Dark Fissures

by Coyle, Matt;

  Bates’s partner, Doug McCafferty, overlooking us from a hidden vantage spot, was cover.

  Bates could handle any killing up close. If I went for my gun now, I’d end up dead and Brianne with me. If she wasn’t there already. I had to rely on my wits and an ex-Navy SEAL, who up until a couple hours ago I thought was an enemy, somewhere out there in the dark.

  “Where’s Brianne?”

  “She’s here.” The shadow nodded toward the sand dune.

  “I need to see her.”

  Another nod. Another shadow emerged from behind the dune. Arms together in front. Bates kept the gun on me, but grabbed the shadow with his free hand. He took a couple steps toward me, and I could make him out.

  And Brianne.

  Her hands were cuffed together in front of her in plastic restraints. Duct tape covered her mouth. Her face was mostly shadow, but I could still see the whites of her eyes. Desperate.

  Anger pushed inside me.

  “Let her go and you’ll get what you want.” I spit the words out jagged between my teeth.

  Bates pulled Brianne a couple steps forward to within ten feet of me.

  “Brianne, kneel down and lie on your back.” He tugged her arm and she did as commanded.

  The clock was running out.

  “You killed Jim Colton over money?” I watched his eyes. “You fought together for God and country and killed him because of money? He saw the new McCafferty at Seaport Village one day and realized it was the old McCafferty, then figured out you two faked his death after you stole the Iraqi gold and started up the fake holding company. Couldn’t you just have fled the country and let him live?”

  “I’m impressed, Cahill. But not too much.” He took another step toward me. “Hands behind your head and walk slowly towards me.”

  “I just hoped it was something more important than money.” I didn’t move and kept my hands at my side. “An old grudge, a woman, honor.”

  “Hands up!”

  “Okay!” I snapped my hands into the air and took a step toward Bates.

  “Stop.”

  I did.

  “Back up. Pick up the bag, then slowly walk toward me.”

  I did as told.

  “Stop. Drop the bag.”

  I stopped a yard in front of Bates and dropped the duffel bag.

  “Both hands behind your head.” He approached me and stuck the gun under my chin.

  I froze. Cold steel against my skin. Fear pushed the anger out of my blood for the first time on the beach.

  Bates patted down my jacket with his free hand. He stopped when his hand pressed against the handle of the .357 in my shoulder holster.

  “Were you planning on using this?” He smiled at me as he unzipped my jacket and shoved his hand in to retrieve my gun. He put it in the waistband of his pants behind his back.

  Next he felt around my waist, then bent down and searched my legs inside and out. He yanked off the KA-BAR knife I’d taped to my calf.

  “You were going to stab me, too?” He stood all the way up and looked me in the eye, then threw the knife, blade first, into the sand. It stuck. “To answer your earlier question, yeah, it was just for the money, Cahill. Only the money.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  Bates’s eyes softened. He pulled the gun from under my chin, but kept it aimed at my chest.

  “When Jacks figured everything out, we went over to his house to talk to him. He was sitting in his den looking at old photos of us in Iraq. Like that all still mattered. We gave him the option to come in with us. But he hadn’t changed at all since the war. We didn’t have a choice. He wanted us to turn everything in. To who?” Bates’s voice rose. “Back to the Iraqi businessmen who were funding terrorists? The US government? So they could spend more on fucking bureaucrats and send us out to fight their wars with our hands tied behind our backs? Fuck that. We did our time. We lost friends. We killed for the bureaucrats. We just wanted our piece.”

  “So you and McCafferty drugged him and hung him in his garage where his son would find him.”

  “Story time’s over.” Bates put his free hand in his pants pocket and pulled out a ten-inch cylinder and snapped his wrist. The middle of the cylinder expanded out. A metal nightstick. He slammed it against my right kneecap before I could twist away. Pain exploded along my knee, and I crumbled to the ground. Brianne moaned behind the duct tape. I writhed in the sand on my back and grabbed my knee.

  Bates picked up the duffel bag and unzipped it. He shoved his hand inside and shuffled it around. Finally, he turned the duffel upside down and dumped out its contents. My burglary tools fell into the sand. Bates slammed the bag onto the ground and zeroed his gun on me.

  “Where are the bonds, asshole?”

  “What bonds?” I honestly didn’t know what he was talking about. The duffel bag was a prop. Something to make Bates think I’d brought what he wanted to give Oak Rollins time to sight him in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Time was up. I stared at the gun and prayed that my phone would vibrate. That Oak was out there somewhere with Bates in his crosshairs.

  “You really going to play dumb now?” Bates stood over me and aimed the gun at my face. “The bearer bonds. Where are they?”

  “I’ve got them hidden away.” Ignorance wouldn’t keep me alive. Lying might. For a while. “You’ll get them when no one’s pointing a gun at anyone.”

  “You just killed your girlfriend.”

  Bates swung the gun toward Brianne. I shoved my hand down my pants and grabbed Jim Colton’s derringer taped above my crotch. I thumbed the hammer back blind and yanked the gun out. I pulled the trigger. A loud snap jerked Bates to the right just as his gun fired. Bates grabbed the side of his neck and spun toward me. I cocked the hammer and fired at center mass. Bates tumbled to the ground, eyes wide.

  A rifle shot echoed through the night. I whipped my head toward the bird’s nest in the hotel’s turret. Something dark tumbled down the lit merry-go-round roof. A body. I didn’t know whose. Doug McCafferty or Oak Rollins.

  I dropped the empty derringer and lunged at Bates. My knee screamed under the adrenaline. Bates lay on his back, one leg bent at a wrong angle beneath him. His gun in the sand inches from his hand. I grabbed it and pointed it at him. A damp spot grew on his chest and blood gurgled in his throat. Then stopped. His eyes stared at nothing.

  “Brianne!” I tried to stand up, but fell down. I fought the urge to burrow into the sand to hide from another rifle shot fired by the wrong man.

  Brianne rolled over and stood up. Her mouth covered by duct tape, she nodded and ran toward me. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out.

  “You okay?” Rollins.

  “Yeah.” I blew out a breath that I held for the whole night.

  “Brianne?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Bates?”

  “Dead. McCafferty?”

  “Dead. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m not sure I can walk.”

  “You hit?”

  “No. Busted knee.”

  “I’m on the way.”

  Brianne grabbed the KA-BAR knife from the sand with her bound hands and dropped to her knees next to me. She pushed the knife toward me, her eyes frantic. I grabbed the knife and then pulled the duct tape from her mouth as gently as I could.

  “Cut these off.” She thrust her bound hands toward me. “We have to catch her!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  “WHO?” I CAREFULLY slipped the knife between her wrists and sawed at the Flex-Cuffs.

  “Alyssa.” Brianne’s body vibrated.

  Alyssa. Wife to Kyle Bates and daughter to Ben Townsend. Was she the third person? The second car door at the auto body shop. The driver of the SUV at the hospital. The connection between Bates and McCafferty to Townsend. It made sense. I just hadn’t seen it before.

  “She was here?”

  “Yes. She was holding me behind the sand dune. She’s getting away!”

  “
No she won’t. The police will catch up to her. We can’t avoid getting them involved now.”

  The knife gave and Brianne’s wrists flew apart, each with a plastic loop still around it. She bounced to her feet.

  “We have to go after her. Can you run?” She bent down and slid her head under my arm and her arm around my back and lifted up.

  “Why?” I hopped up on one leg and tried to put weight on the other. Pain shot through me and my leg buckled. I fell and Brianne went down with me. Bates’s gun tumbled down into the sand. The police would be on the scene any minute. Someone must have heard the gunshots and called them in. Coronado was a small island. The police wouldn’t have far to go.

  “I have to stop her.” Brianne stood up and held out her hand. “I need your keys.”

  “The police will take care of her. She’s their problem now.”

  “Please!” More anger than sadness.

  I pulled out my keys and tossed them to her. “The Mustang’s fifty yards north of the hotel on the same side of the street. How do you know where she’s going?”

  Brianne didn’t respond. She bent down and picked up Bates’s gun from the sand.

  “What are you doing?”

  Brianne sprinted up the beach, gun in hand. She yelled over her shoulder, “I’m going to find her.”

  “Where?” I shouted after her.

  She didn’t answer and disappeared into the night. I sat crumpled in the sand, Brianne’s void already hollowing out my insides.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  ROLLINS TOOK MOST of my weight as we three-legged toward his SUV. He carried a plastic case, slightly larger than a briefcase, in his free hand. The rifle he used to kill McCafferty before McCafferty could kill me was dismantled inside the case.

  We cleared the hotel grounds. The SUV stood twenty-five yards away. A siren. We crouched behind a parked car. My knee bent. I ate the pain. The siren screamed louder and rainbow lights danced in the night. A cop car pulled into the hotel’s private parking lot thirty yards away. Then another. Car doors clicked open and slammed shut out of sight.

  “We give ourselves up now, we’ve got a long night of interrogation,” Rollins whispered. “You might be able to explain shooting Bates, but shooting McCafferty will be a tougher sell.”

  “I can’t spend all night in a square white room and leave Brianne out there on her own.”

  Rollins hoisted me up and we shuffled to his SUV. He pulled quietly away from the curb without his lights on and U-turned away from Hotel Del Coronado.

  “Where to?” Rollins asked.

  “Brianne took off after Alyssa. Head over to Bates’s house. Maybe she’s there.”

  “Roger.”

  The scene at the beach rushed back up at me. Brianne and I would be dead if Rollins hadn’t taken out Doug McCafferty.

  “I didn’t see McCafferty in the bird’s nest when I ran through the hotel grounds,” I said as I tried to arrange my leg in a comfortable position. “Why were you sure he’d be up there?”

  “It’s the highest vantage point in the area. It was the only place he could be, unless he was on the beach with Bates.” Rollins clicked on the car lights as we did the speed limit down Orange Avenue. “I had to enter the beach way south of the hotel to stay out of his line of vision. I got a bead on McCafferty just as the gunshots went off between you and Bates.”

  “What if McCafferty had been on the beach?” I pulled out my phone and hit Brianne’s number.

  “You’d be dead.”

  Brianne’s voicemail message sounded in my ear.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Brianne must not have her phone with her. Bates or his wife probably have it.” The night’s high-throttle energy evaporated and my insides ached along with my knee. “She’s all alone, and I have no way of finding her.”

  “Police?” Rollins looked over at me. Blank face.

  “You think they’ll put out a BOLO for my car just on my word?”

  “No. Not until they have us under the hot lights for a while and sort out the dead bodies back at the hotel and on the beach. We need to get our story straight before we talk to them.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “If we talk to them at all.”

  We drove by Bates’s house. No one home. My heart sank deeper.

  We didn’t speak again until we were off Coronado Island and clear of the bridge.

  “Hospital?” Rollins asked.

  “No. Back to the hotel. Thanks.”

  “Why do you think Brianne went after Alyssa by herself ?”

  “I don’t know. She was almost crazed. Maybe they did something horrible to her and she won’t let it stand.”

  Whatever the reason, I was scared I’d never see her again. At least, not alive.

  * * *

  Rollins did his hero routine and crutched me up to my room at the Marriott. George greeted us whining at the door.

  “Damn. He needs to go out. He’s been stuck in the room all night,” I said as Rollins lowered me onto the bed.

  “I’ll do it.” Rollins leashed up George and took him outside.

  Alone, concern for Brianne swallowed me. Why had I given her my keys? So what if Alyssa got away? Did Alyssa have a gun? Probably. She wasn’t at the house. Wherever she was, Brianne might be walking into a trap.

  I took out my phone and willed it to ring. It did.

  Rankin. My dreams never came true.

  “You see the news tonight?”

  12:10 a.m. The local news had been over for over a half hour. No way they could have had a story on the Coronado shootings. Even so, Rankin wouldn’t have any way to know I was connected.

  “No.”

  “Congressman Peterson died.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Chief Moretti is looking for one more high-profile arrest before he declares for Peterson’s seat. Fight or flight, Rick.”

  Click.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  GEORGE’S BARK WOKE me from my zombie sleep. Dead, but still semi-conscious, clothed on top of the bed. Rollins had returned him to the room and left around 12:30 a.m. I could hear him scratch the door, trying to get outside. 2:43 a.m. on the bedside clock. I’d been asleep maybe thirty minutes. A soft knock on the door. George barked again, then whined.

  I grabbed the Smith & Wesson off the nightstand and gimped to the door in the dark. I leaned over George and looked through the peephole.

  I was wrong about dreams coming true.

  I whipped open the door and George beat me into Brianne’s arms. Only fair. They’d been together longer. Brianne stepped around George and hugged me so hard I almost lost my balance. We kissed long enough for George to whine, then backed into the hotel room.

  Brianne walked me over to the bed and we both sat down. I didn’t notice until we got there that she had a canvas grocery bag hanging over her shoulder.

  “What happened? Did you find her?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. Biggest smile I’d ever seen on her. She kissed me again.

  “Well, what happened?” Something was off. Brianne was too happy. Bloodlust? “Did you call the police?”

  “Rick, hear me out.” She carefully pulled the canvas bag off her shoulder and set it down onto the floor. “Do you believe in karma?”

  “Where’s Alyssa?” The adrenaline from earlier that night reloaded. All nerves. “Did you do something to her?”

  “No. Yes. Not really.”

  “What happened?”

  “You think I killed her?” She pulled her head back, then laughed. “She fine. But this isn’t about her. It’s about us.”

  “What do you mean?” I was still worried. Brianne was almost manic. This was a side of her I’d never seen. I wasn’t ready to like it, yet.

  “You know better than anyone that life is unfair and hard and cruel.” She held my hand. The warmth massaged my nerves. “So when it gives you a gift you have to take it, right?”

  “What gift?” My head swirled, on t
ilt.

  She leaned over, picked up the canvas bag, and hugged it against her chest. “This is our gift, Rick. This is life trying to even things out.”

  She flipped the bag over and emptied its contents onto the bed between us. About a dozen papers tumbled out. They were roughly the size of notebook paper. Watermarked and the color of US currency. US treasury bonds. Eleven in all.

  Each had a million-dollar value listed across the top. I picked one up. My hand shook.

  “They’re bearer bonds. They come due on December first of this year. Three weeks from now.” Excitement pitched her voice high.

  “Where did you get them?” But I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

  “Alyssa had them.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I heard Kyle and Doug talk about them at Kyle’s house after he kidnapped me. I guess Doug shot Townsend at the house in Pine Valley and took his briefcase. But it only had a few of the bonds in it. Then I remembered the other briefcase I saw Townsend put in the trunk of his car.”

  “How did Bates kidnap you?”

  “He followed me back to the hotel from Pine Valley and pulled a gun on me in the hotel parking structure.”

  “How could he have done that? You left before the shooting started.”

  “I think he got to Pine Valley just as I turned around to head back and he recognized my car.” Liquid gathered in the bottom of her eyes. “I thought you were dead. Doug said he shot you.”

  “So, when you took off from the beach to follow Alyssa, you really went up to Pine Valley to get the other suitcase?”

  “I knew that’s where she’d go.”

  “But you went there to get the treasury bonds.”

  “I went there to make sure she didn’t get them.”

  “Well, I guess it worked.”

  “She still has the first suitcase.” She put her arms around my neck. “But none of that matters. We can start a new life. You and me.”

  “That money has blood on it.” I put my hands on her wrists and gently pulled her arms from around my neck. “Four people died because of it.”