Fear (Gone 5)

Orc stared down at it. He placed his own foot beside it. It made the print seem even smaller. It seemed awful small to be from Drake. Drake was a pretty big dude. This was more like a little kid, or a girl.

He could make out three toes: the little ones. The toes pointed down toward the water.

Orc followed the direction with his gaze. Weird, the light was, weird. The shore of the lake looked strange. Something not right.

Then he was distracted by the sight of Sinder and Jezzie working away in their garden. And there was Brianna, watching him actually, when she should have been watching over Sinder and Jezzie.

He raised a massive arm to wave at Brianna and seconds later she was beside him.

“Hey. Orc. Trade jobs with me. Sam has me babysitting the weepy gardeners there. You could watch them.”

“No.” He shook his head.

Brianna tilted her head, a little like a bird. Orc remembered her, too, from when he first met her and she was just coming down from Coates with Sam. She’d gotten pretty full of herself since those days.

“You’re looking for Drake, right?” Brianna asked. “A little payback for Howard? I get that. Totally. Howard was your boy.”

“Don’t act like you care,” Orc grunted.

“What? Couldn’t hear you.”

Orc roared, “Don’t act like you care. No one cared about Howard. No one cares he’s dead. Just me.” It was so loud it echoed. Orc snatched up a small boulder and, in violent frustration, threw it.

It flew twenty feet and smashed against the bluff. It set off two things: a small avalanche of pebbles and midsize stones.

And a sudden rush of panicked coyotes.

Orc stared after them. Brianna’s eyes lit up.

She got close to Orc and in a hard whisper said, “I’ll bet those are the coyotes that did the eating. You got a choice: you want me to get them or not?”

Orc swallowed hard. The coyotes were already atop the bluff and in seconds they would be on level ground and running free. He would never catch them.

“Save one for me,” Orc said.

Brianna winked and zoomed away.

Albert had laid the groundwork carefully.

It was very hard for those without Caine-like or Dekka-like powers even to get out of the sea and onto the island. So he’d arranged for Taylor to carry a looped rope out to the island, secure it around a very sturdy tree, and drop the rope over the cliff.

It was right there in plain view. Anyone who went a little way around the western side of t

he island, past the wrecked yacht, could see it. He’d attached—well, had paid a kid to attach—colorful bits of fabric so that even now, in the eerie brown shadow, the rope was easy to find.

He guided the boat in. There were no waves, just the usual gentle surge. Albert was not a great boat handler, but he’d learned enough, just enough that he could position the boat beside the rope. The rope fell all the way into the water, which meant it was longer—and therefore more expensive—than necessary. But that wasn’t really the point. The rope was where he had arranged for it to be.

The loops made it almost like a ladder. A very awkward ladder that had an unfortunate tendency to push away when you tried to stick your feet in the loops. But once you got started you could climb okay, and especially once the end of the rope had been made fast to the chest in the bottom of the boat.

It was a long climb and Albert regretted not having arrived earlier. He shouldn’t have waited so long. Another hour or two and he wouldn’t have been able to see the ladder, let alone climb it.

He was first up over the lip of the cliff. With a final heave he pushed himself up into the tall grass, rolled out of the way, and, lying on his back, looked up at the sky.

How very strange. Like being inside a soft-boiled egg with the top of the shell chipped away. Sky—normal-seeming sky—but covering only maybe a quarter of the space.

And the growing stain wasn’t night. There were no stars. There was nothing at all. Just blackness.

He stood up and helped the others as one by one they reached the top.