Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

“Why?”

“I have a message for him.”

“A message?”

He could see Wyatt trying to read him and not doing a very subtle job of it.

“Yeah, a message,” Keo said. “Like one of those singing telegrams. That’s me. Except I’m not a very good singer. But I can hum pretty good.”

That elicited a confused look.

“Joke,” Keo said.

“Oh.”

“So where’s Tobias?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Wyatt shook his head.

“You do realize that you were taking me to him a moment ago, right?” Keo said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?”

“No.”

Keo sighed and slung his submachine gun and drew the Glock. He pointed it at Wyatt’s kneecap and squinted behind the sight.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Wyatt said, suddenly alarmed.

“I’m going to shoot you in the kneecap.”

“Why the hell you gonna do that?”

Keo looked up at him. “To get you to tell me where Tobias is. Duh. I know it’s going to hurt, but trust me, I’ve had experience with this. I once shot a guy in the kneecap while we were both on a boat. He was perfectly happy to assist me after that.”

“Hey hey, come on now.”

“Hold still. It won’t hurt. Okay, that’s a lie. It’s definitely going to hurt a lot.”

“Don’t, okay?”

Keo pulled back a second time. “Why not?”

“I…” Wyatt’s eyes darted behind Keo, as if he expected someone to come out of the woods at any moment and rescue him. When no one did, he said, “I’ll take you to him. Just…don’t shoot me in the leg.”

“I was going to shoot you in the kneecap.”

“Yeah, don’t shoot me there, either.”

Keo stood up and holstered the Glock. “See? Now we’re almost best friends.”

Wyatt sighed and stood up, using the tree behind him for support.

“How far away are we?” Keo asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer. Wyatt had fired two shots, and no one had showed up in the last ten minutes. That meant the camp wasn’t close by.

“Not far,” Wyatt said. “Maybe another hour by foot.”

“You guys have vehicles?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t hear any earlier.”

“We’re pretty deep in the woods. We’ll have to start circling back toward the road.”

Keo nodded. “So you do know where you’re going.”

“Yeah.”

“Lead the way, then. Just keep in mind that I’m not against cutting short our burgeoning friendship, Wyatt.”

Wyatt grunted and started off, moving in the same path they had been going earlier. Keo noticed the man’s head turning slightly left and right. Wyatt probably thought he was being slick, that Keo wouldn’t catch the movements. He was, of course, looking for his weapons, the same ones Keo had tossed earlier. Keo decided not to tell him that he was looking in the wrong direction.

“What does he look like?” Keo asked. “Tobias.”

“He’s a guy,” Wyatt said.

“Really? And here I thought he was a bear.”

Wyatt snorted. “What do you want with him, anyway?”

“I’m going to ask him to friend me.”

“Friend you?”

“You know, like on Facebook.”

“You have Facebook?”

Keo smiled. “Joke, Wyatt. Just a joke.”

“Oh,” Wyatt said, and Keo thought he sounded just a little too sad when he said it.

*

They walked through the woods for another ten minutes, then fifteen, and though Wyatt insisted they were moving back to the road, Keo couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. After a while, Keo was sure Wyatt was leading him to a dead end, that maybe the guy never knew where he was going in the first place and was just hoping to stave off getting shot for as long as possible.

After about an hour of pointlessly stumbling around one identical section of woods after another, Keo was about to stop Wyatt and use the bullet-in-the-kneecap as incentive when he saw sunlight filtering in through a wall of trees in front of them.

He grabbed Wyatt by the shirt collar and jerked him back roughly, then deposited him to the ground. “Stay, boy.”

Keo stepped forward with the MP5SD at the ready and looked out.

They’d slowly been angling back toward civilization after all, and he was now looking out at a strip mall with a Valero gas station and a row of businesses on the other side of a two-lane road. On the other side was a strip mall with a Valero gas station and a row of businesses in the back. Sunlight glinted off the barrel of a rifle just barely visible on the rooftop of a Wilmont Mutual Insurance office building. The shooter’s head poked up briefly before disappearing again behind a cut-out picture of the Statue of Liberty.

Keo scanned the rest of the buildings and saw a second, then a third man, the two stationed at opposite ends of the connecting rooftops. They were watching the streets and surrounding area with an alertness that told Keo they were waiting for an impending attack. The rest of the strip mall looked deceptively empty, but Keo didn’t buy it.

Behind him, Wyatt was picking himself up from the ground when Keo grabbed him by the shirt collar and walked his former captor back to the tree line.

“Your friends?” he asked.

Wyatt nodded.

“Why here?” Keo asked. “Why are they still hanging around so close to the ambush site?”

“Maybe that’s what we want.”

“Come again?”

“Tobias isn’t stupid.”

“Go on…”

“Maybe he wants the people from T18 to try to hit him again.”

“You’re saying this is a trap? Tit for tat, is that it?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“How many men do you have left?” Keo asked, looking back out at the sentry perched behind Lady Liberty as the man raised his head briefly to glance down the street before ducking back down.

“I don’t know,” Wyatt said.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know how many made it back from the ambush. I was inside the woods, remember? That’s my job. Scout the area for signs of movement coming and going from the town and report back. I wasn’t even supposed to be involved until the shooting started. Then you just ran right at me.”

Keo still couldn’t spot any movements behind any of the storefront windows, but that didn’t mean the buildings were empty. If this was a trap, an attempt to lure Steve’s people into a payback ambush, the shooters would be hiding and waiting to strike.

Clever dogs.

“Is Tobias in there?” he asked.

“I guess,” Wyatt said.

“You guess?”

“They told me to bring you here, so I guess he’s in there, somewhere.”

“Makes sense,” Keo nodded.

“So what happens now?”

“Give me a second.”

“I mean, to me.” Wyatt sighed. “Tobias won’t be happy that I led you right to him.”

“He told you to take me to him, didn’t he? Why wouldn’t he be happy that you did exactly as ordered?”

That seemed to confuse Wyatt temporarily. “I guess…”

“Besides,” Keo said, “I just want to talk to the guy. Sit down and have a chat. Maybe over some warm beers-”

Snap!

Keo spun around-a difficult feat, since he was still half-crouched-in time to see two figures emerging from behind a thick brush. They were both huge men, their faces painted in camo like Wyatt earlier (More of Tobias’s scouts, Keo thought). More importantly, they were both armed and by the look on their faces, they were equally surprised to see him.

“Fuck!” one of them shouted, even as he lifted his rifle-an M4 with a red dot scope on top.

Keo was wondering how the hell had they gotten so close without him hearing them until now even as he jerked Wyatt in front of him. Wyatt gasped and tensed up as he realized what was happening. Keo abandoned the MP5SD-it was too long, making it too cumbersome for what he had in mind-and drew his Glock and jammed the barrel under Wyatt’s chin at an angle.