She was a target. They were all targets.
She didn't know how or why, but someone at Valley Oil had had ordered them dead. They were cleaning house upstairs, and that meant cleaning the dirty laundry. AJ knew about the security violations; Kate had insider information from old Stan McCreedy's envelope. Not they needed an extra reason to get rid of her. Nearly four hundred thousand shares of a company that could be running the American oil industry in twenty years? They could have never done it inside the states, not with her political ties, and not with The Service watching. But out here was the law of the jungle, and out here, no one would save her.
“I'm sorry about this Kate, I really am,” Mason said through the door. “I did respect your father, even if I didn't like him. This is just business, if you'll excuse the old expression. If it makes you feel better, you can blame the old man.”
“You leave my father out of this!”
“You'll be dead of dehydration in three or four days. Try to sleep it off, if you can.”
She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that she would find a way out, but she couldn't. In that moment, there was only despair. “You don't have to do this,” she groaned. “Please…”
There was no answer, and as the seconds ticked by, her solitude became a stifling certainty. They were leaving her. They were really leaving.
She crumpled to the floor, her head in hands. Then she wiped her face, wondering how many seconds of life each tear would cost. Without food or water, the clock was ticking.
When she lifted her head, she noticed there was almost no light. There were no windows that she could see, no vents or portholes or fenestrae anywhere around her. Then, she remembered her cell phone. She took it from her pocket, praying she had remembered to charge the battery enough to last the day. When she flicked the button, it came to life, and she saw the readout. “No signal. Of course not,” she said. The phone did emit light, however, and that was something. She held it in front of her like a flashlight. All the wits of a CIA operative, she thought again, and she laughed a little. Maybe she could keep those wits about her.
Maybe.
The light on the phone suddenly cut off, and she cried out, nearly dropping it to the floor. The light came back when she slapped it, though. Just the automatic power saver. She exhaled, remembering she'd have to flick a button every few seconds to keep the light active. The battery showed the phone had close to a full charge, but she knew from experience that it wouldn't last forever.
Cautiously, she began walking the hall, sticking her head into each room along the path. The first two rooms held metal bed frames and a couple of shelves. The third contained a hole with an ancient, fetid smell. The room at the end of the hall was the largest, and it looked the most lived-in. She saw beds and shelves, old blankets, toiletries scattered on the floor. A stuffed bear sat on one of the cots, staring at her with ancient, button eyes. It held the faded, worn look of a child's love, and it looked sad somehow. I'm lonely, its eyes seemed to say. Pick me up and hold me. It's been so long since I've had company. So long.
Kate sat on the cot and squeezed the bear to her chest, its stuffing as soft as old jelly. It was comforting, that bear. It didn't matter that it had been almost thirty years since she'd last had one of her own. When at last she set him down, she saw a glint of something strange on one of the shelves. It looked terribly out of place, and at first, she thought the light was playing tricks on her. When she grabbed it, she couldn't believe it was real.
It was a screwdriver.
2
“Dutch?” AJ called. “Dutch, are you there?”
The room lay still. Outside, the platform groaned as it swayed subtly in the wind.
AJ dropped the file he was holding and pulled the M1911 from his belt. He counted his respiration: one breath, two… and then heard the click of footsteps. Dutch appeared in the doorway ahead of him, but he wasn't alone.
“I'd put that down if I were you, smart boy.”
The man behind his friend was smiling. AJ noted distractedly that he had a huge jaw — worthy of acromegaly, really — and it made him look oddly simian.
Dutch cast his eyes downwards. “I'm sorry, buddy.”
“Guess this one's not as slow as the old guy this morning,” AJ said conversationally.
“I guess not.”
St. Croix had eyes for only AJ. “I told you to put it down.”
“Fuck you, you put it down.”
“You don't put it down, I'll shoot him.”
“You shoot him, I shoot you. And you have a big head for a target.”
“Now, now, here. Why don't everybody just calm down?” Just when AJ didn't think things could get any worse, Melvin appeared. He was pushing Doctor Grey in front of him, one hand on the man's shoulder and one wrapped around the trigger of his shotgun. He shoved the doctor into the room, and Grey tumbled to the floor. He looked only half lucid.
A long kitchen counter separated the standoff, and after Grey was down, Melvin began circling around it. AJ saw him flanking, and without opening fire, he couldn't do a thing to stop it. The odds were dropping fast, and his finger twitched, a hair's breadth from thunder.
Melvin leveled the shotgun. “You want to get messy? You look like you thinkin' 'bout it.”
If this were a movie, AJ could hit St. Croix in the head and drop Melvin before either of them could blink. But this wasn't a movie, and Dutch was the marksman, not him.
He lowered his gun. “Shit.”
“On the floor. Kick it over to me.”
The gun skittered across the tile. “What's your boss going to think when he sees what you kids have been up to?”
“I don't know if you heard the boat, buddy-boy, but he's down below. Guess you ain't as sharp as you used to be, huh?”
“Oh yeah, I would have heard it,” St. Croix said.
Dutch spun before the man's mouth was closed, whipping his arm around to strike, but the ape was too fast. St. Croix smacked his attacker in the head. Dutch stumbled, then Melvin booted him in the ass and knocked him over to his friend. AJ grabbed him and hauled him to his feet.
It took a moment for Melvin's words to sink in, but when they did, he felt his face flush. “If Bruhbaker is below, what about the girl? What's she gonna say about all this?”
At that exact moment, Mason appeared in the doorway, his face grim. “She won't be saying a damned thing.”
“What does that mean?” AJ knew Mason could be cold-blooded, but if something had happened to Kate, it would be a new low, even for him. He told himself Mason couldn't be that brazen. Not an official mission for Black Shadow, not with the girl being who she was.
“I didn't shoot her, but your girlfriend won't be coming back from the island to send any postcards. You can bet on that.”
AJ was about to fire back at him, some pithy comeback that would put the sonofabitch in his place, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. The girl? All of them? This had been one hell of a day, but he had never doubted for a second he would see the end of it. He had never doubted that no matter how bad things got, there could be a way out.
“We go back a long time, Mason,” he said quietly.
“That we do.”
“And I guess you're not going to tell us why you're doing this?”
“You've seen what's going on out there. This thing, whatever it is, it's bigger than you and me. It's bigger than all of us. Somebody at the top wants to make sure they have plausible deniability, and I suppose that means getting rid of the people who knew better.”