“Sure, no problem. How are you for supplies?”
“We’ll fill up what we need, but it shouldn’t be too much. What about you?”
“The pantry’s fully stocked, so no worries. How’s the war going out there?”
“It’s…going.”
“Is that good or bad?” Hart asked.
“I guess it depends on your perspective,” Erin said.
Hart glanced back at her, apparently not quite sure how to take her response. Keo shared his confusion.
“I guess it depends on your perspective”? Keo thought.
“Casualties?” Hart asked.
“Maybe more than we’d like,” Erin said, and looked over her shoulder at Keo. “You wanna add something?”
“I’m just a tourist,” Keo said. “I don’t know anything.”
“Who is he, anyway?” Hart asked. “Why is he tied up?”
Erin turned back to Hart. “The better question is, where is everyone?”
“Huh?” Hart said.
“The last time I was here, there were kids running around. Where are all the civilian workers, Hart? Don’t tell me they all caught a cold, too.”
She stopped suddenly, and Keo had to do the same or he would have bumped into her. Erin’s right hand drifted uncomfortably close to her holstered sidearm while behind Keo, he heard Troy shuffling his feet and the sound of a safety being clicked off.
Uh oh.
Hart, realizing that the party had stopped, did too, and turned around.
“Well?” Erin said. “Where are all the civilians, Hart?”
The older man looked past Erin and at Keo. No, not at him, but at Troy standing over Keo’s left shoulder. Unlike Erin, whose rifle was slung over her back, Keo knew for a fact that Troy had his cradled in front of him the entire time they’d walked up the stairs.
“They’re inside,” Hart said, shifting his eyes back to Erin. “There’s no work to be done out here right now.”
“You sound a little nervous, Hart,” Erin said. “Why are you so nervous?”
“I’m not.”
“Bullshit,” Troy said behind Keo. “You’re definitely nervous.”
Hart shook his head and attempted a smile, but it came out so badly that Keo thought, And things were going so well, too.
“You’re being paranoid,” Hart said. “Relax. There’s nothing going on. Just calm down.”
Hart was still talking when Keo glimpsed black-clad figures moving in the corner of his left eye. It was the same two guards that had greeted them when they first stepped onto the platform. Keo hadn’t noticed before, but the men had been shadowing them this entire time while keeping their distance. They were now moving toward them, and one of them had begun to unsling his rifle.
Oh man, here we go!
Before Keo could do or say anything, things went from bad to absolutely fucked when two shots exploded behind him (Goddammit, Troy, you fucker) and the guard reaching for his rifle stumbled and fell as his partner scrambled to get his own rifle free. The guy was simultaneously too slow and in too much of a hurry, and it was like watching a bad comedy routine as he fumbled with the deadly weapon.
Keo waited for Troy to finish the poor sap off when something slammed into him from the front and knocked him backward. He grunted when his back crashed into the hard steel floor and pain stabbed through him, but it was nothing compared to the heavy weight of another person landing, then moving frantically on top of him.
Who the hell? he thought when a third shot rang out and a body collapsed in a pile next to him.
It was Troy, his rifle somehow still clutched in his hands. Blood gushed out of a hole in his chest where the bullet had exited after it had punched through the back of his throat. The chances were pretty good poor Troy was dead before he even hit the deck.
Keo didn’t have a lot of time to think about Troy’s last seconds of life because the weight on top of him suddenly lifted and he could breathe (and move) again. It was Erin (?), and she had rolled off him and scrambled to her knees as two more men in tactical vests appeared out from behind the machines and surrounded her, their rifles pointing at her head.
“Don’t shoot!” someone shouted.
It was Hart, who for some reason was on the floor too, and was slowly picking himself up. What was Hart doing off his feet in the first place?
It took about two seconds for Keo to gather the evidence and play the scenario out in his head: The body that had knocked him down was Erin’s, and someone had to have done the same to her. That someone was Hart, who had barreled into Erin and drove her into him.
“Don’t fucking shoot!” Hart shouted. He lifted one open palm toward the sky — no, not the sky, but at the towering crane.
I knew there was a sniper up there.
But sniper or not, it didn’t stop Erin from wrapping her fingers around her holstered sidearm. Keo thought about rolling away and getting out of the line of fire, but that might just end up drawing attention to himself. And right now, he didn’t want to make any sudden moves, especially since the two newcomers and the third remaining guard had their rifles pointed at Erin, and all three looked a little nervous.
Oh, who was he kidding? They looked a lot nervous.
Keo sat very still on one knee and barely breathed. He had never felt so vulnerable in his life — unarmed and with his hands bound in front of him, and Troy’s blood, bright under the sun, oozing along the ridges in the floor around him.
What to do, what to do?
“Erin, don’t,” Hart was saying. He was clearly trying his very best to stay calm but was only partially (if Keo was being generous) successful. “Take your hand away from your gun, Erin. Don’t draw that sidearm!”
It was bad enough Keo was helpless and trapped in the midst of a situation that was borderline FUBAR. He also didn’t have a clue what was happening, and that might have been the more aggravating part.
Wasn’t the Ocean Star a part of Mercer’s group? Didn’t Erin say they were coming here to refuel and resupply before continuing on to The Ranch, wherever the hell that place turned out to be? Both she and Troy hadn’t looked nervous at all as they approached the rig, clear signs that they didn’t see this coming, either.
Man, I’m so confused right now.
“Erin!” Hart said — he was almost shouting now for some reason. “Don’t do it! Riley wouldn’t want you to do this!”
“Riley?” Erin said, and though Keo couldn’t see her face because he was behind her, he could hear the confusion in her voice. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Hart said. “But he’s been shot.”
“Shot? By who?”
“It’s a long story,” Hart began to say, when Keo thought, Fuck me, because he could see Erin’s fingers tightening around the gun and saw the slight hitch in her elbow as she began to draw the weapon.
He slammed into her from behind, catching her almost in the small of her back with his shoulder, and knocked her off her knees and threw her back onto the deck. Her hands had abandoned the gun in order to stop her fall and Keo spilled on top of her, hearing her scream as his weight drove her chest-first into the steel floor.
He felt like laughing — wasn’t this what had just happened to him?