“Yes,” she replied. “You?”
He nodded and moved off in rough approximation of an offensive lineman’s four-point stance. She followed in spider mode until they reached the bridge’s front apron, where, still concealed from view by the concrete drop, they were able to straighten to their full heights. Using the support beams embedded in the bridge’s floor as a makeshift handrail, they cautiously sidestepped toward solid ground.
Neither of them had to say what they both knew: they didn’t have much time in which to make a getaway. The kill team would be coming after them hard.
The knowledge made her breathing quicken.
Vibrations and traffic sounds from the bridge confirmed that it continued in use, but shouts overhead told Bianca that at least some of the cars above them had stopped, that the Jeep’s plunge into the water had been seen, that people were leaning over the side at that moment, looking down into the river. Were their would-be murderers among them? There wasn’t any way to know. She had no doubt that help had been summoned, that police were on the way. Police boats would be coming, too, as would, almost certainly, a boat containing members of the CIA kill team.
The good news was that, unless a Black Hawk suddenly swooped down out of nowhere, or members of the kill team rappelled over the side of the bridge, which wasn’t likely given the number of potential witnesses, they were relatively safe for the moment. With only minimal illumination from the Christmas lights and the distant waterfront reaching the grid of beams, they were hidden by darkness and sheltered beneath the bridge. Absent the Black Hawk, a sniper’s only possible shot was from the river, would have to be made with the aid of night-vision equipment and be angled almost straight up. The shooter would need a boat or a Jet Ski or something similar to reach any viable spot to launch an attack. Since she was almost 100 percent sure that the Jeep’s detour over the side had been precipitated by Doc’s opening of the doors and not planned in advance, a sniper in a boat would not already be in place.
Looking down—mistake; it made her dizzy, so that one glance was all she allowed herself—she saw the Georgia Queen riverboat, appearing not much larger than a matchbox car from that height, identifiable by its lights and distinctive shape as it steamed across the river; a barge with its accompanying tugboat coming upriver from the bay; docked pleasure craft and fishing boats and all manner of water-going vessels along the banks; lots of lights and activity, but no apparent immediate threat.
In a perfect world, the kill team would not have seen her leap from the Jeep. They would presume that she had plunged with it into the river and died.
If anyone lived in a perfect world, it certainly wasn’t her.
Negotiating the places where the beams connected was the hardest part. Her fingers grew cold and stiff from hanging on so tightly. Her clothing was, she discovered, all wrong for the occasion. The wind bit through the thin knit of her dress. The short hemline left most of her legs exposed, and her stockings were soon in tatters and provided no protection whatsoever for her skin. Edging around a vertical post in her figure-hugging skirt was awkward—and dangerous. Put a foot wrong, and she was dead. She tried not to watch Colin. He was much bigger than she was, clearly lacked her gymnastics training and, despite the fact that he was at least wearing pants, several times seemed like a prime candidate for escapee most likely to plunge to his death. Since there was nothing she could do to help him—not that she particularly wanted to help him, she reminded herself severely—she did her best to keep her focus on their surroundings.
Screaming sirens approached at speed. She had little doubt that they belonged to first responders racing to the scene, which made it even more imperative that they get out of there fast. Now that it appeared she had a reasonable chance of escaping the kill team, she had no intention of complicating the situation by bringing in the local PD, some of whom she knew and all of whom would ask endless questions.
What scared her most was imagining what the kill team must be doing right at that moment. Unless the takeover of the Jeep had been via satellite or drone from some distant location, they were on the scene. By now at least some of them should have found a boat and be heading for where the Jeep had hit the water. The stripe of darkened lights running up the bridge marked the spot where the Jeep had gone over, which should make its location in the river easy to pinpoint. They would search, or they would watch the official police search, until they were satisfied as to her fate.
Or not.
If they’d seen her jump, they would come looking under the bridge. And not just looking: bringing every high-tech tool the best-equipped intelligence service in the world had at its disposal.
Thermal imaging, anyone?
That was the thought that sent an icy finger of dread running down her spine.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. Fortunately, she didn’t have to say it aloud. When it came to the need for speed, she and Colin were clearly of one mind.
Toward the end, the bridge and the beams supporting it slanted steeply downward, making it harder than ever not to lose her footing. The brackish smell of the water grew strong. The river was over a mile wide, and a thickening layer of fog now floated above it so that it was impossible to identify anything very far out with any degree of accuracy. A flotilla of boat lights that, seen through the fog, looked like a swarm of fireflies seemed to be converging on the approximate place where the Jeep had disappeared beneath the water. But so far it appeared that no organized effort was under way to search the river or the banks for possible survivors.
She had no doubt at all that the clock was ticking down on that.
We’ve got to get out of here.
Colin hit the ground first, his long body unfolding from the beam while they were still at a height of maybe fifteen feet. He hung from his hands and let go, his feet crunching on a carpet of small rocks and scrub grass as he landed. She would have done the same thing, although given the difference in their heights she would have done it several yards farther along where the drop would have been shorter, because she really didn’t want to risk a sprained ankle. But he immediately stepped beneath where she still sidestepped along the beam and held up his hands to her.
“Come here,” he said. Even to her, his voice was barely audible above the lapping of the river and the rumble of overhead traffic. Farther away but approaching quickly, the screaming sirens eliminated the possibility that anyone outside their immediate vicinity could hear him. Still she tensed: ears that were high-tech enough could pick up the drop of a pin on Mars.
In the interest of getting out of there as quickly as possible she swung down into his arms.
10
Colin caught her around the waist, steadying her as she dropped. As Bianca found her feet, she looked up at him. The Christmas lights cast the hard planes and angles of his face into sharp relief. His mouth looked grim, his eyes black. He was handsome, familiar, a welcome presence in the dark. She felt a pull of connection, of affinity: we’re in this together. For the briefest of moments, they stood chest to chest, her hands on his shoulders, his on her waist. She could feel the size and strength of his hands through her dress, and she was reminded that she liked the way they felt. Now that she was wearing flats, the top of her head just about reached his chin and she liked the difference in their heights, too. The width of his shoulders and the solid muscularity of his arms and chest appealed to her. So did his ripped abs and the powerful length of his legs. He was built the way she liked men to be built: tall and hard and spare, like weapons. As their bodies pressed close, the electric awareness that had existed between them from the beginning flared, activating that part of her that was instinctively, atavistically female. It was obvious—their bodies were very close—that she was having a reciprocal effect on him.
No point in trying to hide from the fact that she was still majorly attracted to him. The thing was, it didn’t matter. That fierce sexual tug was a residual from her old life that was no longer valid. Given what she now knew about herself, gett
ing involved with him was never going to happen. It was not a life choice that was open to her any longer.
A dark trickle of what could only be blood ran down the left side of his forehead. Her gaze flicked to that instead of meeting his eyes, which were searching her face.
“Your head’s bleeding.” Her tone was brusque as she pulled out of his arms.
“Is it? I must have caught a sharp edge.” He dashed a forearm across the wound.
She was already walking away from him, moving swiftly toward the gravel service road that led to a ramshackle dry dock and boat storage facility. Guardian Consulting had provided security for a nearby, now-defunct sailing club once upon a time, so she was familiar with the area. It was December: the boatyard was closed. If she was lucky, there was a pickup truck she could steal, the one that the workers used to tow runabouts from the river. It was very old, which was just what she wanted. And that would be because, thanks to her late, unlamented most recent brush with death, she’d had it with any vehicle with onboard electronics.
According to everything she’d been taught, the thing to do in this situation was rush immediately toward the heavily populated tourist area and try to hide among the crowd. The problem was, that was exactly what every operative was taught, and what the kill team, assuming they didn’t think she was dead, would expect her to do.
So she was doing the opposite. If they knew she lived, they’d soon be scouring the riverbank. But she was gambling with her life that their first action would be to post lookouts along the routes heading away from the river toward the crowds.
When they expect you to zig, zag.
The first swampy shoals of the river began maybe a hundred feet to her left. Coffee-colored water slurped against the muddy shore. The huge black rectangle of the barge she had spotted earlier nosed silently beneath the bridge. The fact that she could see all its running lights through the fog told her that there were no vessels between her and it. What she’d been concerned about was that the kill team might be running a boat without lights, but if so, it wasn’t between the bank where they were and the barge. By this time the screaming sirens were on the bridge, and traffic was backing up in the surrounding streets. The stroboscopic flash from the police cruisers gave the darkness a hellish quality. Bianca peered suspiciously into the shadowy area where the bank rose steeply before flattening out into the streets and shops of the tourist area: lots of weeds, trash, bottles and what appeared to be a homeless man wrapped in a blanket lying fast asleep. No physical threat but—a potential witness to their survival? From the look of him, a bomb could have gone off beside him and he would have slept on.
A more committed operative would undoubtedly have killed him just to make sure he could never talk about what he probably hadn’t even seen.
Bianca looked away. In her mind, she could almost hear Mason, her not-father, jeer.
“Your knees are bleeding.” Colin caught up. She didn’t even glance at him. Now that they had survived, she hadn’t yet made up her mind what her next move should be as far as he was concerned. Ditch him and go her own way—or not?
“I’ll live.” She flicked a look down to verify that, yes, her knees were exposed through the gaping holes their escape had torn in her stockings, and, yes, they had scrapes on them that were dark with blood. She hadn’t even noticed that they stung until he’d pointed out the damage.
“This time.” He dropped something—his jacket, she discovered as it settled around her—over her shoulders. It was fine wool, silk-lined, warm from his body, and smelled faintly of soap and some kind of woodsy aftershave. She didn’t like that she liked the smell. She also didn’t like that he had given her his jacket. Having a man, especially this man, take care of her was not, repeat not, the dream. She didn’t want it. She didn’t need it.
But keeping him thinking of her as a woman he needed to protect was probably to her advantage. Also, she was cold. In the spirit of not looking a gift horse in the mouth she accepted the gesture with no more than a satiric murmur of “Aren’t you the gentleman?” even as she thrust her arms into the sleeves for ease of movement. She flipped the cuffs back to free her hands, and, not coincidentally, stuck her hand in the pocket for the weapon he’d dropped in there earlier.
It was missing. A sideways glance found that he was carrying it, held straight down by his side in a way that would allow him to snap it up and fire at a split second’s notice.
She would have found that reassuring, except for the fact that a pistol was basically useless against most of what she suspected the kill team would throw at them if they were spotted.
“I try.” They were moving together now, striding along the gravel road, keeping their heads down as the bright blue bursts from the police cars lit up the night. The dampness of the rising fog twined around her lower body like a cat.
The thickening mist was welcome in that it helped conceal them. Unfortunately, it also helped conceal anyone who might be coming after them.
On that thought, suddenly every unidentifiable shape took on a sinister cast.
She was, she realized, glad she wasn’t alone. And that was bad.
She flicked a look at him. “You can take off now, you know. They’re not after you. They’re after me. Anything happens to you, it’s just collateral damage.”
He snorted. She took that as an I’m not going anywhere. Hard to face the fact that she was relieved.
He said, “How about we put our heads together and come up with a plan that gets us both the hell out of here?”
“I have a plan.”
“Oh, yeah? No collaborative effort, no ‘what do you think we ought to do’? Just ‘I have a plan’?”
“I’m the one they’re trying to kill. That means I’m the one who gets to call the shots.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Steal a car. Get gone.”
“I like that. Short and sweet.” He paused, glancing around. The area they were walking through was dark, deserted, swampy and full of weeds. The gravel road was the only solid ground. The good news was, there really wasn’t anywhere in the near vicinity for a wannabe assassin to launch an attack. The bad news was, the attack didn’t have to be launched from the near vicinity. “You happen to know where you’re going to find a car to steal?”
“I do happen to know that, yes.”
“I was betting you did.”
By now the bridge was crawling with cops. Fire trucks raced up the ramp. A searchlight raked the river, its white beam sweeping the dark water, making Bianca shiver. She’d come so close to dying in that river tonight. She still could die tonight.
Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.
Her heart leaped into her throat as the heavy beat of a helicopter’s rotors reached her ears. She instinctively glanced around even before the aircraft, sleek and dark against the glittery Savannah skyline, came into view. She looked forward again and down so that the pale oval of her face wouldn’t be immediately visible to anyone inside the chopper. It was flying low as it passed almost directly above them, heading toward the river. The sound of the rotors drowned out everything else. Its searchlight missed them by maybe twenty feet. Every nerve ending she possessed screamed run. Training won out: she didn’t.
Don’t so much as flinch. If anyone looking out the chopper windows saw them, they were just two people walking along the river. In the dark. In a neglected area with nothing touristy around.
Okay. Now she was just psyching herself out.
“Steady.” Colin grabbed her hand, held tight. She figured her sudden attack of jitters must have somehow communicated themselves to him. Flicking a look at him, her eyes widened. His white shirt was dirty and torn, but—white. Would someone in the helicopter notice it, notice them? A sniper with a silenced weapon positioned inside the chopper could take them both out in less than ten seconds without anyone on the ground even realizing. Trying to cover it up by, say, giving him back his coat would only draw more attention if anyone was watching, so, grittin
g her teeth, she wrapped her fingers around his and kept walking. Two people, a guy and a girl, out for a romantic stroll in the moonlight. Except there was no moonlight. There was fog. And— Stop it.
“Police chopper,” she breathed when the thing was out over the water and turning toward the bridge. The logo on the side made her briefly giddy with relief. Moments later they rounded a bend and the boatyard came into sight. She wiggled the fingers of the hand he was gripping. “You can let go now.”
“So you can try ditching me again?” His voice was cool. His hand was firm and warm. “I don’t think so.”
“If I wanted to ditch you, you’d be ditched.”
But she didn’t make an issue of it, and in any case he had to let go when they reached the six-foot-tall chain-link fence that enclosed the boatyard. Rusty and decrepit, it sported a tired double gate that was secured with a heavy chain and padlock. Bianca wouldn’t have bothered to pick the lock—vaulting one of the sagging spots in the fence would have been faster—but when they left they were going to have to exit through that gate, so she did. In a matter of seconds, which elicited an admiring if under-the-breath whistle from Colin.
“You’re good.”
“I know. Leave it open,” she said, referring to the gate as he followed her inside.
“Yes, ma’am.”
A single light above the door of the shedlike office building left most of the lot in darkness. The truck was parked beside the building. Just inside the pool of light.
Of course it was. It had been that kind of day.
It took her approximately twenty seconds to get the ancient Ford F-150’s door open. The whole time that she was standing there bathed in the bluish glow of the mercury vapor fixture the skin between her shoulder blades prickled in anticipation of taking a bullet. The thing about stealing this particular truck was, due to the boatyard’s inactivity in winter, it might not be missed for weeks.
The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3 Page 10