Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(68)

I wanted to protest, but he was right. After months of reliving Ralph Arguello’s death, wishing I could’ve thrown myself in front of the gun that took my best friend’s life—now another man had died the same way, right in front of me. And I hadn’t been able to stop it.

Garrett nodded, like he was reading my thoughts. “Well, then, don’t stop me now, little bro. You just keep on being a spectator.”

He raised the gun.

“Garrett, no.” Lane stepped between him and Benjamin Lindy. She knelt down in front of Garrett so they were eye to eye.

“Lane, get out of the way.”

“I won’t.” She sounded more determined than I’d ever heard her. “You can’t kill him. You’re not like that.”

“He shot my friend.”

Lane cupped her hands on his knees. “Garrett, you promised to help me. Now let me help you. We’re going to go down to that boat together. No one else is going to die.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Yes, you do, love.” She turned her palms up. “Give me the gun.”

Garrett’s face was gray with pain. He arched his back as if he were trying desperately to stand—to use the legs he’d lost twenty years ago. Then he slumped back in his chair, defeated. He dropped the gun into Lane’s hands.

The four of us were almost to the beach when the hotel disintegrated.

40

Calavera watched the smoke boil into the sky. Windows melted. The southwest gable collapsed with a sound like distant thunder.

He could not enjoy the explosion. Nothing had gone right. Some had died, perhaps. He wasn’t sure. But too many had gotten free.

Your own fault, he chided himself. You set the explosion too late in the morning. Your will was weak.

The gun felt heavy in his pocket. The solution would not be so clean now, but he would have to act soon.

Across the island, someone was shouting. Another wall of the house collapsed in on itself. A tongue of flame curled up the side of the roof.

Soon, the only place that had ever offered him sanctuary would be a pile of rubble and ash. Maybe that’s really what he’d been after with the bombs—destroying this place. He had no heart for killing anymore. But this place had let him down. He’d let himself believe he could change his life here, find peace at last. And the island had deceived him.

Whether he wanted to kill or not, he had to protect his last secret. He had no choice.

And so he put his hand in his pocket, felt the rough cross-hatching of the gun handle, and waited.

41

I watched the remaining palmetto trees burn. Stripped to the trunks by the storm, they leaned sideways from the wreckage of the hotel and smoldered like birthday candles on a stomped cake.

The hotel had gone up in a second blast of glory, just as Alex predicted. Boards and plaster and ashes were sprayed across the dunes and against the lighthouse. The heat had cracked the tower’s side. The glass top had melted and collapsed, and as we watched, the structure’s cracks widened.

The poor captain of the Coast Guard boat wasn’t quite sure what to do with us. He was a reservist, a former merchant marine, probably—the kind of guy who knew boats and storms and preferred both to humans. From the trapped look he gave us, I thought he probably would just as soon leave us stranded and sail away. He had a crew of two, both of whom looked pale and shaken from a night riding out the storm. They had sidearms, but I doubt they’d ever used them. The captain told one of the men to radio in our situation.

“Radio who, sir?” the guy wanted to know.

The captain frowned impatiently. “Everyone, I guess.”

Maia and I sat on the beach watching the clouds break and the ruins burn. It seemed insulting that the sun should break through the clouds so brilliantly after the weekend we’d had. Gulls were starting to reappear. Sand crabs dug their way out of the surf, bubbling little geysers to clear their tunnels. The sea wind blew the smoke and ashes toward the mainland and fanned the flames.

The heat was finally too much for the lighthouse. The cracks deepened and the tower crumbled, imploding on itself in a pile of charred white blocks and burning boards.

“Nothing left,” Maia said.

The way she said it, I got the feeling she was talking about more than the buildings.

I put my hand on her belly. Normally, this irritated her—another sign of my constant worry. But this time I think she realized that I was doing it for a different reason. I needed reassurance—not that the baby was all right, but that I was.

She put her hands over mine. “I felt him kick a minute ago.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You were busy almost getting killed.”

“That’s no excuse. I’m always busy almost getting killed.”

She shrugged, conceding the point.

One of the Coast Guard guys came up and offered us granola bars and water, but neither of us was hungry.

“An EMT is en route, ma’am.” He looked nervously at Maia’s belly. I figured it would probably make his day if he had to assist in childbirth. We thanked him, and as soon as he was sure that Maia was not going to start labor immediately, he nodded and moved off with visible relief.

“The police won’t have much of a crime scene,” I said.

Maia nodded. “What will you tell them about Lindy?”