Chapter 34.
Dinner is served before long and finally the mood in the room lightens, and people are telling of the adventures they’ve experienced so far, about whales and sharks and spiders and all the rest of it.
Somehow the evening swings back to being about the camaraderie most, if not all, of them are feeling.
They don’t know about the adventures to come, or stories yet to be told.
But on this night, even with the short amount of time they have been together, that camaraderie matters, even without Luca Tommasi.
They are here, even if Luca is not.
“Hey, at least none of you got attacked by leopard seals,” Marcelo Oliveira, the jiujitsu man, says at one point.
He’s sitting across the table from Jimmy.
Jimmy says, “Leopard seals are mostly solitary. But they can be dangerous, seriously dangerous.”
Hannah’s eyes light up. “Sometimes they smile. And they sing underwater. So what happened, Mr. Oliveira?”
Marcelo recounts how the ice field on which he’d been walking cracked open like an egg, just as it had for Alek.
But he was, he says, quick enough and agile enough to jump away in the nick of time; was carefully backing away from the edge when a leopard seal lurking underneath the surface had risen up out of the water and tried to bite through the thick ski pants he was wearing.
“I guess that leopard seal wasn’t smiling. Then what?” Hannah asks. It’s clear that she’s caught up in the story. They all are.
“I managed to spin around and roundhouse kick him right in the teeth,” Marcelo says, “before I ran like hell back to my snowcat with my pant leg flapping in the breeze.”
Jack thinks: It’s like we’re telling war stories. Except that his father, the ex-Marine, always said that you didn’t tell stories like that until the war was over.
Jack doesn’t like to tell them, period.
“Why don’t you two blokes compare your wounds?”
Tipton.
Jack hadn’t gone looking for him on the ship taking them back to the airport at Punta Arenas. Then he had stayed away from him on the plane, not sure if he could control himself if he confronted him, and worried about making a scene in front of everybody else.
He frankly didn’t know if he might get sent back home for doing what he wanted to do with Tipton—shove him up against a wall, just for starters.
But tonight, Jack immediately feels the same searing heat in the back of his neck he’d felt in his leg on the trail that day.
Jack looks him dead in the eye.
“You left me on that trail.”
“I went to get help,” Tipton says. “Which eventually arrived.”
“That’s your version,” Jack says.
“It’s the truth,” Tipton says.
There is one empty chair at Jimmy’s table, between Marcelo and Reg Drummond, maybe the most famous person here with the exception of Jimmy. Tipton, dressed all in black, as always, starts to sit down with them.
“Seat’s taken,” Jack says.
“That seat’s been empty all night,” Tipton says. “And it’s not even your table.”
No voices have been raised. Still: There is a hush over this part of the ballroom. All eyes on them.
Jack’s eyes don’t leave Tipton.
“We all decided to keep it open in honor of Luca,” Jack says.
“Pity about him,” Tipton starts—
Jack’s eyes lock. “Don’t.”
Tipton lifts a hand like he’s surrendering. “I’m saying it’s tragic.” He shrugs. “But the rule is simple: You stop, you die. He stopped.”
The air changes. Alek’s jaw tightens. Hannah’s eyes go cold. Rupert’s face changes. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just . . . a line being crossed.
Jack starts to get out of his own chair. Elena puts a hand on his arm before he does. “No lo hagas.”
Jack knows enough Spanish from growing up in Texas to know she’s saying this to him:
Don’t do it.
But Jack isn’t entirely ready to drop this.
Not yet.
“Heard you left Luca the way you left me,” Jack says.
“Some of you may still be under the misguided notion that this is a team sport,” Tipton says. “I’m not.”
“My team saved my life,” Alek Andrich says.
She catches Reg Drummond’s eye, smiles at him, offers a discreet wave. Maybe because she and Reg have also been through something life-changing together. Jack used to feel that way with the Rangers. He understands the look that has just passed between Reg and Alek.
“They saved my life, too,” Hannah Wagner says, “not that I’d expect you to care about that. Or me. Or anybody except yourself.”
“Bully for them,” Tipton says.
Jack: “You didn’t answer my question. What happened with Luca, Tipton?”
“Nothing.”
That’s when Rupert Chadwick stands and walks over to him.
“Excuse me,” Rupert says.
Tipton turns—
—and Rupert drives his fist straight into Tipton’s nose.
Not wild. Not flailing. One clean shot full of a football academy kid’s timing and balance. Surprising everyone for the second time tonight.
Rupert grabs his fist. That hurt.
Tipton staggers back, hand flying up, blood trickling down his nose. A clean, surprisingly hard hit.
“You little . . .” Ant lunges at the kid, who retreats. “That’s right. Run away!”
Now Jack moves. Fast. He gets between them before Tipton can take a step.
“No lo hagas,” Jack says, low, close to Ant’s bleeding face. Then, in English: “Not him. Not tonight.”
Tipton stares past Jack at Rupert, eyes bright with shock and something else—anger, sure, but also calculation, like he’s already deciding how to use this.
He takes a step back instead.
Smiles through the blood.
“Good punch, kid,” Tipton says.