us.”

JT nodded. This was probably a good time to bring up what been worrying him all morning. He led Brent over to the wall, out of earshot of the doorway.

“Something else, too, Doc: Lauren. I think you should talk to her. She’s not handling this well. Seemed fine last night, but this morning she was acting real freaky all of a sudden. Wouldn’t tell me why.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Girl puts on a tough front, but she’s scared real bad.”

“I can have a word with her,” Brent said, “but it’s the police we really need to be talking to at this point.” He tapped his phone again and the screen lit up. “Still no signal at all. Do you think maybe they—?”

“Shine that over here.” JT was staring at the section of wooden siding next to them, which held a faint sheen in the light of Brent’s phone. He ran his fingers over it. “If Julian’s crew isn’t staying in these buildings…”

He rubbed his fingers together, feeling a trace of tacky detergent residue.

“…then why’d they wash the walls?”

L
auren hustled along the beach, headed north along the waterline, moving fast but without real purpose. Her heart was beating hard, her emotions in turmoil. Her arms seemed to have a life of their own, now grabbing at her hair, now slapping her thighs restlessly as she took long strides along the sand. She needed space from everyone right now, to get her thoughts under control and figure out what she needed to do.

Large, dark shapes lay on the beach just ahead: the main cluster of elephant seals. She didn’t want to run into those so she swung around and headed south.

Someone
had left it for her—laid it next to her face while she slept, knowing it would be the first thing she saw. Ten-point-eight millimeter red-and-gold bi-pattern, the color faded as if by long exposure to the weather, one end unraveling where a sharp knife had sliced through it.

She had recognized that rope—oh yes, she had
definitely
recognized it.

With both shaking hands entangled in her hair, Lauren reached the beach’s southern end and spun about to go north again.

Who could she talk to?

Who could she trust?

She had even caught JT looking at her strangely this morning.

The factory buildings had been empty. There was no one else on the island.

Turning south again to avoid blundering into the elephant seal rookery, she stared across the strait toward the mainland.

The waves were calmer today under the gray sky, without their usual white-capped turbulence. Beckoning to her across the short stretch of open water, the beaches and bluffs of the mainland seemed close enough to touch. She shook her head, trying to clear the panic, realizing she was talking to herself.

“It’s impossible—I saw them fall. I fucking
saw
them.”

Something dark on the bluff above drew her attention. She looked up, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

Near the fallen frame of the lighthouse tower, a figure stood silhouetted against the bright sky, silently watching her.

She couldn’t tell who it was.

“T
he way I see it, there are two possibilities,” Mason said.

Camilla was still angry at him, so she didn’t answer. She sat on one of the cots and picked up the first of the reports she had stacked beside her. Light streamed in through the window now, brightening the dusty room. The boards that JT had pulled away from the frame lay jumbled in a corner.

“Possibility number one: Julian is on the ship, anchored out of sight just up the coast. There’s a soundstage on board, fitted with old stuff to look just like one of these rooms.”

Possible, Camilla thought, but pretty unlikely. She continued ignoring Mason and thumbed open the beige cover to read the first page. The report in her hands was dated 2010, three years ago, and titled
Pinniped Population Study
. Elephant seals and sea lions. The white-bound ones were surveys of bird species. She shuffled through the pile of reports: 2012, 2011, 2009… So the station—because this had to be a remote biology station—was still in use from time to time.

“Possibility number two,” Mason said. Then he stopped, letting the silence expand. He was grinning.

She found she just couldn’t stay mad at him. “Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll bite. Possibility number two?”

“A submarine.”

“Oh god, shut up.” She stood and walked to the window, pointing toward where the mainland lay hidden by the island’s upslope. “I saw an old farmhouse about a mile inland, across the channel from us. Probably built around the same time as these buildings. Julian and his crew are in there.”

Mason nodded. “That’s what I’m guessing, too.” His glasses were broken, one of the lenses shattered, the eye underneath it swollen and purple. He had an ugly cut on his chin, and bruises on his jaw and cheekbone.
What a pair we must make,
she thought. She probably had two black eyes herself: the swollen bridge of her nose was a blurry pinkness intruding on the bottom of her view.

He picked up a rolled poster and unrolled it on the counter near the window. “A submarine would have been cool, though—”

“Wait a minute,” Camilla said, pointing at a scientific report that lay on the floor. Dust lay thick on the concrete elsewhere, but it was disturbed where the report had been dropped facedown, cover open. The binding on this report was blue, unlike the beige or white ones she had seen so far. Staring at it, she felt a ripple of anxiety tighten the back of her neck.

“Hand me that one,” she said. “It looks different.”

L
auren came to a stop and dropped her arms to her sides. She had come to a decision. She would not stand by powerless again while the situation around her spiraled further and further beyond recovery.

It felt good to take control, to take action.

Bouncing in place with nervous energy, she stared across the water at the mainland. Only three-quarters of a mile—a little longer than the swim in a sprint-length triathlon. The crosscurrent would make it more tiring, but she could do this. Easy.

Although the beach seemed extra crowded with seals today, the channel itself was surprisingly clear of them. That would make things easier for her.

She took two running steps into the surf and broke the water in a clean forward dive, surfacing just beyond the shore break to take a deep breath.

Strong kicks and even, powerful strokes of her arms carried her out into the strait.

Lauren struck out for the mainland, leaving Año Nuevo Island and its terrible uncertainties behind her.

M
ason handed Camilla the blue-bound report from the floor and then went back to the poster he had unrolled on the counter.

The blue-black corner of a photograph stuck out from between the center pages of the report. Camilla folded back the light blue cover, and her disquiet grew as she read the title page.

Año Nuevo 2011-2012 Seasonal Tracking and Predation Survey

Santa Cruz Pelagic Research Institute

Karen Anderson, PhD
Jacob Horowitz, PhD
Heather Stevens, PhD
Dmitry Kuznetsov, DSc

“You need to see this,” Mason said. He was no longer grinning.

She flipped the report closed, holding her place with her finger, and carried it over to the counter to look down at the map he held spread beneath his palms. The familiar seahorse shape of the island was a blank white space in the middle, surrounded by expanding contour lines showing ocean depth. Scattered amid the contour lines, dozens of X’s were jotted in pencil, with dates and coded notations beside them, clustering most densely in the channel between island and mainland.

He raised his eyes to meet hers. “There’s something else out there.”

“I know,” she said. “Something bad.”

A distant shout sounded through the open window: Jordan’s voice—an urgent command, with none of her usual coquetry.

“Juan, get over here. Right now!”

Through the window, Camilla watched Juan join Jordan at the top of the bluff. She pointed at something Camilla couldn’t see down below, on the beach or in the water. Raising his hand to shield his eyes, Juan stared where she was pointing. Then he grabbed her arm, and the two of them ran for the wooden stairs that led down to the beach.

Mason stared after them. “We’d have
heard
a boat…”

“Not a boat.” Camilla’s stomach clenched. “Lauren.”

She flipped the report open to the center, where several pages of taped photographs thickened the paper. One glance confirmed what she was afraid of. Camilla turned it so Mason could see the photographs. His eyes widened.

“That’s a lot of blood.”

S
troke, stroke, stroke, breath. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breath…

Splashing through the waves, Lauren could hear indistinct shouts. On her next breath, she looked back over her shoulder. A cluster of figures stood at the end of the elevated walkway where it projected out over the water. At the front of the group, a tall man swept his arms over his head like a railroad signalman. Juan. The cheerleader stood beside him. In front of them, Camilla—the stripe of white tape across her broken nose visible even from here—was waving her back, shouting something. Lauren couldn’t make out the words. Mason was there, too, doing something weird: sticking his arms out in front of him and clapping his hands together straight up and down, with fingers hooked. Playing charades.
Have fun, buddy.

Camilla grabbed at Mason. Jumping up and down, she pointed toward Lauren, her voice rising in pitch. She sounded hysterical now; the woman was practically
screaming
. Camilla thought swimming the channel was too dangerous? She didn’t get it at all. The real danger was there on the island with her. Christ, it might even
be
her.

Others were clambering down the stairs from the bluff: JT, Brent, Veronica… It looked as though everybody wanted her to turn back. Fuck that. She switched from a three-one rhythm to two-one, speeding up.

Stroke, stroke, breath. Stroke, stroke, breath.

She couldn’t trust any of them. Someone had put the carabiner in her pack. Someone had left the cut climbing rope on her pillow.

Oh Christ, she couldn’t think about that—not
now
. Lauren gasped, flooding her mouth with seawater.

In her mind’s eye, she could see Matt’s eyes clearly, bulging in terror as he stared up the line at her, seeing the knife in her hand, realizing what she intended.

“Please don’t do it, Lauren,” Matt sobbed. “I don’t want to die.”

Farther down the rope, Terry’s head hung back. His helmet was cracked, but his eyes were open too, staring at her out of his mask of blood. The glacier glistened white, a mile below his dangling feet. He shook his head from side to side, trying to speak, his eyes widening in horror as he watched Lauren slash at the line connecting the two of them to her waist harness, dragging her down.

Close to the middle of the channel now, Lauren sobbed. She pushed herself to swim even harder.

Stroke, stroke, breath, stroke, stroke, breath…

“F
uck!” JT yelled, pushing past Camilla to grab Juan’s shoulder. “She can’t hear us. She’s not turning back.”

“She’s past the halfway point.” Juan changed his arm motions, waving Lauren forward.

Camilla’s legs shook. She reached behind her, groping for Mason’s wrist.

“She’s got this,” JT said. “She’s got it. Go on, girl—”

The water beneath Lauren erupted.

She was lifted high into the air, carried at the front of a gray-and-white torpedo shape the size of a small aircraft. It hung suspended above the water for a frozen second, crescent pectoral fins slicing through the air as it defied gravity. Then the massive shark fell back into the water with a deafening slap that echoed off the bluffs behind them. Plumes of white spray flew skyward.

Lauren was gone.

Camilla realized she was screaming: a high, piercing shriek that rolled out of her mouth, going on and on. She was powerless to stop it. Her fingers dug into Mason’s wrist.

JT dropped in front of her, knees thudding down onto the boards of the walkway. He grabbed the top of his shaved head with both hands. “Aww, hell no! Please, aww, no…”

A billowing red stain spread across the water where Lauren had disappeared.

“Oh my god.” Jordan had both hands clamped over her mouth. Then she pointed. “She’s still alive.”

Camilla watched in horror as Lauren surfaced in the middle of the red stain, one arm flailing at the water.

Something floated on the surface at Lauren’s side. At first, Camilla’s mind refused to interpret what she was seeing; then she realized she was looking at Lauren’s legs. Lauren’s lower body was not aligned properly; it had come partially detached from her upper body, which still tried weakly to swim.

The cloud of red continued to spread, dyeing the water in a growing circle around her.

As if in the slow motion of a nightmare, Jordan’s pointing finger shifted. A short distance from the struggling swimmer, a disturbance swirled the water, then a gray triangle broke the surface. Glistening in the afternoon sun, it arced slowly around Lauren. A wide gray back, like the top of a car, crested beneath the dorsal fin, followed by the towering tail.