George nodded and retrieved a picture of Carri from his wallet. Before he handed it to the doctor, he said, “It’s a few years old. My wife, she was a photographer and pretty particular about the way light hit her in photographs. Especially in the ones I took of her.”
Fincher chuckled.
George handed the picture to him, and the doctor stared at it without saying a word.
In the photo, Carri sat on a bicycle they had rented to ride around the Hamptons during a summer visit. They had been riding around all day, so a vital glow bloomed in her cheeks. Sun and shadow highlighted her muscles and curves.
George managed to finish off his cocktail before the doctor finally said, “I’m not worthy of your wife’s gift.” He handed the picture back to George. “You must miss her terribly.”
“Yes, I do,” George said. “She was an angel of light.” He had waited to say it until the doctor was sipping his drink. Fincher didn’t choke or accidentally spit up his cocktail, or even clear his throat. But he did stop for a microsecond as he registered the words.
George turned his eyes back to the photograph.
He wasn’t sure if he had always felt this way, but now, as he stared down her subtle, knowing smile, her beauty seemed to flow from the revelation of some great mystery, one that he felt he might never know.
Suddenly, blood covered Carri’s face.
“Your nose,” Dr. Fincher said. “It’s bleeding.” He offered a cocktail napkin, and as George reached for it across the bar, he dripped on the granite countertop.
Dr. Fincher stared at the blood for several moments, at the three bright drops marring the otherwise flawless stone. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and he moved from behind the bar toward his kitchen. “I’ll get a washcloth.”
“Thanks,” George said, holding the cocktail napkin up to his nose.
In the kitchen, Dr. Fincher wetted a hand towel beneath the faucet. He folded the warm, damp cloth neatly. By the time he got back to the bar, George was no longer there.
“Mr. Wyatt?” Fincher called, glancing down the hall to the bedrooms and bathroom. He didn’t receive an answer. And all of the doors down the hall stood open, rooms dark.
Fincher turned and realized that the front door to the apartment hung ajar. He looked out into the hallway and saw the elevator doors closing.
Dr. Fincher frowned and returned to his bar to clean up the blood. Along with the red drops, George had left the photograph of his wife on the granite countertop.
Angel of Light, he had called her.
Fincher picked up his drink and took a sip, contemplating the mess George Wyatt had left behind.
***
George rode the elevator down, alone except for his reflection in the mirrored paneling. His nose had stopped bleeding. His hands had begun to shake.
As the elevator opened onto the lobby, George stuffed the bloody cocktail napkin in his pocket and stepped out.
He had told Dr. Fincher that he had come solely to meet him, not judge him. George had lied. And now he felt absolutely certain the man he had just shared a drink with was somehow involved in the train accident and the attempts on Jenna’s life.
George nodded to the security guard as he left the building, glad to be out of there. If he had stayed, he would have succumbed to his wife’s voice in his head, which was still shouting, “Kill him, George—kill him!”
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK
Cassie broke apart her mobile phone, removed the sim card, and tossed it to the polished wood floor of the bedroom. She used the heel of her shoe to grind the computer chip into several small pieces.
“What’s happening, Cassie?”
Like any other day, Rocky had no trouble reading her emotions. It was this ability that had pushed Cassie a week ago to tell him she was leaving.
“You remember all the drills we went through, right? Well, Rocky, this time it’s not practice. What’s happening is for real.”
Her words caused him to bolt upright in his bed.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown the plate…”
“No, listen to me, this has nothing to do with the dinner. Right now, I need you to focus on what we practiced. Can you do that?”
Despite her calm delivery, Rocky reacted by trying to scramble out of the bed. His frantic effort caused the I.V. needle attached to his arm to rip away. His daily regimen of medication squirted all over the surrounding sheets.
Cassie was able to stop him, but in holding him back, she was reminded of how brittle he was. The reptilian scales covering his body broke and flaked off underneath her restraint.
“C’mon, Rocky, calm down, we’ve gone over this a dozen times. There’s no reason to be frightened,” she whispered to him. “What did I tell you after each of our rehearsals…?”
“’We practice these drills so no matter what happens, we’ll end up with a happy ending.”
“That’s right. A happy ending. Everyone loves a happy ending. And if we do exactly what we drilled, then guess what’s going to happen?”
“A happy ending,” Rocky answered.
After she was sure he had calmed down, Cassie released him. She looked directly into his reptilian eyes.
“Now, what do you do first?”
Rocky took a deep breath. Take a deep breath was Step One in the escape plan they had rehearsed.
“That’s right, you take a deep breath,” said Cassie. “You’re doing great, Rocky. Now, you just keep on taking deep breaths until I come back. Okay?”
He nodded as he kept on taking deep breaths.
Cassie quickly moved to the left of the nightstand and kicked the wall. She and Rocky had rehearsed this part, so the noise of her slamming into the dry wall with her foot didn’t distract him from his breathing exercises.
It took three kicks before the hole was large enough in the wall for Cassie to begin grabbing the stockpile of weapons and ammunition that had been stashed there long ago.
From the far end of the floor’s hallway came the noise of an explosion.
Rocky let out a baleful moan as he lay in his bed.
“It’s all right, Rocky. Remember, we’re going for the happy ending,” Cassie cooed to him just a few feet away.
She locked in a clip to a TDI Kriss Super V submachine gun at the same time the sound of automatic gunfire erupted outside the door of the room.
By the time Cassie had grabbed everything she needed from the stash, and moved back to standing next Rocky, the explosions and gunfire outside the room had stopped.
Rocky began whimpering.
“Gimme your hand.”
When he hesitated, she snatched it like it was a bird flying past her and pulled him from the bed.
As she led him around a bedpost, Cassie said, “Rocky, tell me where we’re going.”
“We’re going on a three hour cruise…”
A wall in Rocky’s room was completely taken up with a cast photo of the seven castaways from the TV Series, Gilligan's Island.
Cassie reached out and tapped the face of “the Professor.” Her action triggered an electronically rigged part of the wall to move back an inch, then slide open. “Ginger” and “MaryAnn” disappeared, while at the same time, a secret entrance to an underground passageway revealed itself.
Outside the bedroom door, there was an explosion so powerful the floor underneath them rocked like they were standing at the epicenter of an earthquake.
Cassie guided Rocky through the secret wall entrance, but as she tried to pull away, he would not let go of her hand.
“This is just like we planned, Rocky. All you need to do is follow the lights through the tunnel until you come to a ladder.”
“But I’m scared!”
“I know you’re scared. So am I. But the happy ending is right behind you. Just follow the lights…”
Cassie tried to pull away, but he held onto her hand with such determination she knew he was in a lot of pain. The green and black scales from the digits of his paw
were being turned into dust underneath the intensity of his grip.
She leaned down and kissed his hand…
“You have to go…”
He finally released her hand.
She hit the professor’s face and the secret door turned back into the seamless wall featuring the seven castaways.
The assault team’s explosive charges sent the door of the safe house suite flying across the room.
The explosion filled the suite with a dark, thick cloud of smoke, and was followed quickly by the first wave of black-hooded attackers rushing into the newly created breach.
Cassie waited until all three attackers had entered before triggering her own explosive device, which was planted on the other side of the wall dividing the bedroom and the bathroom.
The bomb blindsided the black-hooded attackers with an explosive punch of shrapnel, marble, and metal fragments.
Only a few silent moments went by before two more members of the assault team rushed into the bedroom.
Cassie unleashed a stream of bullets from her TDI submachine gun. She then rolled off the mattress to the floor. Just as she was scrambling behind the club chair in the alcove, Rocky’s canopy bed exploded from a grenade tossed by one of the attackers.
She tried to regroup for a quick response, but automatic gunfire tore apart the leather of the chair she was hiding behind. As the stuffing from the furniture floated in the air, Cassie caught sight of the second attacker moving toward her, thinking for some reason she had been hit. She could see he was a wearing a protective vest, which would explain why her first shots had not taken him down.
Waiting breathlessly as he drew in closer, Cassie suddenly rose a few inches above the back of the club chair and fired. Her headshot caused him to stop in mid-step and collapse to the floor like a puppet that had its strings cut.
Outside the room, the last member of the assault team was crouched behind the security desk Yasmine had obviously used for cover before she was killed. Her lifeless body lay right beside the masked gunman as he was using his satellite phone to communicate with whomever was in charge of the assault of the safe house.
“This is Penn Six to Overlord. We’ve met some resistance. Yes, all the other team members are down,” he whispered.
He was waiting for a response when Cassie entered his eye line just a few feet away.
Blam!
Cassie moved through the hallway outside Rocky’s suite. She wanted to make sure there was no one left alive from the assault team.
Near the elevators lie Mat’s torn up body. Cassie flashed on his wife and two boys and had to steady herself before moving back down the hall.
She cautiously re-entered Rocky’s suite. As it turned out, one of the five assailants was still moving. Not only moving, but trying to lift his weapon to fire at her.
Cassie shot him in the head.
She ejected the nearly empty clip from the TDI and made her way to the wall featuring the seven castaways.
There was no telling how far Rocky had moved through the underground passage. She admitted to herself there was even the possibility he had gotten scared and stopped halfway through the tunnel.
Cassie hit the professor’s face and the secret doorway revealed itself just as she slipped the new ammo clip into her TDI.
She wasn’t too surprised to see Rocky standing right there in the entrance to the tunnel where she’d left him. Cassie didn’t know whether she should laugh or be angry with him.
“Rocky, c’mon, we rehearsed this…”
Her words were choked off by a burst of gunfire coming from the dark shadows of the tunnel behind Rocky.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Richard Finney
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
BY THIS AUTHOR
APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
EXCERPTS
Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood Page 17