The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

instincts.
    Maybe you were right, Will. Maybe I can do this leadership thing.
    Maybe…
    *
    The yacht’s “captain” looked like he had seen better days. Even so, despite the blood loss and obvious pain on every inch of his face, he seemed to be taking captivity reasonably well. If nothing else, he looked well-rested for a man who was missing one of his kneecaps.
    Blaine stayed outside the bridge to stand guard, with Roy and Maddie remaining at their posts. If the eighth man was out there, he was biding his time. Which was fine with her. She didn’t feel like adding another victim to her growing body count this morning anyway.
    Sorry, lake, you’ll just have to wait until tonight for more bodies.
    Keo nodded at the man in the white hat. “Gage, this is Lara. Lara, that’s Gage. Say hi.”
    “Hi,” Lara said.
    Gage peered through a sweat-covered face at her. “Hey.”
    Lara focused on Gage, which helped her to ignore the body sitting against the Trident ’s control console across the room, along with the chunks of…something sticking to the windshield. She hadn’t asked Keo where he had gotten the shotgun and AK-47 he was carrying around with him this morning, but she could guess. There were three bodies on this deck alone.
    “What happened last night?” she asked Keo.
    “They were Trojan Horsing you,” he said. Then to Gage, “Tell her.”
    Gage nodded. “He’s right.”
    “You’re admitting it?” she said.
    “Yeah, why not? Everyone’s dead. I’m half dead. What’s the point in lying now?”
    “See?” Keo said. “Gage here’s the pragmatic type. He figures that if he doesn’t lie, I won’t have any reason to shoot him in his other kneecap.”
    “Yeah, that, too,” Gage said, and this time he did managed a full grin, though she noticed it was half-amusement and half-mortal terror. “What else you wanna know, lady?”
    “What were you going to do?” Lara asked. “When you got to the island?”
    Gage quickly lost some of his enthusiasm and began noticeably squirming in the corner.
    “Don’t start lying now, el capitan ,” Keo said. “The truth. Nothing but the truth. So help your other kneecap.”
    “We were going to take it,” Gage said. “Then we would take everything else.”
    “What’s ‘everything else’?” Lara asked.
    “Whatever you had. The food. The supplies. The…people.”
    “The people? What were you going to do with the people?”
    “Not everyone. Mostly…just the women.”
    “The women…”
    “Yeah.”
    “What were you going to do with the women?” was the next question that she never asked. She knew. Keo knew. They all did, even the dead man with half of his head blown across the windshield.
    She turned to Keo. “What are we going to do with him?”
    “That’s up to you,” Keo said. “It’s your island he was going to raid. It’s also your people he was going to do probably-not-very-nice things to.”
    She nodded and looked back at Gage.
    “Hey, you promised nothing bad would happen to me,” Gage said, but she noticed he had said it to Keo and not her. He wasn’t even looking at her now. Maybe he was afraid, or maybe he thought his salvation lay with Keo.
    He was wrong.
    She drew the Glock and shot him.
    The bullet hit the wall an inch from Gage’s ducking head, and the yacht’s captain might have actually squealed.
    Footsteps pounded the deck behind them just before Blaine burst through the open door. “Jesus, what’s going on?” He looked at Gage, at Keo, then finally at her. “Lara?”
    “It’s okay,” she said, holstering her sidearm. “I was just making a point.”
    “Oh.”
    “I need you back outside, Blaine.”
    The big man nodded, then exchanged a brief look with Keo, who shrugged back at him. “She was making a point,” Keo said.
    Blaine didn’t look convinced, but he left anyway.
    Her radio squawked, and she heard Maddie’s voice. “Guys? What’s happening? I heard a gunshot.”
    “Everything’s fine,” Lara said