Rhodda gave a half-laugh, half-sob in response.
“And you were only keeping Brock because you needed him to keep Rhodda cooperative,” Hallie added. She’d come to that conclusion a while back, but from the small flinch and gathering tears in Rhodda’s eyes, saw that Rhodda had accepted that as well.
“That’s not true,” Brock said. “You wanted to take me. You said I was one of your best men. Tell them.” He looked at Jonah with a pleading expression that reminded Hallie of a lost, anxious child. Still dangerous, Hallie knew, with his hero-worship of Jonah and the gun in his hands.
Jonah spared Brock a sideways look, but kept most of his attention on Girard, Peredur and Hallie. She could see the calculation in his face and eyes. He’d weighed the odds and decided he couldn’t fight his way free. If it had been just her and Jonah, Hallie had no doubt at all that he would simply have killed her and left. There would have been no hesitation at all. As it was, he was making a different calculation. Perhaps living now to regroup at another time and place. “You’re going to let us go,” he said, addressing his words to Peredur. “We’re going to take one of the ATVs and leave.”
“And go where?” Hallie asked, genuinely curious. As far as she knew, the only settlements on the island were Reunion and New Hope, and she was quite sure neither of them would welcomeJonah in. He’d more or less left the settlers alone, but they feared him and wouldn’t trust him. Jonah might be able to overpower Nicholas on his own, but without his own armed men, Hallie wasn’t sure he’d succeed in taking over the island. His better option was leaving Paradise. There might be a dock at New Hope, but she hadn’t seen a vessel there that was capable of a long voyage.
His mouth pressed into a flat, angry line, but he didn’t answer her, eyes still on the director. “We’re leaving now.”
That told Hallie that Jonah himself had no real idea where he was going beyondaway from here. It said something about him that his first instinct wasn’t to fight but to flee. Cruel and violent where he believed he could win. Prepared to run otherwise. And up close, she could see the faint lines of age on his face, see past the impressive figure he’d seemed from a distance to what he really was. A killer and a coward.
“No, you’re not,” Peredur said, with cool confidence.
“You have no authority here and no reason to hold any of us,” Jonah said.
“The Conclave does not recognise Paradise as an independent state. It’s within Conclave jurisdiction,” Peredur Roth said, voice flat and leaving no room for argument. “And we’re going to find more evidence of smuggling and other illegal activity when we look through the house.”
“I don’t recognise the Conclave’s authority,” Jonah said, lifting his chin. “This is a human country, andhochlenhave no authority here.”
“There’s another matter apart from the smuggling,” Hallie said. “One of the citizens of this island, Waller Howther, was killed, and I suspect that Rhodda at least has more information about his death she could share. We need to speak to you all about that death.”
As she spoke, she kept her attention on Brock and Jonah. Jonah somehow managed to look both bored and irritated, but not worried. Brock, on the other hand, could not hide his fear. He took an instinctive step back, as if distancing himself from the whole discussion. And Hallie’s suspicions crystallised into certainty.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Hallie asked Brock, keeping her voice soft. “I wondered why Rhodda was so nervous about Waller’s death, when I don’t think she had anything to do with it. But she was covering for you, wasn’t she?”
“No,” Brock said.
His lie tasted foul in Hallie’s mouth. He wasn’t a good liar. Even without her truth sense she’d have been able to tell he was hiding something.
“What is this?” Jonah asked, anger spiking. He turned to Brock. “What did you do, you fool?”
“He saw me talking to Vinny,” Brock said, words tripping over each other as he tried to get his explanation out.
And of course he would try to justify himself to his hero, Hallie thought, her mental voice hard-edged. He wouldn’t respect his mother or the Conclave officers in front of him. But a cowardly criminal like Jonah? Brock was going to do all that he could to stay in his good graces.
“He was going to tell the others that I was working with you. He was going to ruineverything.” Brock’s voice rose, sounding petulant in Hallie’s ears. “I fixed the radio as well, so it wouldn’t work and they couldn’t keep talking to the Conclave. That was all my idea.” The boast in his voice made Hallie want to cringe. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to follow the train of thought that led Brock from killing Waller to sabotaging the radio several days later. She was quite sure that Brock had never imagined that the Conclave would send someone to investigate the silence from the island. He hadn’t lived long enough to realise that theone sure way of getting the Conclave’s attention was to ignore them.
“Idiot,” Jonah said, disgust clear. “The only reason I’ve kept you around so long is because your mother was useful to me. You’ve been nothing but a headache from day one.”
The shock and hurt on Brock’s face almost made Hallie feel sorry for him. Almost. But she couldn’t forget that he’d willingly joined forces with Jonah, had conspired with him to extract cooperation from Rhodda, and somewhere in all of that, had killed a man to protect his secret. Hit Waller so hard that the man’s skull had been caved in. It might have been an impulse, but it had come from all of Brock’s choices up to that moment. So she managed to push her pity aside and save it instead for Rhodda, who looked heartbroken.
“Take that back,” Brock said, lifting his gun and pointing it at Jonah. “You take that back.”
Girard and the director lifted their guns in turn, training them on Brock. Seeing him as a threat. Hallie didn’t blame them. The young man was almost unbalanced.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jonah said, contempt in his voice. “You don’t have what it takes. Put that gun away. Let the grown ups talk.”
The sound of the gun firing was the loudest thing Hallie had ever heard, quickly followed by shouting and slow-motion movement. Peredur and Girard both moved forward, their own guns stowed in holsters before they tackled Brock to the ground, Girard kicking the boy’s gun away. Rhodda stumbled back, pressing herself against the wall of the house, mouth open in a silent scream. Hallie thought she shouted as well before moving forward, towards Jonah.
She reached Jonah just as the man’s body hit the ground with a thud almost as loud as the gunshot in her ears, a large hole inhis forehead, eyes wide open, an expression of surprise on his face.
She crouched down beside him and put her fingers on his neck, looking for a pulse that she knew would not be there. His skin was still warm under her touch, but there was no life left in his body. Still crouched beside the body she turned to look first at Brock, wide-eyed and furious, tears on his face, struggling with Peredur and Girard, and then at Rhodda, who had slid down the wall to huddle on the ground, knees drawn up, face a study in grief, more tears falling. As Hallie watched, the older woman put her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.
Running footsteps snapped Hallie’s attention away from Jonah and Brock. She straightened to her feet as a group of four black-cladhochlencame running around the corner of the house, weapons ready.
“Sir, we heard a shot,” the lead man said. Hallie thought it was Frollo.
