Page 41

Special Forces

Calvin

“ P enny, go home,” I yell.

She looks at me with mournful eyes. Eyes that seem to say let me bite him . But then she turns and takes off. I just hope she doesn’t run into any other pirates. I’m hoping to hell that Haley gets my signal. The asswipe doesn’t, so I don’t move.

He screams, “Go.”

I watch as Penny runs through the jungle away from me.

Thank fuck she doesn’t turn back around and look at Haley behind the tree.

I’m holding my breath, hoping that Haley understands I would never yell.

But the one command that damn dog knows certainly is helpful right now. I can only see the fluff of her tail.

The pirate follows my eyes; he has the gun pointed directly at my chest. I see him flick his eyes to the dog. It’s a momentary decision he makes. He fires into the jungle.

I scream “No!” as loud as I can, not necessarily because I think he’s going to hit the dog—there are too many things in the way—but because I’m afraid that Haley is going to scream as well behind the tree, or worse yet, show her face. I need Haley to know that I’m not hit.

But neither thing happens. She’s a fucking brilliant woman. We’re lucky to have her in our lives.

Now I’m just hoping she doesn’t try anything stupid, like taking the gun out of the pack and coming after us. Not looking back where I know she’s hiding is killing me.

“Go,” the pirate says again.

I’m grateful for his command. I’m more than willing to get out of here, to put some distance between me and Haley. I have no idea how many of them are on the island; I can only hope they don’t find her.

He’s got the barrel pushed into the middle of my back, and he seems to know where he’s going. I do too. He’s leading me right back to camp. It’s not the easiest way—there’s a stream to cross—and I’m hoping that at some point he gets distracted and I can overpower him.

He’s not much of a man—scratch that. He’s a good foot shorter than I am, but he’s got some muscle to him, so I have a feeling it would be a fair fight, but he won’t go down without trying.

What I really need to do is get far enough away from Haley that he doesn’t realize she was with me.

Because right now, I don’t think he does.

I’m just a castaway lost in the woods with his dog.

He cuts a sharp right, heading north. The stream’s pretty wide right here, but he pushes me in. “Go,” he barks.

This is the spot. This is where I’m going to overpower him.

I walk through the water, hands still in the air.

He’s got the gun on my back. The rock under my foot wobbles but steadies under the weight of my second foot.

The balance changes as the pirate steps onto it.

I step off it with my left foot, and with my right heel I push it downstream.

It knocks him off-balance, and with the force of the rushing water, he stumbles.

His gun disappears into the stream, his eyes flare, and I smile. It’s not nice to smile.

He comes straight at my core. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing. He pushes me back, but I’m braced for him, like he’s a linebacker blitzing at me in a game. I wrap him up, throw him over, and drop him under the water.

I hold him there, my frustration at this whole island playing out in front of me. I hold him down for Haley. I hold him down for Emily and the crew on the other raft. I fucking hold him down for the murdered villagers on the other side of the island.

I’m going to hell for sure. Because his squirming and gasping open mouth are bringing me a rush of fucking joy.

He pulls at my arms as bubbles leak out his mouth.

.. until they don’t anymore. I hold him there for another second until I’m sure he’s not going to be able to come back from this.

I’m definitely not coming back from this, but one thing is clear as day: he won’t shoot at another dog.

I should have just let him go, because then I hear it—the cock of a gun behind me.

“Hands in the air,” another pirate says.

I clench my eyes shut and turn around, one hand still on the drowned man, the other in the air. But it’s not just one man, one pirate—it’s three. The one who gave the command waves with his gun.

I come out on the other bank. These fuckers must really want us alive. He watched me finish off one of his men and didn’t shoot. I crawl up onto the bank. One of them kicks me in the ass, and I go sputtering to the ground, ferns in my face, but I jump up as quickly as I went down.

There’s no running, not with three of them.

“Move.”

One of them picks up his radio. They’re talking, but I don’t understand anything. It’s fast, but it almost feels like he doesn’t understand what the other guy is saying either—there’s confusion on his face.

One of the others jumps into the stream, pulls the guy out of the water, but not a second later, the one who seems to be in command has all four of us marching away from the water, away from Penny, away from Haley and the body on the bank.

And I’m hoping they don’t have anybody else.

But there’s nothing I can do. I’m outmanned, outgunned.

Easton

I’m sitting in the thicket. I have been for a while, my arms sore and stiff from not moving.

I fucking hate this. I fucking hate hiding—hiding because of my family, hiding because of who I am.

We’re here because some crazy person needed to off my family, wanted us all dead, and here I am again, hiding.

It’s fucking wrong. I don’t know why I ever let them talk me into it, but I’m not gonna go bursting out of here now.

We had a plan. I’m supposed to stick to it. I’m supposed to wait until either I don’t hear anything else or it’s dark, or until they push the compressed air blast telling me to come in. Still fucking hate it.

There’s a gunshot. It’s the first thing I’ve heard over the water in an hour—maybe ninety minutes.

I have no idea how long I’ve been here. I can’t get a good read on the time of day through the tightly packed vegetation.

I strain, listening for anything else, but there’s nothing.

I reposition myself. Maybe I should move to another spot, but no, I stay put. I stretch out my muscles.

Five minutes pass, ten, and then I hear something. Is it a boar? There’s rustling. It’s not loud enough to be a person.

Then I see it—a flash of white, low to the ground, behind a clump of ferns to the north of my thicket. A brown nose pokes in at me.

“What are you doing here, girl?” I ask.

She pushes at me. If ever there was a dog that wanted me to go, it’s this one right now.

“You want me to follow, Penny?”

She sneezes.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, okay, yeah, take me. Where do I need to go? Let’s go.”

Somehow, the dog is walking silently through the woods, and I practice all the things that Green taught me—around the thicket, around the side, near the rocks of the bluff on the southern side.

Why the hell didn’t I study this part of the island better?

I should have explored more. Damn, I hope the dog knows where she’s going, but her nose is to the ground.

We’re moving and moving. I’m going as fast as she can, staying with her, stepping carefully. My eyes scan the horizon as best I can.

This area of the jungle is so dense, but I can still hear the ocean to my right. We’re heading toward Pomelo Beach, toward the waterfall. We go and go and go. Penny darts forward, around a tree.

“Oh my, Penny, I could have shot you.” It’s Haley.

“Haley, it’s me,” I say, coming around the edge of the tree.

Haley’s holding a gun. “Easton.” She puts the gun down on the pack next to her and throws her arms around my neck. “It’s horrible. They took Calvin, but I knew I should stay here because they didn’t know I was here.”

“They took Calvin?”

“Yes, there was a pirate, and he had a gun. I didn’t want to look too much because the pirate hadn’t seen me, but I think with the two of us, we should go after him.”

I take the gun from the pack and swing the pack over my shoulder. “Good girl, Penny,” I say. “Yeah, let’s go after them. But silently. I think I know just the way.”

We walk back through my thicket, past the Bird of Paradise field, close to where the other pit was. The bamboo is all broken—someone has fallen into the pit. We look down. There’s no one.

Twenty minutes later, we’re close to camp.

“Stay here,” I say.

“I’m not staying here.”

“Okay, all right. Together. We’ll do it together. No more splitting up.”

“Exactly,” Haley nods and whispers to me. “That’s what I said all along.”

“Stay here, Penny,” I say. Penny cocks her head, then lies down.

“Good girl,” Haley praises her quietly.

I can’t help but wink at Haley when she says it, and her eyes widen. This isn’t the time for flirting, but with Haley, I can’t stop myself.

The best way to see what’s going on in camp is to go around the back, underneath the treehouse, near the ramp that Zane and Calvin installed for Penny. Haley and I move with stealth. I have the gun raised, and Haley’s behind me—at least she’s letting me go first.

It’s quiet, though—quieter than it’s ever been here.

I can hear the ocean, but the jungle is silent.

There are no birds, and the wind has stopped with the rain and storm passing.

I peek around the banyan map tree. There’s no one in camp, but the net we had hanging over the trail to the waterfall has definitely been deployed.

The rope hangs silent, still, from the tree.

I cock my head at Haley and motion for her to stay put, to run if something happens.

She nods. I move into the kitchen, crouching low, keeping myself out of view.

The table has been knocked over, and when I round it, that’s when I see there’s a body underneath the rubble of rocks. But there’s no one else here.

I go back and get Haley. “I think... I think they’re gone,” I say with uncertainty.

Haley nods. “I think you might be right. Only one way to tell,” she says.

Together, we sneak out onto the beach. Our tender is there under the pile of palm fronds, but the one we saw coming ashore is definitely gone. The pirate ship, however, is still out in the harbor. The sun’s almost set.

“Do you think they have them?” Haley asks.

“I don’t know, but we should go check out where Zane was hiding,” I say.

Haley agrees.

“Whoa,” I say. “Don’t come over here.” I put my hand up. “You don’t need to see this.” Two more dead pirates.

“I think they’re gone, but maybe they’re coming back to get their dead,” she says.

“I don’t think so . . .”

“Well, we can’t let them take the guys.”

“I agree, but we can’t do anything about it right now. When it gets dark, we’ll take the WaveRunner out, climb up one of their own ladders. We run the risk of them hearing us, but...”

Haley’s holding on to me tightly. We’ve got about an hour before the moon rises. I wonder aloud about swimming all the way out, but Haley makes a good point—it would be hard to keep the gun dry.

We use the binoculars, and while they have guards on their ship, they’re not very observant. They’re mostly dangling their feet over the edge of the deck, smoking.

“If we’re lucky—and I sure as hell hope we are—we’ll be able to get close enough that we can grab a rope, turn the WaveRunner off, and hope that we can get back to it before it floats away.”

Either way, we have the gun wrapped in plastic, shoved in a bag. It’s not like we’re going to be able to use it, firing from a WaveRunner anyway. I’m not 007. And three lessons from another Olympian with a gun don’t make you an expert.