Better Off Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  DEVON SPUN AROUND, shading her eyes from the blinding light with one hand. The man was standing behind the rear fender. Light glinted off the barrel of the gun he was holding. Her head throbbed so much it made it difficult to concentrate. A whimper caught in her throat.

  The car was already in Reverse, she reminded herself. She braved a quick peek over her shoulder. The killer had moved to the right so he was no longer directly behind the car.

  She slammed her foot down on the accelerator and gunned the engine while she spun the wheel. The Corvette rocketed backward, tires screeching.

  Thunk!

  The man hit the pavement and rolled on his side. Devon had sideswiped the Chevy next to the Vette as she’d tried to run over the man. She slammed on the brakes to avoid ramming into any other cars parked behind her. She jarred to a stop that whiplashed her aching skull. The headlights illuminated the figure sprawled on the blacktop. She shoved the car into Drive, ready to finish off the bastard.

  In one fluid motion, he leaped to his feet, the gun trained on her. Lord have mercy! It wasn’t a hit man after all.

  It was Chad.

  “It’s me,” she yelled. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Devon?”

  She pressed on the lever to lower the window. “Get in the car.”

  “Hey! What’s going on?” yelled a man who’d come to the door of one of the motel rooms. “You hit my car.”

  Glancing around, Chad rushed to the Corvette. He opened the car door, tossed in his duffel, and dropped into the passenger seat.

  “Hey! Come back here,” the man hollered.

  “Quick! Head back into Miami,” Chad told her.

  She floored it, and the Corvette fishtailed. They strafed the bumper of another car as they peeled out of the motel lot.

  “Where were you?” she cried, the car barreling down the street.

  “The jerk driving this Vette shot out my tires. He’d called the police on his cell phone to report a drunken driver—behind the wheel of the Acura. They came along seconds after he drove off. I had to pass a field sobriety test. I ran as fast as I could to get here.”

  She glanced sideways at him. His look sent a tremor through her.

  “I thought—” her voice cracked with emotion she’d kept suppressed after she believed he’d died “—they’d killed you.”

  He brushed her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “And I thought they’d gotten you.”

  “It was close. I used the knife the way you taught me.” She quickly explained what had happened.

  “I’m proud of you,” he said, his voice husky.

  “I’m proud of me, too. I didn’t know I could do it,” she told him with a cold shiver. “Before tonight, I thought I would have frozen or panicked and been killed.”

  “You’re tough or you wouldn’t have made it this far.”

  “Maybe, but you’d think I would feel some sort of remorse for killing a man. But after seeing Romero and knowing what happened to Tina, I didn’t care—especially when I thought they’d killed you, too.”

  “I understand. When I was with Delta Force, they told us that once you accept you’re as good as dead, you can function. It’s surprising what you can accomplish if you’re not focused on your own survival.”

  His words sank in and she nodded. “That’s how it was. Total calmness came over me.” She thought a moment. “What about now? Are we okay?”

  “We have to assume there’s a second man out there. This Vette’s too flashy to be their primary vehicle.”

  “You’re right.” She checked the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed.

  “Slow down. We don’t want the police to pick us up.”

  Devon eased off the accelerator, and her nerves began to quiver. The reality of what had happened settled in. She’d been a heartbeat from death. Without a second thought, she’d plunged a knife into a man’s heart.

  What had she become?

  Once she’d been average—okay, a high-achiever, but no one special—now a hit team was after her, and she’d murdered a man. When she’d called the FBI, she’d never imagined a life on the run, fear a constant companion. How could this be the price of justice in America?

  Who was Samantha Robbins? Devon hadn’t been that woman for so long. With each identity change, she’d lost part of herself. She was no longer the woman she’d once been. Seeing Tina had helped, but only temporarily. She’d killed a man—something she would never have thought possible.

  Face it, she silently admonished herself. You’re lost in Oz.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I bumped into you with the car.”

  “You didn’t hit me. Delta Force taught us to drop and roll. Nine times out of ten that gets you out of harm’s way. I’m fine.”

  “If I’d run over you…well, I don’t know…I might have—”

  “Forget it. Your reactions were quick. Had it been one of them, running over him was a great idea.”

  A thought hit her. “Chad, the man I killed claimed I had something that belonged to his friend. That man wanted to talk to me. The guy with the gun could have killed me on the spot, the way he murdered the cabdriver, but he didn’t.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want your body to be found there.”

  “I don’t know. I found duct tape in the trunk of this car. I think he was planning to kidnap me.”

  After a long moment of silence, Chad said, “He wasn’t going to put you into the trunk of this Vette. The space isn’t big enough.”

  “Pull off at the next side street,” Chad told her.

  “Why?”

  “If I were in charge of this operation, I would have a tracking device on this car…just in case.”

  She hung a right turn into a low income residential neighborhood. She pulled to the curb behind a Ford pickup. Chad climbed out, his high-powered flashlight in hand. She waited, feeling the knot forming on the back of her head.

  How would this all end?

  She couldn’t imagine a good outcome. Still, something in her wanted to believe that justice would prevail. But right now, it seemed as if the forces of evil had the upper hand.

  Chad returned to the passenger seat, a tiny buttonlike thing in his hand.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A location transmitter.”

  “Like the one you used to track me.”

  A beat of silence, then, “It was under the back bumper just where I would have put it had I wanted to keep tabs on my car. Why bother to crawl under the vehicle to hide it in some obscure place, if you don’t think anyone would look for it?”

  “Right. So toss it out the window.”

  A low chuckle rumbled from his chest. “No. They’re tracking us. I don’t want them to realize we know it. Head east toward Calle Ocho.”

  “Little Havana? At this time of night?”

  He squeezed her shoulder with his hand. Its warmth seeped through her blouse, reassuring her. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. His thoughts were elsewhere, she could tell, but the gesture unexpectedly touched her. Less than an hour ago, she’d believed she’d lost him forever. She never expected to see him again, feel his hand on her arm, the touch of his lips on her cheek.

  “We’llsell this Vette. We’ll take the cash and—”

  “I forgot to tell you. The guy I knifed had over three thousand dollars on him.”

  Chad’s laughter reverberated through the interior of the small sports car. “Way to go, babe. Way to go.”

  BROCK LANDED in the Sikorsky at the Jet-Away private aircraft terminal. He should have heard something by now, he decided. He punched the autodial on his stolen cell phone. He would have to jettison it sometime today, but the idea disturbed him. His contact wasn’t in the area. He wouldn’t have a new cell phone.

  “Gotcha, dude.” It was 251’s voice.

  “What’s happening?” Brock asked, doing his best to keep his frustration out of his voice.

  “I’m c
lose. Wait out front. I’ll pick you up.”

  Brock pressed the ‘end’ button, a troubled feeling shrouding him. The missing jacket on 251, Jordan’s duplicity, the pressure from Kilmer Cassidy. Too many stressors to be coincidence.

  Something was wrong.

  Troubled, he walked to the front of the small, private terminal to wait for his operative. The Robbins bitch was good, he privately conceded. She’d eluded one of the best hit teams around, but this time his men had her nailed.

  A few minutes later a United Florists Van pulled up. Brock recognized the hub for the microcamera on top, disguised as an air vent. He leaped into the passenger seat.

  “Give me an update.”

  The quick intake of breath told Brock that he had a problem.

  “77 is dead.”

  He expelled a long, audible breath. “Dead? What happened?”

  The kid stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “She killed him.”

  “What the fuck are you telling me?”

  “I don’t know how exactly, but she managed to plunge a knife into his heart.”

  Shit! His world was going to hell. A house of cards collapsing—and no way to stop it. He let the words register as 251 kept driving. Something in his brain clicked. An image of the ruthless man with the bitch played across his mind with starling clarity.

  “What happened to the guy with her?”

  Another agonizing beat of silence. “He walked away from the police.”

  “Start over and tell me the whole story.” Brock ground out the words. How was he ever going to explain the death of a top agent to Kilmer Cassidy?

  “Like I told you. The parabolic mike picked up the Robbins woman when she went into her sister’s room. Since we hadn’t seen her come into the hospital, I knew she was in a different disguise. I sent 77 to see what she looked like.”

  “How was she dressed?”

  “Like an old lady. 77 said she really looked the part.”

  “I’m sure she did.” Of all the women Brock had come up against, the Robbins bitch was proving to be the toughest. For a moment he thought of Jordan Walsh, but right now, this was his top priority. Jordan would have to wait her turn.

  “About this time, I notice how blurry several of our secondary cameras were. I figure the guy in the do-rag had tampered with them. I told 77 to watch the Pediatrics entrance. Lots of parents come in and out there. It’s easy to slip by.”

  Brock didn’t like the pride he detected in this kid’s voice. Pride goeth before a fall. That was in the Bible, or maybe Shakespeare came up with it. Whatever. It fit.

  “I got lucky. She came out—in regular clothes and hopped in a cab. I had 77 follow her in the Corvette. The guy she was with was following in an Acura.”

  Brock had let 251 talk him into a red Corvette for this operation. A Vette in Miami, especially South Beach, fit in better than the surveillance van they were in now. Obelisk had plenty of money, but Cassidy would pitch a shit fit over the loss of an expensive sports car.

  “Seventy-seven said he could immobilize the punk following her by shooting out his tires and reporting him as a drunk driver. I was hanging back in the van until 77 nabbed her and called me in. Then it was off to the safe house to interrogate her. A minor traffic accident delayed me just a few minutes.”

  Shit! There was always an unpredictable factor in every operation. A fender bender blew this one apart.

  “I rushed to the motel. Seventy-seven was dead on the ground, a vicious knife wound in his chest.”

  “She didn’t do it. Had to be the asshole in the do-rag.”

  “I don’t know. Women are…”

  Brock battled the urge to spring out of his seat and strangle the fucker. Mennonite parents. A stellar background with Obelisk. Big fucking deal.

  “Good news,” his dip shit operative told Brock. “We’ve got a location transmitter on the Corvette.”

  Brock stared out at the lights dappling Miami’s skyline. “Where are they headed?”

  “South toward Key Largo. From there they can hire a fast boat to take them to Texas or New Orleans or the Bahamas.”

  “Anywhere,” Brock said, amazed at his own bitterness. “The bitch could be going anywhere.”

  “CAN WE STOP for a minute?” Devon cried. The weight of her backpack strapped to her shoulders was compounded by the contents of Chad’s duffel, which they’d crammed inside the backpack. Every time he rounded a curve, her head pounded and she thought she might fall off the Honda.

  Chad slowed the motorcycle they’d traded the Corvette for in Calle Ocho and came to a stop near a copse of trees. They were on Highway 41 East heading through Shark Alley in the Everglades.

  “What’s wrong?” Chad asked.

  “Let me shift a few things,” she said, reluctant to admit how much her head was bothering her.

  “I’ll wear the backpack,” Chad said. “I should have put it on in the first place. I just wanted to feel your boobs against my back.”

  Devon managed to laugh. The headache blotted out almost everything.

  He took the backpack. “This is nothing compared to what I had to carry in Delta Force.”

  “You know I haven’t had a chance to tell you how I feel about you,” he said.

  She nodded. They’d been on the run, never stopping for a minute until now.

  “You mean the world to me. When I told you that we were in this together, I instinctively realized how important you’d become in my life. No matter what happens, I’m here because I care about you.”

  She smiled, but inside she wished he’d said he loved her. “I don’t want anything to happen to you because of me.”

  “It won’t. We’re in this together. Keep that uppermost in your mind.”

  “It’s a long way to Pensacola,” she said, knowing now was not the time to say she loved him. “I might have a better plan.”

  Their original idea was to cut through the Everglades to the west coast of Florida and drive north to Pensacola where Chad could hook up with a buddy at the Naval Air Station. They’d planted the location transmitter on a car full of fraternity guys who were driving to the Keys. The second hit man was probably following that car. He wouldn’t suspect they were north and west.

  “Okay. What’s your plan?”

  “I thoroughly researched how to get back into this country—if I ever had to leave—yet not be in the security system’s computer records.”

  “The private yacht idea was ingenious.”

  “Same thing with a private plane. Private terminals are small and often shut down at night. No one monitors security the way regular airports do. We should hit Naples in the morning, right?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Let’s hire a plane to fly us out of Florida.”

  THE MOTORCYCLE SPUTTERED and hiccuped. Devon held on to Chad’s waist as tightly as she could, considering the bulky backpack separating them like a block of cement.

  “We’re out of gas,” Chad told her.

  The Honda wheezed to a stop. She swung her leg off the back and stretched. It felt so good to be standing. She glanced at the gas gauge.

  “It says half full.”

  “The dial hasn’t moved since we left Calle Ocho. What do you expect? Those guys were thrilled to trade a beat-up motorcycle for a Corvette. Who said the gauges worked?”

  “They took the Corvette to a chop shop, didn’t they?”

  “Absolutely. They figured it was stolen, but the trade was worth more than any of them could make in a month or longer. They chopped it last night rather than get caught with a stolen car.”

  Chad fumbled through his gear that was in the backpack. Devon sniffed the air. The Everglades had the same smell the rain forest in Hawaii had. The loamy scent of decaying plants and moist earth. The sun was seeping over the horizon, a lemon-orange glow lighting the Everglades by degrees. Cicadas were tuning up in the sawgrass. The world was waking up to a new day.

  Please don’t
let this be our last day on earth.

  Chad had set a lightweight pair of binoculars aside. She picked them up and watched the night hawks still patrolling overhead in what was left of the night sky, feasting on insects before retiring to sleep during the heat of the day. Cormorants, Ospreys and red-tailed hawks were winging up from the stands of trees. There were other birds, too. Devon profoundly regretted not being able to recognize them.

  Life was too short. She wished she’d taken more time to observe the world around her. Less time for numbers.

  She watched a nearby heron spear a fish with his bill. A terrapin, moss growing on his helmetlike back, clambered along the shore and plopped into the swamp. Devon would have sworn she’d heard the turtle sigh when he hit the water. Just watching the animals made her head feel better.

  “Here. It’s better than nothing.” Chad tossed her a bottle of mosquito spray. “Bugs aren’t terrible at this time of year, but your bod’s prime meat.”

  She tried for a laugh, but it came out more like a croak. She slathered on the cream, the odor of Deet hitting her full-force. Chad was tinkering with some gadget that he’d hastily shoved into the backpack.

  “It’s about three miles to the Miccosukee Indian Village, according to this. We’ll have to walk the bike there for gas.”

  “What is the Indian Village?”

  “A tourist trap. The Miccosukee were trail Indians who eluded the U.S. government’s Removal Act to ship them West.”

  “When did this happen?” Devon knew a little about Florida’s history from her sister, but Tina had never mentioned this tribe.

  “Mid-1800s. They settled here. Over the years they had the smarts to turn it into a tourist attraction.”

  “So the airboats will be skimming across the Everglades in a couple of hours.”

  “You got that right.”

  She wondered where the birds, and bobcats, and the endangered Florida panthers hid when the hordes of tourists raced across the Everglades. They used airboats to stay above the vines that grew in the water and could entangle a propeller. She empathized. She’d learned what it was like to live constantly in danger, always hiding.