Page 6 of Wayward (Wrecked #4)

Code Breaker

Zane

H olloway hands me off to another guard, one I haven’t seen before.

There’s a shit ton of them. Holloway, Durant, Collins, Hughes, Harris, and at least five others.

Ten or more, total. But with as many deckhands and stews as a ship this size requires, how many more can there be?

There has to be a maximum. The Rosewood’s big, but it’s still a bloody boat.

The guard takes me three doors down on the right, not back to our cabin. “Go in. Be fast, and leave the door open.”

“Fine, but I’m warning you: I haven’t had proper food in a long time, and it’s not agreeing with me.” There’s a little pang of disingenuousness, as Dante’s food is more than proper and this is back to normal for me. But I really just want to see if I can find anything out about Haley.

His forehead furrows, but he gets my drift. “Right, then fucking turn on the exhaust too.” He pulls the door shut.

The WC has another exotic, dark veneer on the walls and a mirror that goes from the ceiling to the marble-topped counter.

I flick on the vent, turn on the water, and make my way to the small porthole above the window.

A quick yank, and the wooden blinds are up.

We are underway, but I knew that already.

There’s no land to see outside. I drop the blinds and do what I need to, then wash my hands and leave the water running while I flush.

I search under the cabinet, but there’s nothing there but a stack of neatly folded towels.

And unlike so many other yachts, there are no sanitary products for women.

It’s weird. I guess there’s no women on board at all.

There aren’t even spots for normal things like cotton buds or cotton balls ― standard on all the yachts I’ve worked on. And nothing to use as a weapon.

The guard pounds on the door. “Are you done?”

I turn the water off and open the door. “I’m good, mate.”

“Not your mate,” he growls at me.

“It’s an expression.”

“Yeah, still not your mate or your friend.”

“Yeah, you’re loyal, like Harris.”

The guard scoffs but then schools his expression.

Interesting. “What’s the deal with Harris?”

“Nothing.” He scowls at me.

I shrug and turn my attention forward down the corridor, away from the conference room. The doors are all closed, and no one is walking around. “You must be happy to be heading back.”

He grunts. Like he’s upset with himself for letting something slip. He wasn’t back at camp when Dante confronted Harris about working with him on the Russian boat.

There are footsteps back toward the conference room. Our heads snap that way. Haley’s there, Easton behind her. She’s wearing different clothes than she had on this morning. Easton too. There’s a bandage over the top of his eyebrow.

“You good?” I’m moving toward them before my guard tells me to move.

But he doesn’t tell me to stop. And neither does the muscle behind them, another guard I don’t recognize.

That brings us to at least eleven. He opens the door to the room and ushers Easton and Haley in.

I don’t know which of them I’m asking, Little Bird or Easton with his bandage.

“We’re good,” Easton answers for the both of them. His hair is wet and slicked back.

Haley pauses at the door and takes my hand. She flinches when she sees the room. “This is different, quite the private conference space.” So it’s not the place she had dinner with Z last night. Crazy to think that was only last night.

“It’s private, to a point,” Z says, his voice bouncing into the room.

He’s appeared in the doorway like a king scoffing at his subjects, and I want to punch him in the throat.

Maybe more of Green and Rockwell has rubbed off on me than I thought.

“All right, class, pens down. You can pass your little drawings to the front of the room.” Z glares at Calvin, who’s sitting at the end of the table.

“Assigned seats?” Calvin pushes back and stands. “By all means, it’s all yours.”

Z and Calvin stare at each other eye to eye. Calvin’s got Z by a couple of inches, but their shoulders are the same width. They’ve both got their an asshole glare going on.

Haley clears her throat, and heads turn to her.

She sits and pulls the chair next to her out for Calvin.

Without taking his eyes off Z, Calvin sits next to her.

And I take the other side. I grab her hand under the table.

I want to feel relief, but it’s too soon.

From what Calvin told us back in the room, Z’s dad wants us dead.

So the younger Z is toying with us. Having some sort of sick, twisted fun.

“All right, how was lunch?” Z flips through the pile of papers that one of the guards collected for him. “Some of you have drawing talent, and others . . . not so much.” He tosses Dante’s notepad with the bird on the smooth table with a slap, and it slides to a stop in front of Haley.

“Oh, I think this is lovely,” Haley says, turning to Dante.

“You sound like a toddler’s mother, Hal.” Z chuckles.

“Just kind.”

“This one, this one I can get behind.” Z holds up the picture that I see in my sleep of the house I designed for Haley. The one for the beach. “A natural talent.”

“Nothing natural about me. I had to learn to draw,” I say. It took me a long time.

“I like it.” Then he flips the page. “Making plans. Of course. Hal’s troop of superheroes wouldn’t have survived without hope.

” He crumples up the page and drops it on the floor.

“Hope’s not here, I’m afraid. Not on the Rosewood.

” He places the Pink Phoenix on the table and spins it like a top.

Reflected spectrum light dances on the table.

It’s an expensive diamond. But the cost of coming after us, the cost of what they did to the Rock Candy...it doesn’t add up. There’s more to it than him or his father wanting the diamond.

“Business is business,” Z says, but it’s like he doesn’t mean it.

“What sort of business are you in, Mr. Z?” Sam glares at him.

“Family business. A very long line of a family business.” Z twists a signet ring on his finger. There’s a crest and four giant rubies in each corner.

“Nice ring,” I say as the diamond stops spinning.

“My grandfather’s. Now mine.”

“A family business,” Haley repeats.

“Yes.” There’re furrows on Z’s forehead.

“What sort of business?” Haley cocks her head to the side like she’s run into him at the market and is inquiring about his family.

“The kind with a deep history.”

“That answers nothing,” Dante says. It’s the sort of thing that most would say under their breath, but Dante just says it out loud, gunmen or not.

“Yes, rather vague, isn’t it? But I don’t have time to give you the confessions of five generations. Or maybe I do. Seeing that we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Where exactly are we going, Mr. Z?” Haley asks.

“First? To find a cat shelter before my engineer throws me overboard.” Z laughs again, but then his face turns hard and he stares at each one of us around the table.

“What do you want with us, Z?” Calvin growls.

Z glares back. And it’s the first time I realize that he doesn’t know what he wants with us.

Well, other than maybe for us to not be us.

I’ve been on ships for a while. Granted, not as long as Calvin or Sam ― or even Haley ― but I’ve learned that rich people aren’t people.

That’s wrong ― of course they’re people.

But some of them have a habit of thinking that everything’s going to just work out for them.

They make a plan, toss enough cash at the problem, and presto, the plan works.

Then when it doesn’t, some of them, or rather the second generation of money, don’t have the fortitude, the grit to make things work.

Or make things work without money. There’s something about us that’s holding Z back from carrying out his father’s orders.

Something more than the goodness in his own heart.

Though a guy that rescues a bunch of feral cats from an island has to have something in his heart.

A guy that lets us go and get our things, Penny.

That’s not the kind of guy who’s going to kill us around a table in the conference room of his ship. At least, I hope so.

A wall slams down over Z’s face. A mask. A shiver runs through me. “Stand up. Out.” This isn’t good. Far from good.

Holloway opens the door, and Z leaves. Easton stands first, following him, and we file out behind him.

There’s a pit in my stomach. I want to grab Haley and run, but where?

How? There is confusion in the corridor with us bunching up.

The guards don’t know if we’re to follow or not.

Holloway catches up with Z. They're far enough away that I can’t hear what he’s saying.

“Follow him.” Holloway points. And we’re a train after him, though Easton’s in no hurry.

I grab Haley’s hand. Sam takes her other one. Calvin’s behind us, Dante in front. Holloway and the other guard from my bathroom trip are behind him.

There are things I haven’t talked about.

I’ve uncoded a lot more of Rocky’s book than I told anyone.

I’m not quite fluent yet. But close. One thing missing from my stuff when I packed it up was Rocky’s book.

I’m guessing they had already taken it. But they didn’t have the cipher.

Still don’t. That’s back in the ceiling of the treehouse.

A month or so ago, I took it out of the book and hid it in the rafters of the treehouse.

In one of the few moments that the guard covering me wasn’t looking, I ran my hand over it.

It’s still there. I took it out of the book because .

. . what I know . . . I didn’t want Easton to know.

There was no point. Not while we were on the island.

I found some shit out about my dad after he died ― nothing like this, but stuff I’d rather not have known.

I still love my dad. He was a good man. When you love someone as much as we both love our dads?

Easton didn’t need this hanging over him on the island.

Now, though? Fucking wish I could tell him.

We’re marched through the grand salon, past a fire in the fireplace, and not a gas fireplace but a wood one ― craziness ― and out onto the sundeck. There’s a table and recliners and stairs down to the swim platform.

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.”