“Who do you think they radioed?” she asked.
“The comm room can reach anyone, including Black Tide,” Riley said. “If I were them, that’s where I’d direct everything. Texas right now is too unpredictable, and they probably knew they wouldn’t get much assistance from there.”
“If that’s true, then Mercer already knows about the mutiny.”
Riley nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I asked before what he would do when he found out,” Lara said. “Did you come up with an answer yet?”
“I don’t know what he’ll do,” Riley said. “I really don’t.”
“Maybe he won’t get the chance to do anything,” Hart said. He was standing next to them, one hand on the railing to steady himself as they moved across the slightly bumpy water. “If Keo gets the job done, I mean.”
She nodded, though she didn’t really like to think about Keo succeeding, because it meant he wasn’t coming back. She remembered watching him leaving with Erin and thinking that she was never going to see him again.
“Who’s Keo?” Riley asked.
Lara told him about Keo and him leaving with Erin.
“Are you surprised she’s helping him?” Lara asked him.
There was almost a ghost of a smile on his lips when he said, “Not at all.”
“What do you think?” Hart asked.
“About what?” Riley said.
“He means Keo killing Mercer,” Lara said. “Is that going to stop the war?”
Riley took a moment to think about it. She couldn’t tell if it was such a foreign concept that he was having trouble grasping the question or if he really was running through all the scenarios before answering.
“Maybe,” he finally said. “There are a lot of people who’ll throw down their guns, but there’s also a lot who won’t.”
“What about Rhett?” Hart asked.
“I think he’ll argue for stopping the bombings, definitely. Bellamy, Jerkins, and Taylor might feel differently.”
“But there is a chance,” Lara said.
He nodded. “If your friend can kill Mercer, then yes, there’s a chance.” He looked over at her. “Can he do it?”
“Keo’s very good.”
“But can he do it?”
“Yes,” she said. “If anyone can do it, it’s Keo.”
Even if it kills him, she thought, but didn’t say that part out loud.
25
Keo
He didn’t know if he should be pleased, disturbed, or slightly annoyed at how easy it was to move around the main building. As with the beach, there weren’t nearly enough people left behind on the island to post on every corner or watch every hallway, and accessing the facility was a simple matter of checking in at the guard station, where Erin did most of the talking; she was, after all, one of Mercer’s easily recognized lieutenants, and that came with a lot of respect.
Once Keo separated from Erin on their way to the communal living quarters for the non-married people, he simply followed the numbers on the walls, which also happened to have helpful arrows pointing the way toward his destination. There wasn’t a single soul in sight to question, much less stop him. There wasn’t even an occasional soldier for him to worry about getting past; everyone who wasn’t sound asleep was already outside standing guard.
“Technically he should be sleeping in the communal area because he’s single, but I guess even he couldn’t bring himself to justify that,” Erin had said before they went their separate ways. “It’s part of the role he’s playing. I recognize that now.”
“The Everyman,” Keo had said.
“Yes.”
“What about guards?”
“What you see is what you get. The rest will be coming back later today or the days after. Like you said, you’ll have to get it done before the sun comes up or it’s going to get a hell of a lot harder.”
“No pressure.”
“I’m serious, Keo,” she had said, stopping at a door marked Quarters and fixing him with a hard stare that was meant to deliver just how serious she was. Then, lowering her voice slightly to an almost whisper, “You were right to come here now, in the middle of the night. Everyone is either asleep or dead on their feet. What did you call it?”
“The hour of the wolf.”
She snapped a quick look past him and up the hallway. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to ask who you are. Mercer’s going to want an after-action report, and I’m going to have to explain what happened to Troy and the others. You understand?”
“Relax,” Keo had said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“We have to stop him, Keo. I should have done it months ago when I had the chance, but I didn’t. That’s on me, and I’m going to have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life. So please, stop him. Do what I and Riley and everyone else couldn’t bring ourselves to do. End this.”
Keo had nodded. “I will.”
He was thinking of Jordan bleeding to death in his arms when he finally located the room he had been looking for, in the exact part of the building where Erin had told him he’d find it. There were no guards posted outside, or anywhere in this or the previous three hallways he had walked through, and when Keo tried the lever, it moved without resistance.
Too easy. Way too easy.
He put his hand on the Sig Sauer P250 and looked left, then right, then left again. He stood perfectly still and listened for sounds of running feet, shouting voices, and safeties being clicked off. Some indication that his trip from the singles living quarters to Mercer’s room had not gone completely unnoticed.
But there was nothing.
There would be dead silence if not for the hum of lights above him and the vibrations from generators in the background. No one was coming, rushing around the corners, or converging on his position so he couldn’t enter this room and take the life of the man on the other side.
Way, way too easy.
It had to be a trick. Maybe Erin had gotten some of the details wrong, or gotten the hallways mixed up. After all, except for the numbers marking each door, they all looked the same in the last four hallways he had walked down.
“Are you sure?” he had asked her.
“506,” she had said for the second time.
“What if he moved?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“What if he did?”
“Why would he? He’s been in that room since we got to the island. He was there when we left for the mainland, and he’ll be there after returning.”
He was staring at the number now.
It had to be a trick, because this was too easy. It was just too goddamn easy.
He sighed, thought, Fuck it, and pushed the door open and slipped inside, palming and drawing the Sig in one smooth motion as he did so.
Once inside, he stood perfectly still, mostly because he couldn’t see a damn thing. After moving around in the brightly lit corridors the last five minutes, it took Keo a while for his eyes to adjust to near darkness. When he could finally make out gray floors, walls, and the shape of a small (much too small for someone of his position) cot at the back of the room, Keo searched out and found the light switch on the wall behind him and flicked it into the on position.
In the second or two after the light bulb buzzed to life, Keo glimpsed the room’s Spartan design in a glance.
It was essentially a big concrete box — nothing fancy or very big, but perfect for a grunt who needed a place — any place — to rest. There was nothing comfortable about it, but he’d been in worse places during jobs. Besides the cot at the far side, there was a flimsy-looking nightstand in the corner to his right with a canteen and a two-way radio sitting on top of it. A complete wardrobe was folded over the back of a wooden chair at the foot of the bed, with a pair of polished boots next to it. There was a closet carved out of the wall with just enough space for a dozen or so articles of clothing to dangle from hangers. A gun belt hung from a hook next to the bed with a pistol in the holster, but there wasn’t a rifle anywhere in the room that he could see.