by Mari Carr
Five yards.
She would close her eyes when she jumped to make sure she didn’t get sand in them and try to land on her forearms, not the heels of her hands. She had some vague memory that landing on your hands could break your wrists, so it was best to land on the back of your shoulder. She had no idea how to do that, so forearms seemed like a good compromise.
“Ah, here we are. Don’t worry, soon we’ll be in the middle of the Atlantic, and then we’ll call him. He’ll tell us what to do next.”
Sylvia was reaching for the door latch as Alicia spoke. There was a boat anchored at the end of a small, rickety dock that stood alone on another long expanse of beach. In the distance, she could see the gray ribbon of a road winding along the higher ground inland.
A boat. If Alicia got her onto a boat, she was fucked.
Sylvia hit the unlock button with one hand, yanked on the handle of the door with the other, and tried to fling it open.
“No!” Alicia shouted, reaching into her door pocket.
She hadn’t factored in the resistance of the air. She forced it open with her foot.
Sand, kicked up by the front tire, was splashing into the car.
Sylvia grabbed onto the doorjamb with her right hand, ready to jump.
Alicia swerved the car to the left. Sylvia fell backwards. The door slammed shut on Sylvia’s fingers.
She screamed in pain, heard the crack as bones in her hand snapped. White-hot agony froze the breath in her chest, and her mind went blank except for a single thought.
Pain, pain, pain.
Then the adrenaline surged again, and Sylvia kicked at the door once more. It hadn’t latched—thanks to her fingers—and swung open. She braced her foot better on the bottom of the doorframe, and this time when Alicia swerved, the door banged into her knee. More pain, but nothing compared to her right hand, which she couldn’t bear to even look at.
Alicia picked up speed, the car making an odd noise as she raced across the sand toward the dock. They were long past the point where Sylvia had planned to jump out.
She was hurt and would have no cover once she was out. But there was no turning back. The past few moments had proved that this woman, who had once meant so much to her, was willing to not just drug her, but hurt her.
“Sylvia, stop it this instant!” Alicia yelled.
Sylvia jumped.
Her back was to Alicia, so she didn’t see her teacher’s hand move.
The instant before Sylvia leapt from the car, Alicia stabbed a second needle into her. She felt the sharp, precise pain for only a moment before she was airborne, flying out of the car. She instinctively curled her right hand into her body, protecting it. She landed hard on her left knee, then shoulder. The third thing to hit was her face, which slammed into the sand.
For a moment, she was lost, suffocating.
Then momentum took over and she rolled over and over, sand flying around her, her elbows, knees, back, and head impacted again and again as she instinctively but unhelpfully tried to curl into a fetal position.
The first time she rolled, the plunger of the needle pressed into the sand, forcing the ketamine into her body.
By the time Sylvia’s body came to a stop, the drug was already swimming through her blood. In a way, it was a blessing because it meant she didn’t hurt. She had just enough awareness left to push onto her side, so she didn’t suffocate facedown in the sand.
Her eyes already closed, she slipped into unconsciousness as the waves lapped against the sand only a few feet from her motionless body.
* * *
“I’M CURIOUS,” Hugo said, glancing over his shoulder at Oscar. “You said Sylvia sent an SOS. What did she say? Did she say she was in trouble?”
Oscar shook his head. “No. She sent an arrow emoji. That’s our family’s signal for distress.”
“Your family has an organized way to signal for help?” Hugo turned back around and glanced at Lancelot. “And Eric thinks you’re paranoid,” he murmured.
“Who’s Eric?” Oscar asked.
“Hugo calls you paranoid, and that’s your question?” Lancelot asked with an amused grin.
Oscar shrugged as Hugo said, “Eric is merely a colleague.”
They fell silent once more. Hugo wished for more conversation. The moments of quiet gave him too much time to think, to focus on the churning well of panic and rage that made him nauseous. Sylvia wouldn’t be with Alicia if they hadn’t involved her in this manhunt. It was why he’d resisted speaking with her to begin with.
He recalled Eric pulling him aside following that last librarians’ meeting, when the fleet admiral announced Hugo would be the one to deal with the “goddamn Americans.” The fleet admiral had waited until the others had left, then dropped the real reason he was sending Hugo to find Alicia.
Ordinarily, Hugo would never have spoken out against his leader, but the second he’d heard Sylvia’s name, he’d dug in his heels, refusing to put the sweet young student he’d recalled in danger. Hugo remembered Cecilia, another librarian, describing the way Alicia had killed Derrick Frederick, the details etched into his brain. He’d refused to put Sylvia in harm’s way.
Eric had been displeased, telling him if Hugo could find Alicia without Sylvia, to do so. But if he failed…
He’d failed. Failed the mission, the Masters’ Admiralty, but most of all, Sylvia.
And now all he could do was sit in this car, imagining Alicia placing an electrical collar around Sylvia’s neck, pushing the button on the rem—
“We got it,” Oscar exclaimed from the back seat.
They’d been driving nearly an hour, Hugo feeling more and more hopeless with each mile. Sylvia’s brother had set up a mobile office on the back seat of the truck, his laptop open, several cell phones scattered on the seat next to him. There was a larger bag at his feet that he’d explained contained a drone, though God only knew what it was in Oscar’s genetic makeup that made him think, “Hey, I have to rescue Sylvia, I’ll bring my drone.”
“You’ve got what?” Lancelot asked.
“Sylvia just sent another text.”
Hugo spun in the passenger seat. “What? What does it say?” Though he’d never admit it, with each passing moment, he’d begun to fear they would never find Sylvia alive. The practical part of him—which he hated, presently—couldn’t come up with a logical reason for Alicia to keep her former student alive.
If she took Sylvia because she was angry or felt betrayed, then killing her enemy—something Alicia had done before—was the most obvious reason for taking her.
“Give me a second,” Oscar said, not looking up.
Hugo impatiently studied the man and, as he did, a weird, random thought came to him. “Did you change your hair?” he asked Oscar.
Lancelot shot Hugo a quick “seriously?” look, then went back to driving. “Come on, brother. Get me a location.”
Oscar tapped on the keyboard, his fingers moving a mile a minute now. “I just,” tap tap tap, “neeeeed,” tap tap tap, “to,” tap tap tap, “triangulate the,” tap tap tap, “signals!” With one last hard slam on the enter key, he looked up with a smile. “I got it. Got a location.”
“Hugo,” Lancelot started, but Hugo already had his phone in hand, opening the GPS.
“Way ahead of you. Give me the address.”
Oscar was back on the keyboard once more. “Two seconds. I had coordinates. I need to…there.”
He rattled off an address and Hugo plugged it into his phone, holding his breath for the few seconds it took the system to reconfigure to their new destination.
“Got it!” he exclaimed.
“And?” Lancelot asked. “How far away?”
“Thirty minutes.”
Oscar leaned forward, looking at the speedometer. “It’s the pedal on the right side, Knight. Let’s see if you can cut that thirty in half.”
Lancelot narrowed his eyes at the challenge, even as he accelerated.
Chapter Fifteen
According to Oscar, Sylvia’s latest message had pinged between two cell towers, and this beach was the area where those two towers’ signal radius overlapped. Unfortunately, the overlap was miles of beach, and not a flat, easy-to-search beach. The sand dunes created a sort of mountain range with plenty of valleys and hidden low spots. An effective search of the area would take a team of people hours.
Alicia had selected a brilliant location—remote yet accessible, with plenty of options for concealment and escape.
It was the perfect place to dump a body.
It had been nearly forty-five minutes since Sylvia’s last text, but he had to put that fact away. Because if he focused on that rather than the task at hand, he’d act rashly, recklessly—fear and worry driving him rather than reason and logic.
They didn’t have a search team, so a grid search of the dunes was out of the question. The massive truck engine wasn’t quiet, so continuing to drive rather than go on foot was a calculated risk.
“Pull over here,” Oscar said. Sylvia’s brother seemed so different when he was out of his house and away from his mad scientist tech lab. Lancelot had thought him a suspicious arsehole the first time he’d met him, but this guy…this guy spoke to his kick-arse-take-names-later heart.
Oscar had been rattling around in the backseat ever since they’d made the turn onto this access road. Glancing through the rearview mirror, he noticed Oscar had pulled the large bag containing his drone up onto the seat.
Suddenly the drone made perfect sense, and Lancelot realized Sylvia’s brother wouldn’t just make an amazing security officer, he’d have Lennon Giles unseated as security minister within days.
He pulled the car off the road, tires sinking slightly into the sand.
Who needed a search team when they had a drone?
“Ah, this is brilliant,” Hugo murmured next to him when he realized Oscar’s plan.
Oscar climbed out and they followed suit.
“Eyes in the sky,” Hugo said to Lancelot as Oscar quickly prepared the drone for takeoff.
“The camera feed will show up here?” Lancelot asked, studying Oscar’s laptop.
Sylvia’s brother merely nodded, too busy setting up the quadcopter.
Lancelot saw when the video camera was turned on, the feed showing on Oscar’s computer. The right side of Oscar’s face came into view. It was impressive quality.
Lancelot had drone envy. He was going to have to convince his boss to outfit him with one of these bad boys.
“What’s your flight time on this?” Lancelot asked. “And your range? Do we need to get to higher ground? Does this thing have infrared?”
Oscar never looked in his direction. “Do you want me to answer questions or find Sylvia?”
Hugo shot him a shut-the-hell-up look and Lancelot closed his mouth, letting Oscar do his work.
“Okay. It’s ready.”
Hugo picked up Oscar’s laptop when he silently nodded to it, then the three of them climbed to the top of the sloping dune in front of them. Oscar launched the drone, using the transmitter to control its path.
Oscar directed the drone in a sweeping route, somehow managing to section the land, dunes and oceans into equal, organized quadrants that would have made Lancelot’s SAS counterintelligence training officer proud.
The three of them watched the laptop screen carefully, searching for any sign of the two women or the car or—
“There!” Hugo said loudly, pointing to the computer screen. “A car.”
Oscar turned his drone in that direction as they all leaned closer. A car was parked on the narrow strip of flat beach between the sand dunes and the water. The end of a small wooden pier was anchored in the sand not far from the car.
Oscar added elevation, zooming out the picture so they could see the end of the pier. “Is that…”
“A boat,” Lancelot said, his pulse picking up. “Get in the car. If Alicia gets that thing away from the pier, we have no chance of catching them, finding Sylvia.”
Hugo cradled the laptop, and he and Oscar ran to the truck, jumping into the backseat together. Lancelot hopped in the driver’s side as Oscar rolled down the back window. Hugo kept an eye on the laptop, directing Oscar, who continued to keep the drone focused on the boat.
Lancelot shot back onto the narrow road that paralleled the coastline, racing toward the spot where the drone hovered and keeping his eye out for a break in the dunes large enough for them to drive through.
“Merde,” Hugo said, as they sped down the road.
“What?!” Lancelot said.
“I see Alicia.”
“Sylvia,” Oscar said. “Do you see my sister?”
“No.” There was heartbreak in Hugo’s voice, though Lancelot could tell he was trying to control his emotions.
“What’s Alicia doing?” Lancelot asked.
“Taking something, I think it is a…yes, a suitcase, out of the boot.” Hugo sucked in a breath. “She’s looking at the camera! Pull back! Pull back!”
Oscar cursed.
Lancelot spotted a break wide enough for the truck. He resisted the urge to pick up speed. He’d done his share of recon and rescue missions in locations with sandy soil. If he went too fast on sand, the tires would spin out, digging in and trapping the vehicle. Slow and steady was the only way.
“Hugo, when we get there, check the car. Make sure Sylvia’s not in it. I’ll go after Alicia.” Lancelot turned, taking his foot completely off the gas as he left the paved road. He eased between the dunes.
“Hurry!” Hugo demanded.
Lancelot ignored him, ignored the way adrenaline and emotions were making his fingers tremble. Once they were through the dunes, onto the hard-packed sand of the beach proper, he picked up speed.
Lancelot spotted Alicia’s vehicle at the same time as she spotted them.
Alicia abandoned her bag in favor of running down the short pier.
Lancelot slammed on the brakes, all three men lurching forward. He grabbed one of his guns and leapt out of the driver’s seat almost simultaneously with throwing the car in park.
Within a second after the car came to a halt, all three of them were out. Lancelot kept his eyes on Alicia, who was less than ten meters away. If this were a simple assassination mission, it would be over. She was an easy target. He lifted his gun. If he could take out her leg…
He couldn’t risk it. If he’d had a sniper rifle, and enough time to factor in the wind, the way the dock bobbed, and the fact that she was moving, he would have taken the shot, confident he would incapacitate her but not kill her. He didn’t have that kind of time or stability. Firing a hand gun at a moving target, while he himself was in motion, was a situation with too many factors he wasn’t controlling. Shooting out her knee or thigh without careful preparation could result it hitting her femoral artery. She’d die before he got any information.
Dammit, he needed her alive.
Needed her alive because she’d taken Sylvia.
Sylvia, who had given her trust and stolen his heart…
No! He needed Alicia alive because his mission was to torture information out of her.
Oh, he had plans for torturing this bitch.
Alicia was untying the boat even as she leapt aboard.
Lancelot was on the pier in a flash, Hugo following his command to check the car. He prayed his partner would find Sylvia safely inside. If she was on the boat…
He raced along the pier as the boat engine fired to life, sensing Oscar was right behind him.
The boat was a few feet from the pier by the time he reached the end. Lance
lot never broke stride, not even for a second.
One moment, his feet were pounding along the rickety boards, the next he was airborne.
Reaching out when it became apparent he wasn’t going to make it, he dropped the gun into the ocean and managed to grab hold of the low bar at the very back of the boat. Mercifully, the fishing boat’s motor was under the vessel, rather than at the rear, or he’d be ground to fish food at the moment.
Even so, the boat picked up speed. Alicia was trying to shake him loose.
Lancelot’s muscles bunched as he fought to find purchase, his grip slipping on the slick railing. His lower body was flapping like a flag in a hurricane along the surface of the water, the smack of the water against his legs sending bolts of pain along his nerves.
With every ounce of strength he had, he managed to pull himself forward—the hardest pull-up of his life—and hook one arm over the railing. Then he threw the other arm over the metal bar and managed to drag more and more of his body out of the chilly water. Once he’d managed to draw his chest over the railing, it became easier to hoist himself onto the low shelf at the back of the boat where fishermen no doubt kept their coolers.
His chest burned from the exertion, his legs felt numb, and his eyes stung from the saltwater; he was breathing hard and had no weapon.
And none of that mattered. Lancelot may have come from humble beginnings, but he was former SAS, with over thirty confirmed mission kills. This bitch was going down.
Rising, he realized two things.
Alicia was no longer at the wheel, even though the boat was still traveling at a high rate of speed, the throttle locked in place. And the small covered cabin was empty.
Skirting slowly along the side of the boat, he sent up a prayer that Alicia didn’t have a gun. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been shot, but it was irritating every time.
Lancelot prepared himself for what would happen next, running scenarios of what Alicia might be doing, so no matter what happened when he found her, he’d have a plan for a quick—if not painless—non-lethal takedown.