Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  Her heart skipped a beat. She had hoped she would walk in on Ryanson alone. The good little senator tucked in his bed. A hop, skip and jump to La Loon, and then it was dinner time for Jabbers.

  She’d clearly packed for more.

  At the very least, he wouldn’t go easy. He thought too highly of himself to roll over. And Lou knew in a distant kind of way that she could just as easily die tonight. It happened when you didn’t expect it. She’d known this since watching her father die through a watery prism.

  She supposed it didn’t matter what Ryanson was doing here. Her intentions were clear. So whatever she was walking into—

  So be it.

  She eased open the bathroom door.

  It was a bedroom. A giant bed with a mirror hanging overhead and a mirrored headboard behind it. Overkill. To the right were stairs leading up to a door. And voices.

  So more than one man. More than one threat.

  She ascended the stairs as slowly as possible, one foot in front of the other, keeping a hand on the wall for balance. She would have to come out guns blazing, she knew. The deck would offer no cover, and if she intended not to have her head blown off straight away, she would have to use the door for protection.

  But there was no time to fool with the hinges in the dark, popping the pins and creating a wooden shield that might prove as flimsy and pathetic as cardboard.

  Keep low, she thought. The voice was her father’s, and the sound of it made her heart constrict. She imagined him here behind her, the scent of him as he guided her. In her imagination, they were on the same team and about to bust a drug house. He was walking her through it. He had her back.

  Duck down. Use the steps. Throw the door wide. Target. Shoot. Get as many as you can before the door closes. Track left to right, following the swing of the door.

  She took a breath.

  And threw open the door. She dropped as the door swung wide and banged against the opposite wall. All the guns came up. Five in all, from her vantage point. A man on the ground eye level with her was gagged and bound in front of a row of white leather benches, fluorescent in the light. A man with a power drill kneeled in front of him while Ryanson stood off to one side with a drink in hand, looking like a vodka advertisement, shades pushed up on his head and shirt billowing in the wind. On the other side of this door stood two more in the moonlight. Their skin shone as if polished.

  They didn’t shoot. Neither did she.

  As good as her father’s advice had been, giving up her cover when she could gather intelligence instead—she couldn’t pass it up. So she remained frozen. Not a single muscle in her body twitched.

  “What the fuck, Ryanson? You got a haunted boat?” the man with the power drill asked.

  “No wonder it came so cheap,” Ryanson joked, but she could hear the terror in his voice. The strong tremor to his words despite his insinuation that he had paid anything less than six figures for his beautiful seabird.

  “Go check it out, Rick.”

  Rick was walking toward her when the cabin door clicked shut. So she stepped back into the dark and drew her knife. The wall behind her softened, and fell away.

  When she slipped through, she was on the deck, beneath the white benches Venetti had described. Lou surveyed the forest of feet. With one swipe, she cut through the boots of the man with the drill. He cried out as his Achilles’ tendons snapped and he fell backward.

  His back hit the deck hard, and he cried out. The drill clattered across the deck.

  Someone bent down and looked under the bench, and Lou put a bullet into his brain and a second into the next lookie-loo. There are more than five, she realized. Some must have been hidden by the door. But she couldn’t count them properly now either. They were jumping up onto the benches, out of her line of sight, like a gaggle of teenage girls escaping a mouse.

  The bench above vibrated and at the last moment, she realized someone was running along it, positioning themselves above her so they could shoot her through the fabric and wood barrier from above.

  She pressed her back against the undercarriage and slipped. The inside of the cabin with Ryanson’s gaudy mirrors and throne bed reformed around her. The man who’d come to investigate the door, Rick, was running up the stairs toward the commotion. She shot him in the back of the head, and he stiffened, falling straight back like a tree.

  Timber, her dead father said, and Lou smiled.

  A bullet shot through the window of the cabin and sliced through her upper arm.

  Her lips pulled back in a hissing grimace. Without thinking, she shot blindly at the window and wasn’t sure she’d hit the gunner until she heard the scream and the splash of a body going overboard.

  The water. She could sink this boat and take the whole thing to La Loon.

  Only she was sure that the boat was designed not to sink.

  She hunkered in the corner. The corner was dark, a potential exit, but also good cover. She tried to breathe through the pain of being shot, gather herself, count in her head how many more men she thought she’d seen—reassess her situation before commencing round two.

  They were shouting on deck. Someone had looked under the bench, found nothing, and now they were spooked.

  It would buy her a couple of minutes if nothing else.

  I need to bring you down, she thought, imagining the boat sinking into black watery depths. How to bring you down.

  Her strategizing was interrupted by another round of bullets. Two hard knocks slammed into her vest, punching her into the wall. Then a third pierced her thigh and the knee folded under her weight.

  39

  King woke to Mel shaking him. “Get up you log! Get up! Get up!”

  King wanted to remind her that he’d been shot at, beat up, and left in a Siberian shipping container all day. His chest still hurt from his attack and his throat was raw and burning.

  It was hardly like he was a lazy bum.

  Then his brain clicked on and registered the fact that Mel was the one shaking him awake in the dead of night. Not Lou.

  King bolted upright so fast his forehead clipped her chin.

  “Watch it!” she said, moving back.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Your girl did a disappearing act, right in the middle of one of my readings. She said to tell you she was sorry but she couldn’t wait. So I called your lady friend, and now there’s a girl in my apartment and...”

  “What?” King put one hand against his head. Then louder as if to shout over his blaring panic. “What?”

  Lucy cupped King’s bare foot in a strangely intimate gesture. It was as if she’d just appeared there, at the foot of his bed, materializing from the darkness as she did.

  But her touch had a strong effect on him. King became hyper aware of the women beside him, of himself only in boxers with the chilly night air coming through the window, of the sweat drying in the fold of his neck.

  “Lou went to kill Ryanson. Alone.”

  When King looked perplexed that Lucy knew the senator’s name, she added, “Paula and I talked. She’s in Mel’s apartment.”

  “And this one!” Mel was pointing. “This one can disappear too.”

  Lucy gave a weak smile. “Secret’s out, Robert. You have some explaining to do.”

  Mel touched her brow as if blessing herself. “You’re going to sit down and tell me everything. At the very least, tell me what to say to Piper. She’s inconsolable. She said all her unborn children are dying as we speak.”

  King pressed his fingers to his forehead hoping his brains would go back inside his skull.

  Their excitement and dread, playfulness yet resignation, King tried to absorb it, understand it. His mind pushed through the mania of their combined emotions and tried to focus on what mattered.

  Lou took off. Alone. And she’s doing it without knowing the truth.

  “We have to stop her.” King swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Ryanson ordered the hit on Jack. He orchestrated everything.
If she murders him, the truth dies with him.”

  Lucy blinked several times.

  “We could clear Jack’s name,” King said again. He tugged at the jeans on the floor. They didn’t come up until Mel stepped off them.

  Lucy offered him a shirt. “Let’s go.”

  King’s head snapped up “You’re not going. No vegetarian Buddhists allowed.”

  Lucy threw the shirt into his face. “And how exactly do you intend to get to Houston without me.”

  King’s heart kicked. Damn. She was right.

  Guns. But Lucy would never take one. Mace, maybe. Handcuffs certainly. And a bullet proof vest for sure. He would have it all on her before they stepped out of this apartment.

  King pulled on a boot and began lacing it. He glanced up at Mel, who still scrutinized him with an arched brow.

  “If I come back in one piece, you and I will sit and have a nice long talk about all this,” he told her.

  Mel threw up her hands, and the gold bangles on her wrist jingled. “You’re damn right we will. And what do I tell Piper?”

  “Tell her not to underestimate Lou.”

  40

  Konstantine fought against the grogginess saturating him. His limbs were heavy. His head felt as if it had doubled in size, rolling around on a neck that could no longer support it. The lights were too bright, and every sound struck him like a slap.

  Then everything happened at once. The gunshots. The screaming. And suddenly a knife was in his hand.

  He felt the blade brush his fingers. He scooted back until the blade was in his hand. The edge sliced his finger open, and a stinging fire shot up his hand. It sobered him, pushed back the drug-induced fugue.

  He managed to pick up the blade again, gingerly this time now that pain forced him to be cautious. And he began working the blade up and down on his bonds. It was an awkward, slow process and all the while he could only watch the other men on the deck.

  He hoped she had left, escaped in the confusion. Half of the men were already dead.

  When Ryanson caught Konstantine looking at him, he slid down onto the bench seat as if suddenly aware what a big dumb target he was, looming over the others. He sat with his knees folded against his chest, resembling a terrified boy. Konstantine thought he could reach Ryanson if he needed to—ten steps, maybe fifteen at most.

  Konstantine’s bonds snapped, and he darted to the nearest pistol lying on the deck, a few inches from a slack hand. He grabbed the gun and turned it on Ryanson. He would not be leaving this boat prematurely. Lou would have her father’s executioner and the USB still hiding in his boot. He felt it, poking into the side of his heel and the knot in his chest released.

  The cabin door burst open, and there she was, leaning heavy on the door.

  Louie. She met his eyes but didn’t see him.

  There was too much blood.

  Mio dio, he thought, she’s going to bleed out.

  Her right thigh was soaked with blood. It dripped like rain onto the top step. He could not tell if the femoral or the aorta were slit. Perhaps both. She had only minutes.

  The last of Ryanson’s men stepped in front of her, and she blew them away like a child blowing dandelion seeds. Konstantine had never seen someone shoot so fast, with such precision, even in her weakened state.

  She shot all the men huddled at the boat entrance in a small circular movement, pulling the trigger six times. Six bullets. Six bodies hit the deck. Then she pulled another gun with her other hand, and the body count doubled. Naturally ambidextrous or practiced, he couldn’t tell.

  When she pulled the third gun, she didn’t shoot. Her eyes fluttered, and she slumped forward onto her hands. She dropped her gun.

  The last two men, apart from Ryanson and himself, came around the corner.

  She doesn’t see them.

  Konstantine put a bullet into each before aiming on Ryanson again. The two dead men fell at her feet as if prostrating to a queen.

  In one fell swoop, she’d killed them all. All of them, except for Konstantine’s minor two-body contribution. Traveling in and out in that way of hers.

  Ryanson collapsed on the bench, surveying the carnage. He looked bewildered, unbelieving at the number of bodies on the boat deck. The blood that seemed to run from all directions, this way and that way depending upon the tilt of the sea.

  Lou frowned at the dead men too. She looked from Ryanson to Konstantine, confusion screwing up her face, as if she’d forgotten what she’d come here for and was trying to remember.

  Then she looked up and met his eyes. Her eyes focused despite the blood loss, and she saw him for the first time.

  She recognized him. And lifted her gun to aim.

  41

  The boat rocked under Lou, unsteady, and her pounding headache didn’t help. She was nauseated. But it was more than that. She’d felt this before—an alarming level of blood pouring warm down the inside of her thigh. If she didn’t get the hell out of there and pump herself with a couple of pints of O-neg, she was going to become a permanent fixture in Ryanson’s graveyard. Or she could jump overboard, sending herself to La Loon. A final offering for her faithful companion.

  That was how it should be.

  Ever since the creature had bitten her, shaken her, thrown her into the lake to die—they were one. They’d exchanged blood. The power of this arcane rite bound them together. Somehow this ravenous creature was her. It was a manifestation of her spirit. Her soul. Her shadow. It thirsted for blood the way she did. It knew only peace when she killed.

  Horseshit, her father said.

  His voice sharpened her mind, bringing her back from the edge of delirium.

  She had to focus. She was almost done here. She just had to be strong for a few minutes more.

  Bodies fell at her feet. Forget them. Focus, she said again. Find Ryanson. Put a bullet in his brain.

  But it wasn’t Ryanson who held her attention. It was Paolo Konstantine. A busted lip and bruised cheek made him more handsome than ever. And the fact that she found him attractive when she was bleeding to death pissed her off more.

  “Konstantine,” she said, her gun trained on his face. She wanted him to confirm it. Declare himself.

  “Yes,” he said in accented English. It was the kind of stupidly sexy accent that women went to movies and got all wet over. Her desire to shoot him increased tenfold. “And you’re Louie. Louie Thorne.”

  And then like that, she had a third reason to shoot him.

  Yet the gun trembled in her hand. Sparks danced in her vision, and she thought goddamn, I’m going to black out.

  She was going to black out with the image of a teenage boy, with big beautiful cow eyes smiling down at her, purring Italian at her with a face full of tenderness. The first kind male face she’d seen since her father had died.

  You need to elevate your leg, her father said. His heavy hand was on her back, and the weight of it was pushing her down.

  “You need to elevate your leg.” Her father’s voice changed. Deepened. No, not her father. King. She was still on the deck of the boat, an arm’s length from the cabin door.

  “I heard you the first time,” she said. Someone prodded the wound in her leg. She screamed.

  “That looks horrible.”

  Lucy and King’s faces solidified. They were both armored to the hilt. They had the sharpness of reality, unlike the warped delirium rolling her. Had Lucy entered from the dark cabin as she did? It didn’t matter. She had to stop her mind from wandering.

  Stay here, she commanded herself. Don’t you fucking black out.

  “We need a hospital,” King said, prodding the leg again.

  “She won’t go to a hospital,” Lucy warned. “She hates them. I’ll have to pump her myself.”

  “Hates hospitals?”

  “The light,” Lou murmured. “All the light.”

  Speaking helped. It grounded her to a time and place outside her head. In the dark of her mind, the world was timeless, unformed. Everythi
ng existed all at once.

  Lou seemed to realize that she was about to be transported, about to be taken away from her kill, and she raised her gun, centering it on Konstantine. His hands went up.

  "What the hell are you going to kill him for?" King asked.

  “He’s the new Martinelli,” she said. Her vision danced again.

  “I’m Paolo Konstantine,” he said. “It’s true that Martinelli was my father, but he did not give me his name or a minute of his life.”

  “You’re a criminal.”

  “You’re the one holding the gun,” he said with a soft smile.

  The Glock shook in Lou’s hand. Why you? Why do I keep coming back to you?

  “Ryanson ordered the hit,” King said behind her. But the hand on her shoulder was Lucy’s. “It was Ryanson who wanted your father dead.”

  “Wait, what?” Ryanson said. He sat up straighter on his bench seat, making everyone aware of him again.

  Lou turned her gun from Konstantine to Ryanson.

  “I got the confession out of Brasso. He’s the reason your dad’s name got smeared all through the papers. And the reason he got shot and killed. The Martinellis were just the hired dogs.”

  Lou pushed herself up, forced herself to look at Ryanson. “It’s a lie. I don’t know what these crazy people are trying to tell you, but it’s—”

  He didn’t finish before Lou was on him. She seized him with both hands and shoved. They tumbled into the black water. Hitting the water hurt. Everything hurt.

  But Lou knew that if she was going to die, so be it.

  She’d find enough strength inside herself for this.

  When she broke the surface on Blood Lake, Ryanson was screaming.

  Her limbs shook, threatening to fail. Her breath was labored, coming in pants.

  But she wasn’t looking at the half-drowned man she dragged toward shore. Her eyes were fixed on the beast waiting for them. She sat on her haunches like a poised cat, some ancient goddess prepared to accept the offering.