The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) by Sam Sisavath Read Free Book Online Page B

said, and waited for him to continue.
    Riley and Hart exchanged a look. She tried to read their faces, but came up with very little, except that they both seemed uncertain.
    “Guys,” Lara said, “you called me up here. Let’s get on with it.”
    “We’re leaning toward going back,” Riley said.
    “Going back where?”
    “Black Tide.”
    Bonnie laughed. “You want to go back? You’re crazy.”
    “Not with Mercer out of the equation,” Riley said.
    “You don’t even know what really happened to him, or if anything happened at all,” Lara said.
    “Rhett wouldn’t have given the stand-down order if everything was status quo.”
    “But you don’t know that for sure, Riley. This is all just conjecture.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been with him long enough—almost since the beginning—to know how he works. And I’m telling you, the kind of order Rhett gave this morning is something Mercer would never have allowed. Or if there was a reason behind it, Mercer would have given it himself. The fact that he didn’t speaks volumes.”
    “You hope ,” Bonnie said.
    “I know ,” Riley insisted.
    Just like you knew Andy was “all-in” with your mutiny? Lara wanted to ask him, but she refrained for the simple reason she didn’t feel like arguing the point. It was done, in the past, and bringing it up again wouldn’t have helped either one of them.
    Besides, she wished she could force herself to care about what happened to Riley and his people once they left the Trident , but she couldn’t. She had other things on her mind right now, and the fate of Riley’s group was not at the top of her list of priorities.
    Lara looked over at Hart. “You’ve been quiet.”
    Hart shrugged, but didn’t say anything right away. He might have been the oldest man on the bridge at the moment, but he looked reinvigorated since the Ocean Star. She could almost believe he was in his late thirties, if not for those streaks of gray.
    “No opinions?” Lara asked.
    “I got lots of opinions,” Hart said.
    “So spill it.”
    “The honest truth is, I don’t know. But if there’s a chance Mercer could be gone, and Rhett or someone else is now in charge…” He shook his head. “Maybe this is our only chance to go home. It’s not about the island but the people on it. We left a lot of good friends behind. We didn’t agree with them on the war, about Mercer’s plans, but they’re one of the reasons we ran instead of fighting.”
    “You didn’t want to have to kill your friends.”
    Hart nodded. “If we couldn’t avoid that, I’m not sure how many people Riley could have gotten to sign up for this. I know I wouldn’t have.”
    “But people are already dead, Hart,” Lara said. “Did you forget about Andy? What about the group that came through the Ocean Star with Erin?”
    “And I wish none of those things had happened,” Riley said. “But that’s the past.”
    “So what’s the future?”
    “I don’t know yet. I guess it’ll depend on what’s waiting for us at Black Tide.” He sighed, the decision clearly weighing heavily on his mind. “I told my people about what’s happened, what we think’s happening right now. But I’m not going to force them to do anything they don’t want to. If the majority of them want to stay on course to the Bengal Islands, then that’s what we’ll do. I’m not Mercer. I’m not going to strong-arm people into doing something they don’t want to. I’ll lay out everything we know—everything we think we know—and let them make their own choices.”
    “What if the majority wants to head back, but a few wants to stick to the original plan?”
    “Then I’ll have to do some begging to get the captain of this boat to let them stay on and help them get to where they want to go.”
    “No promises. The deal was to take you all there, not to take one group to Destination A and the rest to Destination B.”
    “I understand.”
    “Wow, democracy on the high