“Ah’ve been a hunter all my life,” he said with a cockeyed smile. “Ah could track a hummingbird through a hurricane.”
Raven shrugged. MacD was always saying stuff like that. Not being a hunter herself, she couldn’t tell if he was right. She’d grown up on military bases, and then worked in the Military Police after joining the Army, spending most of her time tracking people using clues of a different kind. But one of the things she’d learned since being added to the Oregon crew was that her new colleagues were experts in their fields. If MacD said the woman was hiding behind a tree a hundred yards away, Raven accepted it without question.
“Let me talk to her,” she said. “I don’t think your kind of charm is going to work in this situation.” As an investigator, one of Raven’s specialties was talking to people and gaining their trust.
“Whatever you say,” MacD said. “But Ah’m going to keep an eye on you.” He raised the crossbow.
“Keep an eye on my six,” she said, pointing in the other direction. “Those gunshots may have drawn unwanted attention.”
He nodded, and she crept forward.
She went fifty yards and stopped, still far out of range of a person not trained in how to use a handgun.
“Miss,” she called out. “My name is Raven Malloy. My team and I aren’t here to hurt you.”
There was no response, but now Raven could see a little bit of a black jumpsuit moving behind a palm tree.
“I know you’re scared. I would be, too. We know that you’ve been stuck on this island for a long time. We saw the plane. But you’ll be safer with us than you would be with the friends of that man who was about to kill you.”
“Stay away!” the woman called back. “I know about Bedtime!”
Raven moved a little closer. “I don’t know what that means. We want to help you.”
“You’re here to kill us all!”
“We don’t want to kill anyone.”
“You killed that guard.”
“My squadmate did that with good reason,” Raven said. “Wasn’t the guard going to shoot you?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Then I’d say we just happened to have good timing. Come out, and we’ll take you home.”
There was a rustle of bushes, and the woman emerged holding the pistol at her side. She was of Indian descent, but she spoke with an American accent.
“Either you’re lying and you’d find me eventually because I have no place to go on this speck of an island or you’re telling the truth, which makes more sense because you could have easily shot us both back there. Am I wrong to hope?”
Raven walked forward, her weapon slung across her back. “You’re not wrong. What’s your name?”
“Lyla Dhawan. Where am I?”
“An island west of India.”
Lyla paused as that sunk in. “But your accent isn’t Indian. Are you American?”
Raven nodded and took the pistol before shaking her hand.
“Who are you people? Special Forces?”
“Something like that,” Raven said. “We got a tip that something wasn’t right on the island, so we came to check it out. We were told it was inhabited by a hostile indigenous tribe.”
“Apparently, they died off in a disease outbreak ten years ago, but nobody found out. My captors let the Indian government think it was still populated by natives.”
MacD emerged from the jungle. “It won’t be populated by anyone much longer. We should get going . . . Hi, Ah’m MacD.”
Lyla was surprised to see him appear out of nowhere, but she said, “Hello.” Then a stricken expression suddenly crossed her face. “Oh, no! That was your friend back on the beach, wasn’t it? I killed him!”