Now she pulled her foot from the water, cursing her clumsiness, and sat on one of the rocks as she stared again at the odd symbols carved into the stone. Who had put them there, and why? Did that mean people had once lived on the island? Had they been a part of some kind of ancient temple?
Gabe made his way over the stones more gracefully than she would have expected. He might be a bit older than she was, but the captain was a capable man, in excellent shape.
“You’ve got to take a look at these,” Tori said. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but stray damp locks had fallen in front of her eyes and she tucked them behind her ears as she leaned in to get a better look at the engravings.
“I’ve seen them already. Let’s just go, Tori. We’re running out of morning.”
Tori stared at the symbols, surprised to find her heart still jittering and her stomach still uneasy. Just looking at those weird letters made her afraid, which made no sense at all, considering she had no idea what they meant. It took a moment for Gabe’s words to sink in, but when they did, she looked up at him.
“How did you see them? You couldn’t have, from all the way up there. Were there more on the other side?”
The confusion on his face made her realize that he had no idea what she was talking about. Gabe hadn’t been referring to the strange symbols on the black stone. But if not that, then what?
Tori turned to scan behind her. The rocks went on for another five feet, beyond which was the mouth of the hidden grotto. The surf rushed over a forty-foot section of rocks and shells. At first, nothing caught her eyes, but then she caught a glimpse of white in the water and remembered having noticed several similar shapes from above, white rocks out of place among the black.
A wave flowed in, and the bleached stone rolled. Not rock, then. To move so easily in the surf it must be brittle coral or some kind of heavy shell. Then the wave slid back out and for just a moment — a breath between ebb and flow — the top inch or so of the white thing was visible above the water. In the sun, and with the white froth of the surf calm for a fraction of a second, she saw it clearly.
A human skull.
Tori made a small noise at the back of her throat and struggled to stand. She scanned the shallow water of the grotto. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she spotted three other skulls right away. She breathed through her nose, trying not to panic, even as she realized that what she’d thought was coral might well be shards of bone instead.
“Who are they?” she said.
“Not from the Mariposa,” Gabe replied. “None of this is recent.”
Tori stared at the skulls. Obviously they weren’t from the Mariposa’s crew. They were bleached and smooth from being in the water, almost like driftwood now, so they had been in the grotto a long time. But knowing who they weren’t was entirely different from figuring out who they were.
“Hey,” Gabe said.
She looked at him.
“It’s not our puzzle to solve, Tori. We’ve gotta get—”
His radio crackled, startling them both. Gabe snatched it off his belt.
“Rio,” he said.
“It’s Kevonne, boss. You on your way?” His voice came through a hiss of static.
Gabe thumbed a button on the radio. “We’re getting there. You got something?”
“Damn right,” Kevonne said. “Plenty of tracks, and two of the guys who made them. But they’re not gonna be making any more. DOA, Captain. Both of ’em.”
Tori exhaled a soft prayer to a God she’d lost faith in as a little girl.
“Dead how?” Gabe asked.
The answer came back fast. “Bullets. But this wasn’t a gunfight, boss. I’m thinking self-inflicted.”
“They killed themselves?” Tori said. “Why?”
Gabe held up a hand to hush her. “Any sign of the guns?” he said into the radio.
“No. But if they’re here, they probably aren’t far.”
“We’re coming,” Gabe replied, turning to make his way back along the rocks, hurrying westward even as he put the radio back on his belt.
Tori scrambled over the rocks, her right foot squelching in her wet shoe. “Why would they kill themselves?”
Gabe didn’t turn or slow. “Fuck if I know. Despair? Maybe they figured they were gonna starve to death or something.”
“They were only here for a day. Seriously, that doesn’t freak you out? Why would anyone put a bullet in their head if they had any hope at all they could be rescued? A few hours wouldn’t be enough to take that hope away, Gabe. They wouldn’t even have been that hungry yet!”
Gabe had reached the end of the rocks and started onto the sandy shore, but now he turned to face her, shaking his head.
“I don’t really care, all right? Can you just move your ass so we can get the damn guns and get off this island? Whatever happened to these guys, it doesn’t matter.”
With that, he started off again.
She hurried to catch up, the two of them marching quickly over the rough ground and eventually onto soft beach again. With every step, she wanted to break into a run, and the fear she’d felt while looking at that weird engraving still lingered.
Gabe wanted to get off the island as quickly as possible, and Tori didn’t blame him. But he also thought the suicide of two stranded fishermen didn’t matter and, on that count, Tori felt sure he was wrong. If they’d really killed themselves, it wouldn’t have been out of despair. Only fear could drive someone to desperation that quickly. More than fear, really. Terror.
But what could have made them so afraid?
She glanced back toward the grotto for a moment, then up at the sun. How long until midday? How long until afternoon, when the shadows of the hills and trees would grow long and the ocean would darken? Tori quickened her pace even more, and Gabe matched her speed without question.
She no longer cared if they managed to find the guns, and she had a feeling that pretty soon even Gabe would be willing to go home without them, as long as it meant getting the hell off the island.
33
David Boudreau strolled along the brick sidewalk of M Street, a cup of hazelnut coffee in his right hand and the morning edition of The Washington Post in his left. He only read the paper to amuse himself, trying to figure out which reporters were actually clueless and which were actively involved in major cover-ups. He studied the sky, intrigued by the day’s curious weather. Sunlight splashed the sidewalk and shone down the entire length of M Street, but the horizon in every direction revealed clusters of low-slung gray clouds, a pattern of light and dark that covered the entirety of the DC area.
Apropos, he thought.
His cell phone erupted in a snatch of angry music from Flogging Molly — a nod to the Irish heritage he’d inherited from his late father. The music had worn a groove in his brain and he realized it was time to change his ring tone. With a sigh, David tucked the newspaper under his right arm and managed to fish the cell from his pocket right before it could go to voice mail.
“What’s up?” he said, phone pressed to his ear. “I’ve sort of got my hands full.”
“With what? You haven’t been to the office in two days.”
“I’ve been available by phone and e-mail. Working from home.”
He heard the sigh on the other end of the line, heavy and theatrical. But that was Henry Wagner, his titular employer, on a typical day.
“What are you working on, David?” Wagner asked.
“It’s a pet project, General. But I hope you’ll trust me when I say that it falls squarely within our mission parameters.”
“You do that on purpose, don’t you?” Wagner said.
“Do what?”