Chapter 11
The heat was unbearable. Even now after the sun had gone down, the building remained stuffy and hot.
At least Geri’s suite had a balcony. She needed both fresh air and some toxic smoke, so she grabbed her cigarettes and lighter and headed for the sliding glass door.
It was locked.
She flicked the switch up and down, but the lock refused to disengage.
“You can’t be serious.” She jiggled the handle violently out of pure frustration. Nothing gave. She tried the windows, but they too were locked and refused to budge.
Whispering a string of profanity, she pressed her forehead to the cool, damp glass. She was tempted to light up right there in the suite. What were they going to do? Charge her extra? Shoot her? At this point, she didn’t give a fuck.
But the room was already hot and suffocating. As much as she liked smoking, she didn’t like the way the smoke could hang in the air and stick to everything. There was also little to no ventilation in here; she couldn’t even crack a window to let in fresh air, never mind let out the smoke, so lighting a cigarette would just make things worse.
Fucking hell. Was it too much to ask for some air circulation?
From a group of people who’d murdered a man in cold blood this afternoon… probably, yes.
And when she tried the door, intending to go downstairs… locked.
Jesus Christ.
“I’m going to die here,” she whispered. She didn’t even know if she meant here, as in the overheated suite, or here, as in this island where she’d witnessed a man getting his throat cut.
How the hell do I get out of here? How the hell do I get off this damn island?
Most likely… she didn’t. There wasn’t a speck of land in sight in any direction. One side of the island was sheer cliffs. The beaches—well, she wouldn’t get her far without some kind of boat or aircraft. The marina in front of the hotel was vacant; all the boats had pulled out— all of them—and last she looked, they hadn’t returned.
There had to be some way out, though. If nothing else, Rich Price and his goons had to have the ability to escape if a major hurricane or something descended on the island. Storms like that usually had enough warning that a plane or a boat could be sent to pick people up, but there were still severe weather patterns that could come up out of nowhere. Like the one that had sunk the superyacht packed with wealthy investors. They were out in the open ocean in the middle of hurricane season—anything was possible.
If she could get away from the hotel, maybe she could find whatever craft they had in case of emergency. Even if it was a goddamn inflatable raft or a leaky canoe— something to get her off this godforsaken rock.
Maybe if she got far enough away from the building—even a mile or two up the beach—whatever signal jammers were in the hotel wouldn’t interfere with her equipment anymore. Though the island was tiny, signal jammers only had so much reach. Unless Rich had thought to equip the entire island with them, there had to be areas where they were weaker or didn’t reach at all.
She just needed to get away and put enough distance between her and the hotel to send out an SOS.
Yes. That was what she’d do. Get out of the hotel. Get someplace as remote as the island allowed. Call for help.
First… sleep. Wait for daylight. Try to get a better feel for what little of the island’s topography she could see from the hotel’s windows. Especially from the boardroom, which seemed to have a 360-degree view.
Okay. Sleep tonight. Tomorrow, make a run for it. Or at least grab whatever opportunity she could to scope out the island. And find an exit from the hotel—if her room and balcony were locked, there was a good chance other doors had been sealed as well.
She put her cigarettes and lighter aside and went through her nighttime routine. As hot as it was, she debated sleeping naked, but the thought turned her stomach; rational or not, that felt just a little too vulnerable and exposed.
Instead, she went with a tank top and a pair of shorts, and after she’d pulled back the covers, she turned off the lights and lay back on the bed. It was too hot to be comfortable, but she would have to make do.
Closing her eyes, she took a few long, slow breaths, willing herself to relax. That was no small task under the circumstances, but she reminded herself over and over that she needed to rest so she could escape. She repeated it like a mantra in her head, trying to will herself to fall—
All at once, the room was bright and full of thundering cracks and booms and screams.
Geri flew upright, and her heart stopped.
Every wall was lit up with projected videos of warzones. Bombs whistled through the air, then exploded with teeth-vibrating roars or distant thumps. Tracers whizzed across the ceiling like lightning bolts.
The images changed. All around her people screamed and sobbed. On the walls, people were pulling bodies of children from a destroyed school bus. Far away, something exploded, adding panic to the misery.
“What the fuck?” she murmured. “What is happening?”
She had no idea, but she had to get out of here. Right the hell now. She leaped out of bed and ran for the door, not giving a damn about anything except getting out of this room.
The door was still locked.
The deadbolt wouldn’t disengage. Just like the sliding glass door, she couldn’t get it open.
“Fuck. Fuck! Are you kidding me?” She pounded on the door even though she knew it wouldn’t help.
She hurried across the room, grabbed one of the heavy chairs by the table, and threw it hard toward the balcony doors. Hard enough that her back and shoulders ached with the exertion.
It bounced off the glass and landed harmlessly on the floor, one of its arms splintering on impact. The slider held with just a dull smudge on the glass to commemorate her attempt.
The room offered no other escapes. She had no way out.
“What the hell?” she murmured aloud as she turned in a slow circle in the middle of the room. “What is happening?”
The stark gray-white walls were like TV screens now, every image clear as day and razor sharp. On one wall, footage from a GoPro or bodycam captured panic in the streets. People ran and screamed. The person wearing the camera was panting and shouting in a language she didn’t understand.
All at once, the panic intensified, and seconds later, something exploded. The camera shook and tumbled, then stilled, now pointing up at a smoke-filled sky. It shook in time with what sounded like labored breathing. The wearer’s voice screamed, then sobbed, then whimpered.
Then there was no sound from behind the camera. No movement.
A woman screamed nearby. There were footsteps, and then a bloody face appeared over the camera. The woman wept, and suddenly the camera was covered, her sobs muffled but her anguish coming through unhindered.
The clip ended, and another began. A group of civilians were trying to comfort a man who’d fallen to his knees beside what remained of a small building.
An accusing male voice spoke over the chaos, “This man has just returned home to find his house—along with his wife, children, and parents—no longer exist. The insurgent who was the target of the attack was two towns over and escaped without injury.”
After that, there was battlefield footage in everything from rural to urban settings. Familiar armored vehicles rolled through, crunching over debris and cars as if they weren’t there.
The narrator helpfully pointed out the Cole Industries weapons and vehicles in play. How the tanks could take enemy fire, including mortars and grenades, with barely a scratch, and then deploy a bunker buster and take out their attackers and anyone else in the vicinity. He described how her company’s drone technology truly was the most accurate on the market, allowing the military to engage and destroy from halfway around the world.
“The CI-994 drone is also the most advanced of its kind,” the narrator explained. “Topping out at well over two hundred miles per hour at altitudes in excess of fifty thousand feet. Unfortunately, when a craft that big and fast misses, whether by operator error or mechanical failure, it misses by a lot.”
Geri’s world was again bombarded with clip after clip of devastation in civilian areas. Homes and farms destroyed. Entire high-rise apartment buildings reduced to what looked like Lego bricks kicked across a child’s floor. A fucking school laid to waste .
Geri sank to the floor and just… stared.
The narration wasn’t the worst part. It was her own voice coming through the speakers.
“Our goal at Cole Industries is to develop weapons systems that allow our troops to fight effectively while physically remaining miles—even thousands of miles—away from the front lines.”
Video clips and still images showed more devastation on an enormous scale. Entire buildings reduced to rubble. Vehicles tossed around like toys or crushed beneath debris like soda cans. A mother screaming in the street as she held her child’s broken body to her chest.
“Weapons like those produced by Cole Industries don’t only wreak havoc when they malfunction or are used incorrectly,” the narrator said. “They are, by their nature, tools of destruction. And destroy they do.”
A clip showed a Cole Industries tank destroying a steel-reinforced bunker in a demo.
After that, an identical tank reduced a building to gravel.
“The four insurgents inside were killed, ” the narrator said. “Along with forty-seven civilians.”
It went on like that. Image after image. Clip after clip. Damning accusation after damning accusation.
On some level, Geri had known about these things. Collateral damage was a reality of warfare. It always would be.
But “collateral damage” was also a phrase that sounded official and dry instead of encompassing obliterated school buses and annihilated families. It reminded her of the way “pneumonia associated with Guillain-Barré Syndrome” had served as a clinical, unemotional way of explaining why her mother was a widow and the full weight of Cole Industries was now on Geri’s shoulders.
War was ugly. War was hell. And war was necessary because a country had to defend itself from—
“Cole Industries continues with its mantra about helping the United States defend itself,” the narrator said as if reading her thoughts. “But despite their contracts being in the name of defense, and with the Department of Defense, their products and political activity support offense and nothing but.”
“That’s…” Geri looked around the room at the walls, which now showed what she thought were clips from Vietnam. “That’s not true.” The Gulf War. Likely Afghanistan and Iraq, especially when Cole Industries equipment was prominently displayed.
“The truth is that American forces have not fought in defense of the United States since World War Two.”
Geri’s lips parted. That was bullshit. That wasn’t—
“American forces have fought for oil. Imperialism. Rare earth metals. Strategic advantage over those who threaten the nation’s superpower status.”
A bomb dropped on the screen in view of a CCTV camera, turning everything white for a split second before the picture cleared, revealing a wasteland where a city block had been.
“American troops and civilians alike have been lied to. Propagandized into believing these wars have been in the name of freedom, democracy, or the nation’s defense.”
Two young American soldiers appeared, shouting for help as they half-carried, half-dragged another man between them. The third man was bloodied and limp, and it took a moment for Geri to realize his bloodstained clothes were camouflage. He was a soldier as well, the other two men shouting over each other for someone to help him.
Men. They were boys. Barely twenty, maybe younger.
“Cole Industries aggressively supports lawmakers who vote in favor of these wars,” the narrator went on. “The defense contractor actively helps people into power who happily perpetuate conflicts that keep bloody taxpayer money rolling into their coffers.”
The soldiers on the screen stumbled. One turned to the man between them, and he panicked, grabbing his friend’s face and calling his name. The other shouted, “Medic! Medic! ”
But it was too late.
One hung his head in defeat. The other pulled his friend close and sobbed, looking younger and younger with each tear that streaked down his dirty face.
“Cole Industries is the grease that keeps the war machine rolling,” the narrator said as the two soldiers cried over their fallen friend. “And that’s exactly how their shareholders like it.”
Geri exhaled and leaned against the bed, still staring at the horrifying images.
They continued. The narrator continued. Hour after hour, as Geri sweltered in the suffocating room, the walls stayed bright with all the death and destruction from Cole Industries.
And Geri didn’t get a moment’s sleep for the rest of the night.