New Year Island (72 page)

Her mouth moved, but she couldn’t make a sound. “I can’t remember,” she finally whispered. “I don’t remember.”

“But
I
do,” Brent said. “I could never forget what Garcia told me. It was 1989, four days after the earthquake, when they brought you in. You were my very first survivor, Camilla. You opened my eyes.”

The skin on her arms tightened into goose bumps. What she remembered couldn’t
possibly
be true. She had been a child. Traumatized. She remembered it
wrong
.

Brent addressed the others. “When the earthquake collapsed the Cypress Freeway’s upper deck, her family’s car was under the worst section. The freeway came down right on top of it, crushing the car like a pancake. Trapping Camilla inside with her family. Breaking her legs.”

The doctor’s deep, merciless voice seemed to come from far away.

“She still had a little room to move about in the car. She was small, you see. But her parents weren’t.”

She shook her head violently, trying to shake loose from the paralysis that gripped her. A trapped-animal noise rose in her chest, fighting to break free.

“That’s enough.” Somebody else’s voice. Juan.

Brent chuckled. “Can you imagine how terrifying that would be? For a child who had known nothing but love and security before—an only child whose affectionate mother and father had built their whole lives around her? Darkness and smoke and screaming, blood everywhere? Her dead parents crushed, immobile, alongside her? She had to get out.”

“Stop right now.” Juan’s voice was louder.

Camilla’s hands shook. She didn’t want Juan to hear. She didn’t want
anyone
to hear. To know what she had done. The floor blurred in front of her eyes.

Brent didn’t stop.

“In extremis, some survivors are capable of nearly superhuman physical feats. There were walls of steel and concrete blocking her on all sides. When the rescue team found the car, the steel door frame was twisted like cheap cardboard. The side panels—sheet metal—were peeled and torn…”

She shook her head and shrieked, hurting her own ears.

“…but she still couldn’t wriggle out. Something was in her way. Luckily, it was much softer than metal…”

“No…” Her moan was barely audible.

“…easier to tunnel a path through,” Brent said. “I still find it hard to believe a child was able to do that with her bare hands, though. Can you imagine the kind of will to survive that would require?”

She heard fast footsteps crossing the floor, headed toward Brent. Soft, rubbery steps. Juan.

“They called her the ‘Little Angel of Death.’” Brent’s voice sped up, getting the words out before Juan could reach him. “You see, Camilla managed to escape that car on her own, several days before they found her crawling around under the rubble. The mess she made getting herself out of that car—what she did to her own dead parents—it would have followed her all her life. They were eviscerated. She quite literally tore them to pieces.

“The recovery crew pitied her, so they went back in. They disguised the damage. They covered it up, for her sake…”

Camilla stumbled toward the doorway on rubbery legs. She couldn’t see properly. She heard someone say, “Not. One. More. Word.”

In passing, she caught a glimpse of Juan pressing the Glock against Brent’s forehead. But she couldn’t look at either of them—couldn’t look at anyone. She had to find somewhere to be alone, curl up, and go away for a while. She bumped into the door frame, sending sparks of pain shooting through her broken nose and radiating through her face. Realigning her body with the doorway, she made it through on the second try, leaving the others behind.

She never wanted any of them to see her again.

C
amilla stumbled out the door, and Mason watched her go.
Camilla the chameleon. I thought I had you figured out, but I was wrong.
An unfamiliar sensation ran through his body. To his surprise, it occurred to him that it was very likely fear.

Juan held the gun to Brent’s forehead, leaning into his face, as if daring him to speak. Mason waited, but nothing interesting happened. Then he looked back at the door Camilla had gone through.

JT frowned and said, “Someone ought to go see if she’s okay.”

Mason looked at Juan.
You should go, pal. You’re the one she wants—needs—to hear it from.

Juan’s fingertip was on the trigger. Brent stared back at him with amused contempt. A muscle in Juan’s jaw twitched, but he kept his face impassive. His eyes never left Brent’s, inches away.

Mason waited a moment longer.
I guess not, then.

“I’ll go,” he said, struggling to his feet.

He found her a few minutes later in the blockhouse—Juan’s blockhouse. She was slumped on Jordan’s cot with her back against the wall. Her curly brown hair hung in front of her face, hiding it from him, as she stared at her hands and fingers.

Mason stood in the doorway, unsure what to do or say. His own reaction surprised him again.

She didn’t look up.

“I need to be alone right now,” she said, her voice empty of emotion.

“I’ll be right outside if you need anything,” Mason said. He limped around the corner of the door frame, and slid down it to sit in the sunshine. Seals shuffled about, curious, and he watched them.

When her quiet, wavering voice floated out of the blockhouse long minutes later, he barely heard it.

“Brent’s wrong. I got out the back window.”

Then came a high-pitched keen.

“I was trying to save them. I was trying to get them out. But instead, they came apart.”

“I
s frozen solid with rust.”

Juan watched Dmitry bang on the housings of pump after pump, walking down the row of machinery.

“This one. This one. This one. All of them. Very bad news, my friend.”

Juan swayed on his feet. Fever sweat slicked his forehead, and breathing was getting harder, although he tried not to let the others see it. The itch in his side—his lung—was worse now, making it hard for him to focus.

“We could use a mechanic.” JT laughed. “Too bad we don’t have one anymore.”

Steadying himself against a pipe, Juan tried to keep the concern off his face. The pumps were 140 years old. What was it that Camilla had in mind? She was too smart not to have considered this.

“We need new pumps,” Dmitry said.

A small voice spoke from the doorway. “We have new pumps. Two of them, in fact.”

Juan looked up in surprise to see Camilla. Then he realized what she meant. “The power washers.”

Mason followed her into the room.

“We go get them now.” Dmitry’s face lit up with his crooked smile. He turned to Brent. “
Durak.
This means ‘stupid.’ You are very stupid to kill Heather and Jacob. Here in America you will go to jail, but in Russia they would not waste jail cell and food on you. Waste only a bullet. And
these
people here are good people, too, that you try to kill.”

“Tell your bosses that,
vor v zakony,
” Brent said.

Dmitry’s face blanched.
“Shto?”

Brent spoke past him, addressing them all. “There was some truth to what I said earlier about the gambling.”

“Ignore him.” Juan turned away.

“I dug myself a deep hole with my debts,” Brent said. “The kind of mob people I was dealing with, they were the worst sort of lowlifes. They had a sideline distributing rather unique films.” He rolled his neck, looking at the ceiling. “Believe me, they loved having a doctor at their beck and call. I had access to human tissue. I had keys to the morgue…”

“Don’t listen to this sick fuck,” JT said.

“…and I helped them make some movies.” Brent grinned. “I had to. They owned me. When the hospital administrators eventually caught on, I lost my medical license. But they had no idea of the full extent of it, and of course they didn’t want publicity.”

Dmitry stepped close, his face angry. “
Vor v zakony
—means ‘criminal.’ Thief. Mafia. Why do you say this to
me
?”

“These were bad people, and they owned me. When the video we’re shooting here is delivered, all my debts will be cleared.”

Brent pulled his face away from Dmitry’s angry glare.

“Bad people,” he said, aiming his voice toward Juan. “They made your daddy’s little cocaine cartel look like a third-grade milk-money racket.”

Juan ignored him.

Brent chuckled. “You see, it was the Russian mob I was in debt to. Dmitry’s bosses.”

“Yob tvoyu mat.”
Red faced, Dmitry grabbed the front of Brent’s wet suit. “Why do you say this lie?”

“No, Dmitry!” Camilla shouted.

Juan also realized what was about to happen, and lunged for them, sending a spike of pain through his chest. But he was too late to stop it.

Brent snapped his head forward, driving his forehead into Dmitry’s bandage-wrapped temple, dropping him at his neoprene-booted feet.

He looked down at Dmitry’s prone form with eerie, calm eyes. “
Durak.
”

T
he fog whistle glistened in the sun, still wet from the power washing that had blasted the muck and rust from its metal sides. A four-foot-tall cylinder of steel, three feet in diameter and seamed with welds along one side, it stood upright once again on its concrete base. The surrounding area was now clear of rubble. The end of the wide steam pipe emerged from the ground to fit snugly into the base of the whistle. Camilla’s eyes followed the path of the half-buried steam pipe, now a clean, straight line running down the hill to disappear into the wall of the fog signal building.

She thought of Dmitry, unconscious in the same room where Brent was chained.

“I don’t like leaving those two alone for too long,” she said.

“We’re ready, anyway,” JT said. “Pumps wired, boilers filled, and finally, this…” He slapped the whistle with a palm. “Let’s go make some noise.”

She turned a half-circle, looking at the stretch of California coast across the channel. Less than a mile away, just out of sight behind the dunes, a continuous flow of cars streamed up and down scenic Highway 1. What would people think when the steam whistle, silent for 140 years, split the afternoon air?

She did her best to push aside the awful turmoil that churned inside her, but it wasn’t easy. Did she remember a younger Brent, his hair dark instead of silver, wearing scrubs, holding her hand, speaking gently to her? How she’d clung to that voice twenty-three years ago, pulling herself up out of the darkness that had claimed her then—the darkness that threatened to reclaim her even now.

She looked at the whistle and felt hope blossom in her chest.

Juan squatted in front of the whistle, reaching inside the narrowed section at the bottom, where a small steel door opened into the whistle’s body. He frowned, and the expression on his face made Camilla’s gut roll with tension.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A part is missing,” he said. “A piece of the valve throat. In here, there should be a lever, with a half-gear on one side.”

“Can we improvise something?” JT asked.

Juan shook his head. “Not without a machine shop.” He turned to look toward the fog signal building, and his eyes narrowed.

Camilla stared at the whistle. They were missing a lever with a half-gear on one side. She felt the hope that was blossoming inside her curdle and die.

“I know where it is,” she said. “I’ll be right back. But don’t touch that whistle again. Don’t do
anything
.”

She turned away and ran down the hill, headed for the seal barricade and the houses beyond.

“Be careful,” JT shouted after her. “Veronica may still be around. Brent killed Jacob, but
she
might have taken the missing women.”

Camilla raised a hand in acknowledgment but didn’t slow or turn around.

She had bigger worries right now.

• • •

Seals crowded the foyer of the Greek Revival house. Camilla nudged past them and into the living room. The big-screen monitor had been pulled off the wall. It lay in the corner, the frame twisted, the screen shattered.

Seals roamed freely through the rooms and hallways. On her way up, she passed a sea lion sliding down the stairs.

Déjà vu. Just like their first day here—the first contest. They would have to clear the houses again, she thought, and fought a hysterical giggle that wanted to turn into a sob. But only half of them were left alive now. And everybody was hurt.

She closed her eyes, fighting tears. Jordan, Lauren, Natalie, Veronica, even Travis—all dead now. The two scientists, Heather and Jacob. Dead.

Passing another seal in the upstairs hallway, she entered the room that had been hers. A moment later, she held the odd-shaped piece of metal in her hands. She remembered finding it, wrapped in newspaper, nestled in her luggage that first day on the island.

Brent had known,
even then,
that they would eventually repair the fog whistle.

They couldn’t sound the distress signal now. They didn’t dare.

Something terrible would happen if they tried.

Something else troubled her, too, itching at the back of her thoughts as she turned the valve lever in her hands. It was JT’s shouted warning a few minutes ago.

“…the missing women…”

Camilla repeated his words. An ominous phrase, but familiar from somewhere. She associated it with the metal shape she held. She looked at the valve lever again. Her eye was drawn irresistibly toward something grey-white which lay crumpled in the other corner: the paper she had found the lever wrapped in.

A moment later, she was kneeling and smoothing the wrinkled newspaper pages on the floor. The headlines leaped up at her:

POLICE CONTINUE SEARCH FOR MISSING WOMEN

FAMILY OF MISSING SAN JOSE WOMAN HOLDS VIGIL

ARE WOMEN SAFE IN THE PARK?

LIVERMORE MOTHER DISAPPEARS

MAYOR CONVENES TASK FORCE

FEMALE HIKER MISSING, FEARED DEAD