He met her gaze evenly. “You could say that,” he said. “I was there, anyway.”
/ was there. .. That wasn't the same thing as actually killing anyone. “I don't think you killed your escort earlier tonight; I think it was one of these creatures, and you just ran,” she said. “And I know I haven't known you for very long, but I don't believe that you murdered twenty-three people, either.”
“It doesn't matter,” Billy said, staring at his boots. “People believe what they want to believe.”
“It matters to me,” Rebecca said, her voice gentle. “I'm not going to judge. I just want to know. What happened?”
He was still staring at his boots, but his gaze had gone distant, as if seeing another time, another place. “Last year, my unit was sent to Africa, to intervene in a civil war,” he said. “Top secret, no U.S. involvement, you understand. We were supposed to raid a guerrilla hideout. It was summer, the hottest part of summer, and we were dropped well outside the strike zone, in the middle of a dense jungle. We had to hike in a ways ...“
He trailed off a moment, reaching for his dog tags, holding them tightly. When he spoke again, his voice was even softer. “The heat got half of us. The enemy got most of the rest, picking us off one at a time. By the time we got to where the hideout was supposed to be, there were only four of us left. We were exhausted, half crazy, sick with the heat, sick with—with heartsickness, I guess, watching our buddies die.
“So when we reached the hideout coordinates, we were ready to blow all of them away. Make someone pay, you know? For all that sickness. Only, there was no hideout. The tip-off wasn't valid. It turned out to be some dumpy little village, just a bunch of farmers. Families. Old men and women. Children.”
Rebecca nodded, encouraging him to go on, but her stomach was starting to knot. There was an inevitability to the story; she could see where it was headed, and it wasn't pretty.
“Our team leader told us to round them up, and we did,” Billy said. “And then he told us—“
His voice broke. He reached out and picked up his dropped weapon, stuffing it into his belt almost angrily as he stood up, turning away. Rebecca stood up, too.
“Did you?” she asked. “Did you kill them?”
Billy turned back to her, his lips curled. “What if I tell you that I did? Would you judge me then?”
“Did you?” she asked again, studying his face, his eyes, determined to at least try and understand. And it was as though he could see it in her, could see that she was working to be open to the truth. He stared at her a moment, then shook his head.
“I tried to stop it,” he said. “I tried, but they knocked me down. I was barely conscious, but I saw it, I saw it all . . . and I couldn't do anything.” He looked away before continuing. “When it was over, when we were picked up, it was their word against mine. There was a trial, sentencing, and—well, then this happened.”
He spread his arms, encompassing their surroundings. “So if we make it out of here, I'm dead, anyway. It's that or I run, and keep running.”
It all had the ring of truth. If he was lying, he deserved an Oscar ... And she didn't think he was.
She tried to think of something to say, something reassuring, that would make things better somehow, but nothing came. He was right about his options.
“Hey,” he said, looking at something past her shoulder. “Check it out.”
She turned as he stepped by, saw a stack of scrap metal pieces leaning against the far wall—and half-hidden among them, what looked like a shotgun.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
Billy picked up the weapon, grinning as he pumped it, checking the action. “Yes, ma'am, it certainly
is.”
“Is it loaded?”
“No, but I have a couple of shells, left from the train. It's a twelve gauge.” He smiled again. “Things are looking up. We may not make it, but there's a monkey out in the hall that's just begging for a taste of this baby.”
“Actually, I think it's a baboon,” she said, surprised to find herself smiling back. Then they were both chuckling, struck by the absolute pointlessness of her correction. They were trapped in an isolated mansion, hunted by God knew how many kinds of monster, but at least they knew that the creature in the hall was probably a baboon. Their chuckles turned to laughter.She watched him laugh, all pretense of arrogance, of tough-guy machismo set aside, and felt that she was truly seeing him for the first time, the real Billy Coen. She realized in that moment that she had thoroughly failed her first assignment. He was no more her prisoner than she was his. Assuming they survived, if he ran, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to stop him.
So much for a career in law enforcement.
The thought made her laugh even harder.
Nine
The baboon ran for them as soon as they stepped back into the hall—and it died spectacularly, the double-barreled shotgun blasting it to shreds with a deafening roar. Billy broke and reloaded with his one remaining shell. He thought he'd had more, but it seemed he'd lost them somewhere along the way. In any case, nothing else came at them, and they headed back out toward the main room, Billy feeling much lighter than he had in a long time. Besides the much-needed laugh, a break in the relentless chaos they'd both endured, it was the first time he'd told his story to anyone who was actually listening, who was willing to consider that he might be telling the truth. They stopped at the giant circle of stone statuary in the middle of the large chamber, looking it over. There were six carved animals spaced evenly around the circle, facing outward. Each had a small plaque in front of it, a small oil lamp positioned next to each plaque. The animals were expertly carved, but the whole thing was a monstrosity, a real eyesore.
The animal in front of him was an eagle in flight, a snake clutched in its talons. He read aloud from its plaque: “I DANCE FREELY THROUGH THE AIR, CAPTURING A LEGLESS PREY.” He frowned, moved to the next animal over, a deer, reading from its plaque. “I STAND TALL ON THE EARTH WITH HORNS PROUDLY DISPLAYED.”
Rebecca had walked around the unfortunate art piece, stopped at a steel gate set into the wall behind it. The gate blocked a short hall, two doors set into its walls. “There's a sign here, says”—she turned, studying the animals—“basically, go from weakest to strongest, using the lamps. It's some kind of puzzle.” She grabbed one of the metal bars of the gate, shook it. “Must be how we open the gate.”
“So you have to light the lamps in order, starting with the weakest animal,” Billy said. Dumb. Why someone would go through all the trouble ... He pulled the map out of his back pocket, studied it. “It just looks like a couple of rooms back there. I don't see an exit.”
Rebecca shrugged. “Yeah, but maybe there's something in there we can use. Can it hurt?”
“I don't know,” he said truthfully. “Maybe.” She smiled, turning to the stone animal nearest her, a tiger, reading from the plaque beneath it. “I AM THE KING OF ALL I SURVEY: NO CREATURE CAN ESCAPE MY GRASP.”
Billy moved to his left, to a carving of a snake coiled around a tree limb. “This one says, I CREEP UP ON MY VICTIMS IN LEGLESS SILENCE AND CONQUER EVEN THE MIGHTIEST OF KINGS WITH MY POISON.”
Rebecca read the last two aloud—the words beneath a wolf carving were, MY SHARP WIT ALLOWS ME TO BRING DOWN EVEN THE GREATEST HORNED BEAST.
The sixth animal was a horse, reared back on its hind legs. The legend beneath it was, NO AMOUNT OF CUNNING CAN MATCH THE SPEED OF MY SUPPLE LIMBS.
Horned beast. Billy walked back to the deer, read the part about “horns proudly displayed.”
“So, the wolf is stronger than the deer,” he said.
“And if cunning can't outrace a horse, the horse is stronger than the wolf,” she said. “What's stronger than the snake?”