The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (8 page)

Always the two of us, Will. Even now, after everything that’s happened, why does it still have to fall on our shoulders?

“Lara?” Bonnie said next to her. “What did he say?”

“I’ll tell you and everyone else later,” she said. “Right now we have more immediate problems.”

* * *

W
ith Riley’s
people confined to the lower deck, Lara and Bonnie made good time reaching the floor with the infirmary. Danny was there to meet them when they climbed up the stairs. He was leaning against the wall, sipping from a ceramic mug with steam rising above the rim. Danny had slipped on his old SWAT comm gear with the throat mic and earbud and a tactical vest.

“Kendra was in the armory, counting the hardware,” Danny said when he saw them. “She said they swiped the mags with silver loads, the sneaky little buggers.”

“I guess they didn’t know about silver not affecting him,” Bonnie said.

“Oh, they affect him, all right. They just don’t put him down. It’s all about the ol’ noggin,” Danny said, tapping his temple with his free hand for effect. “It works on the black eyes so they probably assumed it was the same with the blue eyes, and you know what happens when you assume. Assholism.”

“What’s the situation?” Lara asked.

“Same-o, same-o.” He turned around and led them through the hallway. “O-O-O-O’Reilly hasn’t had much luck talking his boys down, before you ask.”

“There’s two of them?”

“A Bray and an Ethan.”

“What kind of name is Bray?” Bonnie asked.

“Redneckian, would be my guess,” Danny said. “As far as we can tell, they haven’t harmed anyone yet. The
mucho importanto
part being
yet
.”

“You think they will?” Lara asked.

“Dunno. They shot Benny and killed Carrie, didn’t they?”

“I don’t think they meant to kill Carrie. The bullet hit her femoral artery. It probably wasn’t on purpose.”

“You sure about that?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter. She’s dead and they’re dead.”

“Dead used to be dead,” Danny said. “Not so much anymore.”

No, not anymore. Will’s further proof of that.

The others were at the end of the hallway, gathered around the closed infirmary door. Riley and Hart were there with empty gun holsters, and she had expected resistance when she ordered Danny to disarm them, but Riley had capitulated without putting up much of a fight.

Hart and Riley being present wasn’t a surprise, but Jolly was. The young man nodded when he saw her, and said, “Ma’am.”

“I told you not to call me that, Jolly,” Lara said.

“Sorry, ma—I mean, uh, Lara.”

“You can call me
ma’am
all you want,” Bonnie said from behind Lara.

Jolly flashed a shy smile.

Riley and Hart glanced over as she approached them. The two men were leaning on opposite sides of the infirmary door, and Lara wondered what exactly they were going to do if Bray and Ethan decided to come out, guns blazing, at that very second. The only one with a weapon was Maddie, who stood slightly back in the hallway, with her M4 at the ready.

“No luck?” Lara asked.

Riley shook his head and frowned. “No.”

“They’re stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place,” Hart said, his voice purposefully low. “They might have had some semblance of a plan when Phil was still around, but after he left this mortal coil, along with those two idiots in the engine room, they don’t have any idea what to do next.”

“That makes them even more dangerous,” Maddie said.

Lara nodded. She was right, but so was Hart.

“Gaby, Nate, and Zoe?” Lara asked.

“As far as we know, they’re okay,” Maddie said. “I don’t know how long that’s going to last, though.”

Lara could read it in Maddie’s eyes—the small Texan wanted to go in there and get it over with. She could tell that much just by the way Maddie gripped her rifle, clutching and unclutching the pistol grip under the barrel.

She turned back to Danny, casually braced against the wall nearby with his steaming mug. She walked over to him to get some privacy, even though there wasn’t really a whole lot to be had given the narrow confines of the hallway and all the bodies jammed inside it at the moment.

“What do you think?” she whispered.

Danny shrugged, as if he hadn’t given it any thought at all, but of course she knew that wasn’t true. Danny, like
(the old)
Will, was just good at hiding it.

“What do I think?” Danny said. “Mostly that I’d love to be cuddling with the redhead in our cabin right now.”

“You can do that later. What about here, now? You’ve been in this situation before, back when you were with SWAT.”

“Once or twice. Though, usually the guy on the other end was either naked or on meth. And sometimes when we were really good boys, both.”

“So what do you think?”

Danny sipped his mug for a second. Then, “Wait till morning and see what we see. Everything looks better with a little sunlight. All shiny and shit.”

“You want to wait it out?”

“Sure, why not? There’s nothing to be gained from going in now. Put our people here in case they try anything in the meantime.”

“We’re running out of people, Danny.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but they were running out of gun-carrying adults. The idea of letting the kids get involved—like Claire, who had shown up with Gaby and was probably the most ready next to Dwayne—made her nauseous. And Carly, Sarah, and the others had their own jobs to take care of that couldn’t be ignored, even now.

“Not necessarily,” Danny said. “Give the kid”—he glanced back at Jolly behind them—“a gun and sign him up.”

Lara looked down the hallway at Jolly, watching them back from about twenty feet away. It was so quiet and the passageway was so narrow it wouldn’t have taken him very much to overhear their conversation. If he did, though, the young man did a good job pretending he wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Jolly?” she said doubtfully.

“Sure, why not?” Danny said.

“He’s just a kid himself.” She pictured Riley and Hart listening in behind her when she added quietly, “And he’s not one of us.”

“No, but he worships me.”

She gave Danny a wry look. “Since when? You’ve only known him for a day.”

“A day’s all you need. Plus, the kid always wanted to be a Ranger. Was going to apply for it before the world went kaput. Trust me, he’ll do what I tell him.”

Lara remembered Jolly’s actions on the
Ocean Star
, how he would always move ahead of her when they were approaching a corner so he would be the first one to encounter any dangers.

She looked past Danny at the young man again. “Jolly.”

He hurried over. “Yeah.”

“Go with Bonnie and get geared up. You’re with us now.”

A big, effortless grin spread across his face. “Yes ma—I mean, Lara.”

“Come on, kid,” Bonnie said, and led Jolly down the hallway.

“See?” Danny said.

Lara looked back at him. “See what?”

“You could practically feel the unrestrained man crush he’s got for me emanating from every pore.”

“You’re right; it’s so obvious I don’t know how I missed it.” She looked back at Riley and Hart. “You guys should go get some rest.”

“We’re okay,” Riley said.

“You should go anyway. You don’t want to be here if something happens between now and dawn.”

The two men exchanged an uncertain look, but if they had any objections, they swallowed them and nodded back.

Lara said to Danny, “It’s your show.”

“Sure, who needs sleep?” Danny said. “And where are you going?”

I have to clean Phil’s blood off the floor in my cabin
, she thought, but said, “To fix my door, no thanks to you.”

“Boy, you save someone’s life and they won’t let you live it down,” Danny said after her.

B
ray and the second man
, whose name turned out to be Ethan, didn’t do or say very much after the burst of gunfire shattered the peaceful night. Gaby eventually let go of the façade and sat up, while Nate was allowed to come over and sit on the bed to her right, with Zoe taking the one to her left. She guessed their captors realized the real danger was outside the room and not inside, and the less they had to deal with—like keeping Nate and Zoe under control at gunpoint—the better.

They were right to ignore her, because she wasn’t in any position to pose a threat. Whatever pain she had arrived on the yacht with was numbed thanks to the meds, but it also limited her
movements. The men also didn’t have to worry too much about Nate; even though he was much better off after being shot in Gallant, he was still far from 100%, and Riley’s men knew it just by the way he walked gingerly back and forth.

The night came and went, and the only sound was Riley’s and Hart’s voices through the door, trying to communicate with Bray and Ethan. Gaby was at least glad to know that Riley wasn’t involved in the attempted yacht takeover, which meant this was more of a rogue mission with a limited number of personnel. That provided some comfort—fewer men meant an easier time for Lara and Danny to deal with—but of course it didn’t do anything for her, Nate, and Zoe as they sat in the dark and watched Bray and Ethan guarding the door with weapons at the ready. She couldn’t quite see their faces from across the room, but their body language didn’t suggest they were any closer to surrendering.

A pool of moonlight filtered in through the window to their left and splashed across the middle of the room, as if symbolically separating hostages from captors. The whole thing was almost romantic…if people weren’t holding her at gunpoint.

“You think he’s okay?” Zoe whispered.

She looked over at the doctor, and matching her pitch, “Who?”

“Will…”

Gaby didn’t have to think too much about it. In fact, she didn’t have to think at all. After the loud cracks of gunfire there had been only silence, both throughout the boat and from the radios that Bray and Ethan carried. As far as she knew, there were three others in on the plan, and all three had gone silent. That didn’t bode well for the mission, and she suspected both of the surviving conspirators knew it.

“Yes,” Gaby said without hesitation.

Zoe glanced over, clearly surprised by the absolute certainty in Gaby’s voice. “How can you be so sure?”

“He’s not…Will anymore.”

Just saying the words out loud made her wince, because it meant embracing the reality that Will wasn’t really Will anymore.

“He’s something else now,” Gaby whispered.

“So how are you so sure it’s really him?” Zoe asked.

“The same reason Danny is. He didn’t have to do any of the things he did for us when we were out there. You should have seen him in Gallant. He risked everything
that night to come save us.”

Zoe didn’t say anything else and seemed to drift off to be with her own thoughts. Maybe some of those were about Will. Gaby always suspected something had happened between them back in Louisiana, but she’d never asked about it. Neither had Lara, who Gaby knew had the same suspicions. But after Will went missing, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

And it still doesn’t matter now.

She focused on the two black silhouettes stationed in front of the door on the other side of the infirmary. Their faces were hidden, along with their expressions, but she could just barely pick up that they were whispering back and forth. She wished she were closer so she could eavesdrop, because she had a feeling what they decided was going to affect everyone in the room.

“How are you doing?” Nate asked. Unlike Zoe, he hadn’t bothered to lower his voice, probably because the question wasn’t something worth hiding.

“I’m okay,” she said. “You?”

“A little throbbing here and there, but okay.” He looked past her. “Hey, doc, I might need a refill on those meds soon.”

“Remind me again when this is over,” Zoe said.

“Thanks.” Then, returning to Gaby, “What a night, huh? And here I thought getting back here would translate into fun times in the sun and a whole lot of bikini-clad boredom.”

“Bikini-clad boredom?”

“Well, you’d be wearing most of it, and I’d just be enjoying it.”

“Shows what you know,” she smiled back.

He snorted. “That’s me, Captain Optimism, as Danny would say. Speaking of…” He glanced over at the door, at Ethan’s and Bray’s shadowy forms. This time he did lower his voice to almost a whisper when he said, “I bet we could take them.”

“In your pain-induced dreams,” she whispered back.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Leave it alone. Danny and Lara don’t need us mucking things up.” Nate didn’t look convinced, so she added sharply,
“Nate.”

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. Sheesh. When did you get so bossy?”

“Since I saved your life back in Gallant.”

He sighed. “How many times are you going to bring that up?”

“Whenever you come up with a stupid plan.”

“So…always?”

She pursed a smile at him.

“It’s quiet out there,” Zoe said. She was looking up at the ceiling for some reason. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the boat this quiet.”

The calm after the storm. Or maybe it’s the calm before the storm.

The fact that no one had tried to breach the room wasn’t surprising. There simply was no advantage to something like that, not with two captors and three hostages. Even though the two men only seemed to be armed with handguns, that was still two too many weapons against her, Zoe, and Nate’s zero.

The night dragged on and her eyelids grew heavy, and the final straw was when Nate started stroking her forehead. That made her close her eyes, and despite telling herself to stay awake, she eventually drifted off.

* * *

“
G
eez
, I thought you were going to sleep through the whole thing,” Danny said when she opened her eyes.

“Danny?”

“It ain’t Elvis, though I have been mistaken for the King of Rock ’n’ Roll once or twice. Must be the blue suede shoes.”

“What…?” she said, but couldn’t find the will to finish.

Her voice sounded overly groggy to her own ears, and maybe that was because— She saw the clock on the wall and groaned.

It was almost noon.

“You slept through all the fun,” Danny said.

Danny wasn’t alone. There was a man with a crew cut, and despite his intimidating size—he was taller than Danny and built like a football player—he might have been just a few years older than her. The stranger had an M4 rifle slung over his back and was wearing the same kind of tactical vest and comm rig that Danny had on.

She glanced about the room, but Zoe was nowhere to be found. On her right was an empty bed where Nate should have been.

“Don’t worry; your boyfriend’s outside getting some rays,” Danny said. “And the doc’s seeing to Benny. Can’t very well leave your ex to some animal doctor. He probably has cooties or some such.”

She slid up the bed and propped a pillow behind her, wincing at a small jolt of pain. Her shoulder was hurting a little bit more than usual, maybe because whatever Zoe had given her was starting to wear off. After all, she had slept through almost all of yesterday and the entire morning today.

“My ex?” she said.

“Benny,” Danny said. “You forgot the poor kid’s name already?”

“What happened to Benny?”

“He got caught in last night’s crossfire.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s alive.” Danny nodded at the big guy behind him, and said, “Head on out. I’ll be along in a few.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said, and turned and left.

Gaby scooted into a better sitting position while Danny adjusted his seat on a stool at the foot of her bed. The infirmary didn’t look any different than the last time she was awake—except there were no strangers with guns, and she didn’t see anything that looked like collateral damage. She also let out a sigh of relief at the visible lack of blood and bullet holes around her.

“What happened last night?” she asked. “I heard a lot of shooting…”

Danny told her, filling in the pieces she was missing from being stuck up here during the whole ordeal. The two (dead) men in the engine room, the attempt on Will’s life, and Benny and Carrie caught in the middle.

Gaby frowned. “They killed Carrie?”

“Maybe not on purpose, but same shitty result.”

“And Zoe’s with Benny now?”

“He’s stable, and the doc’s got it handled. The kid bled a lot before we could get him up here, but there’s more where all that gooey red stuff comes from. Speaking of which, I’d like to be handled by Zoe. That’s one fine-looking woman.”

“You’re already taken, remember?”

“Shhh,”
Danny said, putting a finger to his lips, “don’t tell the ladies. Or Carly. That redhead just don’t understand that I’m a man and men need to spread their seed around. It’s like biology or sumthin’.”

“Ugh, spare me the visuals.” She looked past him at the empty room again. “So what happened while I was asleep?”

“They gave up about two hours ago.”

“Just like that?”

“I guess with their pals dead and all their friends—including their COs—telling them to come to their senses all night long, they finally buckled. It was all very anticlimactic, to be perfectly honest with you. Me and Jolly were ready to bust the door down and come in shooting like Rambo and his mini Rambo. It totally ruined our morning. Heck, we could barely keep our breakfast down afterward, we were so disgusted.”

“What’s a Jolly?”

“The big kid that was just in here with me.”

“Who is he?”

“One of Riley’s guys.”

She gave him a surprised look. “And you gave him a rifle after what they tried to do last night?”

“The kid’s cool.”

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me, cool knows cool, and Jolly Green Giant’s cool as a cucumber.” Danny got up. “But back to you. You gonna lie in bed all day, or what?”

“That depends. What’s happening out there?”

“Well, we’re not going to the Bengal Islands after all.”

“When did that happen?”

Danny told her about the radio broadcast from Black Tide Island, about the stand-down order that had been issued to Mercer’s army back in Texas.

Then Danny smirked. “You remember ol’ Benford? Back in Gallant?”

“How could I forget?”

“Apparently he was one of the big cheeses. Big dead cheese now, anyway.”

“Fuck him,” Gaby said.

“Harsh,” Danny chuckled.

* * *

A
fter Danny left
, she quickly grew tired of being in the room all by herself and swung her legs off the bed and sat up for a moment, just to see if she could. It wasn’t nearly as bad as she had been expecting, and she found that moving actually helped with the occasional slight pain.

She stood up and looked around for her clothes. There was so much light in the room now as opposed to last night that she had no trouble finding a fresh pair of khaki cargos draped over a chair along with a thermal sweater from her personal effects clearly waiting there for her. She smiled, thought
I love you, Nate
, and made sure the door was locked before stripping out of her “patient” clothes and pulling on her own. She only grimaced three or four times during the whole thing, and once she (very) carefully slipped her left arm through the sleeve, was feeling like herself for the first time in seemingly weeks.

Walking was easier than moving any part of her upper body around, and with her left arm (and everything attached to it) basically immobile as a precaution under the sweater, she opened the door and stepped outside and headed down the hallway. There were plenty of footprints immediately outside and around the infirmary—evidence left behind by Danny and the others as they moved around last night—but no actual people.

She slipped outside using the nearest door, drawn forward by the rays of light on the other side. The sun and cool weather against her face was a monumental relief, and she hadn’t realized how much she needed the fresh air until she was standing in the middle of it. The old Gaby would have loved to lie in bed for days being tended to, but Gaby 2.0 needed to move even when there was nothing to do.