Bad Seeds

by Jassy Mackenzie

  “Say what?”

  “What you just said.”

  “Botha could be using you?”

  “No. What you said before that.”

  “He’ll play along until you become an inconvenience?”

  Jade straightened up. “Yes.” The idea had become clear to her now, chilling in its totality.

  “You think that’s what he’s doing?”

  “No. But it might be why Scarlett Sykes died. Maybe she was working with the criminals, not with Loodts. If so, they could have terminated her because she made a bad mistake. She crashed the car when she was leaving the motel. That could have compromised the entire operation. Maybe it wasn’t her first error. So they decided to dispose of her. Kill her, contaminate the scene, damage her fingerprints, leave her body to confuse the cops.”

  “That’s a possibility. I’m going to be speaking to Loodts’s personal assistant tomorrow morning. I’ll ask her if Loodts knew Scarlett Sykes. Personal assistants usually know every last detail, don’t they?”

  Jade laughed. “In my experience, they do.”

  “And in the meantime, watch out. Botha doesn’t know you were hired to investigate him. Make sure you keep it that way.”

  “I will,” Jade promised, wishing she’d never gone to Lorenzo’s.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jade walked back into the house, her mind racing. It seemed that with every turn this case took, disturbing new information landed in her lap.

  Botha was sitting on one of the couches eating a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. He was wearing the black T-shirt she’d bought him, which fit well.

  Jade kicked her shoes off and curled her legs up underneath her on the other couch, balancing her notepad on her knee.

  “Thanks for the clothes and food. I appreciate it,” he said.

  “Pleasure.” She saw an empty Greek salad container next to Botha’s sandwich wrapper. He’d put the other salad and sandwich on the table for her.

  “You write in a paper notebook,” Botha observed. He seemed to be in a better mood now, or maybe he was trying to make up for his attitude earlier. In fact, she thought he was perhaps even attempting a smile. “Retro.”

  “Let’s see how far you get with that battery guzzler during load shedding,” Jade retorted, staring pointedly at Botha’s laptop, which was recharging on the coffee table. “I need notes I can read any time. I can drop my notebook down a flight of stairs and pick it up at the bottom, and nothing will be lost or damaged.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just teasing you. It’s a sensible choice for what you do.”

  Jade glanced at him. He was smiling now. It warmed his face and made her want to smile back, but she resisted. Instead, she slowly flipped through the book’s pages until she reached a fresh one. Instead of focusing on Botha, she tried to scan the information, trying to discern coherent patterns within the disturbing tangle of facts.

  Her efforts were cut short as the lights went out and the house was plunged into darkness.

  “Shit,” Jade muttered. She glanced out of the window. No other lights in sight. The suburb was being load shed. A moment later, from somewhere nearby, she heard the noisy rattle of a diesel generator starting up. Some lucky person was about to enjoy hot dinner and television tonight, even if it meant deafening all the neighbors.

  Botha reached over to the coffee table for his phone. He turned on its flashlight, and the bright beam cut through the darkness. “Power’s out for the next few hours, I guess,” he said, packing up his laptop. “I’m going upstairs.”

  “See you later,” Jade said.

  As she sat in the darkness and bit into her hummus-and-salad sandwich, Jade remembered she’d bought a bottle of Tabasco, which was still in the shopping bag. She was damned if she was going to eat supper without it. Tabasco made everything taste better.

  In the dark, it took a moment to locate it among the extra water bottles, and another moment to get its plastic seal open. Then she unscrewed the lid and shook it over her food. She didn’t need light to tell her when to stop shaking the bottle. When there was no such thing as too much, life became easier.

  She was on her way back to the lounge when she heard the noise.

  It was a quiet, almost furtive scraping sound. If she had been farther away, she wouldn’t have heard it over the nearby generator’s thrumming.

  Jade paused, looking in the direction of the noise, even though there was only blackness to be seen.

  There it was again. Scrape, scrape. Coming from down the corridor.

  Jade put her plate down on the coffee table. Then she tiptoed over to the short passageway and listened again.

  The noise was coming from the sliding doors that opened onto the patio. The weakest spot in the house’s defenses. It sounded . . .

  . . . like somebody trying to break in.

  No, her mind screamed at her. No, no, impossible, it must be a bug banging against the window, it must be the sound of a scraping branch, it must be, it must be, because there is no way anybody could have found us here.

  But it was not an innocent noise. It was too regular. Too discreet. She took another step toward it, heart in her mouth, and then she was sure as she heard the distinctive sound of wood splintering.

  The door was about to give.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jade sprinted upstairs. Botha must have heard her running footsteps, because by the time she arrived at his door, he was already on his feet and cramming his possessions into his bag. On the bed, his phone sent a beam of light to the ceiling, casting an eerie glow on everything around.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. His voice was all hard edges, the way she felt inside.

  “Someone’s breaking in through the sliding door,” Jade whispered. “I don’t know how the hell they found us here, but they did.”

  The window in Botha’s room overlooked the front of the house. She peered out. In the deep gloom, she could just make out a man’s tall figure near the garage, waiting.

  They had all the exits blocked.

  “There’s no way out,” she muttered. There was nowhere she and Botha could run now. Screaming would only tell the invaders exactly which room they were in. Even if they called for help, there was no way it could arrive fast enough.

  Jade felt a terrible calm descend. She glanced at Botha and saw the same expression in his eyes. Even as the killers forced their way in, he was not panicking. Instead, she could see him thinking desperately, running through every option in his mind until the choices narrowed down to the final, inevitable one: to stand and fight.

  A martial arts–trained body was a dangerous weapon, but against men with guns, there was no way he could get close enough to use it.

  Unless she could somehow provide a diversion. Or unless . . .

  Jade thought again about her bedroom. Those big glass doors overlooking the neighbors.

  And suddenly she had a plan.

  “My room,” she said. “The balcony.”

  She could hear footsteps inside now. The invaders were being quiet, but not stealthy. They must have known their quarry was trapped upstairs.

  She wrenched the sliding doors open while Botha closed and locked the bedroom and jammed the bed against it. It might not slow their pursuers down for long, but every second counted.

  She grabbed her bag and followed him out.

  “We have to jump across,” she whispered, pointing to the balcony of the neighboring house, with its darkened windows beyond.

  The balconies had looked so close together in sunny daylight. Now the gap seemed to have widened; the drop below was an abyss. It was crazy, suicidal, to think about clambering over that narrow, unsteady rail and leaping across empty space to an equally narrow and treacherous landing point.

  But not as suicidal as staying put. She could hear footsteps on the
stairs.

  With feline grace, Botha climbed over the waist-high railing, bracing his feet with some difficulty on the narrow ridge that protruded beyond. He tensed, then sprang, awkwardly but high. Jade gasped as he straddled the void. His feet thudded into the railing opposite. He grabbed the top of the rail with both arms and then in one lithe movement boosted himself over.

  “It’s okay,” he told Jade. “It’s a long way, but I’ll get you. I won’t let you fall.”

  She flung her bag across first, and he caught it. She didn’t dare to look down. Adrenaline coursed through her as she scrambled over the rail, hating it that her legs were shaking with fright. God, how had Botha done this when there was literally only an inch of brick to push from beyond the rails?

  But she had to take that leap of faith, because there were only seconds to spare.

  Jade launched herself at the opposite rail. The jump was good. Her fear gave her the wings to leap high and wide.

  It was not her fault that as she pushed off, the concrete rim sheared away from the edge, taking with it the impetus from her effort. She knew that she was going to miss any chance of landing on the opposite shelf. Darkness raced past her; she stretched her arms as far as they would go.

  She hit the railing with her wrists. She made a desperate grab for the top, missed, slipped and had time only to wonder where she would land after falling twenty feet in darkness.

  And then Botha managed to catch her right arm, his grip solid as rock, his steely fingers clamped onto her skin. Jade scrambled furiously with her leg, found a foothold even as he dragged her upward. She clawed at the top of the railing with her left hand, muscles screaming. He shifted his grip, and then she was over, just about falling on top of him as they staggered backward.

  Over the roaring of blood in her ears, she could hear the bedroom door give way as their pursuers kicked it open.

  Botha wrapped his hands around the padded straps of his laptop bag, lowered his head and, holding the bag in front of him, charged at the balcony door.

  The shattering of glass filled the night. Sharp, bright crumbs of safety glass scattered onto the tiles as he forced his way in with Jade close behind. They sprinted downstairs through a pitch-black house that was a mirror image of their own. It was a furnished home, but thankfully, the occupants must have gone out to eat on load shedding night.

  “Left!” Jade shouted. The turn took them to the downstairs sliding door. Botha unhooked it, pushed it open, and then they were out of the gate and running for their lives toward visitors’ parking, with Jade expecting at any moment to feel the punch of a bullet in her back.

  “Give me the keys!” Botha yelled.

  “But you . . .”

  “Jade, I’m fast. Let me.” He stood between her and the driver’s door, his chest heaving, his face tight with tension.

  She just about threw the keys at him before scrambling into the passenger side.

  The engine screamed, and the Mazda shot backward like a bullet.

  “Down! Down!” she ordered, ducking as she saw a figure sprint toward them from the direction of the townhouse. She had no clue how Botha would manage to drive while flattened in his seat, but she was sure the man was holding a gun.

  Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later as two shots split the air.

  “Go!” Jade shouted.

  She was almost thrown on top of Botha as the car jounced over the curb into the paved roadway and, tires wailing, whipped around to the right and down the drive. They were going as fast as they could. But would it be fast enough to outrun the men behind them?

  They flew over a speed bump so fast the car was briefly airborne. They were out, they’d made it, but before the gate could close again, she saw the SUV’s headlights blaze behind her.

  She could have wept with frustration and fear. They were seriously outclassed; their pursuers were in a bigger, faster car.

  They didn’t have Carlos Botha at the wheel, though.

  He hadn’t been exaggerating about his driving. He slewed the car expertly onto the double lane main road, zigzagging through a cluster of cars that had jammed up at a darkened intersection where the lights weren’t working. Behind her, she heard a blare of horns as the SUV tried to follow. Brakes screeched. Hopefully the traffic had slowed it down.

  “Watch out!” To her terror, a group of vehicles ahead was traveling so slowly, it appeared to be standing still.

  Botha didn’t touch the brakes as he slalomed the Mazda between them. Tires wailed, and the car went into a skid.

  Jade’s feet were braced against the boards, and her hands were clamped onto the dashboard. She wanted to close her eyes, but was unable to stop watching the horror unfolding in front of her.

  But the skid was not unplanned—it was a controlled maneuver. The car righted itself just in time to dart between the last two vehicles.

  Then they were off. The speedometer hit triple figures as Botha accelerated, flying down the straight before powering through the curve ahead. She really thought he would lose the car then. Another skid now would kill them. There wasn’t even a tiny margin for error here: On one side of the road was a jagged, rocky outcrop, and on the other, a dented crash barrier was all that lay between them and a steep drop.

  Their headlights flashed off the battered rails as they shrieked through the bend, and Jade’s fingernail bent painfully back against the dashboard.

  And then somehow, miraculously, they were through, the road unrolling in front of them. In a different suburb, one that had power. Streetlights ahead, their path slicing through the darkness.

  “Have we lost them?” Botha yelled, and Jade abandoned her death grip on the dashboard to look.

  Nothing there—yet.

  “They haven’t caught up. Can’t see anybody behind us.”

  “So where to?” Botha asked. Jade glanced over and saw that his face looked hollow from stress; the dim glow from the dashboard illuminated the shadows under his eyes, and his strongly defined cheekbones.

  They approached a crossroad. Three choices, then. Go left, go right, or go straight on. Straight on meant they would be visible for miles. Now her bumper stickers were a liability. They made the car recognizable even from a distance.

  Left or right gave them a fifty-fifty chance, which weren’t great odds. Their future seemed to be entirely in the hands of fate. That was the way Jade had felt as the car had screeched through the bends. Left or right? Neither option was safe. Neither would keep them alive for long.

  She should toss a coin, but it wasn’t a coin she was thinking of now. It was a slot machine, like the ones she’d seen being welded in the secrecy of that warehouse. Press the button, see what comes up. Would it be the jackpot, or a near hit? That depended on how the machine was rigged, didn’t it? So how could she tip the odds in their favor?

  Suddenly Jade knew the answer.

  “Turn!” she shouted, and felt the seat belt bite into her chest as the car slowed suddenly.

  “Turn where?”

  “Go back. Make a U-turn. Put your lights on high beam and drive back around those bends.”

  It was the only option that gave them a fighting chance, the single action their pursuers would not be expecting of them.

  “Got it,” Botha said.

  He swung the car in a neat turn across the double lanes and switched the headlights to high beam. The bright lights would effectively blind oncoming cars, making it impossible for the drivers to recognize the Mazda until it was driving past them, and maybe not even then.

  They sped back up the hill. As they rounded the bend, Jade saw a cluster of headlights approaching. A few slower-moving ones, and one large, high-set pair weaving aggressively between the others. The hunters, impatient to corner their quarry. A couple of the oncoming cars flashed their own lights angrily at Jade and Botha.

  And then the group
was past, and they were driving back up the main road toward the intersection from which they’d fled just a minute earlier.

  “I think we did it,” Jade said. Her voice sounded as if she’d swallowed helium. Even now, their pursuers would be making the same choice that she’d been faced with earlier. Left, right or straight.

  She hoped they wouldn’t think to double back.

  “How did they find us?” she asked Botha. “You said that house was safe.”

  “It was completely safe.”

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “Me. I bought it as an investment a while ago. It’s not even in my name yet. Transfer hasn’t gone through. Nobody could have known we were there.”

  “Somebody sold you out. Do you think it could have been the caretaker?”

  “How would he have done that?”

  “I have no idea! I’m just theorizing, given that the place was broken into and we were a few seconds away from death by bullet.”

  “There must be a logical reason,” Botha countered.

  “Well, I can only think of one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Somehow they’ve managed to plant a tracking device on you,” Jade said. “Something simple, like a SIM card device with a battery, that enables them to locate you.”

  “So why aren’t they following us right now?”

  “There must be a delay in the interface. Probably due to crappy network coverage in this area, compounded by the load shedding.”

  “Network coverage can affect that?”

  “Of course. I use devices like that from time to time. They’re not expensive, but they’re also not as reliable as they say on the box, especially in areas with poor signal. It’s easy to pinpoint someone if you have time, and they stay in one place. It’s much harder when they’re on the move, like we are now.”

  Jade checked the wing mirror, but saw nobody behind them. Hopefully the deception had bought them enough time.

  “So what do we do?” Botha asked. “Keep driving all night?”