by Alex Archer
Sneak claimed he was a fan of Chasing History’s Monsters, and quoted a lot of Annja’s schtick from the show in his e-mail.
Proved nothing. He could have watched the DVDs, researching her. If she’d learned anything over the past few years it was to trust no one. Everyone played the game; the goal was to win.
But she had a gut feeling about this guy. He wasn’t trying to pull something on her. She sensed no malice. And she was really curious about the artifact, which he’d only said was rumored to be twelfth century and mystical.
A nine-hundred-year-old skull? Cool. No way was Annja going to let this one slip out of her hands.
“Miss Creed?”
Taken off guard, Annja twisted at the waist. She hated being caught out unawares.
A tall, slender man strode down the plank sidewalk hugging the bridge, which served only eastbound traffic. Dressed in close-fitted black, the straps and buckles about his upper thighs and ankles gave his attire a militant look. She didn’t see any weapons.
Just because she couldn’t see any didn’t mean he wasn’t carrying.
Hands loose at her sides—but ready to call her sword to hand—Annja waited for him to approach her. They’d agreed to meet here, a quiet spot easily accessed by both parties.
“Thank you for meeting me.” His voice was whispery low, yet he gasped as if he’d been running. “We must be quick.”
She put up a hand as he approached. Stay out of my personal zone. You wouldn’t like the result if you put me to guard, she thought.
“You think someone followed you?” she asked. “Why?”
“I can’t be sure, but better safe than not.” He wore a black ski cap tugged down to his dark eyebrows. A black turtleneck peeked from his jacket and climbed up under his narrow jaw. “I’m glad you came, Annja. I wasn’t sure you would. I didn’t want to give any information over the Internet.”
“Except that you found a skull?”
She glanced around as a silver Honda crept slowly past—obviously not wanting to risk the hardship of the five-dollar fine—but still marking her to the ankle with muddy water.
“You’re not going to pull it out right here?” she cautioned. “There’s a café a couple of blocks from the west end of the bridge.”
His eyes scanned their periphery. Sneak’s fingers clutched at his backpack straps nervously.
Annja didn’t like the vibes he was giving off. At once she sensed a strange tingle to the air. More so than the toxic fumes rising from the canal. It was the man’s weird anxiety, she told herself. It was bleeding off him and onto her.
Just be cool. Who could be watching?
Unless he was a thief, as suspected, and really had stolen this from a dig.
“Tell me how you obtained the thing,” she prompted. Putting her back to the street, she paralleled him, and looked out over the water.
“That’s not important. But I can tell you this.”
He leaned forward. Annja stepped closer because she couldn’t hear well with the water slapping against the canal walls. They stood shoulder to shoulder. His cologne was strong but not offensive.
“I was hired to pass this along to a specific individual. It is what I do.”
Thieves passed things along to others. Annja coiled her fingers, imagining the sword in her grip, but did not call it forth.
“But I have a terrible feeling about this job,” the man said. “Something isn’t right. That’s why I wanted your opinion. Maybe you can identify—”
His head shot up from their close stance. Annja followed his gaze as it soared through the iron bridge girders and traced the line of buildings edging the river.
She didn’t see anything to cause alarm. Darkness softened the edges of buildings and parking lots. Moonlight glinted on a few windows high along the perimeter. All seemed calm. Strange, but not for this part of Brooklyn. It was a quiet, old neighborhood.
The man’s sudden exhalation startled her. He grunted, as if punched. His shoulder jerked against hers. He gripped blindly, his fingers slapping across her shoulder.
He stumbled backward. Annja spied the hole in his forehead. Blood trickled from the small circle. Sniper shot. It could be nothing else.
Instincts igniting, she knew when there was one shot, there could be another. Grabbing him by the shoulder, she directed his staggering movement to swing around her body and stand before her as a defensive wall.
Ice burned along Annja’s neck. She knew the distinct slice of metal to flesh well enough. She’d been hit. But it didn’t slow her down.
Leaning backward over the railing, she slapped both arms about the man’s shoulders. Eyes closed, his head lolled. The dead weight of him toppled her. For a moment, she felt the sensation of air at her back, with no support to catch her, dizzied.
And then she pushed from the sidewalk with her feet.
2
Annja’s belt loops dragged over the bridge railing, but didn’t catch. The man was heavier than she’d expected from such a slender frame.
Bracing air tugged off her ski cap and bruised over her scalp. It hissed through her too-thin-for-winter jacket as she fell, headfirst and backward, toward the water.
With less than twenty feet from railing to water, she worked quickly.
Twisting in midair, still maintaining a death grip on the man, she managed to kick and aim his legs downward. Now she fell over him, positioned as if she’d stepped up to put her arms around his shoulders for a hug.
Impact loosened her fingers from his body, but she scrambled to grip the slippery coat fabric. His horizontal body broke the surface of water and slowed his descent, while Annja’s body crashed hard against his. It felt as if she’d landed on the ground, belly first, after a daring leap from a backyard trampoline.
At least she was making comparisons and not pushing up daisies, she realized.
The water was only slighter warmer than frozen. Some summer heat must yet be trapped in the depths. Or a toxic boil.
Their bodies submerged and Annja immediately struggled with the backpack straps. The first one proved difficult. She couldn’t get the tight strap over the man’s shoulder.
Breath spilling from her faster than she wished, she stopped herself before a frustrating cry would see her swallowing water. As it was, she’d snorted a healthy dose upon submersion and it wasn’t the finest vintage she’d tasted. If she did survive drowning, the toxic cocktail she sucked down her throat would surely kill her, if not at least make her glow electric green in the dark.
With thoughts of hypothermia storming her thinning brain waves, Annja jerked on the backpack strap and tugged it from the man’s arm. His body felt twice as heavy now. He was sinking fast, taking her with him. The canal wasn’t deep—perhaps fifteen to twenty feet—but a person could drown in less than a foot of water.
Utilizing a death grip on the backpack strap, she struggled to release his other lifeless arm.
A wince let out her last ounce of breath. Thanks to some trapped air, the backpack floated and Annja hooked it over an arm and bent her elbow. Kicking, she headed toward the surface, but quickly decided to change course for the murky shadows to her right.
Surfacing under the bridge, she gasped. The icy air pierced like needles at the back of her throat. Spitting out water, she sucked in just as much. Sputtering, she bit on a nasty piece of something she didn’t care to identify.
A kick of her legs slammed her against the slimy log bulkhead hugging the bridge girder.
Shivering, she pushed the hair from her eyes. She wanted to climb out, but didn’t know if the sniper would still be watching. Of course he would. Whoever he was. Was he allied with Sneak? If so, then someone wasn’t playing nice.
She couldn’t risk the chance of emerging in plain sight. She’d have to swim downstream as far as possible.
“Should have stayed home and popped in an episode of Supernatural,” she grumbled.
A cup of hot chocolate sounded too good to be true right now.
Her words stuttered from the cold. But the sound of her voice reassured in a strange way. The sting on her neck had subsided. The bullet must have only skimmed flesh. She was alive, which is what mattered.
Submerging was a difficult choice, but she took a deep breath and let her body drop into the dark, muffling depths.
The murky water and her position under the bridge made it impossible to see. But she didn’t need to see. It wasn’t as though she’d run into a boat or shark down here. Though a whale had been trapped in the canal a few years back. It wasn’t so much taking a bite from a fish that Annja worried about, as the raw sewage in the water.
A slight lightening in the waters signaled she’d cleared the bridge. Keeping close to what she felt was the shore, though her shoes didn’t touch bottom, she kicked swiftly and stroked with her free right arm, while maintaining a secure clutch on the backpack with her left.
A muffled horn honked as a car passed over the bridge. Annja was surprised to hear sound at all. The reminder the real world was so close again bolstered her confidence and made kicking in the cold waters easier.
A branch snagged her ankle. She kicked frantically, briefly panicking. Bubbles of air escaped, and she had to surface to gasp in air. She didn’t bring up her shoulders, only the top of her face. Sucking in the cold November air, she then inhaled deeply and went under.
While she hadn’t planned for an adventure swimming the depths this evening, Annja could only fault herself for not expecting it. When did the world just leave her alone and allow her a normal day?
Finding a surprise smile, she soared forward, turning in the water, to tilt her face to the surface. The world could mess with her all it liked. She was up for the challenge.
Paddling her hands near her thighs to keep her body under as much as possible, she managed to break the surface with only her face. A scan above the lumber edging the shore spied rooftops where she guessed the sniper had shot from.
A gulp of air, and she again submerged. She was on the wrong side of the river. But she wasn’t about to cross it. The current would carry her the way she’d come. Which meant she’d have to go another hundred yards at least, to put her out of sight of the buildings.
What seemed like an hour in the water was probably more like fifteen minutes. It was fourteen minutes too long.
Emerging, she dragged herself up along a mooring of old timbers lashed together with slimy rope. Slipping around behind the mooring put her next to a dock. The backpack no longer floated. It snagged on a branch—no, it was a hook of iron rebar.
Annja tugged, but the rebar held her prize securely. It was close to the surface. Deciding to get out from the water, and struggle with the backpack then, she heaved herself up. Using the rope wrapped about the moorings, she managed to slap a hand onto the dock.
The sting of a warm leather-gloved hand gripped her wrist, and reeled her in as if a giant fish. She was able to stand—for two seconds.
A fist to her gut forced up a hacking cough of water. Annja stumbled backward. Her soggy boots slipped on the wet plank dock. She went down. The landing might have hurt worse if she had feeling in her body. The cold did a number on that.
Kicking at the man who leaned over her, she managed a boot to the side of his face. He yowled. The hood of his jacket fell away to reveal a bald head.
She hadn’t the mental dexterity, or warm enough muscles, to exercise a judo kick or to pull out her Krav Maga moves.
Annja turned and pushed to her knees. Swinging out her right hand, she willed the sword into her grip. It arrived from the otherwhere, solid and weighted perfectly to her hold.
Not completely focused, her brain felt half-frozen. She blindly swung backward. Contact. The hilt struck his temple.
The attacker went down in silence. Must not have expected the fish to bite back.
Annja whipped the sword into the otherwhere. Moving as quickly as her numb limbs would allow, she crawled to the water’s edge and dipped a hand into the canal glimmering with oily residue. Her fingers hooked the backpack strap. It came free of the rebar with a tug.
Her cheek settled on a thin layer of snowflakes. Lying sprawled, her hand gripping the heavy backpack, she closed her eyes.
Did other women spend their Saturday nights like this? She must be doing something wrong. What did a girl have to do to meet a nice guy who wasn’t either set on killing her or being hunted himself?
Standing, her body shivering and her steps moving her in zigzags across the ground, Annja didn’t look back.
If the man lying on the ground was the sniper, she wanted to get out of his range before he came to.
Her lungs thudded like heavy chunks of ice against her ribs, and the muscles in her legs felt as if they’d been stretched like taffy. She wasn’t far from home.
Forcing herself to wander through the debris-littered back lot of a warehouse, she found the street and trudged onward.
When a cab pulled alongside her, Annja hugged the icy yellow vehicle before crawling into the backseat.
“GOOD GIRL, ANNJA. You got the prize.”
Dropping the sniper scope, the tall dark-haired man quickly crossed the cement floor and descended the iron stairs. Each footstep clanked loudly. He wasn’t concerned with stealth.
He’d almost been too late. Hadn’t been able to stop the first shot. But the second he’d altered the course. Not much, but enough to save the girl.
Now, to see what she did with the prize.
HARRIS LET THE PHONE ring six times before hanging up. The sniper had agreed to contact him with details of the skull’s whereabouts, and keep him posted about each move Cooke made.
He wasn’t supposed to fire a shot unless the man holding the skull looked as though he would hand it over to someone else. Cooke hadn’t even gotten the thing out of his backpack. Harris, from his vantage point on a building half a mile down the canal, bit back a growl as the pair went over the railing, taking the skull with them.
“Idiot,” he muttered. “Ravenscroft must have hired the sniper. That man knows so little about fieldwork!”
Tucking the cell phone inside his jacket, Harris eyed the brick-fronted warehouse where he knew the sniper had been positioned. The shooter should be long gone.
Five minutes later, Harris topped the fourth-floor stairs in the abandoned warehouse. His shoes crunched across debris of broken glass and Sheetrock. An icy breeze whipped up his collar and froze his face. At the far end of the warehouse he saw the M-16 rifle, still set upon a tripod.
He rushed through the darkness and stopped before he tripped over a man’s body.
“What the hell?”
Inspection found no ID on the body. He wore black leather gloves and shooting glasses. The sniper. He was dead. No blood evidence. Looked as if someone had broken his neck.
Harris stretched his gaze through the hazy darkness in a circle around him. Whoever had taken out the sniper could still be lurking.
Why had this happened? Had Ravenscroft sent his own backup?
It made no sense at all. This was merely a surveillance job. Keep an eye on Cooke, and make sure he doesn’t do anything rash between the time he landed in New York and met Ravenscroft for the handoff.
Harris scrubbed a hand over his scalp. Anything and everything had gone wrong.
“Ravenscroft is not going to like this one bit.”
3
The cabbie had argued fiercely for a generous tip after he’d seen Annja was dripping wet and smelled like something he’d dumped out of his rain gutter last week. Good thing the twenty she’d stuffed in her back pocket had survived the swim.
Much as Annja wanted to unzip the backpack and discover what she’d almost drowned for, the call of a hot shower denied that curious need.
Dropping the backpack inside the door of her loft, Annja made a beeline through the living room for the bathroom. Twisting the spigot, she would let the shower run for a few minutes to warm up.
Stripping away her wet clothes, she caught
a glance of herself in the vanity mirror. Her lips were blue, as was the fine skin under her eyes. Tilting her head up she stroked the bruised skin on her neck. An abrasion tormented the base of her earlobe. The bullet had skimmed her flesh, but hadn’t drawn blood.
“Lucky girl.”
To touch it hurt worse than actually getting the wound.
She pressed a palm over her gut. She could still feel the bald guy’s knuckles there. He’d packed a force. But she’d gotten lucky when the hilt had clocked him on the temple. A blow to that sweet spot joggled a man’s brain inside his skull and instantly knocked him out.
“Should have searched him for ID,” she said to her sodden reflection. “You weren’t thinking straight, Creed.” Due to her frozen brain. “Who was watching us that would rather kill the one who holds the artifact than see it retrieved?”
Because the shooter had to have known if he did kill one or the both of them, the backpack would be irretrievable.
Had Sneak expected a tail? He’d been nervous. Probably a thief. Might explain why someone was following him.
Twisting the water faucet adjusted the temperature and she climbed into the shower, but was too weak to stand any longer. Settling into the tub in a self-hug, she let the warmth spill over her aching half-frozen muscles.
Annja had learned long ago comfort was never freely given. If she needed a hug or a reassuring word, it had to come from herself. She was fine with that. If you couldn’t pick yourself up after a trying challenge, then you’d better get out of the game because life wasn’t designed for sissies or wimps. Mostly.
She laughed into her elbow. “You must still have brain freeze. The game? Whatever.”
A half hour later, with a mug of hot chocolate in hand and some warm flannel pajama bottoms and her Dodgers sweatshirt on, the final shivers tickled her spine.
Annja squatted on the floor before the waterlogged backpack. It reeked of things she’d rather not consider. Things she had washed down the shower drain. Toxins in the Gowanus Canal? Big-time.