Intent to Kill

by James Grippando

  The police sirens were growing louder. No time to waste. It was settled. He’d retake Babes. And then he would kill the guy who had dragged the police here in the first place and screwed up Vladimir’s entire night.

  Ryan.

  62

  BABES GRIPPED THE GRAVESTONE TIGHTLY AS HE CROUCHED ATOP some dead Puritan’s final resting place. The marker didn’t exactly crumble in his hands, but it felt strangely fragile. Despite the stress—or because of it—the numbers called out to him, and he studied the dates on the monument. It was more than two centuries old, discolored, cracked, and decaying from the elements. He wondered if Vladimir’s bullets could cut right through them.

  Babes felt a strong urge to draw his knees up to his chest and rock, but he forced himself to remain as still as possible. The slightest movement could reveal his whereabouts, which would have been deadly. He listened. The busy interstate bordered the western edge of the cemetery, and even though Babes couldn’t see beyond the trees, the rain had made passing vehicles audible. Speeding tires on wet pavement sounded just like the traffic on the bridge over his boxcar.

  Eshheer.

  He’s here.

  Babes heard the approaching sirens, too. The police. They were coming for him. Surely a guy like the Russian would know how to escape, but Babes feared that his own luck was running out. If the cops caught him, they would pin Yaz’s murder on him and throw him in jail. Then the big men without women would smear his lips with cherry Kool-Aid and have their way with him.

  Footsteps!

  Babes could have sworn he’d heard someone coming. Maybe it was the police. Or the Russian. He wasn’t sure which would have been worse. Either way, he had to escape.

  Babes got down on his belly and, like a snake, slithered between the monuments, keeping low and making himself invisible.

  Watch out for the Russian. That last warning from Babes was burning in Ryan’s ear. It had to be the same thug who had laid out Ryan on the sidewalk last night.

  “He’s coming,” said Ryan, whispering.

  It was purely instinct speaking. In the darkness he couldn’t see the Russian, but the silence told him that something was under way.

  “Either that, or he’s going after Babes,” Ryan added, thinking aloud.

  “Take my gun,” said Emma.

  It hadn’t occurred to Ryan that she would be armed, but it was no surprise that a female prosecutor who went up against rapists and murderers on a daily basis would be licensed to carry a firearm.

  “Lucky me,” said Ryan. “My first shootout, and it has to be with a trained killer.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re the only boy from Texas who doesn’t like guns.”

  He didn’t bother telling her that his dormitory at UT had boots, knives, and guns sculptured onto its frieze. Or that by the age of fifteen he could have shot the cap off a bottle of Dublin Dr Pepper at fifty paces. “I know guns,” he said.

  “Good. It’s holstered on my left side.”

  Ryan released the pressure on her wound, which made Emma cringe with pain. Change of any kind obviously wasn’t going to agree with her in this state. He reached carefully inside her coat, where everything was wet with blood. It had soaked all the way over to her left side, which scared him. The bullet’s entry point was too high to have hit a vital organ, but any wound that bled this much could be fatal.

  Emma seemed to pick up his concern. “Am I dying?” she asked.

  Ryan froze, and even though his hand was on the gun, he could feel her heart beating. In a strange but powerful way, he felt connected to her. “No,” he said firmly. “You are not dying. Not tonight. Not any time soon.”

  Ryan slid the gun from the holster and wiped it clean on his shirt.

  “It’s a SIG-Sauer,” she said. “Nine millimeter.”

  The sirens were getting louder. Ryan guessed that the police and the ambulance were three minutes away, which would probably feel like three hours.

  “You have ten rounds in the magazine,” said Emma.

  Ryan cocked the hammer with his thumb, then pulled the slide back and released it, loading a live round into the barrel.

  “Let’s hope we don’t need that many,” he said.

  The Checker had lost sight of Babes. One minute the twit was an easy target, the next—poof. He’d vanished amid an overcrowded collection of tall markers that stood side by side, almost on top of one another, a veritable forest of chiseled granite.

  You’re a total pain in the ass, you know that, Babes?

  It didn’t seem possible, but the night was growing darker. Once again the cool mist was turning to cold rain, and the last band of clouds had moved in and swallowed the light of the crescent moon entirely. Vladimir had worked under far worse conditions. If not for the approaching police sirens, he would have relished the challenge of this little search-and-destroy mission. In a few minutes, however, the cemetery would be crawling with cops. He’d had enough. To hell with Babes and the notion of taking a hostage. There was no telling where he was hiding, and Vladimir didn’t have the time to smoke him out. It was best just to drop that screwball at the first opportunity.

  He changed direction and doubled back toward the place where his first round of gunfire had dropped the body in the trench coat—back toward Ryan.

  “Ryan, watch out!” Babes shouted.

  In one fluid motion, Vladimir turned, fired two quick shots in the direction of Babes’s voice, and immediately dove to the ground, taking cover behind a marker.

  “Babes!” Ryan shouted.

  Babes did not respond. The night was deadly silent.

  Vladimir smiled to himself. Ryan’s last shout to Babes had confirmed his suspicion: Ryan had stayed near the body of the Checker’s first victim.

  Gun in hand, his body low to the ground, Vladimir used the monuments as cover as he made his way toward his final target.

  63

  SILENCE PIERCED BY SIRENS—THE SOUND WAS HAUNTING TO RYAN.

  The night was beyond black. Emma lay at his side, and the darkness was so profound that it was difficult even to see her face. For an instant—a bizarre and confusing moment in Ryan’s mind—Emma became Chelsea, and Ryan was at her side as the ambulance approached too slowly, too late to stop the bleeding and save her life.

  Ryan shook it off. He could hear Emma breathing. She was struggling.

  “Only a couple minutes more,” he whispered.

  A shot rang out, and then another. Ryan hit the ground as the bullets ricocheted off the marker behind him. The second one had whistled right past his ear. Surely the squad cars were pulling into the parking lot by now—they sounded closer than ever. Still, help was a quarter mile away on foot, and the officers would have to find their way through the cemetery’s maze of winding footpaths. If Ryan didn’t take out the Russian before they arrived, one of those cops might lose his life.

  Ryan was going to have to put Emma’s gun to use.

  Suddenly he felt ready—on so many levels, and for so many reasons. At that moment, the need to save Chelsea’s brother was more powerful than the need to avenge Chelsea’s death. And if Babes was already gone—silenced by those last gunshots in the dark—there would be at least as much justice in taking out the Russian as there had been in bringing down Connie Garrisen.

  Emma emitted a gurgling sound. Her breathing was growing more difficult with the passing of each precious minute.

  Ryan sat up slowly, his back pressed hard against the granite monument. He was still shirtless, and the polished stone felt like a block of ice against his bare back. Saying another word to Emma was out of the question, fearful as he was of drawing more fire. He simply reached out in the darkness and squeezed Emma’s hand to reassure her.

  Then, in total silence, he raised his head above the marker and searched for his enemy. And his heart sank.

  He saw only the black of night.

  The Checker approached with the confidence of an assassin. Time was short. The police were coming. The target w
as near at hand. His heart was pounding.

  I can’t see shit.

  The darkness, however, was strangely exhilarating. Ryan had yet to fire a shot—perhaps he didn’t even have a gun—but Vladimir had to assume he was armed. He always assumed that his targets were armed, and if that body in the trench coat was Emma Carlisle, he was experienced enough to know that prosecutors often carried weapons. Commonsense insights and assumptions had enabled him to keep the upper hand throughout his career. More than a dozen hits—way more—without a hitch. His keys to success were simple. Know your target. Know your surroundings. Know your way out. Tonight he was breaking the rules, battling the darkness, venturing into uncharted territory.

  And he had never felt more alive.

  Sixty seconds more was all the time he had. He could almost feel the police closing in, and soon he would have to make his escape.

  Vladimir moved to the next marker, stopped, and listened. If he couldn’t see Ryan, he knew that Ryan couldn’t see him. But Vladimir had the advantage. Ryan had already given away his position by calling out to Babes. All Vladimir had to do was avoid making any noise—and keep his ears open.

  The next man to make a sound would die.

  Ryan felt it in his bones that the shooter was nearby—perhaps just a few stone markers away. But he couldn’t see a thing in the pitch darkness.

  What is taking the cops so damn long?

  They had to be on the way, but maybe they had charged off to another section of the cemetery. Ryan had told the 911 operator that there was a shooter at the North Burial Ground. In the confusion of the moment, he couldn’t recall whether he’d mentioned the Dawes family crypt. He hoped the police had the common sense to realize that the Dawes crypt was in Emma’s original plan, and he would have liked to redial 911 to make sure they were coming, but that would have been risky. The light from the cell phone’s display would make him a glowing target in the darkness. He could keep the phone in his pocket and punch out the numbers by feel, but that was a stupid idea. How would he talk to the operator without getting shot?

  A touch of irony gripped him. He couldn’t call 911 to save Emma. Connie Garrisen had failed to dial 911, which had killed Chelsea.

  Ryan raised his weapon, pointing the barrel upward in the ready position. The SIG-Sauer was among the smaller 9 mm pistols, and it felt comfortable in his hand. He’d been away from guns since leaving Alpine, Texas, for the most part. There was a time after Chelsea’s accident when anger had gripped him, and he’d taken up target practice at a shooting range in South Boston. The target was a black-on-white image of a man, and Ryan would cast the dark silhouette as the faceless drunk who had run Chelsea off the road. He’d squeeze off hundreds of rounds, all to the head and the heart, kill shot after kill shot.

  Ryan bristled. He heard something. The shooter? No. Just the wind.

  What is taking the cops so damn long?

  He tried to focus. His ears were his only ally. This was a game of sound and silence. Make a sound, and you’d be silenced. Like Babes.

  Please, God. Not Babes, too.

  Goose bumps suddenly covered his upper body. Ryan was naked from the waist up, but the chills had nothing to do with the cold. It was a confluence of thoughts. On one side of his brain were Babes, Chelsea, Emma, and 911. On the other side were the shooter, the silence, the danger of making noise. Like a flash of light in the night, it came down to one common denominator.

  The phone.

  It was his only chance against a professional killer.

  With his left hand, he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his phone, and pressed it facedown in the grass so that it would emit no light. With the tip of his finger, entirely by touch and memory, he found the rectangular Menu button on the right and pressed it. He found the corresponding OK button on the left and pressed that. Then he found the round Talk button in the middle. He punched it—and held his breath.

  The next three seconds felt endless. If all had gone right, Ryan was dialing the last number to have called him.

  A phone chirped in the darkness.

  Instinct took over, and in a total blur of adrenaline-driven motion, Ryan rolled to his right, sprang from behind the cover of the granite marker, and rapid-fired three shots—pow, pow, pow—aimed directly at the ringing cell phone. The noise, the vibration in his hands, the recoil in his forearms—every bit of it seemed to overload his senses and touch his very core. He wasn’t just squeezing off gunshots. He was squeezing out three years of grief, anger, sadness, and every other emotion that had kept him staring at the ceiling night after night since Chelsea’s death.

  He heard a thud—a body hitting the ground.

  Then silence.

  Ryan moved forward, one stone marker to the next, maintaining a position of cover. Just five gravesites away, beside a tall stone monument, he found what he was hoping for.

  The Russian lay facedown in the wet grass.

  Ryan reached out and put two fingers to the Russian’s jugular. No pulse. Another silhouette, another kill shot.

  Right beside the body lay a professional killer’s tool of choice. The pistol that could have killed Ryan and Emma. The pistol that might already have claimed a life tonight.

  “Babes!” Ryan called into the darkness.

  64

  “RYAN?”

  The voice in the night was like music to Ryan’s ears.

  Babes was alive.

  Ryan hurried in the general direction of the voice, sidestepping gravestones along the way, praying to God that Babes wasn’t down from a gunshot and bleeding onto the grass.

  “I can’t find you,” said Ryan, searching frantically in the darkness. “Where are you?”

  “Forty-one degrees, forty-four minutes north; seventy-one degrees, twenty-six minutes west.”

  Ryan smiled. Only a healthy and unharmed Babes could have reached into his memory bank of Rhode Island trivia and pulled out the exact latitude and longitude for north Providence.

  Ryan leaped over a gravestone and found Babes hiding behind a tall monument. He was huddled into a ball, pulling his knees tightly up to his chest.

  “Are you hurt?” said Ryan.

  “Where’s your shirt?” said Babes.

  Babes’s question confirmed that he was just fine. Ryan went to him and hugged him tightly. Babes bristled. Hugs had never been Babes’s thing, not even with Chelsea, but at the moment, Ryan couldn’t help himself. He was that glad to see him.

  There was a commotion in the woods. Flashlights swirled, and the approaching footsteps sounded like a herd of charging buffalo.

  Babes cowered. “What’s that?”

  “It’s okay,” said Ryan. “It’s the police.”

  “No, no! No cherry Kool-Aid!”

  Ryan had no idea what Babes was talking about. He tried to hold him, but Babes’s fears had taken over. His arms were flailing, his feet were kicking, and Babes was able to wriggle free. He sprang from his hiding place and ran off wildly, screaming in a voice that pierced the night.

  “No cherry Kool-Aid!”

  “Police, freeze!”

  “Don’t shoot!” Ryan shouted.

  The beam of a high-powered flashlight had caught up with Babes, adding to his confusion and anger. He turned and ran straight toward the police, still screaming. “Freeze!” another cop shouted, his weapon drawn. Babes kept charging toward the police, yelling at the top of his voice, a total outpouring of emotion more than the verbalization of any specific thought.

  “Babes, stop!” shouted Emma.

  Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was the hand of God. Or maybe it was just the sound of a woman’s voice in the darkness.

  Whatever it was, Babes stopped.

  Two officers grabbed Babes and ordered him onto his belly. Babes was sobbing, facedown on the wet grass, when Ryan caught up with them.

  “Please, leave him alone,” said Ryan. “The shooter’s dead. You need to help Emma Carlisle. She’s been hit.”

  Ryan was po
inting. The officer aimed his flashlight and found Emma.

  The old cemetery grounds were too wooded and too crowded with gravestones for emergency vehicles to pass, but a team of paramedics was rushing up the gravel pathway on foot. The officer called out to the paramedics and led them to Emma. The area around the Dawes family crypt was suddenly aglow with emergency lighting. Ryan stayed a moment longer with Babes, watching from a distance as the paramedics tended to Emma and her wound.

  “Is she going to be okay?” asked Babes.

  The paramedics were working quickly, already infusing her.

  “I think so,” said Ryan.

  The paramedics lifted Emma onto a gurney, but she stopped them before they could whisk her away. Ryan noticed her hand moving. She was gesturing—calling him over.

  “Wait right here,” he told Babes.

  Ryan approached quickly. A paramedic stepped aside so that Emma could speak to him.

  “Closer,” Emma said softly.

  Ryan walked up close to the rail on the gurney, and she curled her index finger to call him closer still. He leaned over. She reached up, cupped the back of his neck with her hand, and pulled his face toward hers. For a moment, Ryan thought she was going to kiss him, but she pulled his ear to her lips.

  “Nice abs,” she whispered.

  Ryan smiled. Emma was going to be okay. Just like Babes. They would all be okay.

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER:

  MAY

  65

  IT WASN’T OPENING DAY FOR MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. IT WASN’T even the first home game of the season for the Boston Red Sox. But it was the biggest first in the career of Ryan James. He was wearing one of the most classic and recognizable uniforms in all of professional sports—and he was playing third base at Fenway Park.