At the shoreline, a solitary giant emerged from the waves. An even larger bull raised its head from the center of one of the groups. It bellowed a challenge at the newcomer.
“Harems,” Jordan said. “That’s what they’re fighting over. It’s about females, not territory.”
“I’m glad they don’t come up here much,” Camilla said. “It looks like they mostly stay on the beaches.”
The steep bluffs continued along the back of the seahorse’s half-coiled tail, around the south end of the island. Halfway down the tail, huge fans of filthy water ran from the many doors of both houses and spread across the rocky ground. Both teams were making great progress toward getting their houses habitable. Hanging out of an upper window at the back of each house, thick intake hoses trailed a short distance across the open ground before dropping over the edge of the bluff to suck up seawater from the ocean fifteen feet below.
Lauren hung out of an upper window of the Victorian, gripping the upper sill with one hand. She had the nozzle braced under her other arm, blasting decades of filth and old nests away from the windowsills, chimneys, and roofline. It looked dangerous, but she seemed very much in control, navigating the window ledges with confident ease.
In the foreground, Juan and JT were rebuilding the seal barricade.
“JT’s even stronger than he looks,” Camilla said. But she was actually watching Juan. He held the end of a heavy log while JT hefted it into place and then leaned against it, swinging a hammer to nail it against the uprights.
“JT’s smart,” Jordan said. “But he hides it.”
“I guess this is the part where we talk about the other contestants,” Camilla said.
Jordan laughed. “What’s there to say, really?”
“Juan… I’m so curious. On the ship, what happened between the two of you?”
“Don’t ask.” Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “Sometimes people aren’t who you think they are.” She looked back toward the houses. “As far as I’m concerned, Juan is right where he belongs: on a team full of losers. And the hell away from us.”
Camilla followed her gaze. Juan’s black clothes made him stand out against the island’s chalky gray-brown soil. Maybe Jordan was overreacting. Maybe she had misunderstood whatever Juan had said. Camilla found it hard to believe anything bad about someone she had seen save a child’s life. Most men she knew would be telling that story over and over again—maybe playing it up with fake modesty, but still milking it for all it was worth. But Juan had simply shrugged, given her the okay sign, and ridden away. She needed to talk to him, but she felt torn by her loyalty to Jordan, who would be disappointed in her if she did.
She was here to win, though. Her kids were counting on her. And the last thing she could afford was to drive a wedge between herself and the team captain she had selected. Reluctantly she shifted her gaze.
In the distance, Veronica and Mason came around the corner of the plainer of the two houses—the Greek Revival, now the blue team’s quarters. Mason held a roll of clear plastic tarp under one arm. He gestured with his other hand, as if he was explaining something. Even at this distance, Veronica’s impatient stride made it clear she had no interest in what he was saying. She held something shiny—a staple gun—which she used to staple the clear plastic that Mason held across the empty window frames.
“Why does Veronica dislike me so much?” Camilla asked Jordan. “To be honest, I’m not really used to getting that from people.”
“I don’t think she knows, herself.” Jordan grinned. “But I do. She’s intimidated by you.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“You really can’t see it, can you?” Jordan put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “That’s why I like you so much, sister. But if Julian asked me to pick the one person here that I thought could give me a real run for the money, I’d have to say it’s you.”
She hugged Jordan back, and the two women stood there for a moment, looking toward the mainland.
Camilla’s vision blurred a little. Jordan always called her “sister.” She had never had a real sister, but if she had, this was exactly who she would have wanted her to be.
Jordan let go of her and started back toward the houses with brisk, wobbling steps. “Let’s go finish helping our team before we get accused of social loafing.”
“I’ll be right there.” Camilla needed a minute to herself first. Then, nestling the bundle of water bottles under her arm, she turned to follow—and noticed the bird.
It lurched across the open ground, a large gray auklet, its entire breast soaked in crimson. The bird stumbled forward in hopping steps, moving slowly but with clear purpose. A terrible injury gouged its upper chest; bright blood soaked its downy gray-white feathers and coated its feet.
Camilla exhaled sharply. What could she do? She stared after Jordan, who was already a hundred yards away, too far to help.
She stepped closer and squatted next to the hurt bird. The wound looked like a dog bite—it must have gotten too close to a seal. She reached for it. Then she stopped.
There was nothing she could do for it.
The auklet ignored her and staggered steadily along, leaving a trail of blood. It was on its way somewhere—back to a nest, to its chicks, maybe. Camilla’s throat locked up and she had to look away.
The bird didn’t understand what was happening to it, even now.
It didn’t realize it was going to die.
N
atalie stood at the edge of the bluff, her back to the two houses, and watched the surging crowds of elephant seals and sea lions on the beach twenty feet below her. Wooden steps angled down the bluff, ending in a rickety span of elevated walkway six feet above the sand. From the bottom of the steps, the narrow walkway projected straight out from the bluff, supported by old creosoted log piers, to split in a Y after fifty feet. One leg of the Y continued past the surf line, extending another thirty feet over the water.
The rickety walkway had no handrails. It didn’t look safe at all. Boards were missing, leaving gaps you could drop a foot through, breaking your ankle.
The bigger elephant seals had to duck to pass beneath it.
Natalie’s skin crawled—a nasty, unpleasant sensation that told her someone was watching her from nearby.
Too
close.
Careful not to move her body, she slowly turned her head to scan the open ground to her right.
Travis leaned against the back of the chicken coop, ten feet away, hidden from the houses by its weathered plywood wall.
Surprise made her clamp her thighs together, but she kept still. How had he gotten so close without her noticing?
“Natalie,” he said. “Come over here for a minute.”
She stayed put and watched his eyes, seeing what he was.
Knowing
it.
“I just want to ask you something,” he said.
Natalie turned and walked back toward the houses, keeping the chicken coop—and Travis—in her peripheral vision the entire way.
A
blurry orange sunset shone through the plastic tarp covering the windows. The room felt damp and smelled like seawater. Camilla sat on the floor with her back against the wall, eyes shut, listening to the muted conversations around her, and the crinkle of plastic water bottles. She knew she should go back to her own building and change out of her filthy clothes, but she was tired. Jordan had left a couple of minutes ago to change shoes—the straps on her designer high heels had finally broken, and she couldn’t walk in them anymore.
Camilla and Jordan’s gift of water had helped ease the tension between the teams, but the water was pretty much gone now. Camilla knew that Julian couldn’t afford to let them get too dehydrated, but she would still suggest rationing the next batch more carefully.
Travis had found everyone’s luggage, stashed inside the chicken coop. Camilla’s bag was now in her own room—next door in the Greek Revival house. She had dragged it upstairs before coming back across the foyer to rejoin the others in the Victorian’s vast central room—red territory, but a gathering place for both teams as they waited for Julian to reappear on the monitor. The red and blue teams weren’t mingling much—not surprising, really, after the way the first challenge had gone. But Camilla’s blue team had done well. She was proud of them.
Her heart still ached for the wounded bird she had seen. It was probably dead by now. Just a part of nature. She wouldn’t think about it anymore; she’d think about something else. The cameras, for instance—where were they hidden? She scanned the walls and ceiling. Something tiny darkened a corner high above, where two walls met the ceiling. Squinting up at it, she couldn’t make out any details, but she was sure there was a tiny lens behind it.
Across the room, Juan sat slumped against the wall next to his teammates, forearms on his raised knees. His gaze, too, slowly roamed the corners of the ceiling. Then his eyes dropped to meet hers, and he nodded in confirmation. Moving only a finger, he indicated another spot—a knothole on the wall next to the monitor screen. Another camera.
Camilla glanced toward the archway of the foyer between the houses, but Jordan wasn’t back yet, so she tilted her head to indicate the monitor itself and mouthed a silent question to Juan. “Power?”
His finger moved a couple of inches to indicate the floor alongside the fireplace, beneath the monitor, then pointed downward.
Look beneath,
his gesture said.
Camilla bounced up and walked toward the monitor. Squatting, she stared beneath the inch-wide gap between the floorboards, into darkness. Although she didn’t want to waste her phone’s limited battery life, she turned it on briefly to aim the brightness through the crack where floor met the wall. A quarter-inch cable descended below the floorboards, dropping four feet to disappear inside a row of shoe-box shapes wrapped in clear plastic.
Of course. She switched off her phone and grinned at Juan. “Car batteries—”
“Guys, this is so weird…” Jordan burst through the archway, and stopped, her gaze flicking from Camilla to Juan, then back. Her puzzled expression vanished.
Camilla stood up, not liking the way Jordan’s eyes had changed. “
What’s
weird?”
“My other shoes are missing,” Jordan announced to the room, her face showing cheerful surprise again. She was barefoot. “I brought six pairs of shoes with me, but now they aren’t in my bag.”
Lauren sneered. “You brought
six
pairs of shoes?”
Camilla tried to remember whether she had packed an extra pair Jordan that could borrow. She didn’t think so. “Veronica,” she said, “do you have something she can wear?”
“No, sorry.” Veronica pushed herself upright and glared at her. “You were so sure you knew why Julian wanted to search our bags.”
Feeling a growing disquiet, Camilla raised her voice. “Everyone, go check your bags. Maybe they accidentally stuck her shoes in someone else’s luggage.”
The room emptied rapidly, and Camilla turned to meet Veronica’s glare. “So I was wrong about that,” she said. “Now I’m wondering what else I was wrong about.”
JT
pulled his tote bag from beneath his cot and dropped it on the mattress pad. With a glance at the doorway to make sure it was still clear, he unzipped the tote and reached inside. He relaxed when his fingers closed on the hard metal edges they were looking for.
He was actually surprised to find it. Julian’s crew must have been rushing when they searched the bags, and missed it somehow.
JT had been a model Boy Scout growing up, and the Scouts had taught him to be prepared, just as the motto said. His years as a Force Recon Marine had only broadened his thinking about the types of situations he needed to be prepared for.
There was probably a camera here in his room, too, watching him right now. He pulled his hand out and rezipped the bag, then wadded it under his cot.
He lay down and crossed his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, thinking. For now the competition was pretty tame—a joke, really. But he could already see that Julian and his crew, with their limited civilian mind-set, didn’t understand what they had set in motion here. Things were going to get dicey soon, the way they always did in situations like this.
When they did, he’d be ready.
I
n the room next door to JT’s, Lauren had spread the contents of her backpack across her mattress pad. Clothing, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, and underwear were separated into organized piles, each pile aligned with the others, just the way she liked it. Everything she had packed was here.
But there was something else, too.
Something she didn’t remember packing.
A lone climbing carabiner—a large aluminum D-ring— sat on the mattress. She had set it apart, a good distance from her clothing and toiletries, as if it might contaminate them somehow.
She stood staring down at it, troubled. It was a brand she hadn’t used for many years. She must have missed it when she cleared out her backpack to get ready for this trip.
She picked it up and rubbed the side of it, feeling the sandpapery roughness where it had scraped against rock. How long had it been there, hidden in her backpack, tucked away in a fold somewhere? She felt her chest tighten. She didn’t think the pack was that old.
The carabiner nagged at her subconscious, glinting silver in the room’s dimness…
Like ice crystals on a granite wall just out of reach. Blood streaking the vertical rock.
Muted sobs from below. Weak voices calling her name.
Pain. A vise crushing her head.
Blood dripping in her eyes.
Upside down.
So cold.
The carabiner’s shiny metal gleamed in the fading light.
• • •
How long had she just been standing here, staring at it?
Lauren looked up, surprised to find herself in near darkness.
V
eronica sat on her cot with her back against the wall, knees raised in front of her, holding a thin stack of typewritten pages. Her Louis Vuitton travel bag lay open on the mattress, by her feet. She had pushed the bed against the same wall as the empty doorframe, so it couldn’t be seen from the hall outside.