New Year Island (45 page)

Peering into the darkness, Camilla had pointed toward the dim outlines of the factory buildings. “We really should go tell those three.”

“Right.” Veronica waved a hand in dismissal. “Be my guest.”

She walked back toward the houses, and Camilla had followed her.

Camilla had been afraid. And now she felt guilty.

This was her fault.

“There’s something we should have told you,” she said, addressing Jacob and Dmitry. “Travis, our missing contestant, is dangerous. He’s a convicted rapist, a felon—”

“And now this happens.” The way Jacob stared at her made her drop her eyes. “Couldn’t any of you have had the basic decency to warn us when you lost track of him?”

“There was a lot going on yesterday,” Brent said, but his eyes flicked toward Camilla again.

She looked away. It would have been so easy to hop the barricade and run to the station, pound on their door and yell a warning, and then sprint back. Just a couple of minutes. But it had been dark, hard to see. Travis could have been lurking anywhere, ready to grab her. He was strong—even one-armed, he could have covered her mouth and dragged her away, to where the noise of the seals would cover her screams while he did anything he wanted to her. She remembered the malice in that flat gaze.

And now Heather had paid the price for Camilla’s cowardice.

“Let’s start where she disappeared,” she said. “At the station. See if we can find something that gives us an idea what happened, and then we’ll sweep the whole island again.”

Two minutes later, Jacob led them inside the station’s second room.

“She normally sleeps in here,” he said. “When there aren’t too many rapey criminal types roaming the island unattended, that is.”

He pointed back through the doorway to the first room. “And we were in there.”

Camilla looked around Heather’s small sleeping space. Sunlight streamed into the un-boarded window, illuminating a cot with tangled blankets trailing onto the floor. The only other furniture was the small worktable with its two cheap plastic chairs, all stacked with binders and notebooks. One stack had spilled onto the floor, creasing the pages and covers of several reports, but otherwise there was nothing to see.

“Did you check in there?” Juan pointed through the room’s other doorway, into the largest building—the factory filled with old machinery.

“We yelled for her,” Dmitry said. “Shining light around, but she didn’t answer.”

Jordan looked at Juan, and hefted the speargun in her hands. They were inseparable now, Camilla saw, moving in unspoken synchronization, like two halves of a whole. Even under these circumstances, Camilla felt a faint pang of something like jealousy. Juan raised a hand, peering inside. Then he motioned forward, and the two of them disappeared into the factory building together.

“Hey. Hey, now.” Brent frowned and pushed through after them. “Make sure you don’t aim that thing at anyone…”

Dmitry picked up the lantern from the table and grabbed Jacob by the arm. “Come. We don’t want her to shoot Heather by mistake.” The two scientists hurried after Brent, sending lantern light bouncing across the walls and ceiling.

Veronica’s quicksilver gaze lingered on Camilla and Mason for a moment, as if assessing how useful they were likely to be. Then she shook her head and plunged into the factory building with forceful strides, followed by Natalie.

Camilla and Mason were left alone. She walked over to Heather’s cot and straightened the wadded blankets.

“Heather
did
seem a little too OCD to leave the bed unmade,” Mason said.

Near the edge of the blanket, a patch of dark maroon the size of a half-dollar crusted the tattered fibers. Camilla’s heart gave a jolt. “Mason,” she whispered, although she wasn’t sure why she was whispering. “Look at this.” She held it to the light.

“Heather’s a woman,” he said. “There might be another explanation for that.”

“No.” Camilla shook her head. “If it were in the middle maybe, but not here on the edge.”

He stepped closer to see. Something tiny skittered away from his shoe across the concrete floor. He glanced down at it, and his face changed.

“Tell me if this is what I think it is,” he said.

Shouts erupted from the darkness beyond the doorway: Travis’s drawling profanity, a sharp command from Juan, followed by Brent’s angry rumble. They had found him.

She looked down at the small white fragment lying in a patch of sunlight near Mason’s shoe. The surface of its unbroken side was smooth, and there was a dot of red in the center where it had fractured.

It was a tooth.

The skin on Camilla’s arms tightened. She was looking at a piece of Heather. Sickened, she turned away. “What did he
do
to her?”

Mason glanced toward the doorway. “Here comes Veronica.”

“Oh, no.” Alarm raced through Camilla’s body. “Mason, she’s going to
kill
him if she sees this.”

Veronica burst through the doorway, bouncing on the balls of her feet, energized. “We got him.”

Camilla took a deep breath and stepped forward, covering the tooth with her foot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mason straighten up. Thank god, he got it. He understood what she was doing, and for a change, it didn’t look as if he was going to try to make things worse.

Veronica glared at them. “We got that animal, no thanks to you two. But we still don’t…” She trailed off, her pale eyes igniting with suspicion as she looked back and forth between them. Her voice slowed, turning liquid, insinuating.

“What are you two up to in here?” Her gaze speared Camilla.

“We were thinking—” Mason started.

Without turning her head, Veronica held up a palm, silencing him.

“Young lady, I believe I asked you a question.”

Camilla could feel Heather’s tooth poking into the bottom of her shoe. Her legs started to tremble.

“Why did you leave last night?” Camilla blurted. “If anything happened to her, it’s our fault, too. Yours and mine. We could have warned them.”

Veronica blinked like an owl. “I thought you—”

“No you didn’t. You didn’t care. And I was
scared
. I was so scared he’d hurt me again.”

Veronica’s shoulders slumped. “Dear God.”

She turned on her heel and ran back into the darkness. Male voices rose in shouts and threats from the direction she had gone.

The breath Camilla was holding whistled out of her. She collapsed into one of the chairs, grinding the heels of her palms into her eyes. She hadn’t wanted another death on her conscience—not even Travis’s. She felt bad enough about Heather as it was.

“You have a real talent for deception,” Mason said.

“Oh god, shut up.” She pointed at the tooth, gleaming from the floor. “We need to save that for the police. Do you think there are cameras in here?”

“Probably,” he said. “Even if there aren’t any, they can do some of that CSI magic to nail him. Lauren was an accident, Camilla. But this is murder.”

“You’re so sure she’s dead.”

“We didn’t find her, did we? And it wouldn’t be hard to dispose of a body here.”

She winced, thinking of Lauren. “No, it wouldn’t. Come on.”

She got up, picked up a notebook, and tore several blank pages from it. Squatting, she slid them under the tooth, not liking the way it rolled across the paper toward her fingers, as if it had a life of its own. She folded the corners over and picked it up, folding it again, making a little package.

Ugh.
She didn’t want it in her hands any longer. “Here, hang on to this—”

Mason stepped away, holding his hands up. “No thanks, I’m good.”

The shouting was getting louder now. Veronica’s voice, harsh and strident, rose above the others.

“Oh god.” Camilla tucked the folded papers with the tooth into the pocket of her jeans, grimacing. “Let’s go.”

“Y
ou got no right.” Travis twisted, but Juan and Brent held him tight. “I already told you ten times, I ain’t seen no fucking Heather.”

Heather’s cot was a few feet away, a mute reminder of what had happened here. Camilla had mussed the covers to hide the blood spot before the others herded Travis in. She stared at his face now, probing his expression. Travis’s features twisted into a snarl.

“The fuck you looking at me all googly-eyed for, bitch?”

Veronica stepped in front of her. “Because she’s never seen a piece of shit talk before. For the last time, what did you do with Heather?”

“Y’all must be real stupid. Or deaf.” He jerked again, trying to shake loose.

Juan’s fingers tightened on Travis’s shoulder, and he dropped to his knees in front of them, gasping.

“Watch him,” Juan said to Brent. Then he and Jordan left together.

A moment later, Jordan passed the window outside, heading toward the blockhouse. She was alone.

Travis tried to stand, but Brent wrapped a big hand around his shoulder and pushed him down again.

“I advise you not to move,” he said. “Your rotator cuff is torn. It’d be very easy to exacerbate your injury—or dislocate the shoulder again.”

“…kill you,” Travis gasped.

Veronica turned away, her expression bleak. “He did it, all right. She didn’t just wander off and drown.”

Camilla glanced at Mason out of the corner of her eye. He was inspecting Travis the way an entomologist might study a strange bug. But at least he wasn’t grinning or saying anything inappropriate.

Veronica took a step toward Travis. “I know this animal is responsible. We may not be able to
prove
anything…”

Brent leaned forward, looming over the kneeling man. “That’s not our job, Veronica.”

“I know,” she snapped. “But until he’s in custody, he’s a danger to every woman on the island. And frankly, I don’t trust you to sedate him again.”

“Now, wait a minute—”

“Please,” Camilla said. “Let’s not argue. Isn’t it more important to get Julian to send help?”

“I’m all ears,” Veronica said.

Camilla had been thinking about this.

“I think you’re wrong about them panicking, Veronica,” she said. “Yesterday, Julian wiped Lauren off the scoreboard. That was very deliberate. I think he was saying something to us. He was telling us that the competition would go on without her.”

She looked around the room. She had everyone’s attention now.

“But Julian needs our cooperation for that,” she said. “And we’re not going to give it to him.”

She pointed in the direction of the houses. “We have food left. I’ve still got a tiny bit of water. Even if you’ve finished yours, Mason’s got five more jugs hidden. That’s a half gallon each.

“We can wait him out if we have to. He’s not going to get what he wants, so he has no reason not to send help.”

Camilla took a deep breath. They were all listening to her. Good.

“I know one of us is a spy. One of us is working with Julian. But it actually doesn’t matter who it is. Not anymore. Because…” She paused to look up into the corners of the ceiling. Were those dark spots the cameras? She chose one, stared into it, and raised her voice. “… as of
right now,
the rest of us—”

“—refuse to play,” Juan finished from the doorway.

He shoved something shiny off his shoulder, and it cascaded onto the concrete floor in a trill of loud clinking. Wet chain, coils and coils of it—no doubt the chain that had destroyed the scientists’ boat.

Jordan appeared behind him. She held out a slender hand, fingers hooked through a half-dozen heavy padlocks, and dropped them onto the pile of chain.

Travis tried to scramble to his feet. “Not locking me up like a fucking animal again.” Brent’s fingertips whitened on his shoulder, and he sank to his knees, groaning.

Juan glanced at Dmitry. “How long until someone comes?”

Jacob pulled at his beard. “From San Diego, it takes—”

Juan silenced him with a chopping gesture of his hand through the air. “Dmitry, how long?”

Dmitry was staring at Jacob, his face perplexed, but he pointed out the window, in the direction of the mainland. “Day after New Year’s, park on shore opens to public again. Visitors, rangers walking there, they see us from shore. January two.”

Juan looked at them all. “Seven days.”

“I’ve got bad news,” Mason said. “We only have three.”

“Y
ou’re a liar.” Veronica pointed a chipped fingernail at Mason. “You dumped the water yourself, just like you dumped the gasoline.”

Neck tense, Camilla watched Veronica pace in front of the dark monitor screen, like an angry, caged tiger. The look on her face was scary. The air crackled like dry static, waiting for a wrong movement or word to set off a spark that would explode into violence again.

Mason slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Blaming the messenger doesn’t help, I’m afraid.”

“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Camilla asked.

The contestants had gathered once again in the great room of the Victorian house. Travis was chained up back at the station, where he would stay, with the two scientists watching him, until help arrived. It was better than leaving a contestant to guard him, Camilla had reasoned. Veronica was a poor choice for obvious reasons, and so was Natalie, and so was Mason. But none of them could be trusted with him, really. If they accidentally left Julian’s spy in charge of Travis, that person might set him free.

“I was going to find who took the water, and cut a deal with them,” Mason said. “But after Lauren and everything else happened, it didn’t matter anymore.”Veronica stopped pacing, and her eyes widened. She turned to stare at him. “So you’ve known it was gone since
yesterday
?”

“I had it hidden,” he said. “I buried it. No one could have known where it was, except Julian’s spy.”

“Right,” Veronica said.
“You.”

“Mason isn’t the spy,” Camilla said. “He couldn’t have chained the boat.”

Veronica’s eyes snapped toward her. “And
you’re
always defending him. The way you two pal around, it wouldn’t surprise me if you were
both
in on it.”