The Recruiter

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by Dan Ames


  His hands tighten.

  Beth holds her breath, but the kicking and hitting takes her oxygen, and soon she has to gasp.

  But no air will come.

  She spits into Samuel’s face, but he remains impassive, looking at her with cool disinterest.

  Beth feels her eyes cloud over. She feels unnaturally light, like her feet are off the ground and she’s floating.

  This is what it’s like to die, she thinks.

  And then Beth hears a roaring in her ears.

  Not what she expected at death’s door, a roaring, but there it is.

  And it’s getting louder.

  Suddenly, Beth sees Samuel look away from her. His hands relax for a moment, enough for her to turn her head.

  And she sees out of the corner of her eye a police car with its lights and siren going.

  Samuel’s hands relax even more around Beth’s throat.

  Chapter 95

  The blow to his testicles is brutal, and the pain blossoms throughout his body. He sinks to his knees. He rolls over and looks up into Beth’s eyes.

  “Beth,” he says. “I love you.”

  She hesitates for just a moment, and he kicks out, hard, catching her in the solar plexus. Then Samuel is up and into Beth, knocking her backward where she lands against the motor, breaking it from its wooden platform. The propeller comes out of the water, moving slowly, while the engine races in neutral.

  “You should have just drowned, Beth. It would have been far less painful,” Samuel says.

  “I don’t give up,” she gasps.

  “Admirable.”

  “High praise coming from a SEAL wannabe,” Beth says. “You’ll never make it, you know.” Her hair is in wet tangles, and her face is a sheet of pure white.

  “I won’t?”

  “You’re a coward inside. You’re a quitter. You’ll never be a SEAL but you’ll always be a piece of shit.”

  He springs at her, but she rolls out of the way and swings the oar from the bottom of the boat. It catches him in the middle of the forehead, and stunned, he lands on his stomach on the bottom of the boat. He reaches out and grabs Beth’s left ankle. He wrenches it with everything he has, and she screams as Samuel feels the knee collapse. Beth falls forward, over the motor. She hears something crack, sees the plywood transom holding the small engine in place split in half. The motor swings free, roaring as the prop clears water.

  Beth’s leg knocks the throttle, and the engine howls.

  Samuel rolls onto his back, still holding Beth’s left leg. He wrenches it again the other way, and Beth screams.

  And then Samuel looks up.

  He sees the motor in Beth’s hands.

  Sees the prop come down.

  Suddenly, the engine revs, and the prop is an invisible blur.

  And then she plunges the motor down.

  Into Samuel.

  Chapter 96

  Mitchell wades into the water and pulls the small boat’s anchor rope toward him. He had seen the girl and Ackerman fighting and now he’s afraid of what he’ll find inside.

  The bow of the boat reaches him first and he grabs hold of the steel handle bolted to the frame. He walks backward and as he moves into shallower water he can see more of the inside of the boat.

  Blood. Lots of blood.

  Mitchell keeps one hand on the butt of his gun as the boat begins to scrape the sand bottom of the lake.

  Eventually, he can see the bodies inside.

  Ackerman’s chest is a mess; completely shredded and torn apart, his internal organs on full display. His face is staring upward at the sky, his lifeless eyes wide open.

  The girl is alive. She looks at Mitchell.

  “My Mom?”

  More sirens erupt behind them and Mitchell turns as other cop cars and an ambulance swarm into the grassy drive. Mitchell helps the girl from the boat as paramedics rush to assist. A pair of cops rush into the cottage and then one re-emerges.

  “We’ve got one in here – barely alive!”

  Mitchell feels the girl sag against his shoulders and then the paramedics take over.

  Epilogue

  The gym is less than half full. This surprises Anna. She had always pictured college basketball games as gymnasiums packed full of crazy, screaming kids with their faces painted in the school colors, waving banners and yelling at the referees.

  But here, the bleachers are empty for the most part. And not very many kids are here. It seems mostly to be parents, who tend not to paint their faces and wave banners.

  Anna shifts her weight on the hard wooden surface. Her body has not fully recovered from the insanity of a year and a half ago. She nearly died that night. She remembers nothing after cutting through the tape that had bound her, finding the emergency trunk release, and confronting Samuel.

  The last image was of him swinging the fireplace shovel at her. After that, the new memories start in the hospital. Having her jaw wired, her ribs taped, and CAT scans done to see if there was any brain damage from when Ackerman had strangled her.

  But she is as good as can be, considering her life.

  At times, she still can’t believe the miracle. One of her emails with Beth’s highlight video had gone to the right coach at the right time.

  A miracle.

  Anna’s thoughts are broken by the sound of the pep band blaring the opening notes to “Sweet Georgia Brown.” The teams run onto the court, and Anna automatically searches for Beth, spotting her instantly.

  Anna watches her, amazed as always at the recovery. After the scene at Ackerman’s cabin, Beth had yet another surgery on the knee and then had thrown herself into rehab like a woman possessed. No more feeling sorry for herself.

  Now, Anna watches Beth move through the pregame warmups. She is moving smoothly and confidently. Maybe not as quickly as she had been as a senior in high school, but with the same easy grace.

  The shrill insistence of the referee’s whistle makes Anna look up. The teams are assembling at center court.

  The referee is ready to toss the ball.

  Anna finds Beth sitting on the bench. She watches her daughter shout out encouragement to her teammates. Beth is happy.

  She has come to grips with Peter’s death, thrown herself into her classes and is studying psychology. So far, she is acing all of her classes.

  The referee tosses the ball, and the game begins. It is not until shortly before halftime that the opposing players drop into a 2-3 zone. Beth is immediately called from the bench by her coach and placed in the game. Anna knows that Beth has spent most of her time in practice perfecting her shot. Relieved of ball-handling duties, she has turned her uncannily accurate, purely fluid shot into something even more precise and deadly.

  The point guard on Beth’s team, a small, lightning-quick girl brings the ball up the court. Beth fans out to the left side of the court.

  Anna sits back in her seat. She is calm. She knows what’s going to happen, and for her, it signifies the new life she and Beth have reconstructed since Samuel Ackerman walked into their lives and blew the old one apart.

  The point guard drives into the middle of the lane, and the opposing players collapse the zone to protect the inside. With a subtle flick of her wrist, the point guard shoots the ball over to Beth who has squared up toward the basket, her feet behind the three-point line.

  Beth catches the ball deftly and, in one silky motion, brings the ball in and then up. Her arms and legs all working together effortlessly. The textbook demonstration of a pure shooter.

  As the ball lofts through the air, the backspin perfect, Beth’s hand is hanging in the air in a perfect follow-through. The ball swooshes through the net with barely a whisper.

  THE END

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  Also by Dan Ames

  The JACK REACHER Cases #1 (A Hard Man To Forget)

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  The JACK REACHER Cases #3 (A Man Made For Killing)

  The JACK REACHER Cases #4 (The Last Man To Murder)

  The JACK REACHER Cases #5 (The Man With No Mercy)

  The JACK REACHER Cases #6 (A Man Out For Blood)

  The Jack Reacher Cases #7 (A Man Beyond The Law)

  The JACK REACHER Cases #8 (The Man Who Walks Away)

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  THE CIRCUIT RIDER (Circuit Rider #1)

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  TO FIND A MOUNTAIN (A WWII Thriller)

  STANDALONE THRILLERS:

  THE RECRUITER

  KILLING THE RAT

  HEAD SHOT

  THE BUTCHER

  BOX SETS:

  AMES TO KILL

  GROSSE POINTE PULP

  GROSSE POINTE PULP 2

  TOTAL SARCASM

  WALLACE MACK THRILLER COLLECTION

  SHORT STORIES:

  THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR

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  HANGING CURVE

  SCALE OF JUSTICE

  About the Author

  Dan Ames is a USA TODAY Bestselling Author, Amazon Kindle #1 bestseller and winner of the Independent Book Award for Crime Fiction.

  www.authordanames.com

  [email protected]

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