He turned to Stacy and saw that she had wedged a warped chunk of steel mesh into the gap and was lying splayed and gasping on her back, one arm thrown across her eyes to protect them from the toxic rain. The puddle of blood from her half-eaten thigh was distressingly large and getting larger by the second. She still had Matt’s ax clutched against her chest.
Matt ran to the edge of the solid floor and looked down. It was about a six-foot jump across exposed and dangerous machine parts and into the icy water beyond. From there, they would have to swim around the massive bulk of the dead ship to reach the shore. Who knew how far down the high, inaccessible docks they’d need to go before they found a way to climb out of the water? It would be hard for Matt alone, and even harder with the injured Stacy in tow, but he had no other choice. The thugs were pounding and tearing at the steel mesh temporarily blocking them from Stacy. It wouldn’t be long before they got through.
“Okay,” Matt said, taking Stacy’s hand. “Can you stand?”
She shook her head. Her lips had gone a deep, bruisy blue in her pale face. It was clear that she was swiftly bleeding out.
“I can’t make it, Matt.”
“I’ll carry you,” he said, lifting one of her limp arms around his neck. “Come on.”
“Not gonna happen,” she said, shoving him away and then pressing the ax into his hands. “Bleeding like I am, we’d both be shark bait the second we hit the water. I know I’m dying now, but I don’t want to go like that.” She lifted a shaking hand and started fumbling in one of her many pockets. “I have a better idea.”
She reached underneath her back and pulled a gun. “I grabbed it up there to blow Long’s head off, but you didn’t give me the chance.”
Not that it would have made a difference.
“No,” he said, “you can make it. I saved your life once. I won’t leave you now.”
“Yes, you will,” she said. “You know it’s the only way.”
“But…”
She was right. He hated it, so much it made him want to put a fist through the rusted steel wall, but she was right.
“Get out of here, will ya?” Stacy said with a weak half smile. “You can watch the fireworks from the shore.”
The thugs were making serious headway with the mesh covering one end of the gap between the rooms, peeling it back enough to reach through, oblivious to the way the sharp edges tore into their flesh. One of the groping hands clamped around Stacy’s ankle.
“Now!” Stacy cried, shoving Matt toward the edge.
He looked back at her one last time. She held her chin high, and her eyes were clear and sure. All that hotheaded reckless immaturity had been stripped away, leaving behind a cold and terrible kind of wisdom.
Matt jumped.
The murky water was so cold it felt like a slug in the chest, crushing all the air from his body. The ax felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, its weight pulling him down, but he would not let it go. He started swimming one-handed, putting Stacy’s talk of sharks out of his mind and focusing only on the distant shore.
A bright flare of orange made him twist around to look behind him. The old ship was engulfed in flames, filling the afternoon sky with oily black smoke. As Matt rounded the ship’s stern, the dock came into view. A group of surprised dockworkers were pointing and videoing the fire with their cell phones as sirens wailed in the distance. None of them seemed to notice Matt. None except a single man, standing slightly apart from the rest. A man with a Tapout T-shirt and a cheerful smile. Mr. Dark.
He winked at Matt, then turned and disappeared into the jostling crowd.
“Hey, look,” one of the workers cried. “There’s a man in the water!”
“Come on!” another called out to Matt. “Swim this way!”
Matt made his way toward the waving men, allowing them to haul him up by the scruff and onto the dock.
“You okay, mister?” a chubby young Mexican guy asked, helping Matt to his feet and nervously eyeing the ax. “What the hell happened?”
“Long story, kid,” Matt replied, clearing his smoky lungs and spitting seawater.
“You’d better wait here for the firemen,” another, shorter man said. “You might be hurt.”
Matt shook his head.
“I can’t,” he said, shouldering the ax. “There’s still work to be done.”
He took off down the dock, following the elusive Mr. Dark.
About The Author
Christa Faust is the author of several novels, including Choke Hold, Money Shot, and Hoodtown. She worked in the Times Square peep booths as a professional dominatrix and in the adult film industry both behind and in front of the cameras for over a decade, starring in dozens of racy fetish-oriented videos. She also wrote and directed a four-part bondage adventure serial called Dita in Distress, featuring world famous burlesque queen Dita Von Teese. Faust is a film noir fanatic, an avid reader of classic hardboiled pulp novels, and an MMA fight fan. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.
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