Page 26 of Murder Island
“Lovely,” said the hostess, taking a seat on an ottoman across from the two men. “Now it’s just us. Let’s start our first lesson.”
“What’s your name?” asked Nils.
The hostess did not answer right away. Instead, she tapped a finger against her lips, as if counting seconds.
Nils twitched once as blood began to spill from his nose and mouth. A second later, the same thing happened to his brother. They didn’t flail or cry out. They couldn’t. Their motor muscles were already paralyzed. But their minds remained totally alert, and their hearing had become even more acute.
The hostess leaned in. “My name is Lial,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you that, because there’s nothing you can do with the information. I also need to tell you that it was a huge mistake to undercut my price on the Stingers. Very bad business.” She leaned back. “I think you realize that now.”
Both men just stared at her, frozen in terror. There was nothing else they could do.
“You don’t have to say it,” said Lial. She reached forward to pat their rigid hands. “It won’t happen again.”
Then she crossed her legs, folded her arms, and watched the brothers die.
CHAPTER 30
KIRA WAS WATCHING, too. She couldn’t help herself. She was now cuffed and tied to a captain’s chair near thePrizrak’s massive control panel. In the seat next to hers, Cal Savage leaned in toward the monitor.
“Perfect.Perfect!” He was admiring the POV from Lial’s brooch camera. Kira could see how impressed he was with her skills.
“The poison,” he said. “Her formula.”
The image rose and fell slightly every second or two. Kira realized that it was from Lial’s breathing. In less than a minute, blood started to cake on the chins and shirts of the two brothers. Their eyes were frozen open. Kira saw Lial’s right hand reach out. The pad of her middle finger rested on Nils’s neck, just below the angle of his jaw. Then Lucas. The camera’s angle tilted and swirled as Lial stood and turned toward the exit. There was a moment of black. Then her face filled the frame.
“Done,” she said softly into the lens.
The screen turned to static.
Savage turned toward Kira. “Your turn, Ms. Sunlight.”
Kira tensed her muscles, looking for an opening. Any chance to make a move. But she was trapped. Was this where it was going to end? She realized that she didn’t even know which of the seven seas she was floating on.
But fear was one thing she would not show.Ever.
“Do you get off on making snuff films?” she asked. “Is that your thing?”
Savage gave her a twisted smile. “I had hoped to seeyoudie, if that’s what you’re asking. I definitely would have watched that.” Savage turned back toward the monitor. “But now I have a much better idea.”
Kira’s mind flicked through the possibilities. None of them pleasant.
Savage picked up a video controller and selected another input. “I’m about to give you an assignment, Ms. Sunlight. Your chance to live a little longer.”
The screen lit up with jerky handheld footage. The time code in the corner was from six days earlier. The scene was midday, bright sunlight. The camera moved along a path through thick tropical foliage. It stopped at a clearing, where a shallow pit had been dug out of the orange-tinted soil.
In the pit were bodies. Maybe a dozen men. Swarms of insects buzzed across the lens as the camera moved closer—close enough to show horrific gunshot wounds. Limbs werenearly torn off, bones exposed. Heads were shattered, some missing jaws or eye sockets or entire craniums. Brains and gore mottled the men’s khaki uniforms. Kira inched forward in her chair, scanning quickly for Doc’s face. Please, God, no… But the dead men were all young and Black.
“What happened here?” said Kira. “Why am I looking at this?”
Savage seemed to be observing the footage with clinical detachment, sometimes freezing a frame to study an image before moving on.
“This footage was taken near one of my financial interests,” he said. “A copper mine. Remote location. A week ago, the mine fell into the wrong hands.” He tapped the screen. “These men were my employees. My overseers and guards. Obviously, they were poorly armed, or inadequately motivated.”
“Copper?” said Kira. “Copper for what? Your own line of cookware?” She was sure that she knew the real answer. She just wanted to hear it from him.
“Don’t play the naïf, Ms. Sunlight. You know as well as I do that a by-product of copper is cobalt, and cobalt is the rock that now runs the world. Extremely profitable. This mine is an investment I can’t personally attend to. But it’s one I don’t intend to surrender.”
“So send Lial,” said Kira. “Retribution seems to be in her wheelhouse.”