The Isles of Elysium (Purge of Babylon, Book 6) (23 page)

“So what does Dave look like?”

“Didn’t I just say I’ve never met him?” She looked annoyed, which wasn’t anything new. He had that kind of effect on women lately.

“Right. So Dave the black guy who works in the cafeteria.”

Keo turned back to the bridge.

Miller had reached the middle and was looking around with his hands on his hips. Jack, on the horse next to him, was saying something.

He looked back at her. “You don’t have to do this. It’s not too late to catch up to Tobias.”

“Are you tired of me already?” she asked with a slight smile.

“It’s not that—”

“I’m just messing with you, Keo.”

“Ah.”

She stood up. “Good luck. I hope you’re right about Miller, because otherwise you’re a dead man.”

Tell me something I don’t already know.

He watched her jog off with her rifle. When he couldn’t see her anymore, he listened to the soft
crunch-crunch
of her boots against the ground. Eventually, even that faded, and he was left with just his slightly elevated breathing.

Why was he breathing so hard?

Right. Steve. The soldiers.

And that M60…

He slung the MP5SD just as Steve shouted, “Keo! You out there? You said you wanted to see me, so here I am!”

He paused for a moment at the sight of a squirrel perched on the biggest tree he’d ever seen in his life. The tree had been there before Wilmont was a glimmer in its founder’s eyes, and would likely be here long after he and Steve and everyone else in T18 were gone. The squirrel was staring blankly at him.

Keo grinned back at the animal.

“Keo!” Steve shouted. “Where are you?”

He could hear the growing agitation in Steve’s voice. Apparently everyone was getting annoyed with him today.

Keo decided to let the man keep waiting a little longer, just to give Jordan enough time to get to her spot.

“Keo! Get out here or I’m gone!” Steve looked down at his watch for dramatic effect. “You have one minute!”

Keo stood up.

This is such a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.

The squirrel must have agreed, because it seemed to shake its head at him before turning and trotting off along the massive branch of the tree.

“Keo!” Steve shouted. “You out there? I don’t have all day!”

He sighed and took a step outside the tree line and onto the road and waited for the M60 to cut him down like the idiot he clearly was.

Any minute now…

He reached the
bridge, and he was still alive, so he kept walking.

Steve watched him coming, but Jack and the other soldiers were scanning the area with binoculars. Even the two perched on the water tower to his right were focused on the bridge. One or both probably had their rifles pointed at him at this very moment, though they were too far downriver for him to be sure. He’d rather not know anyway.

He hoped Jordan had found a decent spot to shoot from if this whole thing went sideways. What the hell was he thinking anyway, putting his life in the hands of a man like Steve? The guy had sent him out there to kill his best friend. Okay, former best friend.

Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. Steve had sent him out there more as bait to lure in Tobias’s fighters, who he knew were hiding in the area. That was clever, and exactly the kind of thinking Keo was relying on: a man who could make that kind of tactical decision would see the value of keeping someone like him alive and working for his cause. How different was Steve from all the men Keo had worked for in his ten-plus-year career with the organization?

If the answer was a lot, then this was going to be a very short walk.

But he had made it onto the bridge, and a full minute later, he was still alive.

Definitely a good sign.

If Steve was going to kill him, he would have done it by now. Probably. Instead, the man stood perfectly still, hands on his hips, and squinted across the steel structure at Keo as he walked toward him.

Keo looked from Steve to the two behind the M60. One of the soldiers was permanently fixed behind the machine gun while the other held the ammo belt, waiting to feed it into the black metal monster. The other four guards continued moving around, looking for danger around and under them.

He walked with his hands at his sides, the MP5SD behind him. There was a good chance he could draw the Glock in his hip holster if someone started shooting, but it was unlikely he was going to hit much of anything from this distance. Especially when those two behind the sandbags started unloading.

“You look good for a dead man!” Steve shouted. “A little worse for wear, but apparently still in one piece! What happened to your face?”

“A painful birth!” Keo shouted back.

Steve said something to Jack, and they both chuckled. Then, back at Keo, “I didn’t think you’d survive the ambush!”

“Yours or theirs?”

“Either/or!”

Keo was close enough to the middle of the bridge now that he didn’t have to shout when he said, “You couldn’t have given me a heads up about that?”

“I could have, but then you wouldn’t have walked so casually into their sniper fire.”

“You saw that.”

“Not me, but guys I snuck into the area before you even showed up.”

“You had it all planned out.”

“I’ve been fighting Tobias for a while now. You have to understand the enemy in order to defeat him.”

“Now where have I heard that before?”

Keo finally stopped a meter in front of Steve.

“Let’s see it,” Steve said.

Keo fished out the ring and tossed it over. Steve caught it and held the jewelry up to the light. The sun glinted off the diamonds and washed over the shape of the Lone Star State in the middle.

He took a moment to look up at the sky. Jordan was right; it did look like rain. Not quite here yet, but he guessed before the night was over T18 was going to get a lot of extra water. Maybe they could hang the clothes out and save themselves a day at the riverbanks tomorrow.

Steve had all but ignored him and seemed focused entirely on the ring. If Keo didn’t know better, the older Miller looked almost…sad?

“They were friends, you know,”
Jordan had told him.
“They were friends for a long time after everything happened. They were in the camp together, then one day they were running things…”

“He loved this,” Steve said, then smirked. “I don’t know why. It’s ugly as fuck. What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it,” Keo said.

“Yeah, me too.” Steve pocketed the ring. “But I’ll keep it anyway. In memory of him.” Then he fixed Keo with a suspicious look. “How did you do it? Take out Tobias?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’d like to know.”

“I shot him in the back of the head.”

“How did you know about the ring?”

“I didn’t, but I figured it was better than dragging his entire corpse back here. The ring was the most obvious personal possession he had on him.”

He expected more of an interrogation, but Steve just nodded. “Come on, I think I still have a bottle of spirits stashed somewhere in my office.” He turned to go, but then suddenly stopped and looked back at Keo. “Oh, just for your safety and mine, give Jack your weapons.”

“And here I thought I’d earned some trust,” Keo said.

Steve smiled. “You have. But you can never be too careful these days.”

Keo unslung the submachine gun and unclasped his gun belt and handed them over to Jack. “You’re looking spry.”

“Feeling spry,” Jack grinned back. “Won’t be running around for a few more weeks, though. But hey, things will be calming down with Tobias out of the way. Looks like they turned tail and ran from what our scouts saw back at the YMCA building.”

“I wouldn’t know. I was out of there by first light.”

He followed Steve off the bridge, but not before sneaking a look back at the woods on the other side. Jordan was there, somewhere, among all the green and brown. Of course he couldn’t see her, but he could feel her watching him back.

He turned to Steve. “So where’s Gillian?”

“You in a hurry?” Steve asked.

“I haven’t seen her in half a year, so yeah, I’m in a little bit of a hurry. I want to make sure she’s fine.”

“She’s fine. I saw her this morning.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why were you seeing her this morning?”

Steve shrugged. “It’s a small town, Keo. Don’t read too much into it.”

Keo didn’t believe him, but he said, “How did she look?”

“Definitely worth killing a guy for.” He walked on for a moment, before adding, “So, six months without any action?”

“I’ve seen plenty of action.”

“But no sexy times.”

Keo didn’t confirm or deny. He said instead, “When do I get to see her?”

“After you and I have a little chat.”

“About what?”

“Where we go from here,” Steve said, “and whether you’re more useful to me dead or alive.”

Keo sneaked another look at the woods on the other side of the river, wondering if it was too late to signal Jordan to take the shot.

*

“He was a
star football player, but you probably already guessed that,” Steve said.

He was pouring from the same bottle of Jack Daniels from yesterday, though there was, at most, just three to four more pours left. He pushed the shot glass across the table and Keo took it, then cringed at the burn as the whiskey went down.

“I think our schools might have even played each other’s once or twice, but I can’t remember,” Steve continued. “Way before your time, obviously. What are you, late twenties?”

“Sounds about right,” Keo said.

“You’re pretty impressive for a guy that young.”

“I didn’t have a lot of choices.”

“Hard life?”

“Hard enough.”

“I can respect that. Jack and I were the product of divorced parents; we were raised mostly apart when we were younger. Barely saw each other until our parents kicked off. I can understand having to do what you have to in order to get by. That’s what we’re doing here.”

They were back in Steve’s office in Marina 1. Keo hadn’t been certain he was going to make it off the bridge alive, but that turned out to be his paranoia getting the best of him. Steve seemed happy to keep him breathing, at least for the next few minutes.

“He was good,” Steve was saying. It took Keo a moment to figure out that he was still talking about Tobias. “Got himself a scholarship to UT in Austin. Didn’t play much there, though. As fast and big and skilled as you are, there’s always one or five other guys faster, bigger, and more skilled.”

Steve nursed his drink, staring at the glass as if he expected to find some kind of revelation swimming among the golden honey liquid.

“They were friends, you know,”
Jordan had said.

And yet, he still sent me out there to kill his friend.

“What happened between the two of you?” Keo asked.

He couldn’t care less about the answer, but it was obvious Steve wanted him to ask. Keo didn’t give a shit, but he knew an opening when he saw one, and anything that kept him alive long enough to see Gillian and figure a way out of here was worth enduring the regretful ruminations of a man like Steve.

“We just couldn’t agree on the direction to take Wilmont,” Steve said. “That’s the old name, before we changed it to T18.”

“Who came up with that?”

“No idea. It’s just temporary, anyway. They say in another year or two, maybe we’ll get a real name.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

Steve grinned at him over the brim of his glass. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You’ve only seen the black-eyed ones, right?”

“There are others?” Keo asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“Oh yeah,” Steve said. “They can do things. Crazy things.” He put the glass down with half of the whiskey still inside. “It’s hard to explain. One of those things you have to see for yourself in order to believe.”

“I’ve seen a lot in my time. I couldn’t explain most of it, either.”

“I bet you have. Seen a lot, I mean.” Steve took out Tobias’s ring and spun it on the desktop like a top. For something so gaudy, it was well-balanced and kept turning for a long time. “The kind of man who accepts a contract killing, then comes back after everything that’s happened, is a dangerous one.”

“Or useful.”

“Is that why you killed one of my guys in the woods? To make yourself more useful? That’s three you’ve forced me to replace now.”

“They all had weapons when I took them out. They had just as good of a chance to put me down as I did them. The way I figured it, I was faster and shot straighter. You should thank me for having enough self control not to plug the kid, too, or else you’d be replacing four instead of just three.”

Steve chuckled. “I should be thankful, huh?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re probably right. Besides, I got ten volunteers for every soldier I lose, anyway.”

“Everyone loves a winning team.”

“Very true.” He paused, eyeing Keo over the desk. “I know exactly why everyone is here, why they can’t volunteer fast enough when we ask for names. But what I’m curious about is you. What makes you tick?”