Farther along they came upon another outcropping of the black rock where the remains of at least two lifeboats were scattered. There were derelict ships half-sunken — and some completely submerged — off the island here as well, but they were not as numerous away from the cove. In the surf, a small boat with an outboard — a Whaler no doubt used as a runabout by the rich owners of one of these ruined yachts — swayed back and forth with the waves.
“I don’t see a thing,” Tori said when they had gone perhaps three-quarters of a mile. “Are we even sure the Mariposa stopped here?”
Gabe glanced at her, a dozen harsh replies playing on his lips. What came out instead was honesty. “I’m not sure of anything, but it feels like someone’s been here.”
Tori actually laughed, and he glanced at her sharply, only to see her gesture toward the nearest offshore wreck. “It feels like plenty of people have been here. The place is like the Bermuda Triangle’s backed-up drain.”
He had been trying to avoid such thoughts. “I don’t believe in that crap.”
They walked half a dozen steps before Tori replied. “I don’t, either. But the only other thing I can think of is pirates. Could be they attack these other ships, kill the crews, steal whatever they can, then take them here and scuttle them. Like home base or whatever.”
“Could be,” Gabe said.
But he didn’t believe it. Not only did it feel like bullshit, but they had yet to see any sign of visitors. No remnants of a camp or a cooking fire or even prints in the sand. The weather could eradicate such things, but not if they were recent. And if it wasn’t pirates, he didn’t have the first clue what had happened to all of these ships.
Tori paused to check out a gap in the tree line, but only for a moment before moving on. Gabe started to do likewise, but the breeze lifted slightly and rustled the fronds of the palm trees, and he looked up.
The gap provided a perfect view of the nearest of the island’s hills. They were green and brown and thick with vegetation in some places — making him wonder how far seabirds might carry seeds — but there were peaks and ridges made of that same glassy black, and he realized that his thoughts about the beach hadn’t been completely off. Much of the island’s spine consisted of that ebony stone. He’d never seen anything like it.
Tori had kept walking and now Gabe picked up his pace to catch her. They must have traveled nearly a mile by now — half the distance they’d need to meet up with Kevonne and Pang on the other side, with no sign of any visitors to the island except the ruined boats. None of it made any sense.
Gabe paused to examine an area of undergrowth that seemed to have been disturbed, but the ground around it showed no sign of passersby, and he figured it had been bad weather or some kind of animal, though they hadn’t seen anything at all so far.
“What is it, Captain?” Tori prodded.
He turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t have to call me Captain out here, Tori.”
“Okay. What’s on your mind, Gabe? You’re distracted, and it isn’t just this.”
Something about her cool brown eyes brought the truth out in him. “Just thinking about Maya. About how things ended.”
Tori thrust her hands into her pockets as they continued along the sand. “It got ugly, huh?”
“Very. If I end up in prison over this, I don’t think she’ll care,” Gabe said, thinking that Maya might even be happy. Then she could carry on fucking whoever she wanted and never have to worry about his jealousy again.
Wrapped up in his own thoughts, he missed the way Tori stiffened and the fear that flared in her eyes. But when she said his name, her voice had become so small that he looked at her anew.
“I can’t go to prison, Gabe. Not even jail. Not for a single night.”
Some of the respect he felt for her slipped away. “None of us wants to go to jail, Tori. It’s definitely not part of my plan. I’ll do whatever it takes—”
Tori shook her head, fixing him with hard eyes. “You don’t understand. I can’t go to jail. The cops will find out who I am, and then …”
Gabe frowned as her words trailed off. “What do you mean, who you are?”
She sighed, gnawed her lip a bit, and he saw in her eyes the moment when she decided to trust him. Tori started walking again and, sensing it was what she desired, Gabe fell in beside her. While they walked, she told him the story of her life before she came to Miami, of her cruel father and criminal husband, of her plan to escape, and the hideous coincidence that allowed her to do so without anyone realizing she had gone.
Tori told the story without ever mentioning her real name.
“He thinks I’m dead, Gabe,” she said, turning to him once more, eyes pleading. “Everyone thinks I’m dead. But if I go to jail, he’ll find out I’m alive, and that’s the one thing I know I couldn’t survive.”
Gabe watched her a moment, absorbing her fear, and the truth of it. It frightened her more to imagine seeing her ex-husband again than it did to think of going to prison, or dying out here the way the crew of the Mariposa had.
“All right,” he said. “Before we reach port, I’m going to get Viscaya to off-load the guns onto a smaller ship. No reason I can’t off-load you, too. If you don’t come into port, you can’t be blamed for beating the crap out of an FBI agent and holding him captive.”
“But Josh knows I was on the Antoinette.”
Gabe shrugged. “The FBI can’t arrest you if they can’t find you, Tori. You’ve started over before. You can just vanish, like you did in New York.”
Her eyes widened. Somehow, this option had never occurred to her.
“But none of that’s going to work if we don’t find the damn guns,” he added.
She nodded and they picked up the pace. Just a few minutes later, the radio clipped to his belt chirped and he snatched it up.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Boggs’s voice came through with only a smattering of static. “Captain, we found something. A couple of caves in the base of a hill.”
Caves. Could the Mariposa’s crew have hidden there, or at least stashed the guns there? The scenario spun out in his head and Gabe could see it was possible. The dying man on the fishing boat had said they thought they’d be safer on land, which Gabe figured meant whoever attacked them had greater numbers and they wanted to fight back from cover. The trees would provide some, but as a base, the caves would make perfect sense.
“Any sign of the guns? Or people?”
More static. “Not yet.”
“All right. Keep looking. Call in if you find anything. If you see other caves, search them, too. And, Chief?”
“Yeah.”
“Watch yourself.”
“I hear that.”
With a final blast of static, they signed off. Gabe put the radio back on his belt. Tori had slowed down to listen to the exchange, but was still a few paces ahead.
“You think they’ll find anything?” she asked as he caught up.
“Them or us. We’ll find something.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Gabe shot her a sidelong glance. “Worst-case scenario, the pirates or whatever found the guns and took them, right? Which means they killed everyone on the island. If we don’t find the guns, you can be damn sure we’ll find the bodies.”
“Well, there’s a pleasant thought,” Tori teased.
He had no reply. Gabe had always enjoyed her company, but — much as he would have liked to set her at ease — he couldn’t find it within himself to make light of their situation. There was nothing pleasant about it.