“That’s why I’m here,” Lara said. She couldn’t decide if she was annoyed or genuinely touched by the girl’s earnestness.
“Thank you.”
“I’m not promising anything.”
“I know,” the younger woman said before heading back down the stairs.
Lara turned back to Riley and caught him looking her over.
He recovered quickly and said, “Come on; let’s go inside. I should have worn my thermal socks.”
“I can’t stay long.”
“One hour?”
She nodded. “One hour.”
“That’s more than enough time.”
He turned around and started off and she followed, leaving just enough space between them that she could still see every inch of him and the spaces around them at the same time. She had done it unconsciously, and recognizing it, thought, Is this what it’s like to be you all the time, Will? Always on 24/7?
“I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Lara. I’m surprised you came,” Riley was saying.
So you agree this is a stupid idea, too?
“But I’m glad you did,” he continued. “I know it took a lot of guts after everything that happened. But I wouldn’t have expected anything else from the Lara.”
He had glanced over his shoulder when he said that last part, and she gave him a wry look back.
“When did you figure it out?” she asked.
“That you’re the same Lara who sent out those messages over the radio? Not right away. I had to listen to our conversation a few times before it clicked.”
“You recorded our conversation?”
“The rig has a pretty impressive comm system. I had our talk recorded just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. A lot’s riding on this—six lives, for one—and I didn’t want to fuck it up the way I did last night.”
She smiled to herself because she knew he couldn’t see. “It takes a big man to admit when he fucks something up.”
“Thank you for not harming Hart and the others.”
“How can you be so sure that I didn’t?”
“You said you hadn’t.”
“I might have been lying.”
“Are you?”
She didn’t answer him.
He looked over his shoulder again. “Are you?”
“No,” she said finally.
“So my thank you stands.”
“People have gotten killed running around out here believing everything a stranger tells them.”
“But you’re not just any stranger, Lara. You’re Lara.”
She wasn’t entirely sure how to take that. The radio messages were therapy as much as they were an attempt to reach out to other survivors. She had only added her name to it with the second broadcast because, deep down, she still expected Will to be listening. It was stupid and desperate, but at the time she didn’t have anything to lose.
Riley led her through the platform and around the large drilling devices that occupied a good portion of the rig. They stepped over pipes of various shapes and sizes, a hard hat that someone had left behind, and passed a bright orange vessel hanging off the side. She guessed it was some kind of emergency raft. They entered a maze of pumps and tanks circling the derrick like army ants, each with their own command unit. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and almost stumbled into a group of heavy machinery but managed to swerve around them at the last second.
The remnants of spilled liquids—chemicals, additives, and fuel used to keep this place churning night and day back when it was still in operation—filled her nostrils. She could only imagine how loud it would be up here when everything was up and running. Right now she might as well be zigzagging through a museum, a showcase of how mankind once bled the earth for resources.
Riley didn’t seem to have the same kind of trouble, but then, he had probably gone through this maze so many times he didn’t even have to think about where he was going.
“How do you get around this place?” she asked.
“You get used to it,” he said. “We were running into everything the first few weeks. A lot of accidents, bumps, and bruises. But we’ve cleared up everything that isn’t nailed down and even took apart some of those that were. You should have seen it when we first got here. About fifty percent of all this open space didn’t exist.”
They passed a helicopter landing port to their right resting on its own raised platform. It was empty at the moment, but she could smell recently spilled fuel and was going to ask Riley where the aircraft was when there was a clink. She looked down just in time to catch a shiny lug nut skidding across the floor before disappearing underneath a machine painted blue and about the size of a car.
They had been walking for a while and didn’t look to be any closer to reaching their destination, and she was growing frustrated. That, and her legs were starting to tire, reminding her of just how good she had it back on the Trident
God, how did I get so out of shape?
“You brought me here to talk,” she said. “So let’s talk.”
“We’re almost there…”
“No, Riley.”
She stopped in the middle of two machines with dials and conduits sticking out of them to both sides of her. One was red and the other was white, and she couldn’t even begin to guess what either one did.
Riley stopped five feet in front of her and turned around. “This is the kind of discussion that we should take inside, Lara. Besides, it’s cold out here.”
“I’ve never felt more clearheaded.”
“It’s warmer inside.”
“It’s warm enough out here,” she said, fighting back a grimace as a particularly cold wind whipped through the valley of machinery around them. “Tell me what I’m doing here, Riley. Tell me now.”
Riley nodded, his blue eyes focusing on her as if he was afraid of missing every reaction on her face in the next few minutes. “I need your boat, Lara.”
“I have six of your men on my boat right now that already told me that. So what else do you want from me, Riley?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Just the boat.”
“Why?”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
His eyes had left her face and gone to her hip because her right hand had slid closer to her holstered sidearm. A year ago the notion that she would reach first for her gun when threatened—or even when she just felt threatened—would have terrified her. Now, she did it without even thinking.
“Don’t,” Riley said again.
“Don’t what?”
“Please don’t draw your gun.”
She didn’t know why, but Riley asking her not to do it made her want to do it. Again, without her realizing it, her fingers brushed against the grip of her sidearm.
“Lara,” Riley said, his eyes returning to hers, “I have a man on the crane, and he’s watching us right now.”
The crane…
“He can’t hear what we’re saying, but he can see everything,” Riley continued. “If you draw your weapon, he’ll shoot.”
It’s a trick! her mind screamed, but she had to exert every ounce of willpower to keep from turning around and zeroing in on the crane.
“There is no man on the crane,” she said. “I looked.”
“His name is Peters,” Riley said. “Trust me, he’s up there. I had to keep him up there, just in case things went sideways. He’s my insurance. My only insurance. Everyone else is staying out of the way on purpose.” He held his hands steady at his sides, the palms facing her as if he wanted her to see he had nothing in them. “I’m not armed, Lara. I can’t stop you if you decide to shoot me right now. But Peters will respond if you do that, and he never misses. Never.”
He’s lying. There is no man on the crane. You looked, remember?
But how easy would it have been to hide someone up there? Very easily, because there were so many metal parts and angles it would be impossible to see every single section o
f the crane. All a sniper would need was to find a perfect spot, and depending on how long Riley and his people had been here, they could easily have figured that part out a long time ago.
Then again, even if there were someone up there, the distance was too great and the man would be shooting from a high angle. Not to mention all the machinery around her, including the two flanking her right now. There were a lot of reasons why a shooter wouldn’t be able to make the shot, even if he “never misses.” The odds were all in her favor.
Right?
Maybe…
Lara exhaled a slow breath, but she didn’t take her hand away from her hip, though there was now an extra inch of space between her fingers and the Glock. She sneaked a quick look to her left, then her right in case Riley’s men were trying to outflank her. She tried to pick up sounds of footsteps behind her, but there was just her slightly racing heartbeat pounding in her ear.
“So talk,” she said finally.
“We should do this inside,” Riley said.
“No. Out here. Tell me why you need my boat and why in God’s name you think I’m going to give it to you.”
He nodded reluctantly. “I have people on the Ocean Star. Civilians.”
“Faith told me you were all civilians.”
“Some people are more civilian than others.”
“Is that supposed to make sense to me?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. This place, this platform, it was an FOB until just a few days ago.”
“FO what?”
“FOB. Forward Operating Base. It was used to launch an attack on the mainland very recently. You probably don’t know anything about it since you’ve been out here the entire time.”
Is he talking about…Mercer?
Something must have registered on her face, because Riley tilted his head slightly to one side. “Or do you?”
“No,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe.”
“Fair enough.”
“Get to the point.”
“I’m trying to.”
“Try harder.”
He sighed, took a breath, then continued. “I have people I need to transport off the Ocean Star and to safety.” He looked out toward the ocean in the direction where the Trident would have been if not for the wall of metal and tubes in his way. “Your boat showing up out of the blue was a godsend.”
“You have boats here. A lot of them.”
“I don’t have enough, and the ones I do have aren’t nearly big enough. If there were still bigger vessels at the ports, I might have risked launching a raid on them, but they’re gone. The collaborators sank them a long time ago.”
“So you risked boarding the Trident with six armed men.”
“I had no choice. It was the best and fastest option. I need your boat, Lara.”
She shook her head. “You can’t have it.”
“You don’t understand—”
“No, I understand perfectly. You want something I have, and I’m not willing to give it to you. What I do have are six of your men. And they’re the only things you’re going to get out of this.”
“And I want them back,” Riley said. “All six of them. They only did what I asked them to. Hart had doubts, but…” He shook his head.
“You should have listened to him.”
“I had no choice.”
“You already said that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You’re still not getting my boat.”
He sighed. “Can I show you something?”
“What can you show me that will make me change my mind?”
“The Lara from the radio would change her mind.”
Lara walked toward him—saw his eyes go wide with surprise—and stopped only when she was less than a foot from bumping into his chest. Even though he was taller than her and she had to tilt her head to look him in the eyes, she could feel him wanting to take a step back, but somehow managing to hold his ground.
“Lara,” he began, almost stuttering out her name.
She cut him off: “You don’t know me. If you have any doubts that I’ve already given orders to shoot your men and throw them overboard and abandon this place when I don’t return within the hour, you should wipe it out of your mind right now. You may have heard something I broadcasted on the radio, but you don’t know me, or my crew. You don’t know what we’ve been through, or what we’ve done, or what we’ve lost. So when I tell you that you don’t know a damn thing about me, I want you to take it to heart, Riley, because you don’t have a clue what I’m capable of.”
“I believe you,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and glanced down at her watch. “You have thirty minutes left. I suggest you use them wisely.”
13
Gaby
The ongoing gun battle between Mercer’s men and the collaborators took on a strange ebb and flow—a hellacious five or so minutes of back-and-forth followed by an hour (sometimes two) of long silence where nothing happened.
Danny had gone uncharacteristically silent since their conversation following his return to the room, seemingly content to listen in on the barely-audible chatter coming from the lobby—not that they could really hear anything with the closed door and the sudden spurts of violence beyond the walls.
After he left her, Mason had yet to return. She wondered if he was running around out there with the rest of Danzinger’s people, trying to put an end to Mercer’s fighters. It was an odd thing to think about, mostly because she had no idea if she cared who won or lost or if she was hoping they might end up killing each other, which would leave just her, Danny, and Nate.
Best-case scenario. Which probably means it won’t happen in a million years.
Nate had woken up a couple of times, but the longest he had stayed awake was only a few minutes. That was just enough time for him to see her and smile before drifting off again. She checked his bandages every thirty minutes to make sure he wasn’t bleeding again and always had at least one ear open listening for any irregularities in his breathing.
“They gave him sedatives,” Danny told her the first time Nate opened his eyes. “I guess they don’t want him waking up between now and tonight. Keep him out of their hair.”
“Mason said he saved him,” she said.
“Did he?” And when she nodded, “You believe him?”
“I don’t know.” She told him about Mason’s claims. “It sounded like Nate.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“Does this mean you’re going to go easier on him from now on?”
Danny chuckled. “I didn’t say that.”
She smiled, and spent the next hour or so watching Nate sleep. After everything he had been through, he deserved as much rest as he could get. She wanted nothing more than to pack him into a car and drive to the coast where Lara and the Trident would be waiting for them. They could have done that days ago if Mercer’s people hadn’t begun their crusade against the collaborators.
Mercer.
Was it possible he was the “he” that the blue-eyed ghouls were hunting? No, because it didn’t make any sense. She, Nate, and Danny had nothing to do with Mercer, and holding them hostage wasn’t going to lure the man here. He couldn’t care less if they lived or died, and she would be surprised if he even still remembered them after Larkin. For all he knew, they were already dead and buried underneath what was left of the airfield.
“Whatcha thinking there?” Danny said, his voice breaking through her thoughts.
“What?” she said, looking over at him.
“You look like me when I’m being all thoughtful and whatnot. What’s up?”
“You tell me.”
“Come again?”
“You’re not telling me everything.” She let the rest go unsaid but didn’t take her eyes away from him.
Danny shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
“When is it not?”
; “Well, this is even more complicated than usual.”
“What is it, Danny? What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”
“That’s the problem, kid; I don’t know anything. Not for sure, anyway. At least, nothing that would hold up in court.”
“We’re not in court. It’s just you and me and Nate in here.”
“To be fair, Nate’s barely here…”
“You know what I mean. So just tell me already.”
“I think…” he started, but didn’t finish.
She could see that he wanted to say it—this thing that had been spinning around inside his head for the last few days—but for whatever reason, he didn’t go through with it. Maybe he couldn’t, or he didn’t want to.
“Danny,” she said.
He shook his head. “It’s too crazy.”
“What’s too crazy?” She could feel her patience with him slipping, even if he didn’t seem to notice it. “Just tell—”
He held his hand up to shush her just before shouting erupted from outside the door. It came first from inside the hallway next to them, then all the way from the lobby. Pounding footsteps immediately followed, then someone screaming in pain. The cracks of gunfire from outside, sounding the closest they had been since the day began.
Gaby stood up and walked to the door, pressing her ear against it. Danny did the same with the wall across from her. She glanced over at him, wondering if he was hearing the same thing, when a loud boom! cut through the noise and the door vibrated, along with the walls and floor and ceiling around them.
She took an involuntary step back, but Danny didn’t move.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Sounded like an explosion,” Danny said.
Gunfire exploded, this time clearly coming from the lobby just beyond the back hallway, the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire drowning out every other sound, including more screams and shouting.
“That’s not good,” Danny said.
“They’re inside,” she said.
“Or coming in…”
Then, just as fast as it had begun, it stopped; there was just the silence again.
Gaby hurried back to the door and pressed against it and listened, but there wasn’t anything loud enough happening out there for her to hear through the slab of wood. She looked down at her bound hands and wondered how far she and Danny could get in their current condition. Of course, it was all a moot point because there was Nate, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes through the explosion and gunfire.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 53
