Evan Arden 04 Isolated (4 page)

“
I don’t give a shit!” he yells back. “Just fucking do it!”

I pull my leg up to my chest and slam it forward as hard as I can. He screams like a wounded animal as it rips its flesh on the teeth of a trap. The rock tumbles down the edge of the mountain, and Bastian manages to move his leg a little.

He looks like he’s about to pass out from the pain. I can see him fighting against the urge to vomit, but he manages to get himself back together.

“
I think that did it,” I inform him as he curses.

“
I should have asked for a bullet to bite on.” He shakes his head and blows out puffs of vapor from his mouth.

“
I have a few,” I say with a smile. “I should have offered.”

“
Bastard.”

He tries to pull his leg out again as his face goes red with the exertion. My stomach knots as I begin to think he won’t be able to do it—he’ll pass out before he can free himself. He doesn’t. He grits his teeth and keeps pulling even though I can hear tearing sounds as he finally moves another couple of inches.

There’s one more rock, and I start to tell him to hold on a second so I can kick it away but decide to just do it instead. He screams and curses at me, but he finally gets his leg loose before he drops his head against the ice, panting.

Bastian’s eyes are closed, and I think maybe he did finally pass out from the pain. He only takes a few seconds before he opens his eyes again, twists and turns his body, and eventually pulls himself out of the hole and drops to the ground beside me.

I’m beyond tense as I wait for him to catch his breath. There was no avoiding this moment, and I don’t know what he will do. As it is, he has the option to just pick up a rock and bash my skull. There’s no way I can stop him if he decides to end me now.

I can see the debate in his eyes, and my mind considers all the things I might be able to say to convince him to live up to his end of the deal. I can remind him about my promise to kill Franks, but he already knows that. How will he react if he knows we are half-brothers? I lick my lips, and just as I’m about to give him that little piece of information, he grins at me.

“
Shall we get you out?”

Fucker.

I let out the breath I’m holding and nod. Bastian grabs a flat rock and starts digging out my arm first and then my leg. With both arms free, I can help with the last part. Once I can stand again, Bastian pushes against my shoulder, and it pops back into the socket as I wince.

“
You okay?” he asks.

“
Yeah, I’m good.” I look him over as my whole arm throbs. I know the pain he’s feeling is much worse. “Your leg is a mess.”

He glances down, and I wonder if there is any chance he’ll be able to keep the leg. It looks completely crushed.

“
How are you going to climb?” I ask.

“
I’ll manage. How are you going to get out of here?”

“
I’ll manage.” I give him a smile and a raised eyebrow. He laughs and looks down the mountainside.

“
Keep out of sight,” he says, surprising me with his concern.

“
I’m pretty good at that.” I lick my lips and stare at him. “You’re going to tell them I’m dead, right?”

“
That’s the plan,” he says. “I don’t think they’re going to spend much time looking for you.”

“
They won’t,” I agree. I think about my Barrett sniper rifle, abandoned at the bottom of the cliff. “Rinaldo knows me too well.”

Bastian looks as if he’s about to ask what I mean, but his attention is directed at his leg again. He tries to set it on the ground and lean into it, but he nearly falls. Balancing himself, he reaches for his waist, and I tense as he brings out a long bolt. He must have retrieved it from the dude with the crossbow.

I relax as he holds it up against his leg, checking the length. It will make a pretty decent splint.

“
I can do that,” I say as he starts looking for something to hold the bolt to his leg. He looks at me suspiciously, and I shrug. “I do have some training as a medic.”

I set his leg with the bolt and the wire he’d tried to garrote me with a few hours ago. It works better than I expect, and I think it will at least give him a fighting chance. That’s all he seems to require.

“
It’s going to have to be reset,” I tell him. “A few more hours, and it’ll have to be broken again to get it to heal right.”

“
I’ll deal with that when I get to the bottom of the mountain.”

“
Yeah, I was wondering how you were going to do that,” I say as I look down the steep slope. “I’m going up and over, away from where they might try to land a helicopter.”

“
You know there’s no other way off this island,” he says. “It’s not like you can swim it.”

“
I have an idea,” I respond. “Don’t worry about me.”

“
I’m not,” he says. “I don’t give a shit about you, but I do have a vested interest in your survival now.”

Again, I am tempted to tell him about our relationship. I’m curious as to how he will react. His eyes narrow at me, as if he’s trying to figure out what I’m thinking. He’s paranoid, but with good reason, I suppose. My brother and I have that in common, too.

I will get off this island, and I will kill Franks for him. I think I’d do it even if we hadn’t made a deal.

“
I’m going now,” I tell him.

“
You’re not going to make it,” he states as he looks up the side of the mountain.

“
Yeah, I will,” I say, making a promise to myself as well as him. “You’ll know it, too—as soon as you hear the news about Franks.”

He nods, but there’s still mistrust in his eyes.

I want to tell him. I want him to know. Just as I have myself convinced, I realize there is no way he’ll believe me.

Instead, I reach out and shake my brother’s hand before I turn and walk away.

I don’t look back until I reach the top of the mountain.

Frigid Escape

I reach the top of the slope and glance down at the dark shape of Sebastian Stark as he makes his way down the side of the mountain. I have no doubt that he’ll make it despite his injuries. He’s one tough bastard, and I admire him.

I sigh as I look down the side of the snowy ridge and swing my legs over to start my own descent. I need to find a good hiding spot until anyone who might be looking for me is gone. As I make my way slowly down the rocks, I wonder how long it will take for them to decide I’m buried in the snow.

There aren’t a lot of options for hiding, but as I hear the whir of helicopter blades, I duck behind a ridge and press my back against the rock. The movement jars my dislocated shoulder, and I have to grit my teeth against the pain. All things considered, I’m lucky to be alive. I know it, but I don’t feel it. Just an hour ago, I was ready to die. It would have been a relief. Giving up, even briefly, had felt good.

I probably just need a decent night’s sleep.

A vision moves beside me, and as much as I want to ignore the specter, he stays in my sights, looking over at me with dark hair hanging in his innocent eyes.

He’s not there. I know he’s not really there.

Even with the intense cold, his presence makes my palms sweat. I let myself look in his direction even though I don’t want to. The kid looks the same as he always does—disheveled, dressed in a simple cloth shirt and trousers, no shoes. There is fear in his eyes as if he knows exactly what is about to happen to him.

“
Don’t you have some other poor asshole to harass?” I ask aloud.

The kid tilts his head but doesn’t speak. He rarely does.

I use the back of my glove to rub at my eyes. The snow melts on my skin, causing a chill as the wind hits my face. I need to stay dry, so I use the strip of cloth covering my mouth to wipe the melted snow away and then yank up my gloves.

The helicopter passes over my head and out of sight. I glance over my shoulder at the icy mountain behind me. Mt. Windsor is the only actual land formation that makes up tiny Buckingham Island in Canada’s unorganized Nunavut territory. On a good day, the temperature might reach zero, but it’s not a good day.

Soon, it’s going to be a really shitty night. I don’t think I’ll live through it.

Shuffling away from the rock, I rub at my sore shoulder and start down the side of the mountain again. It’s slow going. Balancing with one arm basically out of commission isn’t easy, and the terrain is rough. The wind is at my back, trying to push me over, but I manage to stay on my feet.

The vision of the kid, occasionally kicking at rocks that don’t move, follows me all the way down.

My head pounds along with my heart. I close my eyes and shake my head, but he’s still there. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do anymore. I can’t get rid of him. When I first started seeing him, before I realized what he was, he would disappear soon after I first saw him. Now he lingers, taunting me with the memories of the boy I killed overseas.

He doesn’t bother to hide when the helicopter passes over again, but I have to duck underneath a rocky outcropping. When I drag myself back out, he still stands there, staring at me. Maybe he’s feeling bolder since I told Stark about him.

“
Fuck you,” I mutter.

Before I trudge on, I pull a small black box from my pocket. I have to take off my glove to tap at the keys, and my hand is nearly frozen by the time I’m done.

“
Always have a contingency plan.” I nod to the kid. The words make me tense as I listen to myself say them. Maybe if the kid had bothered with Plan B, he’d still be alive. I close my eyes and rub my temples as I keep walking down the slope.

Exhaustion is setting in. With all the hours trapped and immobilized, I should feel rested, but I don’t. The cold is seeping into me. I barely notice when I reach the bottom of the mountain, and the terrain levels out. My eyes burn from the sting of the frigid wind. I can no longer tell if I’m shivering or not; my body is too numb. That’s probably for the best, all things considered. My shoulder has definitely popped back out of its socket again though I can’t remember what I did to make that happen. If circumstances were less lethal, I might have thrown myself against a rock to get it back in place, but if I pass out from the pain, I’m screwed. I’ve tried to wrap my arm up as best I can to keep it close to my body and unmoving, but the flashes of sharp pain I had been feeling before have been replaced by the slightest of aches.

I have to keep moving. I know if I stop, the cold will kill me.

It’s been hours since I used a small satellite transmitter to send a single, coded message. I have no idea if it reached its intended recipient or not, and all I can do is wait.

The kid keeps pace as I walk toward the ice, look out as far as I can see, and then walk back toward the foot of the mountain. Because there is nothing else for me to do but wait, I pace back and forth across the rocks and think about how I got here.

Tournament games—organized crime’s favorite pastime. Each of the organizations’ best fighters battle against those from the other groups. In the end, there should be only one man standing, but this time there were two: me and Bastian Stark, my half-brother.

I smile to myself and shake my head at the ludicrous circumstances that have finally brought us together.

Weeks ago, I’d been so tempted to end Stark on the beach in Miami from a quarter mile away. From the rooftop of a construction site, I’d had my finger on the trigger of my sniper rifle, and he’d been in the crosshairs. I hadn’t done it though. The night before, I had learned about our shared lineage, and I wondered if that was going to change how I felt about killing him. It hadn’t. At least, I didn’t think it had. Regardless, I didn’t shoot him. I’d gone down to the beach to taunt him instead. I’d sat in the sand with the sound of the waves surrounding me, trying not to think of the hole in the desert where I’d spent eighteen months of my life as a POW.

It hadn’t worked. I’d had nightmares every night after that, and by the time the tournament was imminent, I’d barely slept more than two hours at a time. I knew I had to do something to help myself sleep, so in Canada, I’d brought a hooker back to my room.