by Dan Ames
Pauling mulled all of this over as she returned the rental car and took a cab to the little airport. She noted that there were no cabs waiting to pick up fares.
There was no excitement over the idea of going back to San Clemente Island, but now Pauling had a whole new set of questions to ask. There was a surge of adrenaline, though, at the prospect of confronting Dr. Sirrine, Wilkins, and even Michael Tallon.
Had Tallon known Emily Donnellon?
If he was all about seducing beautiful women, Emily would have fit the bill. She had been a breathtakingly beautiful young woman.
Pauling also wasn't looking forward to going back under what they call the cone of silence. A lack of Internet and lack of cell phone coverage was conducive to a feeling of disconnectedness. Even though she had the satellite phone and could communicate with Blake via email, a sense of isolation was pervasive on the island.
Pauling made her way to the old airplane and walked up to Troyer, who was overseeing the loading of more cargo.
He turned to her. “There she is,” he said. “Our lone passenger.”
She took her seat as they finished loading the plane. Once her gear had been stowed, Pauling sat down and pulled out her phone. It might be the last time she had quick and easy access to her email.
She checked her mailboxes and saw a message from Dr. Killibrew. Attached was a Word document with a more thorough analysis of Paige’s autopsy.
The plane hurtled down the runway and then lurched into the air. Pauling momentarily put her phone down to hold onto the arms of her seat. It was windy, and the old plane creaked and groaned as it gained altitude.
Once it was calmer, she got the phone back out and opened the document.
The fourth paragraph made her gasp out loud. It stated:
…subject appears to have suffered from a full body concussion initially misdiagnosed as blunt force trauma. A more accurate diagnosis with a higher degree of accuracy would state that the trauma was consistent with suicide jumpers...
The phone dangled in Pauling’s hand.
Suddenly it made sense.
When Paige had been placed into the ocean she had already been dead.
But what she suddenly realized was that Paige hadn’t been tossed into the water from a boat.
She’d been dropped from somewhere much higher.
And no one had seen Emily Donnellon once she’d gotten off the plane.
Pauling knew why: she’d probably never gotten off the plane in the first place.
At least not on land.
The realization sunk in and then she felt the cold, razor-sharp edge of steel placed against her throat.
“Whatcha reading there, honey?” the voice asked.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“I was reading all about your handiwork,” she answered through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, how so?” Troyer asked.
He stayed behind her.
“Pretty slick,” Pauling said. “Find your victims, get them on the plane alone, have your fun, then dump them into the ocean. More specifically, a part of the ocean full of hungry great white sharks.”
She heard him chuckle.
“Lean forward and put one arm behind your back,” he said.
Pauling had no choice but to comply.
“It was you at Rag City, wasn’t it?” Pauling asked.
“Yeah, we get bored when we have to overnight on the island.”
From the cockpit, Jamison appeared. He smiled back at them, and he had a small pistol in his hand.
“It’s a .22,” he said, reading her mind. “I can shoot you, but it won’t go through the fuselage. The perfect caliber for this sort of thing.”
Pauling felt the knife removed from her throat, and then cold steel snapped around her left wrist. The snap of the handcuffs closing seemed to echo in the airplane.
“She was asking about our fun shooting at her in Rag City,” Troyer said.
“I’m a helluva shot,” Jamison said. “Missing you was easy but I tried to get as close as possible. For the effect.”
“How’d you put the note under my door without being seen?” Pauling asked.
“Easy. The Nest is empty all the time. That’s how we searched your room, too.”
“Put your other hand behind your back,” Troyer said.
“Whoo boy, I’ve been waiting for this ever since we flew you out here,” Jamison said.
“That’s pretty pathetic,” she said. “Can’t compete with the military guys, huh? ‘Cuz they’re young and athletic and you’re middle-aged and soft?”
She wanted to piss them off, get them to momentarily forget their cool, and she desperately wanted at least one hand free.
However, she knew methodical killers rarely made mistakes. It was when they were distracted that they failed to think things through.
Jamison slapped her.
It was a quick hard move and it rocked her head back. She tasted blood.
Troyer used the slap to grab her arm and snap the cuff on it.
Pauling spit the blood out at him. “What a great idea,” she said. “Kill them on the plane. No witnesses. Plenty of time to get rid of evidence. Hell, you could even doctor the flight records to make it look like they landed in Los Angeles.”
“Oh, they landed all right, just not on terra firma,” Troyer said. His voice sounded cool and collected. Jamison still looked flushed, pissed off at what she’d said.
“Can’t they track your flight records?” Pauling asked, stalling for time. “I’m assuming you put the plane on autopilot while you have your fun?”
“Oh, we just divert due to weather for awhile. No big deal,” Troyer answered.
“Yeah, you look like you’d be pretty quick in the sack,” Pauling said, meeting Jamison’s eyes. “Little-dicked buddies spurned by women, right?”
Something snapped in Jamison’s eyes and he slid the pistol into his pants and lunged at Pauling.
She lowered her head and butted him in the sternum, then spun and grabbed for the pistol with her hands behind her back. Jamison grabbed her and they tumbled together onto the floor.
Pauling was lucky. She landed on top of the gun and was able to get ahold of it. However, she was pinned on top of it and couldn’t budge it, so she squeezed the trigger.
The sound was an explosion and Jamison screamed. Troyer jumped off of her and she lurched forward, getting the gun out of Jamison’s pocket and she aimed it blindly behind her and down. She pulled the trigger multiple times and then spun as Troyer reacted.
He came at her but she shot. The bullet went high, catching him in the throat. He stopped, and then staggered. Pauling lowered the pistol and fired two more times until the hammer clicked on empty.
Troyer fell, the front of his shirt a bloody mess.
Pauling looked down, behind her, and saw that one of the bullets she’d fired into Jamison had gone in under his chin and come back out through his left eye.
They were both dead.
Even worse, the plane was tilting down and Pauling had a moment to wonder if one of the bullets had gone into some wiring or fuel lines.
She looked to the cockpit and saw through the windshield a sky of blue.
Except there was a wave in the sky.
And then she realized the blue wasn’t the sky, and the wave was real.
The plane crashed into the ocean and Pauling’s world went black.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Cold.
Pauling’s world went from black to cold. And then to bright white. Foam filled the airplane as it creaked and heaved in the cold ocean water.
Her hands still locked behind her, she struggled to her feet. The crash landing had snapped a wing off and taken a chunk of the fuselage with it. The sun burst through the opening, along with a steady roar of ocean water.
Suddenly, the sun was gone, replaced by a glow as the plane sank beneath the surface of the water. Pauling instinctively dove toward the opening, unable to use her arms, instead,
kicking with everything she had. She made it through the opening just as the plane heaved to the right. She felt something stab her left leg and then she was kicking upward.
Her head broke through the surface and she gasped, taking in a huge lungful of water.
She bobbed under, then back up. She rolled to her side and then to the other.
To her right, she had glimpsed the top of Bird Shit Rock. She rotated her body and rolled onto her back, and began kicking furiously.
Her leg was burning and she had the sickening realization that she was probably bleeding.
Not a good thing with sharks everywhere.
Pauling was tempted to try to stop and confirm if she was bleeding, but what would be the point? She continued to kick and twist to remain on her back.
She was sure at any moment something huge would crunch through her legs.
It took her an agonizingly long five minutes to reach the outskirts of Bird Shit Rock.
In those last few seconds she was absolutely positive something was going to bite off her legs.
But it never did.
She heard the waves splashing on rock and maneuvered herself into an opening between two jagged thumbs of rock. She could barely keep her head up to see, and each time the sea rewarded her by smashing her face with a vicious wave.
Pauling choked on the ocean water but crabbed sideways, getting her feet beneath her and working her way around until she could stand and climb higher onto the outcropping.
She was safe, out of the water, but she was bleeding. The back of her leg was crimson and blood had seeped down, covering her foot.
Pauling wondered how long she would have to wait. The sun felt good on her skin as she shivered and closed her eyes.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
“How long were you out there?”
Pauling looked up at Nathan.
“A couple of hours,” she said. “The military air traffic control guys saw the plane disappear. They sent a helicopter out and they found me.”
“You were lucky,” he said.
“I know.”
He sighed.
They were in a hospital room in Los Angeles, flown directly there by the search and rescue team. She’d had a mild concussion and some bruised ribs. The jagged cut on her leg had taken twenty-seven stitches.
In a few hours she would be released and able to head back to Wisconsin on Nathan’s private jet.
Not that she was all that anxious to get back on an airplane.
“You did it,” he said.
“A lot of luck was involved,” Pauling said.
“Those bastards got what they deserved,” Nathan said. In some ways, he looked more tired and older than when she’d last seen him. But there was something different in his eyes, too. A sense of closure, maybe.
Justice.
“There may be more than Paige and Emily,” Nathan said. “The cops are scouring their files for any other missing women. They think they’ve already found one.”
Pauling knew they would. Jamison and Troyer had gotten very good at what they were doing. And they’d gotten that good through practice.
Plenty of practice.
“I owe you an apology,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry about using the Jack Reacher story to get you to take the case. I had read about your background and knew you were the perfect person to find out who killed Paige.”
Pauling let it go. She wasn’t happy about it, and she’d almost died, but she wasn’t going to tear into Nathan Jones now.
There was movement in the doorway and Pauling saw Michael Tallon looking at her. He had a clutch of flowers in his hand.
“Well, I’ll see how soon we can get you out of here,” Nathan said. He nodded at Tallon as he left the room.
“You know if you’d wanted to see Bird Shit Rock up close all you had to do was ask,” Tallon said. He gave Pauling a sheepish smile and put the flowers on a table at the foot of the bed.
“Pretty impressive, what you did,” Tallon said.
“Thanks,” Pauling answered.
“How long was I a suspect?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Not very long,” she answered.
“Before you trusted me,” he said.
“Who said I trust you?”
“You don’t?” he made a big deal of looking shocked. “What do I have to do to earn it?”
She glanced out the window and then looked back at him.
“I’ve got a few ideas in mind.”
An Award-Winning Bestselling Mystery Series
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“Fast-paced, engaging, original.”
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About the Author
Dan Ames is a USA TODAY Bestselling Author and winner of the Independent Book Award for Crime Fiction.
www.authordanames.com
[email protected]
Also by Dan Ames
The JACK REACHER Cases #1 (A Hard Man To Forget)
The JACK REACHER Cases #2 (The Right Man For Revenge)
The JACK REACHER Cases #3 (A Man Made For Killing)
DEAD WOOD (John Rockne Mystery #1)
HARD ROCK (John Rockne Mystery #2)
COLD JADE (John Rockne Mystery #3)
LONG SHOT (John Rockne Mystery #4)
EASY PREY (John Rockne Mystery #5)
BODY BLOW (John Rockne Mystery #6)
THE KILLING LEAGUE (Wallace Mack Thriller #1)
THE MURDER STORE (Wallace Mack Thriller #2)
FINDERS KILLERS (Wallace Mack Thriller #3)
DEATH BY SARCASM (Mary Cooper Mystery #1)
MURDER WITH SARCASTIC INTENT (Mary Cooper Mystery #2)
GROSS SARCASTIC HOMICIDE (Mary Cooper Mystery #3)
KILLER GROOVE (Rockne & Cooper Mystery #1)
BEER MONEY (Burr Ashland Mystery #1)
THE CIRCUIT RIDER (Circuit Rider #1)
KILLER’S DRAW (Circuit Rider #2)
TO FIND A MOUNTAIN (A WWII Thriller)
STANDALONE THRILLERS:
THE RECRUITER
KILLING THE RAT
HEAD SHOT
THE BUTCHER
BOX SETS:
AMES TO KILL
GROSSE POINTE PULP
GROSSE POINTE PULP 2
TOTAL SARCASM
WALLACE MACK THRILLER COLLECTION
SHORT STORIES:
THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR
BULLET RIVER
SCHOOL GIRL
HANGING CURVE
SCALE OF JUSTICE