Frost started toward it.
“What the hell is this?” Collette said, hurrying to get a better look at the truck. Anxious, she glanced up and down the road, but they were completely alone. Frost moved with purpose, and that worried her.
“What’ve you done?” she asked.
At the truck, the winter man paused and glanced back at her. Mist rose from his eyes, drifting on the breeze. The rain around him turned to sleet and pelted the truck with a metallic prickling.
“I’ve become a thief,” Frost said. Perhaps he smiled as he said it. “But not a murderer, if that is your concern.”
With a gesture, he indicated the roadside. Under the trees lay a brown shape, and it took her a moment to recognize it as some kind of canvas tarp. Beneath it, she realized, lay the driver of this truck.
“He’s not dead?”
“He’ll live,” Frost replied. “Get in the truck and drive, please.”
“Where are we going?”
The winter man opened the passenger door, climbed in, and closed it, just as if there were nothing strange at all about a creature made entirely of ice and snow riding in a rusty old truck.
Collette did as he asked. The keys were in the ignition and the truck started instantly. The windows were open. Several times Frost simply evaporated out of his seat, drifting up into the sky, a twisting storm cloud rushing ahead of the truck, only to pour himself back into the seat a minute or two later with directions. They stayed north of the city, though Collette got several glimpses of it through her window; she was surprised at how modern it seemed. The truck rattled along plantation roads and then what might have passed for a main road. For a mile or so it seemed they might actually drive into Machala, and then Frost directed her to take a narrow, rutted turn to the northwest.
Moments later, they came in sight of the water. To the south, she could see the port and was stunned to find not only fishing boats but elegant pleasure craft and huge shipping vessels. They bounced through a pothole and she had to focus on the road, but she could still glimpse the port in the rearview mirror. On the left, they rolled past a massive seaside operation that a sign identified as a shrimp farm.
“You really think this is going to work?” she asked.
“What?” the winter man said.
“We’re just going to take a boat? Obviously that’s your plan, because there’s no way anyone is going to let me on a plane with no identification, even if I had the money. Which means we’re stealing a boat.”
Frost glanced at her, his hair clinking together again. “I have already stolen it. The men I stole it from had guns. The hold was full of bags of white powder I assume is cocaine.”
Trying to process this news, her mind snatched one question out of a dozen. “You know what cocaine is?”
The winter man scowled. “I have been crossing the Veil since its magic was first woven. I have seen the best and worst of humanity. One of the men is dead, shot by another and fallen into the sea. The others are incapacitated.”
“You did all of this in a couple of hours?”
Frost looked back out through the windshield. “Time is short. They were evil men.”
As though it was that simple. And, Collette realized, perhaps it was. Four or five miles up the coast, the winter man directed her into a narrow drive that led into a wooded, rocky piece of property. Whoever owned the place was wealthy by any standard. Her father had been very well off, but the house that perched on the edge of the ocean here was twice the size of the Bascombe home.
They drove up and parked right in front. Collette felt wary as they got out of the truck. The front door hung from its frame. Several windows were broken. Nothing moved except the door, which swayed loosely with the breeze. Part of her wanted to go inside and see the chaos that Frost had wrought. Instead, she hurried around the side of the house, following a path that led to a dock. Two men lay bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the beach, several feet from the dock. One of them had an arm twisted at the wrong angle, clearly broken.
Collette paused to stare at him, thinking that no matter what this man had done, they ought to call someone. If his injuries were bad enough, he could die.
“We are at war,” Frost said. His voice felt like a chilly whisper against her ear. “If our war took place here, these men would be our foes.”
She took a breath. Much as she still hated Frost for leaving her to the Sandman’s mercies-and much as she had lived her entire life by the laws and morals of her own people-she could not disagree with him.
They walked out onto the dock and boarded the boat. As a child, she had watched reruns of Miami Vice voraciously. Drug lords and cigarette boats. They called them something else, now, but she couldn’t think of the word. Didn’t matter. If those little, slick, swift craft were cigarette boats, this one was a cigar.
Less than an hour ago, she’d been lying beneath the banana trees and thinking how nice it was to be back in her world, where things felt more real. But now, nothing about this felt real. Or maybe it was just that Frost was right-they were at war-and in war, the old rules no longer applied.
“You never asked me if I could drive this thing,” she said as she investigated the instrument panel on the boat. She ought to go below and look at the food and water stores, but there wasn’t time even for that. If she needed something, Frost would provide. She might hate him, but she knew that he needed her, now.
He needs me, because Oliver stayed behind, and if Oliver dies…
She shuddered. Of course. Frost had done it to them again. Oliver had insisted he stay behind to protect Julianna, because she couldn’t pass through the Veil. So Collette couldn’t blame Frost for that. But the truth could not be denied. Once again, he had left one Bascombe behind to live or die, content with the knowledge that he had the other in his safekeeping.
Yet as perverse as it seemed, Collette found some comfort in this. She was Legend-Born. Frost couldn’t afford to let her die. Too much relied upon the Bascombes. The Lost Ones would follow them into war, or fight on their behalf. The Borderkind who feared Atlantis’s efforts to seal off the Veil forever would fight all the harder, knowing the Legend-Born lived.
“You can drive it, can’t you?” the winter man asked.
The salt wind off of the water scoured him, but he seemed to enjoy it, somehow.
“Yes. How did you know?”
Frost cocked his head, as was his habit. “Perhaps Oliver told me. Or perhaps I assumed it, given your background. Your father’s money provided many luxuries.”
Collette sighed and started up the boat. The engine purred. “Right, then. Cast off.”
Frost went to see to the moorings. Collette looked at the water, wondering what had become of the man who’d been shot and fallen in. His corpse would be floating down there, somewhere.
As the winter man breezed up beside her, she glanced at him.
“You know someone will come after us, right? If not the police, then the military. Or other scumbags like the ones back there on the beach. Even if they don’t catch up, we’ll run out of gas long before we reach the California coast-if I haven’t starved to death by then.”
“We should go,” Frost replied.
Collette stared at him. “You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?”
The winter man said nothing, just retreated into the cabin to get out of the sunlight.
Collette checked her instruments and pushed up on the throttle, pulling away from the dock. Oliver waited for her an entire world away, and she would do whatever had to be done to get back to him.
Ixchel brought them a hose that must have been used when the horse stalls had to be cleaned out, and Oliver and Julianna transformed an empty stall into a makeshift shower, taking turns cleaning off the grime and stink of the dungeons. Their new friend-whose entire knowledge of the English language was Oliver’s last name-made several trips out into the city for them. He brought back soap, clean clothes, and food.