He heard sneakers crunching gravel and looked over as Maddie walked toward them. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t read the expression on her face. He wondered if she had gone to Mason and sold them out, or if he had cemented a new ally.
God, don’t let me be wrong about her.
“Did you talk to Bobby?” Blaine asked.
“Yeah,” Maddie nodded.
She paused and seemed to look off at the highway in the distance. He imagined she was trying to work her way up to something.
Blaine exchanged a worried look with Sandra.
Finally, Maddie said, “We’re going to have to kill Mason and the others, you know that, right?”
Blaine nodded. He fully expected that. “Yeah, we know.”
This time Maddie looked over at Sandra when she said, “Because he’s not going to let us go. Not without a fight. And if we leave him alive, he’ll come after us. Sooner or later, we’ll have to deal with him, and it might as well be now.”
“We understand,” Sandra said. “How are we going to do this?”
“Depending on when we leave, I’ve got a few ideas.”
Blaine grinned at her. “You’ve been thinking about this for a while, haven’t you? How to take out Mason and the rest?”
She grinned back at him. “Maybe.”
He listened to her lay it out. It was a pretty good plan. He was right; it was obvious she had given it some thought even before they had shown up. The more he thought about it, turning it over in his head as they stood up there on the roof discussing it, the more Blaine was convinced it could work. All they really needed was a little bit of luck and some timing. And if push came to shove, it was four against three, so the odds were in their favor.
It was a good plan.
That is, it was a good plan, until Lenny decided to fuck everything up.
CHAPTER 23
WILL
Marcus, the man who had showed up in the pontoon to pick them up, stood next to Debra, who drove the boat across Beaufont Lake and toward Song Island, still just a shimmering patch of land in the distance.
The pontoon was seven and a half meters long and looked like a floating raft with four recliners someone had decided to tack on. Then, just for good measure, they had added an admiral’s high-back reclining chair in front of a steering wheel in the middle. Faded slick vinyl covered the chairs, and the floor matting made walking surprisingly unadventurous, even in boots.
A three-inch heavy-duty deck rub rail with impact bumpers surrounded the boat, and there was just enough space to squeeze everyone inside, though it was a tight fit. Of course, it didn’t help that they brought two crates of supplies with them. On the plus side, the crates became impromptu seats. They also carried their personal items in backpacks, along with two heavy duffel bags — one for weapons and the other for ammo. It wasn’t everything they had, but it was all they could fit and still bring everyone on the first trip. Will was wary about leaving anyone behind.
The pontoon moved along at a steady clip, powered by a V8 battery that was amazingly quiet. Will remembered going fishing with Marker, his former Harris County SWAT commander, and how Marker’s aging boat’s motor sputtered plumes of smoke and leaked gasoline before it even made it out onto the water. Compared to that trip, the pontoon ran like a dream.
As they neared their destination, Will eyeballed Song Island at about one kilometer long. He had no idea about its width, given that they were approaching it from just one direction. The lighthouse/radio tower sprouted from the eastern side — possibly northeast — and not from the center as he had thought when he had first seen it through the binoculars. He guessed the eastern section was also where the survivors congregated, and probably where the main buildings were located. Thick jungle foliage covered nearly the entire western half.
Tall, glinting objects encircled the slightly jagged, oval-shaped outline of the island. Using his binoculars, he picked up an impressive array of solar panels, held in place by long, thin steel poles reaching almost as high as the trees. From a distance, they looked like flagpoles with shiny metal boards on top, soaking up the sun’s rays in crystalline cells. He could only see one side of the island, but it was clear the fence of panels extended entirely around. He did quick calculations in his head, using his guess of the island’s width and length, and came up with…a hell of a lot of solar panels.
Will lowered the binoculars. He stood at the front with Lara and Carly, and the girls sat on opposite sides of the reclining seats. His M4A1 was slung over his shoulder, something that neither Marcus nor Debra had objected to before they had boarded the pontoon boat.
Marcus and Debra had shown up at the marina less than an hour after they had arrived. Their vehicles had been spotted coming down the road by a watcher in what Marcus called the Tower — the combination radio tower and lighthouse. From the Tower, you could apparently see the shoreline along the western cove of Beaufont Lake.
“How many people are on the island?” Will asked.
“Eleven,” Marcus said. “Well, nineteen now, counting you folks.”
The six-foot-tall Marcus, in his khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and sandals, looked like a yuppie who had wandered too far from his natural habitat, the big city. His blond hair and blue eyes were incongruous against overly tanned skin. Marcus was in his thirties, and Will had thought stockbroker the first time he had seen the man riding up to the marina in the pontoon.
Debra had similarly tanned features, though she looked like she actually belonged out here on the water. Shorter than Marcus by about half a foot, she was also wearing sandals and shorts, along with a loose-fitting T-shirt. Debra had a lean face, not exactly unattractive, but she was far from either Carly or Lara or the girl, Gaby. Rough hands that clearly spent a lot of time working outdoors guided the boat’s steering wheel with confidence. Frankly, she looked like the type of person a guy like Marcus would hire for a few days to take him fishing on her boat.
Neither Marcus nor Debra were armed, though Will glimpsed the barrel of a revolver in the slot under the boat’s steering wheel, within easy reach for Debra. Marcus had been all smiles as the two of them had drifted up the inlet. It occurred to Will that smiling was something Marcus did well. Like breathing.
“Eight more people is a lot,” Will said. “Is adding that many to the island in such a short time going to cause problems?”
“I don’t see why it would,” Marcus said. “There’s plenty of room and plenty of food. Plenty of fish in the lake around us, too. You guys like fish?”
“I like fish,” Danny said.
Danny stood in the back of the boat with Josh and Gaby. His M4A1 was slung over his shoulder. The fact that he was back there and Will was up front was no accident. If either Marcus or Debra noticed, they hadn’t said a word.
“Can you fish?” Marcus asked Danny.
“You didn’t say I actually had to catch my own fish,” Danny said.
Marcus laughed. “Don’t worry, there are plenty of people who don’t mind reeling in your share. Debra here’s one. It’s not like there’s a lot to do on the island. You can only explore it so many times before you run out of room.”
“Free food without having to work for it? This sounds like my dream job.”
“Why aren’t you armed?” Will asked Marcus.
Marcus smiled at him. Apparently he had been anticipating the question. “We have guns on the island, of course, but we don’t carry them around. There’s no need.”