He was standing on one of the iron spans that held up the railroad bridge. That put him above her and shielded by the shadow from the bridge, his face obscured. She saw him only as a silhouette, framed above the dark rushing water.
“Hi, Boone,” he said.
The voice was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Youthful but with a lilt to it, a thread of taunt, that evoked someone she’d once known.
“Who are you?” she said.
“Call me Hobo.” His hand moved in the darkness, and on the west bank of the river, bushes shook. He had some sort of a line attached to them, designed to draw her attention. An amateur’s gambit, one that she should have spotted immediately, but she’d been so certain she was out in front that she hadn’t feared the trap. How did he know the dog’s name? Who was he, and how had he known that she would arrive in this place, on this mission?
“Who’s your client?” he said.
Boone didn’t respond.
The man shifted, his shadow unspooling like a piece of the bridge coming to life, and the bushes shook once more. He thought that was cute. Boone was pleased to see it. He had one hand busy with that trick. That he would face her down with one hand occupied told her that she didn’t need to worry about placing that voice; he was a stranger. He knew her name, but he did not truly know Boone.
“My client is an Israeli,” she said, turning her body to him and squaring her shoulders. “But I don’t know his name.”
He moved farther out on the steel beam, and she saw that there was a gun in his right hand but that it was held down against his leg. How foolish was he? How did one come to know Lisa Boone’s name and not know enough to keep one’s gun pointed at her heart? She was almost insulted.
He stood there watching her from what he thought was a clever hiding spot but was really just a convenient place for him to die. The dark river below waited to carry his body away when he fell. His left hand still held the cord that he’d tied to the bushes, and his right hand held the gun with its muzzle pointed at the river. He was out on the center of the beam now. It couldn’t have been much more than ten inches wide, and yet he never looked down, had moved with smoothness in the night. What he lacked in brains he made up for in composure and balance. It was a dangerous high-wire act out there. Boone’s own balance was also perfect, though, and she had a stable platform beneath her. She would have to throw the knife left-handed, but this was why you practiced with your left hand and in the dark. She was not worried about accuracy.
“You’d better remember the client’s name,” he said, “because Tara Beckley can’t blink that one out for me.”
Again, the voice sounded familiar, and Boone probably could have made the connection if she’d allowed her focus to drift. But she wouldn’t. Not as she slowly, almost motionlessly, thumbed the knife blade open in her cupped left hand.
“I don’t have names,” she said. “I only have phone numbers.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“Deal,” Boone said, and when she threw the knife, she was almost sad that he’d end up in the river, because she wanted to see his face.
She was down on her back before she understood that she’d been shot.
How? How did he beat me? Did I miss? I’ve never missed.
Her knife was gone, but where was her gun? Somewhere below her and to the left. She told herself to reach for it, but the command couldn’t bring strength. She lay there tasting her own blood and watched her killer jump nimbly from the railroad bridge span down to the footbridge, a treacherous leap in the dark but one he made without hesitation. He caught the railing on the footbridge with his left hand, then swung himself up and over.
She saw then that she had not missed with the knife. The blade was embedded in the back of his right hand. His shooting hand. He’d brought the gun up just fast enough. Fraction-of-a-blink speed. That was the separation between life and death. Before this, Boone had always been the winner in this contest.
Who are you? She tried to ask it but couldn’t. No words came. She watched him advance, and her vision grayed out, and she hoped that she would last long enough to know who it was.
He’ll get the phone, Boone thought numbly, aware that it was no longer a concern to her yet still disappointed. It had been worth so much.
He came on patiently, without firing again even though that would have been the smart play, and Boone had the sense that he wanted her to know him too. When he was close enough to be seen, though, she realized something was wrong. In the confusion brought on by darkness and imminent death, he looked like a child.
He’d shot like a pro, though. Boone’s knife was still embedded in the back of his right hand, blood running down his fingers and falling to the pavement in fat drips. He hadn’t paused to address the knife yet, and Boone knew that he wouldn’t until he was certain that she was dead. There weren’t many in her business with that level of focus.
So who had gotten her?
She blinked and studied him. The boyish face was a lie; she knew his voice, knew his motions, knew his pale hair in the moonlight. Knew him because he’d shot fast and straight even with a knife embedded in his gun hand.
“Hello, Boone,” he said. He blurred before her eyes, and in the moment of double vision, she seemed to see two of him smiling down at her, and then she knew them. They came in a pair, always. Her brain whispered that this was impossible, but she couldn’t remember why. She squinted up at her killer.
“Jack?” she whispered.
“No,” the boy said, “but close enough.”
Then came the fulfillment of a promise that Boone had understood for many years now: the last thing she saw was the muzzle of a gun.
60
Abby was halfway down the hill, moving quietly but awkwardly, still trying to get her circulation flowing, when she heard the clap of the gunshot.
The sound came from the far side of the bridge, close to the western shore. She had no idea if Dax had killed or been killed.
She also knew that it didn’t matter. She’d escaped the car, the headrest coming free with one spine-popping twist, but Shannon Beckley was, presumably, still trapped in hers. Abby stopped in the blackness beneath a twisting oak limb and took gasping breaths of the chilled autumn air. She looked behind her, out to where the woods promised cover and the houses promised help, and then back down at the Jeep, where Shannon waited alone for whoever had survived the shooting on the bridge.
Abby’s hands were still bound at the wrists. She could run but not fight. They wouldn’t pursue her. Dax wouldn’t, at least, and the woman he’d called Lisa Boone was of his breed. They’d calculate risk and reward, and they’d run.
But they wouldn’t leave Shannon Beckley behind. The witness who couldn’t run or hide was the witness who would be eliminated.
Abby started downhill again, moving quietly, chasing the shadows. The bridge was bathed in blackness, but as she watched, a figure leaped from the upper bridge, beneath the railroad tracks, and landed on the footbridge, catching the rail with his left hand. In that moment when he flickered through the night, Abby knew who’d come out victorious in the showdown between assassins.
Dax hadn’t wasted his advantage. Those early minutes in the darkness, all-seeing and all-knowing as he waited for an unprepared adversary, had been put to good use.
His attention was diverted from the car now, though. The bridge crowned above the river, and the shooting had taken place near the opposite shore, which meant his view of the parking lot would be minimal. Abby stayed as low as she could, approaching the Jeep, and just before she reached for the door handle, she felt the overwhelming certainty that it would be locked and she would have come down here for no reason but to guarantee her death.
Right then, there was another clap on the bridge. A second shot.
She knelt and turned her hands palms up, like a beggar, and got her fingertips under the door handle. She pulled, bracing for the interior lights that would come on l
ike a prison guard’s searchlight, pinning her escape attempt.
The door opened, and darkness remained.
She’s just like him, Abby realized. The woman named Boone had shut off the automatic lights. She was just like him, favoring control at all times.
And she was dead now.
Abby leaned into the car. Shannon Beckley was in the backseat, a strip of duct tape over her mouth. Her hands rested in her lap, bound with zip-ties, similar to Abby.
“We need to run,” Abby whispered. “Can you—”
She didn’t need to finish the question; Shannon was already shaking her head. She moved her foot and Abby heard a metallic jingle, looked down, and saw that Shannon was cuffed to something beneath the seat. Maybe to the seat itself.
Shit, shit, shit.
Shannon made a jutting motion with her chin, a series of upward nudges, like a cat seeking attention, and Abby understood what she meant. Shannon was telling her to run. To save herself. Just as Hank once had, and back then Abby had listened and lived.
Abby shook her head. She stayed in place, heart skittering, trying to keep her breathing as silent as possible while she looked around the car for any help, any weapon. There was nothing—except for a phone in the cup holder.
She reached for it excitedly, fumbling with her bound hands, and only when she’d secured it in her grasp did she recognize that it wasn’t a source of help at all. It wasn’t even a phone. It was Oltamu’s fake.
She dropped the phone with disgust, then jerked with surprise when Shannon Beckley kicked the back of the passenger seat, hard. Abby looked up into her fierce eyes and watched Shannon look pointedly at the center console.
Abby found the latch, lifted the console cover, and saw Shannon’s cell phone resting there.
Beside the phone was a set of car keys with a Hertz keychain.
Abby grabbed them and swung into the driver’s seat. She reached for the door handle with her bound hands and eased it shut, not quite latching it for fear of making noise. Just before she put her foot on the brake pedal, which would flash the telltale lights illuminating her escape attempt, she checked the mirror.
Dax was at the top of the bridge and walking their way.
Better hurry, she told herself, but she didn’t move. Instead she watched him walking confidently down the center of the bridge, a gun in each hand, and she saw that he was indifferent to the Jeep, indifferent to the darkness, indifferent to everything. In his mind, the threat had been eliminated, and the rest would be easy. Abby could start the Jeep now, well within pistol range, and hope he wouldn’t hit the tires. If he did, though…
She looked up the long, steep hill ahead and saw how it would end—the Jeep grinding to a pained halt on shredded rubber. He’d close on them easily enough then. This wasn’t like Hank’s house, where Abby had been able to get into the pines and be protected from the gunfire. She would be driving down the length of target range for him and counting on him to miss.
He wasn’t going to miss.
“Get down below the windows,” Abby whispered to Shannon Beckley. “Fast.”
Shannon’s eyes were wide above the strip of duct tape, but she didn’t hesitate in following the instructions. She slid off the seat and into an awkward ball on the floor of the car. She was tall, and the space wasn’t large, but she was bound to the car only by one foot, and she was flexible enough to burrow down tightly.
“Good,” Abby whispered. “Stay down. No matter what. I’m going to kill him now.”
Abby checked the mirror once more, then slid down in the driver’s seat, low enough to bring the back of her head almost level with the steering wheel. She lost sight of Dax in the rearview mirror but found him in the side-view.
He was almost off the bridge. From there it was twenty or twenty-five paces to the Jeep. Unprotected ground. For her, and for him.
If she got him, it would be over. If she missed…
The ignition lag will be the moment you lose advantage, she thought. That half-second hitch between engine cranking and engine catching. He’s very fast.
He’d shoot before he moved. She was almost certain of that. He’d shoot before he moved, and he would expect whoever was driving the Jeep to be in flight mode, not fight mode. He counted on fear.
He wouldn’t be getting any more of that from Abby.
He walked on with a fast but controlled stride. Refusing, as always, to be rushed. Abby bit her lip until blood filled her mouth. Her hands trembled just below the push-button ignition; her foot hovered above the brake pedal, calf muscles bunched, threatening to cramp.
Down he came. Stepping off the bridge without pause. He didn’t so much as glance up the road at the car from which she’d escaped. His eyes were locked dead ahead, and she was sure that he was looking right into the side-view mirror and seeing her eyes. The guns dangled in his hands, and the second of them was proof of Boone’s death, as sure a trophy as if he’d carried her scalp back.
Thirty feet away now. Abby almost pressed on the brake but managed to hold off.
Twenty feet. Close enough? No. He would have to be almost to the vehicle. Then, she just had three simple steps—press the brake and the ignition, shift from park to reverse, and hit the gas.
Oh, and duck. That was key.
Fifteen feet, ten…
Abby slammed her foot onto the brake pedal and punched the ignition simultaneously. The dash lights came on, and then, with what felt like excruciating slowness, the engine growled.
She ripped the shifter from park to reverse as the back window imploded, and then she hit the gas. Three shots were fired, maybe more. The Jeep ripped backward, and then there was an impact on the left side, glancing, almost imperceptible, but she knew what it was because there’d been only one thing between her and the bridge.
Got him. Got the bastard!
The gunfire was done, and the bridge and the river beyond had to be avoided, so she switched from gas pedal to brake and jerked the Jeep to a stop.
No more shots. Not a sound except for the engine.
She poked her head up and searched for him. The headlights showed a short expanse of grass and then the trees, the jogging path a ribbon of black between them. Empty.
She looked sideways and found him.
He was down in the grass behind the parking lot, fighting to rise to his feet.
He didn’t make it. He got halfway up and then fell to his knees. His hands were empty, and his left arm dangled unnaturally across his body, broken. He patted the grass with his right hand, searching for a gun, and Abby pushed herself all the way up in the driver’s seat, thin slivers of glass biting through her jeans. She let go of the wheel and used her bound hands to knock the gearshift into drive.
Kill him.
As if he’d heard the thought, Dax looked up at the Jeep. Before Abby could reach for the steering wheel, he lurched upward again. This time he made it to his feet.
Then he turned and ran.
She was so astonished that she left her foot on the brake. She sat motionless, watching him go. His run was awkward; he was hurting badly. But he moved fast for a wounded man. He was panicked.
You coward, she thought. Somehow, she’d expected he would fight until the end. She was almost disappointed to see him run.
But there he went, laboring up the hill toward the Challenger. Did he think Abby was still inside that car and that Shannon Beckley had driven the Jeep into him, or had he seen Abby’s face in the instant before she hit him? She hoped he had. She wanted him to know who’d gotten him. In any case, he’d know soon enough, when he found the Challenger empty. He was covering ground surprisingly fast despite his injuries, running on adrenaline. Running on fear. He was scared of her, and that filled her with a savage delight.
The train whistle shrilled to the west. To the east, at the top of the hill near the Challenger, the sky was edging from black to gray. Dawn almost here. Daylight on the way, and Dax on the run.
She’d won.
Abb
y twisted and looked into the backseat.
“You okay?”
Shannon nodded. Her cheek was bleeding where a ribbon of glass had opened it up, but she seemed unaware of the wound.
“He’s gone,” Abby said. “He’s running away.”
Two flashes of light came from up the hill, and she looked that way to see the Challenger’s headlights come on as the Hellcat engine growled to life, started with the remote as Dax limped that way. She watched him reach the car, fumble with the door, and then fall into the driver’s seat. He’d have a chance to escape now, and she almost wanted to pursue him.
She knew better, though. Let him run, and let the police catch him. He wouldn’t make it far. What Abby needed to do was get help on the way. She would go to one of the houses up the road and call for…
“Oh, shit,” she said, in a flat, almost matter-of-fact voice.
The Challenger was in motion, but it wasn’t turning around. He was headed down the hill, not up it.
The kid wasn’t fleeing. He was coming back to finish the fight.
61
Even as she hammered the accelerator, Abby knew there was no real gain to making the first move. She was backed in against the river, and her options were minimal—she could swerve left or right, trying to evade him, or drive straight at him. The Jeep had the advantage if she chose the latter, but that didn’t make her feel confident. A head-to-head crash would do more damage to the Challenger than the Jeep, yes, but there was hardly a guarantee of disabling the driver.
I already hit him, she thought numbly. I broke the bastard’s arm, I won, so why won’t he quit?
Beneath that thought, though, ran a soft, chastising whisper that told her she should have known better.
The cars would meet about halfway up the hill. Abby was bracing for the collision and thinking too late that she needed to yell out some word of warning to Shannon when Dax cut the wheel and brought the Challenger smoking in at an angle, and she realized what he was trying to do—block the road.
Easy enough. She swerved right, and the front end of the Challenger clipped the edge of the Jeep’s bumper, an impact that felt barely more solid than when she’d hit Dax. The Jeep chunked off the pavement and back onto it and then she was past him, open road ahead.
If She Wakes Page 33