Fear (Gone #5)(25)

Astrid felt weariness rise up and almost close her eyes where she sat. A nap. Just a brief one. She made her way to Sam’s bunk and flopped down.

The bed smelled of salt and Sam. The two smells had always been connected in her mind.

She wondered who he had found to be with. Surely someone by now. Well, good. Good. Sam needed someone to take care of him, and she hoped he’d found that.

She felt around, looking for a pillow. She hadn’t had a pillow in a long, long time, and now the idea of one seemed incredibly luxurious.

Instead of a pillow her hand touched sheer, silky fabric. She pulled it to her and ran the fabric against her cheek. She knew it. It was her old nightgown, the filmy white thing she used to wear back in the days when she didn’t need to sleep with her clothes on and a shotgun nestled to her breast.

Her old nightgown. Sam kept it with him, in his bed.





TEN

34 HOURS, 31 MINUTES

“I’M GOING TO risk some light,” Sam said.

“I think some light would be a great idea,” Dekka said.

Sam raised his hands, and a ball of light, like a pale greenish sun, began to form in midair. It created more shadows than illumination. So he leaned to his right as far as he could without moving his feet and hung a second light in midair. The two lights banished some of the shadows.

“Okay, everyone kneel down real slowly and check all around your feet,” Sam instructed.

“Aaahh!” Jack yelled.

“Don’t move!”

“I’m not moving, I’m not moving, my foot is underneath a wire, I’m not moving, Oh, God, I’m going to die!”

Sam formed a third light down by Jack’s feet. Now he could easily see the taut wire crossing the toe of Jack’s boot.

“Dekka, are you clear?” Sam asked.

“I think so. Anyway, I can see where the wire runs now.”

“Okay, then move back to a safe distance.”

“Any idea what a safe distance would be?”

“Far,” Sam said. “Okay, Jack, just stand still. I’m going to scoop the sand out from under your foot. That’ll take the pressure off the wire.”

Sam used his two index fingers to begin very, very delicately scooping sand. Then he used two fingers from each hand.

Jack’s shoe dropped half an inch. Then a bit more.

“Okay, now just move your foot back.”

“You sure?”

“I’m right here next to you, aren’t I?” Sam snapped.

Jack moved his foot. Nothing blew up.

“Now we all just back away.”

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” It was Brianna atop the bluff. “What’s with all the light? I thought we were being all—”

“Stay right there!” Dekka yelled.

“Okay, jeez, you don’t have to yell.”

Sam explained what was going on. “We can’t leave this thing booby-trapped. Some innocent person could stumble across this place. We either have to disarm it or blow it up.”

“Since I’m the tech guy, and disarming a booby trap is a sort of tech problem,” Jack said, “I vote we blow it up from a safe distance.”

“Oh, come on, Jack, don’t be a wimp,” Dekka teased.

“Breeze,” Sam called up to her. “Find us a rope or a long string.”

Brianna blurred out of view.

“Okay, let’s all go down to the water,” Sam said.

They did not have to wait long. In five minutes Brianna was vibrating to a stop next to them.

“I don’t guess you can outrun an explosion, right?” Sam asked doubtfully.

Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.”

“Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said.

“In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.”

He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation.

Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.”

She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?”

“She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—”

BOOOOM!

The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand.

Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth.

In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.”

He looked toward the south. From where he was standing he couldn’t exactly see Perdido Beach. There were no lights except for his eternal Sammy suns, and they would be behind curtains at night.

Down there in town his brother, Caine, was … doing what exactly? That was the question. Had this been Caine’s idea, this booby trap? Had he heard or seen the explosion and was he now rejoicing, believing Sam had been killed?