Read Online Rebel Island by Rick Riordan - Free Book Online Page B

“We’ll talk later. Go get your friends.”
    Chase nodded with reluctance. “All right. But that guy Garrett’s up there teaching Markie to slam tequila. Not sure I can tear them away.”

    “We need to talk,” I told Alex.
    “I don’t have time, Tres. I’ve got this demolished room, no electricity, and the guests—”
    “Alex.” Maia used her best calm, lawyerly voice. “We have a problem.”
    “A problem?” He laughed in a brittle way. “You don’t say.”
    Maia showed him the envelope with the newspaper clippings. I explained to him about the attempt on Peter Brazos’s life, the murder of his wife and children.
    Alex looked at us like we were explaining a technical diagram in Japanese. “What does that have to do—”
    “The assassin is called Calavera,” I said. “He leaves a candy skull at the scene of every hit.”
    “An assassin. Candy. Did Garrett put you up to this?”
    “Look, Alex, Calavera is real. He’s done dozens of hits. All of them explosions. Mostly he works for the drug lords, silencing informants. Knocking off the competition. He took down the leader of a Juárez cartel about a year ago. Then he tried to kill Peter Brazos. You sure you haven’t heard about this?”
    Alex shook his head, but I could tell his mind was going a million miles an hour.
    “The explosion was in Port Aransas,” Maia said. “It must’ve been big local news. Surely you heard about it.”
    “Maybe—maybe I’ve heard the name Brazos or something. But an assassin? Why would someone give those articles to you? What does it have to do with anything?”
    “Someone apparently thinks Calavera is here,” Maia said.
    “That’s nuts.”
    “Jesse Longoria came here for a reason,” I said. “We found Chris’s business card and a candy skull in Longoria’s suitcase. I think Chris tipped him off that Calavera would be here. Today. June fifth.”
    “Look, Tres. I can’t…” Alex ran his hands through his hair. His fingers were trembling. “I can’t handle this right now, okay? The hotel is falling apart around my ears.”
    “You haven’t found Chris?”
    “Not a sign. The guy’s disappeared.”
    “Then I’m glad you arranged a dinner,” I said. “We need to warn the others. They need to know.”
    “You’re going to scare the hell out of everyone because someone slipped an envelope under your door?”
    “Alex, if this guy Calavera
is
trapped on the island, he’s got no way off until the ferry tomorrow night.”
    “Well, I guess, unless—”
    “He can’t afford to have anybody get in the way of his escape.”
    “What are you saying? He’s going to kill us all?”
    “That’s what I would do,” Maia said.
    Alex and I both stared at her.
    “If I were a cornered assassin,” she amended.
    Alex shook his head miserably. “A nice dinner. All I wanted was a nice dinner to take everyone’s mind off things.”
    He ripped off another piece of duct tape, slapped it across the doorway like a bandage, then trudged off down the hall.

    “He’s hiding something,” I told Maia.
    “Maybe you just don’t like him.”
    “Yeah, I don’t like him. But he’s also hiding something. He used to make fireworks when he was a teenager. Fuses. Timers.”
    “Tres, a hit man using explosives and a kid playing with fireworks are two very different things. Something
is
a little fractured about Alex. I’ll give you that. But he doesn’t seem dangerous.”
    “I don’t believe he’s never heard of Calavera.”
    “What if he’s the one who gave you the articles?”
    “That doesn’t make sense either,” I said. “I don’t think Alex reads.”
    Maia rolled her eyes. “You really
don’t
like him.”
    The plastic and boards and duct tape billowed and creaked against the ruined door, like some kind of artificial lung. I wondered if it was my imagination, or if the wind sounded like it was lessening a bit.
    “If Calavera is here,” Maia said, “he’ll need to leave. And if he knows that we know