New Year Island (63 page)

Jordan’s face at the end, so angry, so utterly furious with him. He had deserved it. He had treated her so badly. He had ruined everything.

He was missing what Dmitry was saying.

Face tight, Juan forced himself to concentrate. He studied the map. Año Nuevo Island sat at the juncture of a converging network of geological faults. The fault lines increased in density the closer they came to the island.

“So this would be a really bad place to be when California’s big one hits?” he asked.

Dmitry nodded. “Bad place for earthquake. Very bad.”

C
amilla stood on the elevated walkway, watching the elephant seals on the beach below. She needed to find Jordan and speak with her, get her to rejoin the others before it was too late.

The sun was climbing over the horizon now. They would be face-to-face with Julian soon. They didn’t have much time, and they needed Jordan’s help.

Camilla scanned the crowds of seals. There seemed to be fewer than before, which made it easier to spot what she was looking for.

Despite the dread that weighed her limbs and sat like a brick in her gut, she couldn’t help feeling a certain awe as she watched Jordan move among the seals. Her motions mimicked those of the animals around her: long pauses, languid stretches, followed by short bursts of shuffling, limping forward motion. The elephant seals that Jordan passed did not react even when she brushed against them or pushed them as she went by. They seemed to accept her as one of them.

She did not look like a person who had lost her mind.

Relieved, Camilla let out the breath she had been holding and lowered herself to drop from the walkway to the sand.

The seals around Jordan scattered at Camilla’s approach. Jordan stood up from her crouch, balancing storklike on one leg. She leaned on the speargun, using it as a crutch. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, her face was set in an expression of stony indifference. She didn’t say anything.

Camilla found herself at a loss for words. She swallowed.

“Julian’s coming.”

Jordan looked away, and her lips twitched in annoyance, as if she was disappointed in Camilla.

“Don’t shut the rest of us out this way,” Camilla said. “We need your help. Maybe together we can figure out who Julian’s spy is, before he gets here.”

“Oh, that.” Jordan turned away and limped along the beach, giving a dismissive wave behind her. “We’ve had the answer to
that
ever since the first presentation on the ship.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The company name. Vita Brevis.” Jordan’s pace was brisk, despite her limp.

Camilla hurried to keep up. “What was that quote again?”

“Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.”
It was strange to hear Jordan pronounce the rolling Latin syllables, tossing them over her shoulder with indifference.

“But what does it
mean
?”

“It’s not important.”

Camilla grabbed her arm. “Please, Jordan!”

She answered in a bored monotone. “Art is long, life is short, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult.”

“So this is a sick experiment of some sort? Or we’re being judged somehow? What does it
mean
?”

“
What
isn’t important.
Who
is.”

“
Who
is what we’re trying to figure out here,” Camilla said. “I’m mystified. How does the quote tell us that?”

Jordan just shook her head. But then she stopped for a moment and looked at Camilla—really looked at her. And smiled.

Her wide, dazzling smile lit Camilla’s face like the sun, and she felt a burst of hope as the knots in her heart started to loosen.

Jordan reached out and touched her forearm.

“You don’t give up on people, do you?” she said. “I’m really sorry he brought
you
here, Camilla, because you don’t deserve this.”

“Julian’s coming to kill us all,” Camilla said. “It’ll be much easier for him if we’re all separated like this, angry at each other. We need you with us right now, Jordan.
I
need you.
Juan
needs you.”

At Juan’s name, Jordan’s face changed, turning ugly. Her fingers gripped Camilla’s forearm like a claw.

“Juan needs me?” Her attempt at a sarcastic laugh sounded more like a choked sob. “Juan doesn’t need
anybody,
sister. Don’t you forget that. And don’t you
dare
trust that bastard.”

Pushing Camilla’s arm aside, she turned and limped away down the beach with fast, angry strides.

Watching her receding back, Camilla closed her eyes.

“Oh god,” she said to the empty beach. “We’re all going to die here.”

“D
id you find JT?” Camilla asked.

Brent shook his head. But he didn’t stop—just continued wagging his head back and forth much longer than would be normal. Camilla looked at his eyes, and her heart sank. His blue irises were wide and almost without pupils—he had injected himself again.

She threw Mason a questioning glance that asked,
Why didn’t you stop him?

Mason shrugged and gave her a rueful grin. Then he pointed toward the narrow, bridgelike causeway of rock separating the northern part of the island—the seahorse’s head—from where they now stood.

“We found an orange line in the sand,” he said.

Camilla had gathered everyone she could—Mason, Brent, Juan, and Dmitry—near the fallen lighthouse tower to come up with a plan. Tamping down the rising panic inside that screamed at her to run, run, run because Julian was coming to kill them all, she thought about what Mason had just said.

“Orange was JT’s paintball color,” she said. “He’s alive.”

“But a line in the sand means only one thing,” Mason said.

She nodded. “Cross at your own peril. He’s over there, in hiding, telling the rest of us to keep away or else. But that’s no good. We need his help.”

“Unless he’s with Julian,” Mason said.

Camilla walked over to the middle of the causeway, and the others followed. An irregular orange line, marked every few feet by a crushed orange paintball, cut across the narrowest section of dirt and rock, running its full forty-foot width.

Heart pounding, Camilla hesitated for a moment. Then she stepped over the line and strode to the northern end of the causeway. She scanned the rocky ground beyond, seeing only emptiness.

“I know you can hear me, JT,” she shouted. “We need your help. Julian’s coming to kill us all.”

Silence greeted her in response.

“Please, JT. Protect us. We need you.”

Nothing but echoes.

JT had abandoned them to die. Camilla tasted bitterness in her throat. This must have been how his wounded teammates felt in Afghanistan.

Juan laid a hand on her shoulder. “The orange line may be a decoy. He could be behind us. Anywhere.”

She stared at him, tense with doubt. Had
Juan
draw this line?

“I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t kill him.” Juan took his hand off her shoulder. “I’m not a killer, Camilla.”

What about your brother Álvaro?

And now Juan had given himself the last name
Álvarez
. Oh god. If JT was still alive, maybe he was hiding from Juan.

She was going about this all wrong—trying to pull her team together, when they were probably the people she should be most scared of. Maybe Veronica, JT, and Jordan had the right idea, and Camilla, too, should be getting as far away from the others as possible.

Brent cleared his throat. “What you were reading last night, about the history and archaeology of this place? Well, I read a little of it, too.”

“Maybe your book club can meet a little later, then?” Mason said. “Right now isn’t a good time.”

Brent ignored him and pointed out to sea. “When Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed past here four hundred years ago he was already losing his crew to scurvy. Not a whole lot of medical knowledge back then.”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “No modafinil to get them so high that they’d babble to each other about history instead of coming up with a plan.”

Brent frowned at him. “I guess you didn’t take any of the pills, or you’d know there aren’t any euphoric effects associated with modafinil. My pupillary constriction and general feeling of well-being comes from other things—fentanyl and hydrocodone, mainly.”

“You’re a credit to the profession, Brent.”

Brent waved him away and pointed across the channel.

“Vizcaíno’s chaplain, Father Antonio de la Ascensión, had given last rites to half the crew by the time he looked out at Punto Año Nuevo and named it. Vizcaíno’s sailors made no attempt to communicate with the natives—Costanoan Ohlone people—they saw hiding on the shore, watching the ship go by.”

“I’m guessing this is eventually going somewhere,” Mason said.

Brent kept his eerie gaze focused on Camilla. “The cure to what was killing Vizcaíno’s men was growing wild all along these shores.
Fragaria chiloensis
—beach strawberry—was a staple of the native diet, and so were gooseberries. Scurvy is caused by acute vitamin C deficiency, and both types of berries are very high in C.

“The Ohlone hid amongst the berry bushes until Vizcaíno’s ships were out of sight. But they were less fortunate in their next encounter with the Spanish: a military expedition led by Gaspar de Portola. I do wonder how differently history might have turned out, if…”

“…if Vizcaíno’s men and the Ohlone had trusted each other,” Camilla said. “But they didn’t, and so they died.”

She turned to Juan. “Let’s all go to your blockhouse,” she said. “
Together
. I want to see that map.”

• • •

In the blockhouse, Camilla looked at her companions. Dmitry held the four-foot concrete-capped steel pipe she had seen days ago in Lauren’s hands. He carried it over his shoulder like a medieval mace. Juan wore his wet suit again, and a dive knife on his ankle. She couldn’t see the gun.

She looked at the can of bear spray in Mason’s hand and shook her head. “That’s not going to be enough.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver pocketknife that she recognized as one of the presents from the gifting game, two days ago. The blade was less than two inches long—it looked pathetic.

“Oh god.” Rolling her eyes, Camilla took it from him and tossed it aside. Picking up one of the heavy dive knives on the counter, she handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “I think.”

Seeing the awkward, tentative way he held it, Camilla’s face tightened into a grimace. This was her army.

“Brent?” she asked.

He shook his head and tightened his grip on the first-aid kit. “I know what it feels like to kill accidentally,” he said. “I won’t do it on purpose.”

Camilla took a dive knife for herself, too. She strapped its sheath to her upper arm like a workout iPod—upside down, so she could grab it in a hurry with the other hand. The thought of using the knife to defend herself—stabbing another human being with it—sickened her. But unlike Brent, she was ready to do it if necessary. She would do anything she had to, to get back to Avery—and to make sure Julian didn’t get away with this.

“Juan, what about the gasoline you found in that cave?” she asked. “I know none of the houses or other wood will burn. Julian made sure of that. But we have gas now, and it isn’t raining. Maybe we can light a pile of dried seaweed or something to make a signal fire.”

He was shaking his head. “It’s diesel.”

“So?”

“Julian thought of everything.” Juan tapped the generator on the counter with a knuckle. “Diesel fuel doesn’t ignite easily outside a high-compression engine. It would actually put
out
a small fire—we’d need to get something big burning hot already before it would be useful as an accelerant.”

“Everyone over here, then,” she said. “Let’s take a look at the map.”

The five of them looked down at it. Like movie generals strategizing for war, she thought. And wasn’t that pretty much what they were doing, after all?

Borrowing Juan’s pen, she crosshatched the area south of the barricade, where the houses were.

“Veronica and Natalie,” she said. “Red territory.”

“The black widow’s lair,” Mason said, laughing.

Camilla ignored him and hatched diagonal lines across the seahorse-head shape of the island’s northern end. “Orange territory—JT.”

She drew wavy lines over the island’s main beach. “Black territory—Jordan.”

She tapped the center of what was left. “That leaves the five of us with this territory,” she said. “Our paintball colors were green, pink, yellow, and purple, so we’ll call it rainbow territory.”

“‘Rainbow’ works for me,” Mason said. He traced their territory’s outline with his finger. “Julian’s main advantages are the cameras and—if you’re right—the guns he brings. To level the playing field, we need to take those advantages away from him.”

“We don’t have time to find and destroy all the cameras,” Brent said. “That would take days, and even then we’d never get them all.”

Camilla nodded. “But we don’t
have
to get them all. Clearing one small space is enough, if we can force Julian to come after us there.”

“This blockhouse?” Mason asked.

Juan shook his head. “The walls are concrete, which is good, but it’s small—no maneuvering room. And it’s exposed. They could breach a wall and pick us off from a distance.”

Camilla tapped the wooden station buildings on the map. “These are even worse. Too many ways in—doors and windows—and the walls won’t stop bullets. Julian could hunt us room to room, killing us one by one.”

She stepped back and took in the whole of rainbow territory, from the seal barricade in the south to the causeway in the north, bounded on the west by the dock and breakwater, and on the east by the bluffs dropping to the beach.

The blockhouse and the station buildings wouldn’t work. The big factory warehouse would turn into a carnival shooting gallery, with them as the targets. The lighthouse tower was a twisted wreck of rubble…