Nate looked through his binoculars. “Two people. A man and a woman. The woman’s short and the man’s a blond.”
“That’ll be Roy, the guy I was talking to earlier,” Danny said. Then, to Gaby, “You’ll like him. Handsome kid. Good with his hands, and I hear the ladies like that in a man.”
Gaby wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she didn’t say anything.
“Then, of course, there’s Benny,” Danny continued. “Face it, kid, you’re going to have your hands full with the gentlemen callers when we get back to the island.”
“Hey, I’m right here,” Nate said.
“So you are, Natepoleon Bonaparte, so you are.”
“Give it a rest, guys,” Gaby said, smiling anyway, because it allowed her to think about something other than what she was going to say to Lara when she finally saw her again very soon.
Maddie steered the old but dependable pontoon around the big white vessel anchored in front of Song Island. It was massive and occupied a ridiculous amount of real estate. Or maybe that was just her imagination, since she’d never seen a yacht up close before, never mind one that probably cost more than her parents made in their entire lifetime. The word Trident was written along its side.
Gaby saw a familiar figure leaning over the railing at the top of the boat waving to them. Blaine. She’d recognize his hulking size anywhere. She waved back, as did Danny and the girls. Blaine wasn’t alone on the yacht. Two women on the other two decks watched them coming in. They were all heavily armed and looked the part of soldiers waiting for a fight.
Song Island has been getting ready for war. God help us.
Gaby felt the familiar pangs of guilt whenever she looked back at Claire, Maddie, and Annie. The three of them seemed awestruck by the sight of the big white yacht, and then later the beaches of Song Island and the towering solar panels that ringed it. She couldn’t shake the nagging fear that she had made a terrible mistake by bringing them here. What was she doing? Song Island might have been a sanctuary once upon a time, but if Will was right and Kate was going to throw her human forces at it tonight, the place might as well be a death trap. And she had led them here with promises of a soft bed, their own rooms, and ice-cold water.
Song Island’s not safe. I shouldn’t have brought them here. Anywhere but here.
And then they were past the yacht and slowing down as they approached the piers. And there, standing at the end of one of the wooden structures sticking out of the beach, was what Gaby had been dreading since she stepped onto the boat.
Lara.
She was standing with a man Gaby hadn’t seen before. Like Blaine and the two women on the Trident, Lara and the stranger were heavily armed and wearing assault vests.
Lara looked so different from the last time Gaby had seen her, and she suddenly realized that it wasn’t just her who had gone through the kind of metamorphosis that even her parents wouldn’t have recognized while she was running around out there trying to stay alive. Lara had changed, too. They all had. You had to, these days, or you didn’t survive.
“Who’s that?” Nate, standing next to her, asked.
“That’s Lara,” Gaby said.
“I thought you said she was some kind of medical student.”
“She was. I mean, she is.”
“Wow,” Nate said. “Medical school in Texas is, uh, really different.”
Gaby couldn’t help but smile a little bit.
“Who’s the string bean?” Danny asked Roy. The two of them were standing at the back of the boat.
“Keo,” Roy, the blond who had come to pick them up along with Maddie, said.
“What kind of name is Keo?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Showed up a couple of days ago. He’s the reason the collaborators haven’t attacked the island yet.”
“So that’s Keo.”
“Yup. That’s Keo,” Roy said.
Gaby was listening to their conversation, but she was mostly focused on Lara standing on the pier with Keo. They were watching the pontoon on approach and talking. Gaby wondered how long it would take Lara to notice that Will wasn’t among them.
She caught her breath and waited for the inevitable.
“Welcome home,” Lara said as Maddie shut off the pontoon’s motor and sidled it alongside the pier. “Guys, this is Keo. Keo, this is Gaby and that’s Danny and…I don’t know who the rest are.”
The tall Asian guy nodded at them. Gaby could just barely make out a long, thin scar running down one side of his face, and he seemed to be favoring his right shoulder for some reason. Instead of an assault rifle like the others were carrying, he had a weapon with a long suppressor attached to the end. It looked mean and dangerous, and she wanted one.
“What kind of name is Keo?” Danny asked, climbing out of the boat.
“Lou was taken,” the guy said.
Gaby hadn’t made it onto the pier yet when Lara said, “Gaby, Danny — where’s Will?”
CHAPTER 15
JOSH
“We almost had him,” Travis said. “Smiley said he might have even tagged him.”
Smiley? Right. The sniper.
Or as close to a sniper as he was going to get out here. Josh had to constantly remind himself that he wasn’t actually leading a group of soldiers. It took more than a nice polished uniform to turn some accountant or restaurant manager or, in Travis’s case, a construction supervisor, into a full-blooded killer.
Will and Danny would laugh at these guys.
“But he was too fast,” Travis was saying. “Lucky bastard somehow managed to do a U-turn in the channel and slipped back into the lake before the others could catch him.”
“So where is he now?” Josh asked.
“Back on the island’d be my guess.”
“Just one guy?”
“Just one guy.”
“I guess one more or less won’t matter.” Then, “Have you heard back from Mason?”
“Sonia didn’t say anything, so I’m guessing not. He’s probably still trying to deal with those other guys that popped out of nowhere and laid waste to his group back at Route 13.”
“The Dunbar people.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought we killed everyone in that city.”
“That’s what Mason thought, too. But apparently not. It’s funny…”
Funny? Nothing about this is funny, Travis, Josh thought, but he said, “What’s that?”
“I think this is the first time I’ve heard of them not being able to finish a job.”
“First time for everything,” Josh said.
The “them” Travis was referring to were the blue-eyed ghouls. They had slaughtered almost everyone in Dunbar a few nights ago and took the women and children. Or, well, most of the ones that were still alive at the end of the night, anyway. Josh didn’t want to think about it too much. He accepted what the ghouls were, what they did, but it didn’t mean he wanted to dwell on it. As long as he wasn’t directly involved, it was easy to pretend it wasn’t actually happening.
“I don’t know what’s giving Mason so much trouble,” Travis said. “He’s got what, thirty or forty people with him?”
“Something like that.”
“He should have had them by now. They were right there for the taking.”
Mason.
The man was irritating. Or was that aggravating? Maybe both. The worse part of it was that Mason just didn’t care. Sometimes Josh wondered if he should bring it up with Kate during one of their talks. It would serve Mason right. What Josh needed were dependable men, not lazy ones that did whatever the hell they wanted.