Sam stumbled up the hill toward the giant concrete monolith. She moved haltingly, painfully, but gathered speed with each step. She hoped her strength would hold out for just a little longer.
She prayed for just one more shot at him.
She vowed not to waste it.
Sam’s head swum, and she felt faint from all the blood that had poured from the deep wound in her thigh, but she pressed on, willing her body forward step by step in pursuit of the shadow charging up the hill.
The killer was silhouetted against the bright floodlights that wrapped the Washington Monument in a pale white glow. He was now well out of her 9mm pistol’s range, but she was gaining on him despite her halting, pain-wracked gait. All of her fitness training was clearly paying off. And the slug in his leg probably isn’t speeding him up any.
His shape became harder and harder to discern as he neared the ring of lights, his outline obscured by the blazing wall of light. Sam couldn’t fathom why he would be running toward the monument, but that’s exactly what he was doing.
The stocky assassin dashed into the circle of spotlights surrounding the giant obelisk, his frame suddenly awash in brilliant, blinding light, and Sam could suddenly see him in sharp detail, down to the crimson stain on the leg of his gray plumber’s suit, as if to mock her for missing his heart.
He kept running, and Sam kept willing her body forward after him, pouring all of her energy into getting within shooting distance to bring him down once and for all.
Almost there.
The killer limped all the way to the foot of the monument, stepping over the yellow tape restricting public access to the renovation site. Sam saw him pause briefly at the sheet of thick plastic that covered the scaffolding.
Then he ducked down and disappeared inside.
Sam cursed. This guy’s deranged, but not stupid. He’d forced her to make a choice. She could either guard the monument like a dog with treed game, hoping he would emerge before the crooked Metro cops showed up on the scene, or she could climb into the plastic-shrouded scaffold after him.
It wasn’t a choice, really.
It ends tonight, she repeated to herself like a mantra.
But damn if I’m going to follow him through the same hole in the plastic. She approached the base of the monument twenty yards to the south of where the killer had entered, got on her hands and knees, and crawled beneath the plastic covering, pausing on the inside for her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness.
Movement, and clanging.
He’s climbing.
The assassin’s short, stocky body hung precariously as he scrambled up the metal scaffolding, sliding his feet upwards along the diagonal bars that formed X-shaped reinforcements along the edges of the metal platform.
Sam raised her pistol and steadied for a shot, centering her sights on the killer’s chest. Just as she moved her finger to the trigger, the assassin hoisted himself up to the next level of scaffolding, out of view.
She got to her feet as quickly as she could manage, grabbing the steel structure for support, and dashed to the spot where the killer had just climbed up.
Heavy, uneven footfalls sounded on the platform above her. He was running along the second level of the scaffold, and she followed the sound of his footsteps around to the west side of the monument, her pistol trained upwards in case an opportunity presented itself.
Sam felt faint with the exertion, saw stars in her eyes, and felt a fog around her thoughts. She’d lost a lot of blood, and she knew that her time was limited. Time to put this guy into the ground, she thought to herself.
She heard the clanging of boots on metal, and realized that the assassin was climbing higher up the scaffolding. Sam pressed her body into the plastic wrapper surrounding the outer edge of the steel scaffold and peered upwards, hoping to spot him.
Sam glimpsed the killer’s thick form, making its way quickly up the structure. He had found a ladder on the inside of the scaffold, and was rapidly putting vertical distance between them.
She didn’t bother raising her pistol. The assassin’s body was shielded by the steel and timber of the scaffolding.
Sonuvabitch. There was no option but to climb up after him.
Sam instantly recognized the method to the killer’s madness. She was forced to holster her pistol in order to climb, which negated her advantage. She shook her head, liking her odds much less now. The assassin had gone a long way toward leveling the playing field.
Her body protested with each agonizing upward thrust, but she could tell that her taller frame and better physical fitness were working to her advantage. She was slowly catching up to the killer, despite the intense pain that accompanied each movement of her limbs.
The killer stopped climbing, and peered down the ladder at her. She reached quickly for her shoulder holster, but he disappeared onto the scaffolding two levels above her before she could draw.
This is a problem, Sam realized. She was stuck on the ladder, while the assassin enjoyed the freedom of movement the scaffold platform afforded.
She heard a loud crash, and the protracted clanging of what sounded like dozens of heavy steel rods scattering about the platform above. He’s found a weapon.
Sam drew her gun to keep it at the ready, but found it difficult to negotiate the ladder with just one free hand. She had to hook her right elbow around each rung while she repositioned her left hand onto the next rung above. It was slow going, and she wasn’t sure she was any safer than with her pistol in its holster.
She looked down, and felt a sudden surge of fear. She was thirty feet above the concrete, clinging to a swaying support ladder, trapped halfway between scaffold levels with a deranged killer above her.
Sam looked up just in time to see a long, heavy metal rod leave the assassin’s hands, hurled down at her from the platform above. She ducked her head out of the way, but the heavy support rail struck her square across her shoulders and neck.
Pain seared through her battered body, and the force of the impact knocked her off balance. She swung precariously out to the side of the ladder, her left hand flailing desperately to find support.
Both feet slipped from beneath her.
Panic. Her stomach lurched as she fell.
This is how it ends?
Then sharp pain bit the crook of her elbow. It was still hooked around a ladder rung.
It held. Her body swung wildly, then slammed into the scaffolding, knocking the wind from her lungs, wrenching her shoulder as it bore her full weight, dangling three stories above the concrete.
A second metal support rod left the killer’s hands and sailed harmlessly past.
But a third one connected, bouncing off her head with a skull-rattling clang that nearly knocked her unconscious. Her body slackened, and she felt her arm beginning to give.
A sound grabbed her attention. An important sound. The clatter of her pistol, free of her slack grip, ending its fall with a bounce and a skid on the scaffolding beneath her. I’m fucked, Sam realized, stars still swimming in her eyes.
But she wasn’t about to give up.
She grabbed a lungful of air, swung her body, hooked her shin around a rung, and managed a tenuous grip on the ladder with her left hand. Several eternal seconds passed as her muscles strained to right her body.
Finally, she repositioned her left hand, grasped the nearest rung with a firm grip, and pulled herself back in position. She climbed down toward the scaffold floor beneath her as fast as she could make her body move.
She heard another grunt above her, and instinctively flattened her body against the cold steel ladder to dodge another volley of heavy steel reinforcing rods, narrowly escaping a third tooth-jarring impact, one she was sure would have knocked her to her death.
After an eternity of painful scrambling down the ladder, her feet found the hard planks of the scaffold floor, and she immediately dropped to her hands and knees to find her pistol. Splinters dug into her hands and fingers as she moved them around the s
caffold floor, searching for the gun.
A loud, metallic clang nearby caused an involuntary screech of fright. Another steel reinforcement rail had nearly found its mark.
Where the hell is the gun? It had to be on the wooden scaffold floor. She would certainly have heard it clatter on the concrete below if it had fallen all the way to the ground. She was sure it was on this level, somewhere, but it was lost in the shadow cast by the floor itself, high above the floodlights on the ground below.
She heard the killer’s boots on the ladder above her. But her blood ran cold with a stunning realization. His footfalls were growing louder and closer.
He was no longer climbing up the scaffolding.
He was coming down after her.
Sam lifted her eyes toward the ladder. In the cool white light, she saw the same twisted, inhuman grin she’d seen for hours on end as he did vile, unspeakable things to her naked body. She recalled the terror of being clamped fast to a cold cement wall, immobilized and incapable of defending herself against his demonic depravity, forced to watch his horrific, sadistic smile as he drew her blood and her screams, to see the glee in his eyes with each new evil and agony he inflicted upon her.
Anger rose up within her, a rage like Sam had never known, a deep, burning hatred that propelled her upwards to her feet, that willed her forward.
She charged toward the demon on the ladder, her own teeth bared in an atavistic howl, her fists flying in frenzied hatred, her only aim to knock him from the ladder, to hear the wet crunch of his life ending on the cement below.
Her fist connected, driving upward into his balls, a primal roar escaping her mouth as she threw the full force of her body behind the crippling blow. The wind left the killer’s lungs, bringing with it a groan of instant agony, and he slumped on the ladder, his descent suddenly stopped by the red rage on the scaffolding below.
Sam watched the wave of pain settle over his body as she reached back to his crotch. She clamped her fist around the soft flesh between his legs, and twisted with all of her might. “You fucking bastard!” she screamed, throwing her body behind the grip on his balls, twisting and torqueing for maximum devastation, feeling the killer’s body tense in agony, a terrific comeuppance that brought a vicious snarl to her lips.
“Fuck you!” she howled, bringing her left hand through a ladder rung to the killer’s face, her thumb scrambling to find his eye socket. When it did, she drove it into the killer’s eyeball, feeling a gooey, satisfying squish that brought another howl of anguish from the stocky assassin, his voice freakish, gravelly, wraith-like.
She torqued harder with her right hand, feeling something give, hoping she’d ripped his nut sack, rewarded by another agonized exhalation. “It’s over, asshole!” she raged, digging her thumb deeper into the killer’s eye socket, gripping his skull with her fingers to prevent him from twisting free of her devastating grasp. She lowered her shoulder and pushed into his body, praying for his feet to leave the ladder, begging gravity to take him to the death he so richly deserved.
It’s working. She felt his foot slip free of the ladder. And a hand.
But he wasn’t falling.
His hand disappeared behind his waist, then whipped back around toward her body, a streak of shiny steel reflecting in the floodlights.
His blade founds its mark, cutting her yet again, burying itself in her shoulder, its tip scraping bone. Sam shrieked in pain, and her hand fell away from the killer’s face. Her vicious grip on his balls lost its vigor, and Sam staggered back on her heels, too off-balance to dodge the swing of the killer’s heavy boot. It connected with her ribs, sending an electric pulse of pain through her body and knocking her onto the scaffold floor.
In a flash, he was on her, his heavy fists pounding away at the back of her head, his knee on the small of her back, pinning her down on the hard planks. The punches came hard and fast, threatening to knock her unconscious, moving toward the vulnerable place where her spine met her skull, each blow beating her forehead into the wooden floor of the scaffolding.
His other hand closed around her neck. Her vision dimmed, and her lungs screamed for air.
The killer’s hand drew away, his body coiling for a coup de grace, his weight pushing into her body as he prepared to kill her with his fist.
She felt her consciousness fading, but through the fog and pain, a certainty welled up within her.
Not this time, asshole.
Sam summoned a strength she didn’t feel, a reserve she hoped somehow still existed. She drove her left hand and knee down into the scaffold floor with all of her might, rolling her body violently to the right, throwing her head back to dodge the crushing blow she sensed was on its way.
She felt his fist graze her cheek, harmless.
He missed.
She heard the crack of bones and a howl of pain as the killer’s fist shattered against the scaffold floor. She continued to throw her body into the desperate roll to her right, pushing harder with her hips, and leading with her left elbow, swinging viciously toward the killer’s face.
Her elbow found its mark. His jaw crunched. He fell, dazed, dead weight, head banging against the scaffold, and Sam continued rolling, scrambling to escape from beneath his bulk. The knife, still buried deep in her shoulder, grazed painfully against the assassin’s barrel chest as she squirmed from beneath him, finally extricating herself from his deadly embrace.
She rose shakily to her knees, head swimming, her body held up by pure adrenaline and little else.
Face down on the wooden planks, the killer stirred.
He planted his hands, drew his knees up, lifted his torso, and swung his right arm toward Sam’s face.
She dodged.
It ends now.
Sam gritted her teeth and grasped the handle of the killer’s knife, protruding grotesquely from her shoulder. With a yell of pain and rage, she pulled the knife out of her flesh and raised it above her head. She drew her body up, grasping the knife handle with both hands, and drove the blade downward with desperate, frantic force, aiming in between the twisted killer’s fleshy shoulder and his bony skull, dodging the flailing parry of his arm.
She drove the blade home, feeling the muscle and sinew give way in her killer’s neck, feeling his spine sever, feeling the sudden limpness in his body, feeling the slackness overtake him, hearing his last, gurgling breath.
Relief overtook her. She felt the overpowering, ancient joy of survival, the humbling exhilaration of cheating death yet again.
Overcome, she sobbed with exhaustion, with the horror of yet another deadly encounter with pure evil, and with the frightening, accusatory knowledge of the angry, deadly rage inside of her own soul.
She had won, had prevailed against evil incarnate, had killed the walking demon. She had survived.
But a new realization settled.
It’s still not over.
Sam felt weight, dread, foreboding. And impossible tiredness.
Below her, she heard someone yelling. It was a familiar voice, yelling her name, with sirens wailing in the background, growing louder.
She found her voice. “Up here, Dan.”
“We gotta go, Sam! Metro’s on the way!”
Shakily, she rose to her feet and stumbled to the ladder.
51
Sam sat alone, enveloped in a plush leather armchair, her legs resting atop an exquisitely carved oak coffee table, watching a growing streak of blazing orange announce the new day’s arrival.
Monday.
I hate Mondays.
It had been ten days since a bomb nearly destroyed her house.
Two days ago, she’d been tortured, mutilated, and killed.
Four hours ago, in a flash of rage-driven strength, she’d saved a senator, saved her own life yet again, and sent her twisted, deranged killer to the afterlife.
The time since her exhausting battle with the assassin had been filled with intravenous bags, needles, painkillers, stitches, and other medical care delivered qui
etly in a flop house in a seedy part of town by a doctor Dan had called.
She was exhausted. She’d slept little more than an hour since the previous evening, when, lying next to Brock in Secretary Cullsworth’s guest room, the jagged, uncooperative pieces of the puzzle had finally locked into place in her mind.
That revelation had led her inexorably to the exquisitely-appointed office in which she now sat, watching the breathtaking sunrise.
Important sunrise, Sam thought. It ends now.
It was an enormous gamble. She’d staked everything on the strength of little more than an intuition, a nascent knowing that felt true even before she’d found the words, the logic, and the reasons to explain why.
But she was certain.
Out the window, deep reds turned to lighter oranges and yellows, and a high layer of wispy clouds offered a canvas to the gorgeous colors of dawn. It felt like a moment worth savoring.
It ended all too quickly. She heard mechanical noises, and turned her head to the right of the giant picture window in the enormous office, staring expectantly at the gleaming silver door that concealed a private executive elevator.
The elevator was used by one person, and one person only.
He’s the one. She knew it in her bones.
Jarvis’ murderous display had been nothing more than a diversion. Psychopathic, unnecessary, disgusting.
She pulled back the slide on her 9mm pistol, chambering a round and setting the hammer for a quick single-action shot, and clicked off the safety.
The mechanical noises grew louder.
Sam’s heartbeat grew more insistent. She trained her gun on the elevator door, and forced herself to take deep, calming breaths.
It ends now.
The elevator noise grew to a crescendo, then halted. The doors parted.
Two men?
Of course! How could it be otherwise?
Homeland Secretary Vince Cullsworth stepped confidently into his office.
Deputy Director Tom Jarvis followed.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 54