Page 15 of Wayward

Z stops on the swim deck. “Head on down there, Rockwell.” Z points at Easton.

My heart squeezes against my chest.

Holloway stands next to Easton. “Down you go.”

“The rest of you too,” Z says.

Easton turns back to Haley and then to Z. Easton’s eye twitches. “No one cares about the rest of them. There’s no reason to hurt them. You don’t need to?”

Z cuts Easton off. “So, they just show up in the middle of what? Singapore or Tokyo? Found, and no one needs to know anything? No loose ends. You know how it has to be, right, Chef?”

Dante glares. “There’s more than one way to keep a person quiet. You always have options.”

“Right. If it was only that simple. I should pay you off to keep you quiet? Put you back on the island for someone else to find?”

“You could have left us there. We could have died on our own. Less guilt for you. Turn the boat around, and no one will be the wiser,” Sam says.

“Oh, there’s always plenty who will be the wiser.” Z motions to the other guard.

“Move on down. The whole lot of you.” There’s nothing behind the guard’s eyes.

“You don’t need to do this.” Haley’s on the verge of tears. Rightly so. There were plenty of times I thought one or all of us might die in the last year. On the raft, Easton being shot, me almost drowning. The bloody damn boar. The pirates . . . so many times, but I sure as hell didn’t think it would be from being assassinated on a swim platform.

“You don’t know what’s needed?”

“Your father.” Calvin’s shoulders are back, his head square. He’s standing in front of Haley.

Z nods. “Perhaps you do understand.”

The problem is, I understand better than all of them. Maybe even better than Mr. Z, seeing as how he hadn’t known that the Rock Candy had been found but his father clearly had. “You have Rocky’s diary,” I blurt. “The book with the numbers?not the phone numbers, but the other one.”

“Yes, it’s gibberish.

“No, it’s a code.” Gibberish? “I can read it. I can read it in exchange for letting us go.” I turn to Easton. “All of us.”

Chapter 7

When in Rome

Haley

I’m not going to fall apart. I want to. I so very want to break apart and fall down on the deck crying in a sobbing mess. But if they’re going to shoot me, I don’t want to make it easy. I want them to have to look me in the face. Thayer told me he had no problem killing a man. But not a woman. That’s why he doesn’t have any on his crew. That, and his father sounds like a real womanizing asshole. If he won’t shoot me, I might be able to save the guys.

Thayer stares at Zane. Mist from the engines sprays over our backs. It’s colder here than on the beach. But I’d give anything to go back. For it to be New Year’s Day again. To watch the sun rise over our beautiful beach. To eat nothing but fish and pomelos for another year. I don’t want to die. But I don’t want my guys to die, either.

“You can read it?” Thayer narrows his eyes at Zane.

“Yeah. It took me fucking forever, but I’ve recently had a lot of time on my hands.” Zane cracks a smile. It’s not his real smile but one I’m sure he uses with hard-to-handle guests. Thayer’snot a hard-to-handle guest. He’s something all on its own. One minute I think he’s a reasonable guy, and the next, I’m standing on a swim platform waiting to have a bullet sunk into my head.

Thayer laughs. And I have a moment of hope. “Why should I care?” he growls.

“Because it says things. About Rocky, his partner, and someone else. I had problems figuring it out?I even asked Easton if he knew of an Ed. But Rocky didn’t mean Ed, did he? He meant Zed, as in Z. There’s more, though. About a Swiss bank account. He was stealing money from the man he was helping launder the money. But there’s more. And it took me months to figure out the code.”

Thayer flinches. He’s so polished it’s hard to tell if he knows he flinched. But there was definitely a moment when something Zane said struck a chord with him. Thayer shakes it off quickly and nods. “Without a computer, it took you what? Five months? I’ll be able to do it in no time.”

“You’re a cryptographic code breaker?” Zane’s got his arms crossed over his chest, his head cocked sideways like this is a normal afternoon chat.

“You’re a bosun.” There’s a bit of disbelief in Thayer’s tone.