Juan leaned against the wall, arms crossed, seeming lost in thought.
“We must find Jacob, too,” Dmitry said.
“I covered the whole island,” Juan said. “He’s gone.”
Mason sat next to Camilla. Jugs of water lined the wall next to him. He had gone next door to retrieve JT’s and Travis’s, refilling them, too.
Brent sat apart from the others with his head back against the wall, eyes closed. Camilla could hear a quiet, ragged murmur under his breath—he was humming to himself.
“What about JT?” she asked.
Juan shook his head. “He’s on his own.”
“I’ll go get Jordan,” she said.
Juan seemed to wilt, but he didn’t say anything.
She found Jordan next door, sitting on the steps of the Greek Revival house, staring at the monitor with a bleak expression on her face.
Camilla squatted on the steps next to her. “You shouldn’t be in here all alone. Come join the rest of us.”
Jordan stared past her. “Go away.”
What had happened to the friendly, sparkly personality that Camilla liked so much? It was gone without a trace, set aside like a once-fashionable coat that its owner no longer felt like wearing.
“Fine,” Camilla said, standing up. “We don’t have to be friends. But we really should talk, Jordan.”
Once she was back in the Victorian, Mason stood up and dusted off his hands. He stood in front of her defaced diagram and, using a pink paintball, drew an arrow from the “T” to the “C.” But there were still no arrows pointing at Travis, and two arrows pointed at Jordan.
Intrigued again despite herself, Camilla joined him, like a co-presenter at a studio green-light meeting. Mason turned to face her. He tapped the diagram as if it were a whiteboard.
“What can we infer from this?” he asked.
“Number one,” she said. “By leaving Travis unassigned to be anybody’s target, Julian kept him in reserve until the very end.”
She looked around the room at Brent, Veronica, Natalie, Juan, Dmitry, and Mason. She had everybody’s attention now—except for the unconscious Natalie’s, of course.
“Number two. Instead, his assassin was reassigned to someone else. That’s interesting in itself, since it effectively doubled the odds against that person.
“Number three. Travis got loose. Or someone
let
Travis loose and put him into play, injuring Dmitry in the process.”
“So was Travis Julian’s spy?” Mason asked. “Or not?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have trouble picturing Travis setting up the flags and other games for Julian, but there’s no reason he couldn’t have. He was the one that supposedly found our luggage, remember? As for freeing himself—he was in the prison system for years, after all. He might have been able to. But I’m only speculating.”
Mason pushed his glasses higher. “So one of us might still be a spy…”
She nodded. “We can’t rule it out, I’m afraid.
“Number four,” she said. “I was Travis’s assigned target—”
“So for most of the game, no one was after you.” Veronica’s voice cut the air. “And
you
won. That seems fair, doesn’t it? But at least we know who Julian’s favorite is.”
Camilla felt her face flush. “Bear with me, please,” she said. “Number four. Travis was supposed to come after me. And he did, eventually. But first he got up to some extracurricular activity…”
“Natalie,” Mason said. “He grabbed her and stashed her for later.” He looked at Juan. “She owes you, my friend. Travis must’ve used her own stun gun on her—again and again, getting his revenge. It’s a good thing her heart was young and strong.”
“This man… this criminal,” Dmitry said. “I am glad he is dead.” His voice turned gloomy. “What about Heather?”
Face sober for a change, Mason shook his head. “I’m afraid he had more time with her. I’m sorry, Dmitry.”
“But why Jacob? I mean, Jacob is not woman.”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “Travis definitely didn’t like men. I’m sure of that…”
Veronica interrupted. “Maybe he thought Jacob had seen him take Heather.”
“No,” Camilla said as a horrifying possibility occurred to her. “Travis set off my alarms from the first moment I saw him. What if he was something even
worse
than we know?”
Mason looked at her. “Like what?”
“Fava beans and a nice Chianti,” Brent rumbled from the corner without opening his eyes. “Travis? Now he was a serial killer, too, Camilla? And I thought
I
was the one on drugs.”
“Don’t be so quick to discount her,” Mason said. “These things are outside my experience—I just don’t know—but I’ve seen the same movies you have. Hollywood dresses it up some, sure, but there really
are
people like that out there.” He laughed. “Veronica, I think you might have done the world a service.”
“Because he liked to hurt men, too?” she said. “Great. Makes no difference to me. Typical that you men would see it that way, though. Now all of a sudden, he’s a
real
bad guy.”
“I didn’t mean it that way—”
“You think I have any regrets about what I did? Any at all?” Veronica’s eyes flashed. “If Travis stood up and walked in here, I’d kill him again.”
“You might want to watch what you’re saying,” Brent said. “You’re upset.” He opened his opaque, drugged eyes and pointed a thick finger at the ceiling and walls. “We should assume this is all being captured on video and will be admissible in court.”
“And I should give a shit?” Veronica snorted. “No jury would ever convict me. They’d give me a fucking medal, instead. He had just kidnapped this poor girl, nearly killed her. Travis was a sadistic rapist, a child molester, a murderer, and now, according to you boneheads, maybe even a serial killer.
Not
a fine, upstanding, highly decorated police captain on a first-name basis with the mayor…”
Camilla froze in mid breath.
In the sudden silence, Veronica’s eyes widened in horror. Her jaw snapped shut, and she tucked her chin down to stare at the floor.
“Oops,” Mason giggled.
Veronica had killed her second husband, the police captain, too. Camilla found she wasn’t really surprised. Veronica had killed
both
her husbands.
Camilla felt a pang of sympathy for Veronica, trapped in an inescapable cycle of abuse and violence, driven to seek it out over and over again because it was the only love she knew.
“Serial killers are astronomically rare,” Camilla said, speaking to defuse the situation and take the focus off Veronica. “Maybe I
am
being silly. After all, what are the odds that Vita Brevis would accidentally recruit a serial killer as one of ten show contestants?”
“Perhaps it wasn’t an accident,” Mason said.
“Oh god, you’re not helping, Mason.”
“I can just imagine the Craigslist ad.” Dark amusement flickered in Juan’s eyes. “Serial killer with a preference for underage girls wanted. Must be proven survivor and look good on camera. Ten million for two weeks’ work, room and board included…”
“Look.” Mason sounded exasperated. “We know Julian recruited Travis specifically because he was a convict. They even made his résumé a prize for Lauren to find.”
He laid a hand on Camilla’s shoulder. “Besides,” he said, “the percentage of serial killers in a prison population, no matter what they were arrested for, would be much higher than in an average cross-section of humanity. So even if it was an accident, maybe the odds aren’t quite as astronomical as you seem to think.”
Mason tapped the “T” on the diagram. A streak of Travis’s blood looped beneath it, underlining it. “But like I said, I don’t really think it was an accident. We already know Julian deliberately recruited a convicted child molester for morbid entertainment value. So how much of a stretch is it to believe Julian actually wanted Travis because he was a serial killer?”
“That’s utterly ludicrous.” Veronica stroked Natalie’s unconscious head, which rested on her thigh. “And you didn’t really address Juan’s point, either. How would they go about finding a serial killer when the police and FBI chase them for years and can’t catch them?”
“The black widow speaks.” Mason said.
Veronica’s eyes ignited.
“Sorry, sorry.” He held up his hands in a gesture of mock contrition. “Okay, that’s actually a fair question, but I don’t think it would be all that hard, theoretically.”
Veronica’s voice was dry. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
“You’d have to be willing to do something police and FBI can’t: use live bait.”
“Policewomen frequently pose undercover as prostitutes to entrap predators,” she said. “It almost never works.”
“That’s not the same as live bait. You let the bait actually get taken by the fish.”
“I hesitate to even ask what you mean.”
Mason turned to Dmitry. “Your sharks—I read some of the surveys in the station and looked at your data. You obviously can track them quite well. How?”
“We using the GPS.” Dmitry sat up, cupping his hand around an imaginary cylinder. “Satellite tracker unit show us where is shark—”
“These tracker units—how did you get them into the sharks in the first place?”
“First we try to poke them into shark’s back with harpoon. Very hard to do. Trackers coming off too soon. No good. But Jacob, he is persistent.” Dmitry smiled. “Two years ago, he figure out very good solution. We put tracker unit
inside
bait—seal carcasses we find. Shark, he eats bait. Then we track him easy.”
Mason looked at the others. “There you have it, then.”
Camilla was appalled. “So you’re saying Vita Brevis put GPS trackers inside
prostitutes
to catch a serial killer? Travis abducted one of them, and
that’s
how Julian found him?” She grimaced in disgust. “How do you even come up with this stuff?”
Mason grinned.
“He’s just trying to get a reaction out of you, Camilla,” Brent said. “He finds it gratifying for some reason.”
She glanced away, seeing the countdown tick from 04:46 to 04:45. Less than five minutes from now, they would have the answers they sought—
if
Julian delivered on his earlier promises.
Juan shook his head. “Even a drugged-up prostitute might notice someone putting a GPS tracker unit inside them, no matter how high they were. Am I right, Brent? You seem to be the authority around here on being high.”
“Perhaps I am, Juan. Perhaps I am.” Brent leaned forward. “But I’ll play.”
His eyes were jittery blue, pupilless. “I would imagine that prostitutes are often desperate for money to buy drugs, are they not? And Vita Brevis seems to have no shortage of money. What if, in Mason’s scenario, the prostitutes were told that Vita Brevis was buying a kidney from them? Some might be willing to go along with that. Then, instead of taking a kidney out, Vita Brevis could implant a GPS tracker and stitch them up. Does that work for you, Mason?”
“Enough!” Veronica said. “I’m about to throw up. It’s disgusting that you people can sit there making jokes about this. And don’t try to make things complicated when they aren’t. It’s actually real simple.”
She pointed at the next room, where Travis’s body lay. “Travis kidnaps Heather and rapes her—a crime of opportunity. But he’s angry and frustrated by his injuries, and under these circumstances he takes things too far and kills her. Later, Jacob confronts him about Heather and accuses him. He thinks Jacob knows something. So as soon as he’s free he kills Jacob, too, disposing of the body the same way as Heather’s: feeding them to the sharks.
“As for Natalie…” Veronica’s arm curled over her protectively. “That animal has been after her since the first day on the island—probably since he first saw her on the ship. That’s how their minds work.”
She snorted. “Hannibal Lecter, my ass. Travis was a garden-variety trailer-trash piece of shit. Common as dirt. Kick over a rock, you’ll find three guys just like him.”
The monitor suddenly brightened the room.
Camilla found herself staring at their host.
J
ulian straddled an old office chair, resting his chin on his forearms, which were crossed atop the chair back. His suit was a rich maroon. With his loosened tie dangling over one arm, his body language was relaxed—a teacher having an informal chat with a few favored students. But his customary playful smile was gone. In its place, his features conveyed a solemn sense of gravitas.
“My congratulations to the winner of today’s contest, the last assassin standing…”
Camilla winced. He meant her.
“…and to all the rest of you, who have unquestionably earned your current rankings today. Only one more competition remains tomorrow, and rest assured, I will indeed join you for it. But now, as I promised, let us peel back the veil of mystery together. Here are the answers you seek.”
Julian leaned back and spread his arms wide. “We live in an exciting era of technological transformation. The Internet age is rewriting the rules of entertainment forever. The old gatekeepers of our industry—the studios, distributors, cable companies, and traditional media outlets—are being swept aside by the new and truly innovative.
“Today’s entertainment audience is global, affluent, and hungry for novelty. Amateur self-publishing channels, YouTube, and the like are only the first wave of the coming change. Vita Brevis represents the other end of the spectrum. We are multinational, professional, well financed, and independent. Today we have access to direct distribution—and direct monetization—on a scale unprecedented in human history. Vita Brevis operates outside the control of the mainstream media, ungoverned by the arbitrary laws and regulations of any country or jurisdiction.
“We know what the people want. And we will give it to them.
“Tomorrow’s stars aren’t actors and musicians, athletes and models, the superficial creations of a tired oligarchy that grows more irrelevant by the day. Nor are they the so-called reality stars, elevated above their mediocre lives and humdrum backgrounds for fifteen minutes of fame. No, we can do better.”
Laying his forearms back down on the chair back, their host canted forward and rested his chin again, smiling—a pleased coach congratulating his team after a winning season.