“Jak’s right,” Elias added. “It was made to look like Jak. You have some pretty powerful enemies, ones who will got to the length of taking a discarded weapon and using it to incriminate you.”
Ryan nodded. “That’s what worries me. If you hadn’t been able to vouch for Jak’s whereabouts back there, I figure we would have had one hell of a fight on our hands. They wanted to lynch us.”
“Yeah, and in a way I don’t blame them,” Krysty said thoughtfully. “That would have been a pretty good argument against going to the mainland, if we were the example of what it was like.”
“How true, dear girl, but surely our priority should be to find whoever is responsible for such actions, lest the situation be allowed to worsen.”
“It is easier to say than to do,” Elias mused. “After all, many of the work parties are separated from each other, and it is easy to move about undetected in these woods. Come to that,” he added after a thoughtful pause, “do we know that Mildred and Markos had each other in sight the whole time?”
Ryan frowned. “You think that Markos may have had something to do with this?”
Elias shrugged. “He was quick enough to point the finger of suspicion, and was he not in charge of the party that took you prisoner on the far side of the island? What better opportunity to have retrieved the knife—perhaps only for a trophy or to study—or to know where such a weapon may be.”
It gave the companions pause for thought. If their enemy was the sec chief, then they would have to keep close counsel and watch one another with the utmost care.
The oppressive thought killed all conversation and each was lost in his or her own thoughts as they returned to felling trees. The work was hard and there was a plentiful supply of water. However, the humidity was such that they drank far more than intended, leaving them dry, as J.B. discovered when, with a loud curse, he turned the empty canteen upside down. “Dark night, nothing about this pesthole is good.”
“River there,” Jak commented, indicating through the trees. “Mebbe fill canteen.”
“Is it drinkable down there?” Ryan asked Elias. The dark giant shrugged. “It may be a little brackish with this density of wood—the river gets blocked too frequently to flow fresh—but it will still be drinkable.”
“Better than nothing,” the Armorer commented in a taciturn manner as he took the canteen and headed toward the river that ran parallel to the area being felled by the work parties. As he made his way through the trees, J.B. could hear the other tree fellers at work. But his attention wasn’t on his surroundings. Spinning around his head were thoughts that he didn’t want to consider. If they managed to get off this island in one piece, without either being chilled by separatists or lynched by those who felt they were responsible for the death, then it was highly possible that Mildred may part company with them. Although there was a part of the Armorer that could understand Mildred’s dilemma, for the most part he could only think of traveling on without her. It wasn’t something that he wished to contemplate. He wasn’t a man for expressing his feelings, but he had always assumed that she knew their depth. Perhaps he was wrong.
He had reached the bank of the river, which was little more than a stream, that ran sluggishly. He bent to scoop up a palmful of water to taste it and to appease the dryness in his throat. He grimaced as it hit his taste buds. It was sour and brackish, tainted by the leaves and twigs. But it wasn’t poisonous and better than nothing. J.B. uncorked the canteen and dipped it into the flowing stream.
It was as he lowered himself to his full extent to reach out to catch the water at its fullest flow that he heard the snap of a twig behind him. It was a sharp crack, suggesting a heavy footfall and no small animal following its own path.
Cursing to himself, the Armorer threw himself forward into the river. The realization that he had been so wrapped up in thought that he hadn’t been observing the slightest caution angered him. He couldn’t believe that he’d been so stupe, so soon after they had been under threat. He had to have been simple to track, and he was relieved that whoever was in his wake had been so careless as to give him unintentional warning. He gasped in as much breath as he had time before he hit the surface of the water, flat and hard. The leaves and branches stung with the force of his flattened impact, the surface hard to him like a stone being skimmed across it.