Captives (30 page)

A few low chuckles. Frank picked up a fork, turning it slowly, sunlight dancing from its steel tines. "I don't blame them. You got to look after yourself. But I'm thankful I don't have to be like that anymore. And amazed that all it took to rekindle the flame was one man's conviction we could be better."

The others murmured their agreement. Frank sat. With the speechmaking over, Walt expected to be bombarded with questions, but the others tucked into their food, joking with each other about the day's work or people from other groups and/or zones. Soo kept him occupied with talk about sailing and fishing, switching between the hard details of the job and airier talk about their desire to get and crew a second ship.

Whenever she got on that subject, others chimed in, talking about how much more productive it would make them, how much it would be appreciated. Walt got the impression their desire to get another boat up and running had a lot to do with how readily he'd been welcomed into the fold. He was no longer certain that Soo being the first to find him on the road had been coincidence. Could be that the zones were set up to create competition between each other. Including for new sources of labor.

"Mind doing the dishes?" Soo said once everyone had finished their meal, leaving the table full of fish bones and orange peels.

He smiled tightly. "I'd love to."

He got to work. The sun dropped. He went to the bunk room, where Frank and the other two men were preparing for bed. He wanted to do some exploring after dark, but fell asleep as soon as he hit his mattress.

They rousted early. After they'd been out a few hours, the catch looked big enough to feed forty or fifty people, easy. Chances were good that the people running the horse team were responsible for distributing it across the zones. If he stalled out here, his next move would be to transfer into food distribution.

The day came and went. When Soo wasn't at his elbow, which wasn't often, he did his best to plumb the others for answers about the city's organization, but they were about as useful as posts without a fence. Smiling politely. Agreeing vaguely. Shrugging as if a shrug was an answer. Most of the time, they looked around, hunting for Soo.

It troubled him for reasons beyond the lack of information. As he lay in bed, he figured out why: they were isolating him. Making him socially dependent on Soo to understand how his new home worked. If he did something to provoke her disapproval, he'd have no one else to turn to. That meant staying on her good side. Learning to obey.

Or maybe he was nuts. Ready to read menace into anything. Maybe the others didn't want to step on her toes. Or saw him and his schooling as an unwanted responsibility to be pawned off on Soo. For all he knew, she was a man-hungry lunatic and the others knew better than to get too near her prey.

Friday arrived. The day seemed to go on forever. Out at sea, a net snapped as they were hauling it in and he tried to grab it before it could spill its contents, scraping his palm. Soo cleaned the wound and Frank gave him some pills to stave off infection, but the event put him in a sour mood that lingered to the end of the day.

"Something wrong?" Soo asked once they were off the boat and done cleaning up.

He started off down the sand, annoyed when he heard her following. "Nothing a bottle of pirate rum wouldn't fix. Did Anson have the foresight to set up a zone for brewmeisters?"

"I could find you something if you thought it would help." She caught up and fell in step beside him. "But sometimes talking helps, too."

"Talking is just a way to convince yourself of a new version of the story. It doesn't change the truth of things."

"So talk about the truth."

"And accomplish what? Prove I'm a world-class self-pitier?"

She brushed her hair from her face. "None of us can stand alone. We're born missing pieces that it's hard to get by without. Trust in others is what makes us whole."

He watched her from the corner of his eye. Was this part of their game? Their scheme to make you emotionally reliant on a single person? Or was he so conditioned by power plays and manipulation that he couldn't recognize a genuine effort to connect?

Either way, his road led to the same place.

"I lost someone," he said. "A couple years back. We went to bed after a normal day, and when I woke up, she was gone."

"I'm so sorry," Soo said. "What happened?"

"She was taken. I followed the best I could. I was only a few hours behind her, but they had a car and it was too much to make up. I didn't catch up to them for weeks. By then…"

"That's terrible."

"It's better now. Most days, it isn't too heavy. But when I think about that, my insides twist. As much as we tell ourselves the people in our lives mean to us, in time, you move on. You walk away and leave them behind. Everyone's replaceable. Emotional widgets. Love is selfish, isn't it? Filling those holes in you with whoever's in front of you. No different than looting a department store. You take the clothes that suit you, and when they wear out, you go back and pull something else off the rack."

"People aren't clothes." Soo laced her fingers together, gazing at her feet. "It doesn't hurt when you lose a pair of jeans."

"After a while, it doesn't hurt much to have lost a person, either." The surf was talking to him again, its ceaseless whispers. The babble of a man who didn't know his skull had just been caved in. "It makes you wonder how much they could have meant to you after all."

"Pardon me for saying, but you don't sound like a man who's forgotten."

"Just wait," he said. "Talk to me tomorrow, and this conversation we're having will feel like nothing more than a bad dream."

He was right. When he got up in the morning, he felt like a better version of himself. Maybe it was the anticipation. It was Saturday. The day he'd meet Anson.

The event was at a park a few miles inland. Along the way, they swung by the apartments of the salvage team, eight people split equally between male and female. The park was your usual urban savannah of lawns broken up by trees. And yet there was nothing usual about that anymore: in L.A., grass didn't stay green any more than it cut itself. This land was irrigated. Maintained. A hint that the old world might not be so lost after all.

A few dozen people were already there, loosely gathered on a lawn facing a pale blue bandstand flanked by jacaranda trees aburst with purple flowers. Behind them, a thicket of palms fluttered in the breeze. The smell of barbecue tickled his nose. Now and then one of his fellow fishermen wandered off to chat with someone they knew, but once they finished, they always returned to the group.

Walt was so busy watching them he didn't notice the man take the stage. He was in his late thirties, a good-looking white guy whose hair had begun to turn an authoritative gray. He wore a plain t-shirt that showed off his arms and a warm smile that conveyed that, however busy he might be, there was no other place he'd rather be.

"Welcome," he said. "As always, I know why you're here: for the ribs. Well, no worries—that's the only reason
I'm
here, too." This garnered far more laughter than Walt judged it deserved. The man smiled, eyes crinkling. "First, though, I thought you might indulge me in a few words. Hell, one of these days, I might even run out of them."

He stood, pacing slowly down the stage of the bandstand. He didn't have a microphone and he didn't need one. "Man, there's nothing I love more than standing on this stage. Not for the stage itself—trust me, I could do without that. When I came here two years ago, I didn't mean to do anything more than lead a quiet, simple life. There are many days when I'm tempted to step down, to let someone better suited to the podium step up in my place.

"But then I get up here. Every single time, I see unfamiliar faces. And that makes me glow. You know why? Because it means what we're doing is
working
. We're bringing light to the darkness. Giving people the chance at something they haven't had in years: the opportunity to live quiet, simple lives of their own. Free from fattened thugs who'll work you to the bone, take everything you make, and once you've got nothing left to give, why, they'll feed you to their dogs. Everywhere you go, that's the story.

"I won't mince words: that story sucks. That's why, together, we're starting over. From page one. No nepotism, no good ol' boys club, no favor granted from on high.
You
choose the best of you, nominating the best of us to become the Sworn, to rise and serve our community. And you know what? You don't have to be Sworn to give back something vital. Maybe all you want to do is to lead that simple life without the need for recognition from anyone besides yourself. Because that's how your life demands it be lived. If you can believe it, most of the time, I'm jealous of you."

Anson stopped, hands on hips, smiling across the crowd. "Whatever you choose, you do have a choice. That's something we haven't had for a long time." He grinned. "As for me, right now, I choose to shut up and eat."

He jogged down the steps beside the stage. The crowd stood, lifting their hands above their heads to applaud. Walt smiled at Soo and cut toward the stage. Dozens of others had the same idea, gathering in a ring around the steps, pressing against each other to get a word with Anson. Walt wasn't above letting his elbows and shoulders lead the way, but soon, the others were packed so tight that getting any further would require judo.

Anson moved along the inner row, shaking hands, peppering the attendees with personal questions. Walt maneuvered toward the flank and managed to insert himself between a nervous-looking young woman and a beefy man who was sweating like he'd run all the way from San Diego.

Anson progressed fast. Within two minutes, he was shaking the hand of the young woman, who could barely stammer out her thanks. He leaned in and said something and she laughed in a relieved gust. He winked, then turned to Walt.

"I'm one of those new recruits you were talking about," Walt said. "I just got here the other day, but I've already heard so much about you."

"Wonderful." Anson clasped his hand with both of his own and shook it warmly. "How's Los Angeles treating you so far?"

"Frighteningly well."

"Glad to hear it. You couldn't have chosen a better time. Where have they got you working?"

"Santa Monica pier." Walt jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

"Well, wonderful. I've been meaning to drop by there again, but they've got me running around like an Olympian. Once you get that second boat up and running, maybe you can take me out in it."

Anson smiled and stepped past him. Walt tried to hang on to the man's hand, but Anson broke free as if he hadn't noticed, already speaking to the beefy, sweating man. Walt stepped from the line of people, meaning to get around to Anson's other side, and was halted by a pillar of a man.

"Sir," the man said. "There are others here."

Walt forced his fist to unclench. "How rude of me."

He backed off, lingering at the fringe of the crowd. Soo appeared beside him, smiling her untroubled smile. "Well? Isn't he something?"

"Sure," Walt said. "I thought you said I'd get to talk to him."

"Didn't you?" Soo said. "I saw you up there."

"I was hoping for more than a handshake."

"If you've got a concern, that's what Frank is here for. Tell him whatever's on your mind and he'll pass it along. Or did you just want to spend a minute with the man himself?"

"Something like that," Walt said.

She glanced toward Anson, who was already strolling across the park away from the crowd, trailing assistants and hangers-on like a grinning, humble comet. "He's about the busiest person I ever saw. Talk to Frank. He'll hook you up."

She led him away to the lunch tables. The ribs were irritatingly good. As he wiped his fingers on a rag, he glimpsed Anson standing beneath the shadows of a palm tree, beckoning forcefully to the hills to the north. Before him, a smaller man bowed repeatedly, then took off at a jog. Anson returned to the serving table, reassembling his smile along the way.

Walt excused himself on the pretext of locating a bathroom and headed after the servant. At the edge of the park, the man hopped to the driver's seat of a sleek black carriage, cursing at his horses. They took off at a canter.

Walt walked behind them, following the team down Wilshire. As soon as he passed beneath the highway, he increased to a jog, just managing to keep up with the steady clop of the horses. After a few blocks of shops and offices, the team turned uphill through a neighborhood of hulking Spanish houses that squeezed every inch of space out of their lots.

"Hey!" Walt called. "Where do you think you're going?"

The man came to a halt, glancing incredulously around the side of the carriage. He kept his hands from sight. "Official business. Get away."

"Anson just sent you off, yeah? Where are you headed?"

"Just as he told me." The man gestured northeast. "The Lakehouse."

"Which one?"

"
The
Lakehouse. Franklin Canyon. Which else?"

"With all the zones these days, you never know. Anyway, he said to get a move on. On the double."

The man snorted. "He wants me to get there faster by stopping me?"

"Don't ask me," Walt said. "He told me to run you down. I'm going to argue?"

The man looked ready to curse him out, then shook his head and cracked the reins. The carriage thundered forward. Walt hurried back to the park. As usual, Soo tried to monopolize his attention, but he begged off, circulating through the crowd, collecting answers.

That night, as the others slept, he drew himself from bed, picked up his shoes, and padded outside. He had a long hike ahead of him—close to eight miles, he figured—and he paced himself, alternating between jogging and running. The air was a humid sixty degrees, and though it initially felt cold, he soon found himself sweating.

He skirted the park and followed the path of the carriage. Beyond where he'd last seen it, the roads were a tangled mess, meandering around the hills and their multi-million-dollar homes. He used the heights and the stars as a reference point to guide him toward the canyon. He wasn't certain the prisoners would be there, but it was clear he wasn't going to get anywhere by hanging around the pier waiting for answers to drop on the dock. The captives were a secret. They contradicted the core messages of freedom and dreams. They would be hidden.