Spencer swore. “Okay,” he said, bending down and pulling up patchy handfuls of razor grass. “You need to head toward the inmates. I’m gonna calm him down a little.”
Glen tried not to gape. “You’re the billy-goat whisperer?”
Spencer lifted a negligent shoulder. “Someone finds me charming.”
“And doesn’t mind your burrito gas, probably,” Glen retorted. But it was working. Spencer fed the goat tufts of grass, and Glen slowly backed away. “There’s a big patch of grass to your right, Spence,” Glen said, backing up a little more quickly.
“That’s a big help, you bastard. Now move!”
Glen did, heading sideways, now, until he was sidling along the edge of the cover, trying to find a place to get the attention of the people working to see if anyone wanted to be rescued.
He skirted the clearing around the house, keeping the building between himself and the gun towers on general principle, then found some shade under a group of squat palm trees with some sawgrass growing between them. He stayed in their shadow, conscious of the ocean roaring into the cove not far away, and was about to try to catch somebody’s eye when a loud creaking of metal and gears made everybody—farmers, guards, Glen—cringe.
“I hate that,” a young woman whispered, shaking a little.
“God, me too,” said the young man next to her. Both of them made agonized eye contact for a moment until a guard shouted, “Hey! You two! No talking. Meditation only.”
Glen glared from his position behind a tree. Ass. Hole. Then he peered in the direction of the noise.
First he saw the cove, stretching out below the house, big enough for one or two boats—at one time, it had been pristine.
The water was still clear enough to see the machinery that operated the weirdo affectation that Spencer and Damien had been talking about.
The wall.
On the one hand, it was ridiculously small—a ten-foot-wide stretch of the ocean is, quite literally, a drop in the bucket. But on the other hand, he could see how it would force people in a boat to announce themselves. From the slight height above the cove and the distance, the dark shapes of the submerged junk on the edges of the water were visible. It should have been laughable—but it was actually effective, and Glen wished the guy hadn’t had the same military training he had.
Damned canny fucker.
Then the wall lowered, and he got a good look at the occupants of the boat motoring in and forgot about Tranquilizer Piss and the poor lost kids currently weeding the tomato patch.
The two goons he’d expected—both of them wearing suits in the humidity if not the heat. The girl surprised him—but he’d been told there were two. This one didn’t look like Cash’s friend, so she must have been another inmate/victim of Tranquilizer Piss.
But those weren’t the things that stopped his heart and caused sweat to crawl down his back.
A familiar figure was trussed and gagged, lying unconscious and blindfolded in the boat. Glen had to look twice, but Cash had been wearing a pale blue hoodie and bright red sneakers that morning—silly and bright and touristy and perfect—and the sneakers could be seen from space.
He stared as the boat puttered in, trying to control the beating of his heart.
His skin was cold, he couldn’t breathe, his vision went black. That was convenient, right there within sight of armed guards. Fuck. Cash. Well, he was moving—Glen could see that much from here, so… plan. That’s what ops were. Plans.
Okay. Okay. Plan. They had a plan. He didn’t see Preston in the boat—or the dogs—which meant Preston managed to avoid capture, which was good. His brother… his brother wouldn’t deal with being captured, and the dogs? Well, the guys in town might have been local yokels, but the guys here were the same mercenaries he and Cash had seen in Nayarit. They might shoot Preston’s dogs without hesitation, and Glen couldn’t live with that.
So it was Cash, with his quick mouth and his survivor instinct, who’d been captured, and Glen needed to get him out.
But first he needed to make contact. He peered around his tree again and saw the guards facing the ocean, whispering—probably about Cash.
Glen dropped to his stomach, inched forward, and pulled a handful of brightly wrapped candy out of his pocket. He’d snagged a bunch of packages from the vending machine at the hotel, figuring that if he’d been kept on a strict diet/code of silence/exercise regime against his will, sugar might be the one thing that would get him to break.
Making sure the guards were still turned away, he gave one packet a little toss so it landed right on the foot of the girl who’d spoken.
She saw it land and scooped it up as smoothly as if she’d been pulling a weed. Surreptitiously she looked around. When she spotted Glen, her brown eyes widened, and she murmured, “Hello, Candy Fairy. Are you trying to get shot?”
“Nope,” he whispered back. “Mostly I’m trying to get you all out of here. Any takers?”
The girl peered around at her companions, all while keeping her head down. “Most of us,” she said. “See those two closest to the guards?”
Tall and rail thin, deeply tanned with the sort of bone structure and dental work that spoke of plastic surgery and braces, the two young people at the edge of the garden plot looked enough alike to be brother and sister.
“Yeah?”
“They buy this bullshit. The rest of us just agree to it so they don’t drug our water.”
“Then we won’t tell them we’re leaving,” Glen murmured. “Other side of the house—we’ve got a camo path to mask you, and a way to get down the cliff on the other end of the island. Any way we can get there?”
The girl closed her eyes like she was thinking, and still her hands moved restlessly, looking for ripe veggies.
“Evening prayer—in about four hours. We’re allowed to wander the front lawn aimlessly like zombies.” Her voice was flat and quiet and uninflected, but Glen sensed a lot of bitterness there. Good girl.
“We’ll be there,” he whispered back. “Only bring people you know will leave quietly.”
“Got it,” she said.
From across the garden plot, one of the guards called, “Hey—are you asleep over there, or what?”
“Of course, sir,” she said, standing up slowly. “Please don’t be bullshit,” she whispered harshly to Glen.
“Very real,” he whispered back. “One more thing—if he’s got a prisoner, where would he take them?”
She shuddered. “There’s a wine cellar,” she told him. “You can get to it through the back door during our evening meal. The guards are all around the dining room then—if you’re trying to get that kid in the boat, that’s when.”
“Thanks. If I’m not at the meeting spot, my buddy will be. And if there’s someone you want out, but you don’t think they’ll come, leave them—if we’ve got a name and some parental involvement, we can come back. Right now we’re naked, you understand?”
She nodded grimly. “Gotcha.” And with that she turned and started moving toward a patch of what looked like squash. It wasn’t doing great in the soil; it was sort of anemic and droopy and sad. Gah! No wonder they had to send Brielle looking for produce two or three times a week.