“I saw it. She didn’t come to the island for fun or fresh air.”
“No shit. I’ll tell Bo.”
And Bo studies me for some time in silence when I spill the info. We sit in the workshop and smoke a joint.
“So she came to spy on Archer, or the entire island, whatever the deal is.” Bo is calm and calculating something in his mind. “Here is the thing though. I know age is not an indicator. She might be a trained assassin for all I know.” He passes the joint to me. “But if she thinks she can sneak past Archer, she is in for a big fucking surprise.”
I nod.
As much as I hate Crone, the fucker is genius. He might have been into chicks and drugs and booze and football, all mula and fun on the surface. But at home, he had a library the size of fucking Congress. He could speed read and had a photographic memory. He spoke fluent Spanish and was brilliant in chemistry. He invented two party apps that went viral and did some day trading. He wasn’t your typical rich kid—he’s been making money since he was thirteen.
I admired him. He was like no one else. Behind the spoiled kid who liked to tell the world to bow and paraded hot chicks around, he blew me away with his random conversations.
I’m still not sure how our friendship started. Crone always had a big crew. An inner circle. And another cohort of fans. But within a year, we became best friends. He was like a brother who, when everyone headed like a herd of sheep to some hot happening, would pull into my shabby driveway and say, “Come on, bro, fuck them all. Let’s go for a ride.”
There was this invisible thread that tied us together. Things we shared were at times too shameful. Stories that no one else knew about that we told each other, drunk or high, when we roamed the city and the most random places.
We got drunk in Tijuana one spring and got into a fight with cartel mules. We raced sports bikes. We went to Ultra Fest and partied with some big-name DJ, then flew with him to Tulum for a wild week, then ditched him, rented a car, and drove up across Mexico.
Then Callie came along. Crone saw the way she and I looked at each other.
That’s when something snapped in him.
I think, for the first time, he felt really jealous. Deep affection was his issue, after what happened to his mom and brother. And he decided that if he couldn’t have the happily ever after, no one would.
It all went downhill. If we’d sorted it all out the day after the Block Party, life could have been different.
But the next day was the beginning of the end.
I know Crone better than he knows himself. He thinks he has his shit together. But that accident with his mom and little bro left him forever scarred. It made him vicious when something made him feel vulnerable.
Katura doesn’t know that, but she should. She will find out. I hope it doesn’t break her free spirit. I pray Crone doesn’t fuck up her ego.
I ask Callie about her.
“She never said anything,” Callie says as we walk toward the greenhouse one morning after breakfast. “But she didn’t lose anyone during the Change. And she is too independent to want to be locked away here. So it makes you wonder…”
“Yeah. She has a family?”
“Well.” Callie smiles as if remembering something.
Fuck, how I love Callie’s smile. She is wearing flip-flops and a surfer’s tank that comes down just barely below her bikini bottom. Her hair is tied in a loose bun on top of her head, and I want to throw her over my shoulder, carry her into my bungalow, and fuck her senseless.
S-s-stop.
“Here is what she told me,” Callie says, stopping by the entrance to the greenhouse, then looks inside to make sure no one can hear and crosses her arms over her chest. “Her dad and uncle are former Navy SEALs,” she says in a low voice. I chuckle in surprise. She nods with a half-smile. “Yeah. They did some contract jobs in Asia. They built a bomb shelter in the mountains of Pennsylvania a year before the stuff went down.”
“No shit…”
“She’s lived in Arizona, California, in Thailand for several years. She knows martial arts, first aid, shooting all sorts of weapons, speaks a little bit of Russian, fluent Spanish, and some Thai.”
“Holy shit,” I murmur.
“I mean. I thought she was adventurous. I didn’t think twice about it when we were on the way here.”
“Right.”
We stand in silence for a moment, and I need to leave before I make it too fucking awkward.