The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) by Sam Sisavath

said, and went back to reclining.
    Will wanted to build a guard tower on top of the boat shack, to give the beach the same kind of coverage that the Tower provided. It was another item on a to-do list that was getting longer every week. Not that she minded. If you didn’t work or enjoy running around the beach every day, there wasn’t much else to do on the island.
    “Where’s Blaine?” Lara asked.
    “He went to the hotel for a bite,” Maddie said. “He’ll be back to relieve me in a few hours.”
    “Keep an eye on the girls for me.”
    “You got it, doc.”
    Lara headed back up the path. She liked Maddie. The country girl had come to them with Blaine and a young man named Bobby. Bobby was gone, killed during the attack on the island. It had been a bad night for all of them, but to look at the island now, she couldn’t even see signs that there had been a bloodbath on the beach just three months ago. The bodies were buried in the field behind the marina, and the blood had been washed away by the tide.
    *
    She heard laughter from the kitchen, and inside she found Blaine leaning against one of the counters, picking at a plate of baked fish wrapped in aluminum foil, while Sarah ate from her own plate with a fork. Sarah’s cheeks looked flustered, her long blonde hair—the longest on the island by far—in a ponytail that went all the way down to her waist.
    Blaine was licking his fingers when she came into the kitchen. “Hey, want some fish?”
    “Smells good,” Lara said.
    “It would be nice if we had some vegetables to go with it,” Sarah said. “Cilantro or basil would be wonderful.”
    “Zucchini or green olives, too?”
    “See, I knew there was a cook in there somewhere.”
    “She must be very well hidden, then.”
    There was suddenly awkward silence, and Lara got the sense she had interrupted something.
    She quickly turned to go. “I’m going to go do something…that isn’t here. Carry on.”
    She caught Sarah blushing a bit as she left, but Blaine was already out of her peripheral vision so she couldn’t tell his reaction.
    Blaine and Sarah? Was it possible?
    She reminded herself what Blaine had lost just to get to the island. For the first few days after the fight, they weren’t even sure he was going to stay. At one point, she remembered Will telling her not to be surprised if Blaine disappeared into the western section of the island, into the woods, and never came back. Blaine was looking noticeably less haggard in recent weeks, and whether it was the island weather finally doing its job, or the (Sarah’s) company, he seemed to have more life in his eyes now than in all the time she had known him.
    She was happy for him, for Sarah. Or maybe she was reading too much into what was really just a simple, innocent moment? She hoped it was true. The two of them had been through a lot. They all had. To find a little slice of peace, maybe even happiness, was more than any of them could have asked for when so many people had lost their lives.
    She thought of Will again and couldn’t help but smile to herself as she walked through the hotel. Sometimes she forgot she was on an island, that just beyond those waters were creatures that shouldn’t exist, but did. But here, now, in this place that was designed for rich people but had never been finished, none of the world’s problems mattered.
    This is our home now. God help those who try to take it from us.
    Lara found Carly in the laundry room, near the back of Hallway A—the main hallway that connected the completed sections of the hotel—past the ballroom and squeezed in between some employee lounges and large storage rooms. It wasn’t quite the bowels of the hotel, but it was close.
    Carly was folding bedsheets and humming some pop song Lara vaguely recalled being popular on the radio. Lara tapped her on the shoulder.
    A month ago, Carly would have jumped, but this afternoon she just glanced over and pulled free one iPod earbud. “Hey. How you