New Year Island (49 page)

“Camilla, I expected more from you,” Brent said. “The money’s a lie, and so is everything else. Julian is toying with us.” He took a deep breath. “Look at the psychology of this. We’re all sick of feeling like victims. It’s not our nature, given who we are, what we are. He’s using our own survivor mind-set against us.”

She didn’t respond. What was Brent’s answer, then? To sit around taking drugs while their situation got worse and worse? Sometimes you had to decide to risk everything, she knew. It was something that all survivors knew. You had to choose to push
forward
while blackness closed in all around you and the ceiling pressed down overhead. You had to accept the risks and the danger and make them your own. You faced the darkness on your own terms, instead of waiting to be dragged into it, because to do otherwise was to die.

The scoreboard blinked.

The score in one cell spun through a change.

S
tanding alone with Natalie in the blue team’s Greek Revival house, Veronica watched her own score climb. Her eyes widened as the digits spun past, faster and faster, to stop at 45—a forty-point increase. Her score cell slid left, switching places with the others. She was no longer in last place.

Julian had rewarded her for destroying the beacon.

She was in first place now.

If she could hold on to it, she would win ten million dollars.

Veronica drew a deep breath through her nostrils. She would pay off those vultures from the bank. Pay off the lawyers. She would buy outright the property that Safe Harbor occupied. She would open a South Bay shelter, and one in the East Bay, too. With so much travel to do between the offices, she also would need to get a new car: one of those nice little Mercedes SLK’s would be just right. She’d pay off the Platinum MasterCard. She would…

“There’s no way the others will go along with this,” Natalie said. “Not after how the last game ended. Not after Lauren.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Veronica said. “Of course they’re going to play. They can’t help it. It’s who they are. It’s who
we
are. Survivors. And now you’re going to help me win.”

C
amilla looked at the scoreboard, where Veronica’s score now dominated them all.

“Oh
hell
no.” JT said. He chuckled—a hollow sound—and shook his head slowly, eye patch gleaming white against his dark-mahogany skin. “That’s
not
going to happen.”

“Can’t you see what the purpose of this game is?” Brent said. “He wants us all—”

“—to split up.” Camilla nodded. “Yes, I get that. Julian wants us all moving around the island on our own… running into each other alone.”

Brent took his hands out of his vest pockets and stared at her. “And you don’t think that’s a bad idea?”

Jordan’s voice was cold. “Go do your drugs, Brent. No one cares what you have to say anymore.”

“If you do this,” Brent said, “it’s probable that someone else will die here.
Today.
Are you ready to face that, Camilla?”

She took a deep breath.

“Julian chose us because we were survivors,” she said. “Let’s find out if he was right.”

SEMIFINAL ROUND

“S
o where’s this mandatory eye protection?” Mason asked.

Camilla scanned the back wall of the storage shed. The
real
back wall, revealed now that the plywood panels covering it had been pulled loose and laid aside. Veronica and Natalie had done that a few minutes ago, she knew.

When Camilla had led the others outside, she saw the two women leaving the shed. Each held a paintball gun and a blue envelope. Natalie slunk past them, head down, like a teenager caught smoking. But Veronica held her head high. As the two groups passed each other, her contemptuous silver glare cut across the space between, spearing Camilla. If Veronica felt sorry for what she had done, Camilla couldn’t see it. Veronica carried the paintball gun with the same practiced ease she had demonstrated holding JT’s gun yesterday. She had been a police wife for ten years, Camilla remembered—once she had a target in her sights, she wouldn’t miss. Veronica’s eyes were bright with hate. Was Camilla’s name in the envelope she held? Surrounded by the others, she had held Veronica’s gaze, refusing to be afraid, until Veronica and Natalie disappeared into the houses.

On the wall of the storage shed, seven paintball guns hung on hooks. Taped to the wall above each was a blue envelope and a spare ammunition cartridge. Camilla could see two empty hooks. She spotted her name on one of the envelopes. But Mason was right: no eye protection at all.

“I guess they forgot the safety glasses,” she said.

He laughed. “It’s all fun and games until…”

JT’s head whipped toward him, and Camilla was surprised to see Mason shut up. Maybe he did have a survival instinct after all.

The muscular ex-Marine reached for his paintball gun and the envelope beneath it, never taking his eye off Mason. He tapped the envelope. “Could be it’s your name in here.”

Camilla noticed that JT never looked at Juan. And that Juan was careful never to end up within JT’s reach. Juan still held the real gun down at his side. The thought of those two coming face to face with no one else around filled her with dread. She was the one who had pushed for this. But was Brent right?

Before her group left the Victorian house, he had looked at her with stony eyes, and then settled himself on the stairs.

“Do what you like. I refuse to be his puppet.”

“The game doesn’t work unless everyone plays.”

“Bring me the envelope, then,” Brent said, “but leave that stupid toy behind. I don’t have any use for it.”

He patted the steps beside him. “I’ll be waiting right here for whoever shows up. I’ll give the envelope to them.”

Camilla’s heart went out to the big man. He looked defeated. Broken. Were his hands shaking?

“Brent, I want you to know—”

“Just go.” He looked away. “Please leave.”

Jordan thrust her face toward him. “Enjoy your fix.”

Brent wouldn’t meet Camilla’s eye as she led the others outside. She knew there was a possibility that she might not see him alive again. But she tried not to think about it.

In the storage shed, she lifted her paintball gun off the hook and looked it over. A Tippman TPX according to the markings on the side, it was heavy and awkward. She fumbled with the gun until she found the button that released the magazine, and pressed it. A boxlike ammunition cartridge slid out of the grip, and she barely caught it with her other hand before it fell. A green ball the size of a large marble was visible at the top of the cartridge. Camilla pushed it back into place and looked at the others.

“Let’s make sure these things really shoot paint and not something else.”

She pointed the gun at the back wall and pulled the trigger. There was a snick of compressed gas, louder than she had expected, and the gun bucked in her hand. A bright starburst of neon-green paint splattered against the wall. She raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t know much about paintball, but that seemed a little overpowered.”

“Nah,” JT said. “It’s about right. That’s why the eye protection.”

Which they didn’t have. She looked at his eye patch and cringed inside.

JT stepped up to the wall and sniffed the green paint. Then he touched it with a finger. Watching them one-eyed, he held his finger up as if feeling for something. Then he dabbed it to his tongue. After a few seconds, he spat on the ground.

“Just paint.”

The others took their paintball markers, spare ammunition, and envelopes. One gun was left on the wall. The envelope beneath it read “Travis.”

“What do we do about that?” Mason asked.

Camilla considered. “I think it’s a forfeit. Whoever has Travis as a target, come and take his envelope.”

“Better get some paint on him first,” Mason said. “Or else it may not count as a kill.”

Camilla nodded, and thought of the two scientists guarding Travis. What would they make of this? They would probably think the contestants were crazy, doing this. She wasn’t so sure they were wrong, either.

But the alternatives were worse. She had no idea who Julian and his people—Vita Brevis’s producers—were, but they were definitely not any kind of legitimate studio. Veronica’s idea, the Hollywood hubris scenario, was flat wrong—had to be. What was happening here had progressed far beyond any possibility of legality. People were dead.

The room was suddenly noisy with the barks of paintball markers. A rainbow of different-colored splats appeared on the wall. Yellow, pink, orange, and black starbursts joined Camilla’s green mark. Each contestant had been assigned a distinct color of paint.

“Looks like they all work,” JT said.

Camilla took Brent’s gun off the hook with her other hand. She fired a purple starburst onto the wall next to the others, then tossed the gun aside—he didn’t want it. She tucked his envelope into her pocket to give to him.

“Aim low,” she said. “Let’s shoot for the legs whenever possible. And all of us need to stay in tight control of our emotions. No fights, no violence, no matter what happens. No matter who wins or how they do it. Even if the money’s real—ten million is a lot, but it isn’t worth dying for.”

Camilla took a deep breath, looking from eye to eye. The terrified voice in her mind screamed at her to stop this madness before it was too late. It told her she needed to convince them all to put the guns down before someone else got hurt—or killed. It told her to gather everyone together and not let anyone out of sight until help arrived, because, surely, someone
had
to come and save them before they succumbed to thirst. Julian couldn’t possibly leave them here to die.

It was the voice that said that this couldn’t really be happening. The voice that, in situations like these, led 90 percent of people to their deaths.

She knew better than to listen to that voice.

Camilla was a survivor.

“I suggest we all split up and open the envelopes when we’re alone,” she said. “And, Juan?” She dropped a hand to his wrist, which held the real gun—the Glock—aimed at the floorboards. Next to him, Jordan stiffened. Camilla ignored her and looked Juan in the eye. “Don’t get confused about which gun is which.”

Juan held her gaze for a moment.

Then he nodded.

“Let’s roll.”

“P
oetic justice. Do you think I’m wrong?”

Jordan wouldn’t meet Juan’s eyes. They stood in the blockhouse, facing each other, looking down at the envelopes they held, putting off the moment.

Juan knew she was right. He nodded. “Julian wouldn’t pass this opportunity up. Either your name is in this envelope, or my name is in yours.”

“I never cared about the money,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me. And I don’t even care about winning. Not anymore.”

He looked up, surprised. Because if there was one thing about this fascinating, extraordinary, incomprehensible woman that he had been certain of, it was that to Jordan, winning was everything.

“I just don’t want anything to happen between us, Juan. To change what we have. To ruin it.”

She said it plainly, softly. Her usually expressive face was still. Juan was pretty sure he was seeing a Jordan that few ever saw—perhaps a Jordan no one else had ever seen.

He reached out and brushed the hair away from her face, and she took a quick, sharp breath. Her eyes—so wide, so green—stared into his own. She looked afraid.

His throat felt tight. He wanted to wrap his arms around her to chase away the fear. Hold her close, bury his face in her hair, and not let go. But he couldn’t yet, because there was something he needed to do first. What Camilla had said after they found Veronica’s pager: time to get all their secrets out in the open before it was too late. She had been looking right at
him
when she said it.

What he had hidden from Jordan, beneath the cabinet just an arm’s reach away, was like a wall between the two of them. The longer he waited, the worse it would be when she found out. She would understand his reasons, he thought—she was the same as he in so many ways. Besides, he had done what he’d done days ago. The situation had changed since then—on the island, and between them. A lot had changed.

Jordan looked down at her bare feet. They were bleeding again, from the walk across the island. Seeing them made Juan feel even guiltier.

She was rubbing her badly healed broken pinky again. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile to him now. Her voice was a whisper he could barely hear.

“This isn’t easy for me to say.”

Juan’s heart sped up. He was afraid, too. Very afraid of what was coming.

“Jordan…”

“I don’t use these words lightly… anymore.” She took a deep breath, looked up into his face.

“Juan, I—”

He stopped her, placing a finger on her lips. Heart pounding, he knelt and opened the cabinet, pried up the floorboards, and reached underneath.

Scooping up an armful of the things he had hidden, he deposited them on the counter. Then he walked over to the doorway of the blockhouse, knowing that his words wouldn’t make a difference right now. He was afraid to look at her, to see the hurt that he knew would be spreading across her beautiful face. He put a hand on the door frame, closed his eyes, and hung his head, hoping—praying—that she would understand.