We lifted the unconscious sailor onto the duvet and wrapped him like a tamale. Only his face showed from the folds. With Hollis taking his legs and me at his head, we carried Jaak aft—both of us grunting with effort—and down onto the swim platform, from where we could step to the dock and begin making our slow way toward the house. The pale figure stayed where it was. No sign of the dogs. My forearms ached with the effort of gripping the duvet.
Flagstones in the lawn helped us climb the hill to the house. Hollis’s breath was coming short and fast.
“We can rest if you want,” he said. Then another two gasps later: “Better than dropping him.”
I nodded and we set Jaak down gently on the soaked grass. We were close enough now for me to be sure the figure in the cream-colored rain jacket was a woman. Hollis waved exhaustedly to her. In her middle years and over six feet tall, she had curls that might be ash-blond under the jacket’s ivory hood. She hovered outside the closed door, barely shielded from the weather by a stunted overhang.
“Doctor,” Hollis managed.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the woman said. “Take him to a hospital.”
“We’re here now,” Hollis said. Rain dappled Jaak’s slack face. “At least have a look—”
“He’s not my concern. Leave.” Claybeck held herself stiff upright, as if guarding against the cold and the occasional gust that splashed water over her boots.
“Why tell us now?” I said. “Hollis has been trying to call you for hours.”
“I’ll let the dogs loose again.”
“He could die before we reach the mainland. If we go back to the boat, it’ll be to call nine-one-one. You’re in this now. Help him.”
Before she could answer, the door swung open behind her. A slim man with a thigh-length tan leather coat and a hard expression on his darker face appeared from one side of the doorway. He pointed the blunt barrel of a machine pistol at me. Hollis stepped back reflexively.
For an instant, nobody moved. I watched the gun, anticipating the minute flex of the man’s trigger finger that would send half a dozen rounds tearing through my center mass.
A young woman stepped past the gunman, blocking his field of fire. Her platinum hair had been highlighted with blue tips that brushed the shoulders of her trench coat. She took in the sodden sight of us for a moment before nodding assent to some private decision.
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Come in out of the rain.”
Six
They made us leave Jaak on the wet lawn while the glowering man patted Hollis and me down. His leather coat had a band collar and only buttoned partway down his chest, as much poncho as jacket. I guessed him to be Indian or Pakistani, or some nation close to those borders. He removed my wallet and multitool and even the change from my pockets. Then he knelt to check Jaak himself.
When they were satisfied, the white woman with the bicolor dye job ordered us to carry Jaak into the house. Dr. Claybeck remained at a distance, observing our progress without comment.
We hefted Jaak’s limp form through a mudroom lined with cedar planks and into a finished basement, though unlike any basement I’d ever seen before.
The square room had been outfitted like a very small but completely modern emergency care clinic. Two hospital beds and one steel-topped surface that might serve as an operating table took center stage. A rack on one wall held equipment like defibrillators and vital-signs monitors that I recognized, and a lot more that I didn’t. Cabinets and refrigerators completely covered the far side of the room. Each shelf was fully stocked with a pharmacy’s worth of pill bottles, surgical tools, and other supplies.
One of the beds was occupied. A man, fully clothed in an expensive-looking metallic gray suit and fawn shirt, and a ventilator mask covering most of his face. Elastic bands around his forehead and neck held the clear plastic wedge in place. Tubes connecting the mask’s valve to the ventilator flexed and shuddered minutely with every breath. A sweep of brown hair started high on his scalp and reached down to his shoulders. His eyes were closed.
“Set him on the table,” Dr. Claybeck said to us. It was her first utterance since the blonde and the gunman had appeared. Hollis and I made one last heave to set Jaak carefully on the steel surface.
“Leave him.” The blonde strode across to grab Claybeck’s arm. “See to Bilal.”
“Bilal is stable—” the doctor protested, as the blonde shoved her toward the man in the ventilator mask.
“Then keep him that way.”
Claybeck looked on the verge of spitting right back. She didn’t give the impression of a woman who would be pushed around, literally or otherwise. But she made work for herself by checking the ventilator machine.
“What the hell’s going on, Paula?” Hollis said. “Setting your animals on us and now this?”
“I’m sorry.” Claybeck spared a glance for him. “Saleem and Aura let my dogs loose to try and force you to leave.” She indicated the man with the machine gun and the blonde. “I convinced them that unless I turned you away directly, you’d keep trying. I underestimated your stubbornness.”
“Sorry we didn’t take the hint,” Hollis growled at the blonde, Aura. “This is madness. Why not tend to both of them?”
Because there was no point, I had realized. Whoever the man called Bilal was, his presence here was meant to be kept secret. Now that we had seen him, Saleem and Aura might have no intention of letting us leave.
The man called Bilal opened his eyes. Wide eyes, very dark and completely alert. The mask and tubes gave the impression of a large translucent snake against his face. It was unclear who was eating whom.
He motioned to the mask, and Aura began to remove it.
“He needs that,” Claybeck said. They ignored her.
Saleem motioned toward the opposite side of the room with his gun. “There. Sit down there,” he said in a heavy South Asian accent.
Hollis and I sat on stools against the wall. The stools weren’t metal, like the table, but they were solid enough chunks of wood. Aura seemed distracted with Bilal. If Saleem came close, I would have a fair chance of putting his lights out with the stool and taking his gun before Aura could effectively retaliate.
Except Saleem was a watchful fucker. He kept his distance from Hollis and me. His Steyr machine pistol was more than capable of cutting us both in two from across the room.
Aura helped Bilal prop himself up on one elbow. His bronze face was long and square and creased with temporary furrows left by the mask and permanent ones that spoke of heavy concerns. He took a long breath, maybe testing his lungs. I guessed Bilal’s age at late forties. His brown mane showed no gray. Maybe he went to the same salon as his girlfriend, who must be twenty years younger.
“Your names, please?” Bilal said to Hollis and me. His voice was deep and casual, with the same accent as Saleem’s, though not nearly as pronounced.
Saleem answered for us. “The old man is Hollis Brant, who the doctor told us about. The big one with the marks is Donovan Shaw.” He stepped forward to offer Bilal my driver’s license. The picture on the license didn’t show my marks—the scars that divided my left cheek into three distinct sections, and the smaller ones that bisected my eyebrow and creased my jaw on that same side—as starkly as real life.