There was no going back now.
Forty
His eyes still stung like a son of a bitch.
Brandon Kyle kept blinking, trying to create tears that would wash out whatever traces of window cleaner were still in his eyes. What he needed was to rinse them thoroughly, but the woods he now found himself wandering in didn’t have a fridge stocked with bottles of Evian.
Once the Cadillac sped off, Kyle had considered hanging by the road. If the Arrival corporation could miss one person hiding a self-driving car, maybe it had missed others. Maybe another nonautonomous vehicle, with a real live human being behind the wheel, would show up. He could flag them down, ask them for a lift. Didn’t matter where to. A house, a store, anyplace with water. Out of a tap, from a bottle, didn’t much matter.
But what he soon heard was not a conventional car, but the electric whine of an Arrival. Kyle ran into the woods as a blue one zipped past, followed closely by a green one. The little bastards were still out there, hunting their prey.
Then something funny happened.
Watching from behind a tree, keeping himself well hidden, he saw a lone, yellow Arrival approaching. As it got closer, it decelerated. Finally, it came to a halt. Just stopped in the middle of the road.
And sat there.
Kyle watched it for a couple of minutes before deciding to get its attention.
“Hey, asshole! Come and get me!”
The car did not respond in any way.
A pink Arrival came into view, came to a stop alongside the yellow one, as if checking on a fallen comrade. After thirty seconds, it moved on.
“Huh,” Kyle said.
Now that he knew Arrivals were still patrolling, he decided cutting through the woods to get back to civilization was the better plan. He hadn’t gone very far when he heard something encouraging.
Running water.
He stopped and listened carefully to determine which direction the sound was coming from. Go left, he thought. The woods gave way to a creek, no more than five feet wide, barely a foot deep, but Kyle didn’t need the Mississippi. All he had to do was descend a muddy, leaf-covered embankment — no more than ten feet — to reach it.
He was about to inch his way down the slope when he heard a sudden rustling in the leaves behind him. He spun around, caught a glimpse of something brown and tall and huge that was moving quickly only a step or two away from him.
How the fuck did a car get into the—
Kyle screamed, lost his balance, and tumbled down the hill.
He slid headfirst through the leaves and mud to the edge of the creek. He came to a stop inches from the water, his hands and face and clothes streaked with filth from the forest floor.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he said.
He raised himself up on his two hands and turned to confirm that what had startled him was not a car, but a deer, working its way through the forest with more grace than Kyle had exhibited when he’d plunged to the creek’s edge. It took a few laps from the creek with its tongue, then wandered back up the hill, disappearing between the trees.
“Asshole!” Kyle shouted at the animal.
He crawled the remaining distance to the creek and first washed the dirt from his hands, then cupped water in his palms and threw it up into his open eyes. He did it four times, blinking between each splash.
The stinging dissipated.
Sitting on his haunches, he looked upward into the cathedral of towering trees, and in that moment of tranquility, he felt the rage building within him.
Sure, things had gone well. Arrival was finished. Its CEO was dead.
But then Derek lost the boat. Refused to find another one so that Kyle could make his escape.
Then he had lucked into — lucked, ha! — that man and the girl in the Cadillac. Could that have gone any worse for him?
Had he actually hurt them? The old man or the girl? No, he had not. And he could have. Oh yes, if he’d wanted to he could have shot them both and taken the car. But no, he hadn’t done that, and what thanks did he get?
Near blindness and a kick in the gut.
The rage churned within him.
If he couldn’t get off this fucking island, he could still use his time productively. He could settle scores. He could get even.
Derek was probably still biding his time at the yacht club. Maybe it was time to go back and thank him for all his years of service.
And then there was the girl.
Katie.
If only he knew her last name, he could—
Hang on.
Her mother. She’d asked him about her mother, if she’d been hurt when the cars first started spinning out of control. Katie had said her mother was helping out with the Arrival event.
She was the one who’d handed him his press kit. Kyle remembered now.
Montrose. Sandra Montrose.
Katie Montrose.
Now that he could see again, he reached into his pocket for his phone, hoping to God he hadn’t lost it in the fall. No, he had it. He brushed the dirt off the screen, thumbed the home button. The phone lit up.
“Yes,” he said.
He wanted an address. And once he’d found it, he’d go back and see if he could find where the old man had pitched that gun into the woods.
Forty-One
Something was troubling Sandra.
Actually, there were a whole lot of things troubling Sandra, not the least of which was this damn bicycle she was riding. The seat was too high and had a rip in the leather that was cutting into her butt. The handlebars were too low and her feet kept slipping off the pedals, one of which was broken. The next time Joe stole a bike, he needed to steal a better one than this.
And of course, a skirt was not the best thing to wear when riding a two-wheeler.
Archie and Katie were front of mind, naturally. Nothing was more important than being reunited with her kids. But something was nagging at her, something that didn’t quite add up.
Something about Joe.
Did he seem a bit... odd when she came back with the first aid kit? Well, okay, he probably did, and wasn’t he entitled to? Ruskin had died. That would have been upsetting. No question.
So yeah, if Joe didn’t quite seem himself, what of it? Who wouldn’t be a bit off his game with all that was going on? They were all dealing with tremendous stress.
And yet...
Joe sure had gotten a lot of information out of Ruskin in his final moments. Stuff he hadn’t been willing to tell her he’d gone and shared with Joe. And why was Joe making excuses for Albert Ruskin? Suggesting Ruskin had never intended for things to get so out of hand. How did Joe know that? Why downplay the damage the bastard had done?
It just seemed weird, was all. And what about—
Hang on. Arrival at three o’clock.
She was riding across a street, leaving one sidewalk and heading for the opposite one, when she saw one coming from her right. Quickly, she cycled down a driveway and turned in behind a house, nearly catching her neck on a low-hanging clothesline. She hopped off, wheeled the bike along by the handlebars, crept to the corner of the house, and peeked.
The Arrival drove on by.
She got back on the bike, taking a circuitous route back to her house that kept her off wider streets where she figured she was more likely to encounter Arrivals.
So, yeah, back to Joe.
The password.
He’d been able to get into Lisa Carver’s computer right away because Ruskin had given him the password. It was believable Ruskin might know it, and if he was feeling some remorse for what he’d done, it was conceivable he would reveal it to Joe.
Except...
Joe had said the password was Carver’s daughter’s name spelled backward, followed by numeric dates.