While relieving himself, he swatted away the mosquitoes. For four days he’d been at their mercy, doing his best to stay hidden and survive in the unforgiving landscape. Part of him didn’t care anymore whether he got captured by the police or not. At least in a jail cell, he’d be away from the bugs, and he’d get three square meals a day.
Deke better think up something soon, he thought. I can’t do this shit forever.
A chilling thought crawled up his spine. Maybe Deke wasn’t coming. Maybe Deke didn’t care about him, and therefore could care less if the man lived or died. Maybe he’d been deserted by his own people.
He finished up, then zipped his pants. Just as the thought began to burrow into his psyche, the sound of a boat engine woke him from his thoughts. Casper knew boats. It sounded like a small outboard. And it sounded like it was coming from inside the lagoon. It would be the first motorized craft he’d seen in the body of water since arriving. Every visitor had anchored down in the deeper water surrounding the islands.
He stumbled through the thickets, then climbed up onto a thick branch for a better view. Shielding his eyes, he spotted a skiff enter the lagoon from the western opening in the mangroves. At first, he suspected that it was a tour guide as well. Or a fisherman looking to take advantage of the lagoon’s isolation. But as the boat motored closer into view, it was clear that it wasn’t a tour, or a fisherman.
He ran back to his camp, grabbed a small pair of binoculars from his sack, then returned to the vantage point in the tree. Focusing through blurry lenses, he saw three people. They were preparing to deploy a bright yellow device that he’d recognize from a mile away.
As one of the men turned to look in his direction, Casper got a good look at his face and gasped.
It’s the asshole.
His left hand instinctively brushed his injured thigh as he focused in on the man who’d inflicted the wound. Despite the fatigue, the pain, the lack of nutrition, and the itchy skin from a thousand bug bites, a surging anger overtook him that transcended everything else.
This local should’ve finished me off when he had the chance.
He took one more sinister look at the man and his companions, then staggered back to his camp. Reaching back into his sack, he traded the binos for a handgun.
Nothing made him happier than the prospect of sneaking over to their boat and filling the guy with lead. But as he’d snatched his weapon, his phone had fallen out onto the dirt. The screen was blank. He kept it powered off to conserve the battery, turning it on just once a day to see if he’d received any word from Deke. It had been three days since he’d heard his leader’s voice.
But this…this changes things.
A prospect more enticing than just revenge crept into his mind. He could kill their enemy and become filthy rich at the same time.
If they had a magnetometer, it meant that they were looking for the gold. And they were doing so on the opposite side of the lagoon from where Jake and Tuck had been looking.
They know something we don’t.
He smiled for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. There hadn’t been anything to be happy about for a while. Not for him. But this wiped the slate clean.
He set his gun back in the sack and grabbed the phone. After powering it on and seeing that he still hadn’t received any word, he made a call of his own.
~ ~ ~
Deacon Lynch walked along the edge of a murky pond filled with alligators. The white supremacist leader had just finished checking the back of their new compound’s perimeter, making sure that the chain-link fence was intact. His boots were muddy from the trek, his Confederate flag shirt drenched in sweat.
He stopped, removed his ballcap, and wiped his brow. The swastika tattoo at the base of his neck was just visible above his collar. He looked terrible. Unkempt and exhausted. It had been a long and eventful couple of days scrambling to pick up the pieces after everything that had happened.
He gazed upon the nearest gators sunbathing on the muddy shore, then put his hat back on and continued forward. Just as he took his second step, his phone vibrated in the front pocket of his tattered jeans.
He slid it out, focused on the caller ID, then sighed.
“What?” Lynch said in an agitated tone.
“Is that any way to talk to one of your followers?” Casper said in a joking tone.
“I’m hanging up.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Casper said, his tone shifting to serious. “Trust me.”
Lynch paused. “Talk, Casper.”
“I just wanted to call and wish you a merry fucking Christmas, Deke.”
This guy’s been spending way too much time out in the sun.
“What the hell are you saying?”
“I said, merry Christmas.”
Lynch shook his head and rolled his eyes.
This guy’s officially gone off the deep end. Too much sun and isolation.
“I don’t have time for games, Casper. I’m trying to figure a way out of this mess.”
The white supremacist leader was just about to hang up the phone when Casper spoke again.
“I’ve got our way out of this,” he said. “I’ve got a way for us
