The shotgun. She stopped as the thought hit her. If Krogan had a shotgun, someone was going to get shot.
Not someone. Gavin was going to get shot.
Without thinking, she turned and ran back. Going into the boat was insane, but so was leaving the weapon for a monster who couldn’t care less about killing. She made up her mind. Taking one quick look around, she hopped over the side of the boat, crouching, crawling, moving quickly like a crab to the cabin door. There was a padlock, but it wasn’t latched, apparently used only to keep the door closed. She reached up and slipped the lock out of the loop, then placed it on the floor. A moment later, she was inside, sliding the door closed behind her.
Inside she gasped and covered her mouth and nose with her hand. It didn’t help. The place was hot enough to bake bread and smelled like dead fish. To her right was the steering wheel and controls. Straight ahead was a small stairway that led down into the bow, where the gun was. With no time to waste, she scurried down the stairs, almost slipping on empty liquor bottles. There was a garbage can, but it was full to spilling over. What a pig, she thought. How did he ever get a boat like this in the first place?
The shotgun was leaning on the stained mattress. Amy’s arms were beaded with sweat and her shirt was starting to stick. She didn’t want to touch anything, for fear of contracting some lethal disease from whatever toxic and viral strains were mutating in the filth around her. The first thing she was going to do after tossing the gun into the water was go home, throw her clothes in the garbage can, and take a long, hot shower. On second thought, she would go for a swim before even getting back into the car.
She took a step and, balancing on one leg, reached over to retrieve the gun without touching anything else. As she touched the barrel, her cell phone rang. She gasped, the noise startling her back onto two legs. She quickly unzipped her fanny pack as it rang again, the noise alarmingly loud.
“Hello?” she said breathlessly, trying to look through the slimy porthole to see if anyone was coming.
“Hi! Are you alright?”
“Gavin!” She was relieved to hear his voice.
“I got your page, but I didn’t have my phone. I just stopped home on my way to Karianne’s. You’re not going to believe what’s been happening.”
“Neither are you,” she said.
“Yeah, well top this: I said the word ‘Sabah’ to Karianne when she was under hypnosis—”
“Buck told us not to do that.”
“Uh, well, anyway, she nearly killed Steinman, Katz, and me with her bare hands. Fortunately we were able to tranquilize her. Then—”
“You found Krogan at Giants Stadium?”
“How did you know?”
“Chris saw it on TV, with the rest of the world.”
“Chris… I have to call him.”
“Now my turn,” Amy said, anxious to hear his surprised reaction. “I’m inside a lobster boat named, get this, Shadahd.”
“What?”
“Krogan is really Karl Dengler and he’s a lobster fisherman. An endless supply of lobster claws.”
“Amy! Get out of there! Now!”
She held the phone away from her ear. “Believe me, that is exactly what I’m going to do as soon as I get this shotgun and—”
“Where are you?” Gavin screamed.
“Hempstead Harbor Marina. Gavin, he was right here under our noses all the time and we di—”
The phone was grabbed from her hand a split second before she crashed headlong into a tangled pile of netting, then rolled onto a rusted chain and barnacle-encrusted anchor.
“Hello, pretty girl.”
46
Krogan stood there, seemingly in thought. His mass shrunk the room. His rippled arms were cut and scraped and his tank top was torn and soiled. Amy’s heart hammered. Apparently he had heard enough of the conversation to surmise his situation. The longer he stood there the angrier he appeared. Finally he let out a primeval scream and kicked the garbage can, sending bottles and broken glass everywhere. He then brought the cell phone to his mouth.
“Gavin, huh? I didn’t expect to be speaking to you again so soon.”
“Krogan?” came Gavin’s voice through the receiver, barely loud enough for Amy to hear.
“Very good. That’s why you’re a detective. You’re good at figuring things out. I’m a detective, too. You know what I just figured out? I figure this nosey wench just put me out of the lobster business. She’ll die for that. But not before I have some fun with her. If you want my boat so bad, you’ll have to pry it out of another. I never was a big fan of freedom or New York. You think you’re so smart, figure that one out, Detective.”
Krogan smashed the phone against the wall and turned to Amy with a smile. “Well, pretty girl. Anyone who looks for me as hard as you deserves my best. Just whisper in my ear if I’m moving too fast.”
Amy was scared less by his ominous presence than by what she knew about him. She didn’t know if Karl Dengler knew anything about Krogan’s past, but she knew the demon in him found his comfort in terror and destruction and she wasn’t going to worry anymore about killing him. So what if he disappeared and popped up in someone else? At least it would be someplace else, and right now that seemed like a good thing.
She glanced at the shotgun and knew by the way he followed her eyes that the weapon was loaded.
Krogan took a step in her direction and she dove for the shotgun. The instant she grabbed the stock, he grabbed the barrel, snatching it away from her with a laugh.
“All right,” he said. “This is my lucky day.” His hungry, wild eyes were a vacuum of darkness, feeding like a shark off her terror.
She leaned back hard into the netting as he approached until all she could see was his enormous bulk.
47
For one horrified instant Gavin stared at his phone. Then he was bolting for the door. Cedar saw him coming and scrambled to get out of the way, his paws slipping on the oak floor. The aluminum storm door slammed against the handrail as Gavin landed on the walkway, then cleared the chain-link fence… and stopped. There was a white pickup truck in his driveway and someone was getting out.
Five minutes ago there was no one in the world Gavin would rather have seen than the man who emerged from the truck. But right now all he wanted was to get to the marina as fast as possible.
“Detective Pierce!”
“Buck, I don’t know what you’re doing here but you’ve got to let me out of the driveway—now.”
“I came as soon as I got your message. I told you not to—”
“Get out of the driveway! Krogan’s got Amy in a fishing boat. I’ve got to stop him before he gets out of the harbor.”
Buck’s expression stiffened. “I have to come with you. We’ll take my truck. You drive.” He threw Gavin the keys, which Gavin immediately threw back.
“You can come if you like, but we’ll take my car,” he yelled as he hopped into his Sunbeam Tiger and started the engine with a throaty roar.
Buck quickly backed his pickup out of the driveway to the opposite curb. He hurried to Gavin, carrying an old wooden chest the size of a milk crate.
“What’s that?” Gavin said.
“A tool of the trade.”
“Come on. Put it in the back and get in already,” Gavin said, folding up the seat for him. He watched impatiently as Buck stored the chest.
Before Buck had the door closed Gavin hit the gas, whiplashing Buck and leaving a cloud of exhaust behind them. Keeping the pedal to the floor, Gavin threw the four-speed into second and then third, chirping the tires each time. He then put the flashing red light on the dashboard before shifting into fourth.
“I think I can understand why we took your car,” Buck said loudly enough to be heard over the engine and wind.
Gavin handed Buck the cell phone and told him to dial 911.
“That would be a huge mistake, Detective,” Buck said.
“A mistake I should have made this afternoon. Now d
ial,” Gavin commanded. “We’re going to need all the help we can get as soon as we can get it.”
“They’re going to kill him and Krogan will be free. You have to believe me when I tell you your fight is not only against flesh and blood.”
“Tell me about it,” Gavin acknowledged.
“You mean Sabah?”
“You got it.”
“I told you not to.”
“That’s why I did it. I had to know.”
“What actually happened?”
“Later. Call 911. We’ll surround him and he’ll have to give up.”
“Please, Detective. You’ve faced him. You’ve followed him through five thousand years. Stop listening to your police training and tell me: is Krogan going to give up? Is he going to let anyone take him alive?”
“Then we’ll kill the monster. We’ll catch him the next time, or we’ll kill him again and catch him the time after that. At least Amy will have a chance.”
“Krogan knows you’ll do this. He’s counting on it. You can’t match his craftiness with your logic and emotion. Your men will swarm him from every direction and he’ll kill Amy so they’ll have no choice but to kill him. When he found out his host’s fun-filled life was going to change he had to have been very angry. The faster he can find a new host the better for him.”
“But if we don’t catch him, he’ll kamikaze some party boat and kill himself and Amy and half the people on board. I can’t let that happen,” Gavin said, downshifting to second for a hard turn, then slamming it into third.
“Then we have to catch him. It’s our only chance of keeping everyone alive,” Buck pleaded.
Gavin growled in frustration. “Then dial this number,” he said, handing him his beeper.
Buck dialed the number and handed the phone over to Gavin.
“Hello?”
“Chris!”
“Gav! Where are you? I’ve been paging—”
“I can’t talk about it now. There’s something you’ve got to do for us.”
“Shoot.”
“Two boats: Freedom and New York. Find out what they are and where they are, then call me on my cell phone. They could be anything from an old tall ship to a navy vessel to a party boat to a tour boat. Fast, Chris.”
“You got it, pal.”
Gavin hung up and concentrated on driving. A few minutes later he was fishtailing into the marina parking lot, alternately downshifting and speeding up as he wove through the cars. He soon found himself racing down the same fishing pier Krogan had when he’d crashed through the fencing and into the sailboat. By the time he skidded to a stop at the temporary barricade that had replaced the broken railing, Buck’s hands were splayed against the dashboard and a couple of fishermen were clinging to the pier’s outer rails.
Gavin was out the door in a flash and up onto the barricade, his hand blocking the sun from his eyes as he searched the harbor’s mouth for the lobster boat. Nothing.
“Did either of you see a lobster boat leave the marina?” he yelled to the shaken fishermen.
They both nodded, one of them pointing out of the harbor.
“And I’ll bet it was going a lot faster than the five-mile-per-hour speed limit,” Gavin said.
The fishermen nodded, then looked at each other oddly, as if they thought he was going to give a lobster fisherman a ticket for speeding in the harbor.
Gavin ignored them. Down to his left were the boat slips. Several boats were slowly maneuvering in and out, but they were mostly sailboats and cabin cruisers and would have little chance of catching up to the lobster boat. To his right was the boat ramp, with boats going in and out of the water. Maybe he could use one of the ones already in. He scanned the half dozen or so waiting their turn, but saw only little ski boats and runabouts. Why was it that every other time he had come down to the marina, he had been wowed by at least one or two ocean racers, yet now, when he needed one, there were none?
Frustrated, Gavin hopped back in the car and slammed it into reverse. Next to him Buck sat with eyes closed.
48
Amy lay face down on the rotten, liquor-bathed mattress. Before Krogan showed up, she had tried her best not to touch it lest some horrid disease invade the pores of her skin. Now she was trussed up on it like an animal awaiting slaughter. Her hands were tied so tightly to her ankles she could barely feel her fingers anymore. Another droplet of blood crawled from the cut over her left ear along her bruised, sweaty cheek to her lips.
Fortunately, thanks to her phone call to Gavin, Krogan had been in a hurry and hadn’t taken the time for any indulgences. Of course, nothing would have been easier than for him to kill her outright, but he seemed willing to keep her alive, at least for the moment. If there was anything to be learned from the sessions with Karianne—or rather Sabah—killing was to be savored. Looked forward to, like dessert after a fine meal. Krogan had pretty much told her so, beating her only to the point that she would allow him to tie her up. He wanted her fully alert and horrified at whatever he had coming.
He had taken the shotgun with him. Through the open doorway she could see him from the waist down. He was at the steering wheel and she hoped he would stay there. In one hand he had a fifth of clear liquor. Whatever it was, he was downing it fast. She wondered how long she had before the inevitable crash. Knowing the Krogan that Sabah had revealed, she knew his target would be large, yet sinkable. Something the size of a yacht, she thought. A ferry maybe. What kind of boat would be in the water, full of people on a Sunday evening before sunset? Whatever and wherever it was, she wasn’t about to just lay there and let it happen.
She rolled to her side and tried to lower her tied wrists under her buttocks. She could not. She rolled back to her abdomen and struggled to raise her rump, dragging her chin on the mattress until she was up on her knees. Next to her was another dirty porthole, opposite the one she had originally looked through. She wished she had never peeked in; after all her good intentions, Krogan still had the shotgun.
Peering out the window, she saw they were about a thousand feet off a shoreline she did not recognize. The very fact the shoreline was off the left side meant they were traveling west, toward Manhattan. She was surprised at the speed they were traveling at— for such a large boat Shadahd could move.
“I’m sorry. You wanted a view?”
Amy turned her head as far as she could without falling to see Krogan crouched down, staring at her through the shallow doorway. The engines suddenly slowed to an idle; the excess momentum made Amy fall forward onto her face. Terror snapped at her mind like an uncoiling viper and she fought to control a scream. What perverse ideas were marching him toward her… alone in the water… tied up and at his mercy?
Her eyes widened as Krogan slowly knelt down beside her. He looked her up and down, examining her like an unwrapped gift. Then he closed his eyes and whispered close to her ear, “Listen… can you hear it?”
Amy couldn’t answer. She sensed whatever she said might snap him into a violent rage. But then, so could her silence.
“Your heart. I can hear your heart. It’s beating for me. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” he said, slowly at first, then faster and faster until Amy could swear he actually was in rhythm with her racing pulse.
“Boom!” he yelled, his eyes popping open, his face inches from hers.
Amy startled. She jerked again as he touched her leg.
“Very smooth,” he said, then brought his nose to the back of her thigh and licked her. “Mmm… Did you shave just for me?”
Amy began to tremble uncontrollably. She had been determined not to cry, but her shivers turned to whimpers. Krogan began to laugh, and she felt his hot breath against her. She struggled violently to gain control of herself and to get his slithering, slimy tongue off her.
“You coward,” she screamed.
Krogan laughed loudly. “Brave girl. We’ll see how tough you are.”
49
The moment Gavin pulled into the boat-ramp parking lot, h
e saw the boat he wanted. Sitting on a huge trailer hooked onto a Range Rover was almost thirty feet of streamlined ocean racer, its bow taking up at least three quarters of the boat. Perfect. The boat should be able to catch Krogan fairly rapidly—if, that is, they chose the correct direction once out of the harbor.
Both Buck and Gavin got out of the car, but Gavin motioned Buck to remain there. He didn’t want this scene to be any more confusing to the boat owner than it had to be. The man in the Range Rover frowned as Gavin ran toward him, his shield out and in clear view.
“Sir. I’m Detective Pierce of the Nassau County Police Department and this is a police emergency. I need the use of a boat and driver to apprehend an escaped felon.”
“Yeah, right,” the man said incredulously. He looked at his buddy in the seat next to him and laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“And you want to use me and my boat?”
“It’s a matter of life and death,” Gavin said.
“Don’t the police have any more boats or helicopters?” the man said as he laughed again.
Gavin was too desperate to feel like a fool, but he didn’t have an answer that would make any sense. He couldn’t very well tell the guy he was afraid of involving other policemen, and he didn’t have time to explain why.
“If you’re worried about your boat, I’ll take personal responsibility for it. We’ll go right now to the front of the line. You’ll be a hero tomorrow whether we catch him or not.” Gavin was lying; for doing what he was doing, he’d probably be fired by this time tomorrow.
“Personally responsible? Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Do you know what this boat cost? And what are we going to do, get shot at? Sorry, pal, I gave at the office. Besides, nobody’s going anywhere until the wild-man with the flying machine gets his crazy contraption off the ramp… again. Now there’s someone you should arrest.”
Gavin didn’t even remember running toward the ultralight, but suddenly he was there.
Driven Page 27