New Year Island (51 page)

Mason’s eyebrows rose in surprise. It had taken him a moment to recognize Veronica. She looked different now.

Her hair had been chopped short. The bright salon highlights were gone. Standing up in spikes and radiating from her head in a rough shag, her hair looked almost black in the distance. She looked very familiar to Mason, now, though. Apart from her clothes and the missing nose ring, Veronica looked exactly the way she had as the angry teenager in the picture from Julian’s profile.

Only deadlier.

Her nostrils flared. Her mouth was slightly open, in an expression of hungry anticipation. Mason watched her chest rise and fall. She looked like a predatory animal readying for the hunt.

Your mask is slipping. I can see what you really are. Even if you yourself don’t know.

Her pale eyes bored into his across the empty space, and Mason drew back against the wall despite himself. He grinned. Even though he was sure she couldn’t see him, the urge to hide had been involuntary, instinctive.

He wondered whose name was in Veronica’s envelope. He hoped it wasn’t Camilla’s.

Veronica stalked away from the house, disappearing into the lengthening shadows as she made her way toward the barricade.

After a moment, Mason slipped out to follow her.

JT
ripped another strip from the black T-shirt. It required almost no effort, as if the tough cotton were tissue paper. The bloody white gauze of his eye patch gleamed up at him from his cot. It would make him a target, visible in light or darkness. Reaching up, he wrapped the black strips of clean cloth around his head and over his dead eye, winding them into a bandana that also covered one side of his face. He double-knotted it behind his head.

The Hawaiian shirt lay on the cot. In its place, he wore another long-sleeved black T-shirt. The desert camouflage of the multipocket tactical vest that covered his chest was a decent match for the island’s dirt and rock, as were the tan fatigue pants he wore.

He double-laced his boots—combat boots now, also in desert tan—and listened to the quiet sounds that echoed through the Victorian house.

JT himself made no noise at all. Silence was his specialty.

One dark night in the Korengal, DiMarco had dubbed him the “shadow of death.” The nickname had stuck. But the Taliban themselves had no nicknames for him. The ones he had encountered on patrol didn’t have nicknames for anything anymore.

JT flipped open a small green plastic compact one-handed, shielding the mirror inside its lid with his hand to prevent reflections from bouncing off the walls and ceiling, visible from the hallway or outside. Without looking down, he dabbed two fingers into the compact and striped the dark greasepaint under his eye. He dipped again, coming up with a lighter color.

He finished the interlocking pattern of light and dark that now covered his face, head, neck, and wrists, then slipped the compact back into a vest pocket.

Then he picked up the blue card that had been inside his envelope. His eye flicked down briefly to read the name of his target.

The card and envelope went into another pocket of his tactical vest. He picked up the night-vision goggles from his cot.

JT clipped a Benchmade tactical folding knife, also striped in camouflage, to his pants pocket. Then he slipped through the door, disappearing into the darkening hallway.

He would be a shadow once again.

C
rouching by the breakwater, Jordan ripped upward with the dive knife. She sliced through the half-dry seal hide, which she had carefully scraped clean of putrefying flesh, and cut another long strip. Sheathing the knife at her waist, she ripped the last few inches by hand. The end of the strip refused to separate, and she tore it free with her teeth.

Her anger burned inside, white hot, incandescent, making her stomach hurt, her jaw clench, her heart ache, her eyes sting.

She scanned the area all around her. No one moved—only seals and birds. She thought of how he had pointed them out to her on the beach this morning, teaching her their Latin names, and a choked sob suddenly erupted from her mouth. Tears splashed the backs of her hands, burning them.

Bastard.

Swiping her forearm across her eyes, she strangled the sobs that wanted to come, that threatened to leave her curled helpless on the ground, a pathetic loser for others to pity and feel superior to. That wasn’t her. It would never be her.

She would make that bastard sorry.

Gritting her teeth, fully in control of herself again, Jordan stared at the paintball gun, the speargun, and the envelope that lay on the ground beside her.

She would make him regret what he did.

Grabbing a long strip of sealskin, she shifted onto one knee and wrapped the strip around her opposite ankle, heel, and foot in a figure-eight pattern, layer after layer, pulling it tight they way a gymnast did after a sprain. She tied it off and shifted position, switching knees so she could wrap the other foot.

She didn’t need his fucking scuba shoes.

Ignoring the stench of rotting blubber, Jordan looked at the three sealskins in front of her and thought of tuna and peaches.

Or his fucking food, either.

She stood and grabbed the hooded sealskin cape she had fashioned, sliding it onto her shoulders and tying the reeking folds of it about her like a full-length Burberry trench coat.

Or his cozy fucking blockhouse.
He could keep it all. He could rot in there. She didn’t care.

Her new outfit felt sticky and awful against her skin, but it would keep her warm enough, even in December. After all, this was California.

Jordan slung the speargun across her back and picked up the paintball gun. She ripped open the envelope, and her shoulders sagged in disappointment. Her target was Mason. Then she straightened.

That meant Juan had her name. He would have to come after her.

And if Juan didn’t have the guts to come after her, she would still make him sorry. Her eyes narrowed. After she took out Mason, she would only have to eliminate six others to close the circle.

Then Juan would be her target, just as she was his.

She was going to look that son of a bitch in the eyes and make him regret that he ever met her.

J
uan stood inside the blockhouse, next to the drying rack, facing the open doorway. The light outside dimmed, and a chill wind tickled his bare chest and shoulders. Clouds were gathering above the island. They were sparse now, only thin wisps and streamers, but he knew they would thicken and darken over the next few hours.

The storm was coming.

Thrusting both arms into the form-fitting black wetsuit that covered him from the waist down, he shrugged his shoulders and felt the neoprene drape his chest. He reached behind him to grab the lanyard and drew the zipper up his back. Kneeling, he zipped up the left neoprene bootie, then the right. Their heavy-duty rubber soles were ridged on the bottom and sides, for stable footing on wet rock.

She hadn’t given him a chance to explain, to tell her how he felt about her. But now what was done was done. Best not to think about it anymore.

He stood and pulled the black neoprene gloves over one hand, then the other. Flexing his fingers, he watched the space beyond the door. Nothing but seals.

He had hurt her pride.

Lifting a heavy nylon belt threaded with square lead weights off the drying rack, he swung it around his waist and buckled it into place. Then he shrugged into a slim buoyancy-compensator vest and tightened the straps about his chest. Without a tank to inflate it, the BC vest wouldn’t be much use for its primary function of providing buoyancy. But its many pockets, D-rings, and buckles had other uses. He attached a clear face mask to a D-ring near his shoulder, letting the mask dangle at his collarbone.

She had let her guard down. She had left herself totally open to him. After what she had been through already—her fiancé’s suicide—that must have taken incredible courage.

The oversize swim fins on the drying rack—Beuchat Mundial Carbon Pros—were each almost a yard long. They were designed for free diving and for powering through strong currents with minimal effort. Rubber struts ridged their black carbon-fiber blades like the long, bony fingers of a bat’s wing. Juan lifted one over his shoulder and snapped it through a ring of the BC, letting the fin hang down his back, out of the way. Its mate went over his other shoulder.

He had been afraid to trust his own feelings. Now it was too late. She would never forgive him.

He slid the serrated dive knife into the black plastic locking sheath strapped to his calf. The spare paintball ammunition—yellow, in his case—went into a side pocket of the BC vest. Wedging the paintball gun barrel-first into a diagonal chest pocket, he left the grip exposed so he could draw it one-handed. Left-handed.

Perhaps, deep down, he had known that he didn’t really deserve her.

But he couldn’t undo what was done, and it didn’t matter how sorry he was. He would focus on the job at hand—the true reason he was here. He ignored the way the corners of his mouth tried to pull downward. No more distractions.

With his right hand, Juan picked up JT’s Glock. A day of immersion in salt water had done the polymer handgun no harm at all. He had wiped the brass cartridges dry and reinserted them into the magazine, but he was fairly sure even that precaution had been unnecessary. The Glock would probably even shoot underwater. He slid the blocky handgun into the improvised drop-leg holster strapped to his thigh, which he had made by cannibalizing parts from another BC vest. A rubber strap snapped into place, holding the gun securely until it was needed.

Juan smiled grimly. Now he could operate in the frame of shallow water that surrounded the island, too, while everyone else was limited to moving on the rock-and-sand picture within that frame.

With the serrated dive knife, he sliced through an empty water jug, cutting away the top to leave a large opening. Then he grabbed another empty jug and did the same. That one had belonged to Jordan.

His eyes swept the blockhouse, inspecting the walls and ceiling corners, until settling on a sunken divot in the concrete. He was reasonably certain he could make out a small black dot in its shadowed center. Staring at it, he drew the paintball gun.

Unsmiling, Juan raised his other hand to present a raised middle finger to the camera. Then he aimed the paintball gun. It bucked once in his hand, and the divot disappeared under a splatter of yellow.

Grabbing a jug with each hand, he carried them to the doorway, ready to drop both and grab for either gun. After scanning the area outside the blockhouse, he slipped cautiously outside and knelt to brace the two jugs upright between rocks.

Juan stood up. It was time for some answers.

The storm was coming.

A
n unnatural stillness reigned over the island. Camilla lay flat on her back, watching the sky. It was what she liked to do at the midpoint of a mountain bike ride. She would reach the summit, legs shaky, breathing hard from the climb, and find a nice place to stretch out. She would take her helmet off, tousle her sweaty hair to let it breathe, and watch the clouds while she gathered herself for the downhill run. Getting ready.

Because on the downhill run, anything could happen to her.

Camilla liked to go fast.
Crazy
fast.

She would dare the mountain to do its worst to her and she’d laugh, bombing down the trail without ever touching her brakes, leaving her riding companions far behind, because flying free with the sky wide above her and the wind whipping her face while trees flashed past on both sides was the exact opposite of being buried in darkness and smoke and death and screams while crumbled walls of rock and metal pressed in on you from all sides and crushed down on you from above and you were crawling, lost, crawling, crawling, dragging yourself, unable to find a way out…

She would wait for her companions to catch up in the parking lot, drinking water and smiling a quiet smile, with her bike already racked atop the Prius. She would smile when they tried to talk to her about safety and told her they were worried about her. She would smile while they called her a reckless maniac, and ask her if she had a death wish.

Nobody would go riding with her more than once. Mostly she went alone.

Camilla watched the light play through the clouds, dimming and brightening as they passed. The sun sparkled off the ocean in a band of blinding whiteness that made her squint. She let her hand drift to the paintball gun that lay at her side. Sometimes, it was like the song said: to survive, you had to get a little crazy. She knew that the stillness was an illusion. All around below her, her fellow contestants would be moving about the island, hidden and stealthy. Or they would be hunkered down, concealed from view, like trapdoor spiders waiting to ambush their prey. In the minutes and hours ahead, short bursts of human activity would erupt with shocking suddenness and play out with desperate energy, only to have the stillness return once again. But she wasn’t quite ready to join that dance yet.

Camilla thought about what Brent had said about living life alone. She was thirty years old already. She was an extrovert, she knew. She liked people, liked spending time with them, liked helping them. And people liked her. But she also liked to keep them at a comfortable distance. She did a lot of things alone. She pushed her friends and even boyfriends away when they got too close, when they wanted more of her then she was willing to share. The terror of her childhood tragedy was always going to be there inside her, a part of her forever. She had buried it as deeply as anyone could. But it still threatened to cripple all that she had become, if she allowed it to get a grip on her mind again and drag her back into its unrelenting darkness.

She thought about Veronica, a woman with her own darkness to fight. Perhaps that was why, despite all Veronica had done, despite how badly she had treated Camilla, Camilla still couldn’t find it in her heart to hate her. She was even admirable in an awful sort of way… No. Camilla stopped herself. She was doing what she always did: being too nice.