“Hey, Blaine. Anything?”
“Just water. Lots and lots of water.” He had his assault rifle slung over his back and a pair of night-vision binoculars hanging around his neck. “Can’t sleep?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah, me too.”
He leaned against the railing and looked out at nothing in particular. Their world at this moment began and ended in the halo of lights that encircled the Trident. It was as if the rest of the universe no longer existed; or, if it still did, it had gone into hiding.
“Did Lara say where we were going?” Gaby asked, leaning next to him.
“There was talk of some Caribbean island, but I don’t think she’s decided yet.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, I guess.”
“No?”
“Nah. One island’s the same as another.”
She didn’t think that was exactly true. Song Island had been unique.
“Where’s Lara?” she asked.
“In the captain’s quarters next to the bridge.”
“Thanks.”
As Gaby started off, Blaine stopped her with, “Hey, kid.” And when she looked back, he said, “I’m sorry about Josh.”
“Go, get out of here! Get out of here!”
“We move on,” Blaine said. “It’s hard at first, but eventually the pain hurts less. Don’t make the same mistakes I did by closing yourself off for too long. There are people who care about you.”
She gave him a pursed smile. He was talking about himself. About Sandra.
“Thanks, Blaine,” she said.
“Don’t mention it.”
Gaby went back inside.
She walked past Benny and Nate again, but this time stopped to linger on Nate for a moment. He looked peaceful, and she was glad he was still alive. Not just after tonight, but after the pawnshop. Had she ever made that clear to him? If not, she could always fix it, maybe starting this morning.
But that was for later.
Now, she continued on, finding the hallway at the back. She knocked on the first door that came up.
“It’s not locked,” a voice said from inside.
Lara was alone, looking over a heavily annotated map spread out on a table with a lamp turned on next to her. The rest of the room was dark except for sections that were lit up by moonlight filtering in through the windows.
Like Gaby, Lara hadn’t changed out of the blood-splattered clothes, and her shoulder and leg remained heavily bandaged. Gaby didn’t know how she was even still standing despite all the painkillers she had been taking throughout the night. Had she even gone to see Zoe yet? She had washed the dirt and grime (and blood) off her face, though there were still spots that she couldn’t get to or didn’t know were there.
Gaby made a mental note to talk to Keo and Blaine about forcing Lara to take a break — or at least get her off her feet. Now that Keo would be staying around for a while, they could afford to take turns getting some rest. God knew they all needed it. A lot of it.
“Can’t sleep either?” Lara asked.
Gaby shook her head. “You?”
“No rest for the weary.”
“Amen, sister.”
Gaby leaned against the table and looked down at the map.
“You checked up on Danny?” Lara asked.
“Just came from there.”
“How is he?”
“Zoe thinks it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start praying.”
“She doesn’t know him the way we do,” Lara said. “He’ll pull through. He has to. We need him now more than ever without—” She stopped herself in mid-sentence and didn’t finish.
We need him now more than ever without Will here, Gaby thought, finishing for her friend.
“Who’s watching our fearless captain?” she asked instead.
“Jo.”
“Jo?”
“Gage is handcuffed to the steering wheel. He’s not going anywhere or doing anything. I would have preferred Roy—” She stopped again and shook her head. “Dammit.”
“What?”
“No matter what we do, where we go, we keep losing people.”
Like Will. Dead or alive, somewhere out there by himself.
“He’ll be back,” Gaby said. She didn’t have to say who “he” was, because Lara already knew. “He’ll return to the island, find your message, and come look for us. Have faith.”
Lara nodded. “I do have faith.” Then, as if to convince herself, “I do have faith…”
Gaby reached over and took Lara’s hand and squeezed. They exchanged a brief half-smile. It was the best either one of them could manage at the moment.
“Is that it?” Gaby said, looking down at the map. It was covered in Lara’s notes, with a barely-visible dot in the middle of the ocean heavily circled. “Bengal Island?”
“Bengal Islands. There’s a main one and a smaller companion island.”
Lara hadn’t said it with a lot of enthusiasm — or, at least, not as much as Gaby had expected when talking about a place that was supposed to be their salvation.
“What’s wrong?” Gaby asked.
“We don’t know what’s waiting for us there,” she said, staring at the map as if she could see all the bad things lurking if she just stared hard and deep enough.
“Isn’t it like that everywhere?”
“Yes, but this place…it has everything we need, and everything we don’t want.”
“Like?”
“People with guns. A lot of guns. Bad people.”
“Badder than us?” Gaby smiled.
“According to Keo…yes. Way badder.”
They didn’t say anything for a moment, and Lara seemed to drift off with her thoughts again. They were standing across the table from each other, but her friend might as well be on the other side of the continent.
“So what do we do?” Gaby finally asked.
“We’ll figure it out,” Lara said. “Whatever happens, whatever’s out there, we’ll adapt and survive.”
“He said something similar to me back on Route 13.” Again, she didn’t have to say who “he” was. “He said, ‘Whatever happens, keep moving forward. Don’t stop to look back. Keep moving forward, because that’s how we survive.’”
Lara pursed her lips, then walked around the table and embraced her. Gaby wrapped as much of her arms around Lara as possible, careful to avoid her bandages. She was fighting back tears and could tell Lara was doing the same thing, Lara’s body trembling noticeably against hers.
“Adapt or perish,” Gaby said, just barely able to contain herself. “We should make a banner and hang it somewhere.”
Lara laughed and pulled back. The two of them took turns exchanging embarrassed smiles. “I like the sound of that.”
Gaby pushed off the table, needing to go before she ended up bawling like a little kid. She couldn’t allow that to happen, because that childish version of her had been excised and she couldn’t afford to let her back in. Not now.
“Anyway, I’m going to go keep Blaine company,” Gaby said. “I don’t think he’s slept at all the last couple of days.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Gaby walked to the door.
“Hey,” Lara said.
She stopped and looked back.
“He saved us,” Lara said. “Josh. Despite what he did to Danny, if he hadn’t pushed the boat off the beach…”
Gaby smiled at her and was surprised how easily it came out. “That was the Josh I always wanted you to meet. That was him back there. Not the one in the uniform, or the one that shot Danny, but the one that I grew up across the street from.”
“He was a good kid, that Josh.”
“He was.”
Lara nodded. “Okay, enough chick talk. Go check on Blaine, make sure he doesn’t nod off and drop into the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Aye aye, boss,” Gaby said, giving her a mock salute as she left.