The FBI agent looked up, coffee mug in his hand. He raised it in a little salute, like some 1950s husband in a TV ad. “Sure. A top-up would be great, thanks.”
Her chest felt tight, her heart racing so fast that she would have done anything to make it slow down. Far away, muffled by walls and corridors, she could make out the sound of helicopters — maybe the fool that had brought that rusty container over from the Antoinette was making another run.
Angie tried to smile but only one corner of her mouth lifted, forming a weird, lopsided grimace. Plausky didn’t seem to notice. Why would he? He was just a guy doing his job, waiting until he could hand her over into somebody else’s custody so that she wouldn’t be his problem anymore. Getting assigned to watch out for her was just luck of the draw.
Which made Plausky one unlucky son of a bitch.
She threw her coffee in his face. He shouted and raised his hands to try to keep the hot liquid from scalding him, and she took the opportunity to smash him in the temple with the metal coffeepot, hard enough that she heard something crack. The sound scared her — God, she didn’t want to hurt him that badly — but even as he fell out of his chair, moaning in pain, she saw that his arms were still moving. His eyes were rolling back, but she saw no blood. He’d live. She hadn’t killed him.
Before she slipped from the room into the corridor, Angie took his gun. She liked the weight in her hand. It gave her focus.
82
Voss had spent months trying to put together a case against Gabe Rio. Now she followed him through a tangle of tropical vegetation with no path or trail except what he had in his memory, and somehow they had become allies. Massive palm fronds rustled in the breeze above them. Gabe paused to look around and then spotted a place where a pair of trees leaned together like some grand archway. He seemed to recognize this as a landmark and adjusted course to go under the arch.
She didn’t ask if he knew where he was going. Just talking to him fed an anger that she needed to extinguish if they were going to make it through the day. For the second time, she had to fight the temptation to give Josh up for dead, and battling that pessimistic whisper took all her strength. She didn’t have the energy for spite. Besides, Gabe Rio had never been her real target. He was just a victim of Viscaya’s schemes.
On the other hand, if he hadn’t committed those crimes, she wouldn’t ever have come here. And Josh wouldn’t be trapped down in the dark with those things.
Voss picked up her pace. David Boudreau and Lieutenant Stone hurried along behind her with — how many sailors were there, three? Not enough, she felt sure. But how many would have been? They were either going to find Josh, David’s grandmother, and the others, or they weren’t. In the end, how many people went down into the island’s womb didn’t matter as much as how many came back up.
Sunlight came through the trees at enough of an angle to remind her that the afternoon wore on as the sun slid inexorably toward the western horizon. In several places they passed depressions in the ground where the vegetation grew even thicker and greener, and volcanic steam lay upon the ground like mist. Sweat beaded on her forehead and arms and the back of her neck, and trickled between her breasts and down the small of her back. Voss used the hem of her tank top to wipe her forehead and kept up her pace, slogging after Gabe.
The massive hill at the center of the island — it wasn’t really big enough for her to think of it as a mountain — rose up in front of them, but there were smaller ridges and formations all around it. In between two of those, Gabe Rio stopped short, looking around to get his bearings.
“You better know where the fuck you’re going,” Voss said as she halted at his side. They had landed on the shore precisely where he had indicated, flying over the still-burning wreckage of the graveyard of derelict ships just offshore.
“We’re fine,” he replied. “But I’m going in the way we came out yesterday, so I’m trying to reverse course in my head. It’s this way.”
He started off again, cutting to the right at an angle that would take them around one of the lower hills. Over the eons since the volcano had erupted, local flora had grown wild all across those hills, but in places the black rock thrust up from the ground in jagged edges.
Voss could only follow, and because of that, she couldn’t help hating Gabe a little. The thought brought her back to the argument she had had with Turcotte right before boarding the helicopter that had taken her out to the island. Despite the way he had abdicated all responsibility in the Viscaya case — abandoned any interest, regardless of how hard he had once fought to take the case away from her — he had been very unhappy with the idea of taking Gabe Rio away from the Kodiak, and out of his custody.
“You’re treating him like a human being. Like he’s part of the team, instead of the bastard who put us here!” Turcotte had shouted at her, his words hacked apart by the roar of the helicopter’s rotors, out there on the deck of the Coast Guard ship.
The irony had sickened Voss. “What the fuck do you care? You gave up on this case! And if he’s our shot at getting my partner and the others out of there alive, I’m taking it.”
“And if I order you to stay here?” Turcotte had sneered.
The memory made Voss sniff in disgust. At that moment, though, she had laughed at him, told him if he wanted to pull rank as the agent in charge, he should be the first one on the chopper, heading out to save his man in the field. Turcotte hadn’t even had the sense to be ashamed of himself, but it didn’t matter. With Alena missing, David Boudreau held rank over them all, and he had approved bringing Gabe Rio along.
“Fine,” Turcotte had said. “Go and die. I tried to stop you.”
The words, like a slap in the face, would stay with her the rest of her life. However long that might be.
She rounded the bottom of the hill, ducked underneath low-hanging branches, and looked up to see that Gabe had come to a sudden halt. And then she saw why. Beyond him, the tangled brush thinned and opened into a natural clearing in front of a cave set into the steep hillside. A large rectangular plastic box sat just outside the cave, tilted on its side to reveal that it was empty. They had arrived.
“Looks like your people haven’t found this one yet,” Gabe said, glancing back at her.
Then David passed her, and she knew Gabe had not been speaking to her. David strode right up to the cave opening, ignoring the box. He paused to examine the entrance to the cave, then turned to Stone.
“Lieutenant, get on the radio and get someone over here immediately to set charges. I don’t want to think about how many other caves they’ve missed.”
Stone narrowed his eyes. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Dr. Boudreau. The teams are being methodical, sweeping every square foot of the island. They didn’t miss this cave. They just haven’t gotten to it yet.”
“They’re going to run out of time.”
“They’ll do the job, Doctor,” Stone insisted. “Drawing them away from their sweep patterns just to focus on this one cave—”
“No, no,” David said, waving a hand. “I understand. Forget I said it.”
He looked at Gabe, and Voss wondered if the young scientist would ask the guy to confirm that this was the cave where he had heard the water. How there could be any doubt, she had no idea. The plastic crate had obviously contained guns that had been consolidated into other containers or carried away. Now that she looked, she saw signs of footfalls and disturbance everywhere in the clearing, not to mention empty ammunition boxes just inside the mouth of the cave and splashes of blood on the rocks in one place.