by Jill Gregory
“Why don’t you tell me who you are, and what this is all about?” To his surprise, his voice emerged an octave lower than usual.
“I’m just a messenger boy, Professor.” He gestured with his chin. “Set your phone down on that table and tell me where that book is. I’ll also take everything you acquired from the rabbi.”
David’s gaze locked with Yael’s. Pain pulsed through his temples. He wanted to tell the kid to fuck himself, but he bit his tongue, forcing himself to stare down his adversary.
There has to be something in there, behind those veiled eyes. But how to reach it? Maybe if I offer him one of the gemstones, he’ll leave Yael alone.
It was as if she heard him. “Don’t do it, David.” Her voice was almost as panicked as the chaos clamoring in his own head. “He’s going to kill me no matter what. Get out of here—now.”
The hulk smiled thinly and pressed the blade harder against her flesh. He nodded toward the unmade bed. “You poked her last night. Looks like it’s my turn to poke her today.”
Yael gasped as the knife nicked her throat. Blood spouted from a tiny puncture.
“See why bodies are so inconvenient,” the hulk said with disdain. “So messy. Bothersome. And such a barrier to spiritual ascension.” He drew the knife a quarter of an inch across Yael’s throat, and she winced as blood began to trickle toward the collar of her robe. “Move it, Professor. Or would you like to see more?”
“Bastard,” Yael spat between her teeth, and with one backwards thrust slammed her foot into his shin. David lunged. The room tilted as he grabbed for the knife. Writhing desperately, Yael twisted free, but with one punch, the monolith sent her flying into the paneled closet doors. Then he spun toward David. A perfectly aimed karate kick to the stomach sent David crashing to his knees.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even remember how. He felt as if his lungs were collapsing and on fire all at the same time. Nausea roiled in his throat as he clutched at the headboard and pulled himself to his feet.
All three of them spotted the amber on the floor in the same instant. It had rolled from David’s pocket and now winked like a tiny sun beside one of Yael’s kitten-heeled sandals, its ancient carved letters dark with mystery.
Even as the blond’s thick arm shot out, Yael dove for the stone. David seized the metal luggage rack and slammed it down on the man’s head with a sickening crack. The Dark Angel thumped to the carpet like a felled elephant.
“Yael, are you all right?” David gulped at the air that was slowly feeding oxygen back to his brain.
“I’ll be better once we get out of here,” she said, tying her robe. She pressed a shaking hand to her throat, wincing at the feel of blood. “What about you? Anything broken?”
“Probably,” he grimaced. “If I ignore it, I’m sure it will go away.”
With a weak smile, she scooped up the gemstone and handed it to him.
David slipped it back inside his pocket and heard the soft clink as it fell against the agate still hidden there.
“Let’s find out if he has anything we can use before we get out of here,” he said, kneeling beside the fallen man.
The New Jersey driver’s license identified the hulk as James Gillis.
“That ID might be fake. If we could get it to Avi he might be able to find out who sent this putz,” Yael murmured, riffling through Gillis’s back pants pocket.
“You sure rely on Avi a lot, don’t you?”
“We go back a long time.” She searched through the rest of the wallet. “He was recruited by the Mossad the same year as my husband.”
“Husband?” David asked, investigating the bulge in Gillis’s knee-length sock.
“We were only married three months when he was killed on a mission. We’d delayed our honeymoon. . . .”
Sympathy welled within him. But before he could give voice to it, she changed the subject, eyeing the small caliber handgun he’d just pulled from Gillis’s sock.
“I wouldn’t recommend trying to get that past security. Give it to me.”
Swiping a hand across the sweat pouring down his forehead, he watched her empty the chamber and hide the bullets under the mattress. Then he checked Gillis’s other leg and found a tarot card in the second sock.
“Well, look at this. It’s identical.”
Yael moved closer to examine it. “The number on the back is different,” she pointed out.
She was right. This one was marked 1,098. We’ll have to figure it out later, David thought. Right now he needed to restrain Gillis before he came to. He wanted answers.
Quickly, he ripped the sheet from his bed.
“Yael, get a glass of cold water from the bathroom.”
She gave him a long look, then disappeared while David tied one end of the sheet tight around Gillis’s arms, binding them behind his back, then did the same with his legs.
“Ready?” Yael held the glass of cold water over Gillis’s head.
“Do it.”
Gillis didn’t so much as flinch, even when David slapped at his dripping face. “Wake up, blondie.” But Gillis’s eyelids never blinked.
Yael dropped down beside him and pressed her fingers to his throat. “His pulse is weak. He could be out for a while, and we don’t have the luxury of waiting.”
David stuffed the man’s driver’s license and the tarot card into his duffel as Yael dressed. She slung her tote over her shoulder as they took one last look around the room. On the TV screen, Turkish rescue workers carried more broken bodies from the earthquake’s rubble.
Gillis groaned once, but didn’t move. David started toward him, but Yael grabbed his arm. “We don’t have time. David, please.”
He knew she was right. It might take hours to get Gillis to talk. And in the meantime, police bulletins would have airport security interested in talking to him.
He opened the door cautiously and glanced down the hall. Empty.
But he had no way of knowing about the beefy Puerto Rican leaning against a wall downstairs in the lobby, his gaze glued to the elevators just in case Professor David Shepherd and Yael HarPaz managed to slip past Gillis and tried to check out.
“So much for modern technology.” Disgustedly, Hutch pushed the sunglasses up on his head and regarded the burly clerk in Charlie’s Convenience Store while Stacy pondered the array of candy piled on wooden display shelves.
“Yup.” The clerk worked over the ball of tobacco jammed in his stubbled cheek. “Those wildfires are sure doing a number on us. Mother Nature, she’ll trump technology every time.”
“This is preposterous. You’re telling us there isn’t a single working cell phone in Flagstaff?” Meredith demanded. The impatience in her tone earned her a low grunt from the clerk. Stacy looked at the pine-beamed ceiling and rolled her eyes.
“That’s what I’m telling you, ma’am—not if ya got AT&T, Verizon, Cingular, and such. Not a one of ’em that bounces through the main tower here’s got any signal whatsoever.”
“And all of the land lines are jammed with people trying to get through,” a sun-browned man hoisting a six-pack called from the beer cooler. Stacy stared at his black boots, which were a work of art with intricate stitching and elaborate tooling.
Hutch wasn’t paying attention to the man. He was keeping an eye on both Stacy and the front door, as well as the road with its outcroppings of scrub and rock beyond the parking lot. No one had followed them from his cabin in Walnut Creek. Not even the backup team, due any time now. He had no idea how he was going to meet up with them, but there was no choice—they had to get out of the path of the fire.
“And what if someone has an emergency?” Meredith’s voice rose, sounding shrill in the small store, which smelled of stale coffee and Pine-Sol.
“The whole world’s got an emergency, Mom,” Stacy muttered, her cheeks flushing the color of the lettering on her gray sweatshirt. “Haven’t you been watching the news?”
The clerk smirked and moved off to ring up some soda p
op and chips for the two young boys waiting at the cash register.
Hutch weighed his options. There weren’t any. They’d have to try to hook up with David and the backup team once they reached a secure location.
“Come on, ladies, let’s get a move on. We’ll find some other place where we can call Grandma and wish her a happy birthday.”
Stacy’s gaze flicked to him for an instant, then dropped as she caught on. Poor kid. Every now and then she probably forgot what this little adventure was all about. For a thirteen-year-old she was pretty grounded, but still, all this had to take a toll. He’d watched how furiously she’d scribbled in her diary this morning, curled in the big high-backed chair where his grandfather used to sit and read him Cattle Rancher magazine. In a short time, he’d realized that Stacy was intense and empathetic, a sweet, scared kid who had no idea she wore her heart on her sleeve for all the world to see.
Meredith slapped a pack of Marlboro Light 100’s on the counter along with a ten-dollar bill as Hutch lowered his sunglasses and preceded Stacy to the door.
“Go ahead, I’ll be right there,” she called after him.
As Hutch escorted Stacy to the Explorer, his eyes scanned the road and the rough open land sloping away from the store. He saw nothing unusual, but he kept a light hand on the girl’s shoulder just the same.
Raoul LaDouceur smiled. The bodyguard was precisely in his sights. Three more minutes and he’d have the girl in his trunk, sleeping chloroform dreams as they sped toward the private plane waiting for their arrival.
“Hold on there, ma’am.” The sun-browned man grabbed Meredith’s arm and yanked her backwards, just as she reached for the door.
“Take your hands off—” Meredith’s face drained of color as she saw the gun in his hand.
“Stacy! Run, baby!” she screamed.
But even as she screeched the warning, the man catapulted past her, firing his gun so rapidly it sounded like fireworks. It took a moment for her to realize that shots were also exploding from another direction.
“Get the hell down, lady,” the clerk yelled from the floor. At the same moment Meredith saw Hutch hunched on the ground, a gun in his hand, and Stacy scrambling out from under him, sobbing.
“Run!” Meredith bolted outside, shrieking. “Run, Stacy!”
A bullet blew the pack of Marlboros from her fingers. She stumbled, then tore off toward the Explorer. At the same time, the sun-browned man serpentined through the parking area, firing in the direction of the rock outcropping a hundred yards away.
“Help him, Mom, there’s so much blood. You have to help Hutch.” Her face white with terror, Stacy crouched beside Hutch as the sun-browned man suddenly wheeled, running toward them.
“Don’t kill us,” she begged. “Please, don’t kill us.”
He dropped to one knee and grabbed Hutch’s right hand, easing the gun from it and setting it beside Meredith. “I’m on your side, ladies. Garrick Rix, Hutch’s backup,” he said, checking for a pulse.
He slapped Hutch’s face, without reaction. “Come on, shithead, don’t crap out on me now.”
Rix unthreaded the belt from his jeans and tossed it at Meredith. “He’s going to die unless you twist this around his leg as tight as you can, and hold it there until I get back. And no matter what happens, don’t move from this spot. I hope I wounded that son of a bitch out there, but there’s no guarantee. I’m going to make sure he’s not waiting to pick us off one at a time, and then we get the hell out of here. Your job in the meantime is to keep Hutch from bleeding to death.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Stacy grabbed the leather belt and twisted it, ignoring the blood seeping across Hutch’s jeans. Dimly, she was aware that Garrick Rix had left them. The shooting had stopped, but the sound of it still roared in her ears. She felt sick to her stomach, but if she allowed herself to give in to it, Hutch might die. It was already her fault that this had happened to him.
“Please don’t die,” she choked out, staring down at the man, whose face was the color of the gray modeling clay she used in art class.
“Stacy, let me.” Meredith was shaking so hard her teeth clinked against one another as she gently tried to pry the leather from her daughter’s clenched fingers. “Get under the Explorer now.”
Stacy’s fingers tightened on the belt. “I’m staying here with you and Hutch. I can help.”
“Stacy, they’re after you. Get under the—”
A gunshot rang from the outcropping. Stacy whimpered.
“Do you think Hutch’s friend got shot?” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Sounds like somebody did, Meredith thought, her heart pounding, but before she could answer, the clerk’s hoarse whisper reached them from the store.
“Get back in here, you two. I can hold ’em off with my rifle. Run!”
“He’s bleeding too much. I can’t leave him,” Meredith called back in a low tone. “Stacy, go on now,” she urged frantically, her hair straggling over her eyes. Hutch’s sticky blood warmed her knees. “Crawl back into the store, baby. I’m begging you. I promise I’ll take care of Hutch.”
Stacy was torn between obeying her mother and protecting her. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. She couldn’t seem to move. And then it was too late.
Garrett Rix crawled on his belly, his gun trained on the swarthy man less than twenty yards ahead. He’d been hit, but adrenaline was keeping the pain at bay. He just needed one shot, one good shot.
The man moved closer. The son-of-a-bitch was smiling like a man who’d just turned over a royal flush. Rix tried to blink the sweat out of his eyes, to raise his arm a little to the left. He spit out the blood gathering in his mouth so he wouldn’t choke on it and give himself away. He thinks he’s got me like a squirrel in a stew pot. But I’ve got another shot in me, one more shot.
The blaze of fire blinded him as his finger squeezed the trigger. The world turned red. Then black.
Raoul kicked the gun from the man’s lifeless fingers and shot him once more through the head just to make sure he stayed dead.
Without any wasted motion, he sprinted to the Firebird, feeling jaunty for the first time in days. Death always put a bounce in his step.
The sound of tires spitting gravel split the air as a yellow Firebird convertible fishtailed around the outcropping and came to a stop. It purred at right angles to the Explorer, effectively cutting off any path of escape.
The storekeeper fired, but his shot missed the convertible’s front tire and ricocheted off the bottom of the passenger door.
Stacy recognized the man who stepped from the Firebird.
“Mom, it’s him!” she sobbed, and dove for the SUV.
Grabbing Hutch’s gun, Meredith struggled to aim it. But her arms were trembling uncontrollably and she’d bitten her lower lip so hard she could taste blood. The man wasn’t paying her any attention. He was fiddling with something on his belt.
She watched, numb, as he brought his arm back and threw something toward the store.
Shoot him, now! Shoot him, a voice inside her screamed. She squinted her eyes and pulled the trigger, toppling back onto Hutch from the kick of the gun. At that instant, a deafening explosion lifted the store from its foundation and flames burst from the windows.
Shock froze her for a full second. Then she was on her feet, trying to get off another shot.
“Give me . . . the gun.” Hutch’s voice was barely audible. “Just drop it,” he whispered, “like you’re giving up.”
She sank to her knees and let the gun fall into Hutch’s open palm. Her eyes found Stacy’s as her daughter stared back, shivering under the Explorer. Stay there, baby she prayed silently. Stay right there.
Coughing, the dark-haired man turned his back on the inferno and moved toward Meredith with long, sure strides. As he came to a halt less than six feet from her, terror throbbed through every cell in her body. Yet all she could see was the oddness of his eyes. They were two different colors—one brown, one blue.<
br />
She was so fixated on them she never saw Hutch raise his arm. She only heard the shot and saw the man with the strange eyes reel.
For an instant, hope surged through her. Again, Hutch. Shoot him again. This time in the heart.
But the man moved with remarkable speed, even as blood stained his right shoulder.
“No!” Meredith cried, as he fired four times across the length of Hutch’s body. “Oh, God. No!”
“Stacy!” the man barked.
The sound of her daughter’s name on his lips chilled Meredith to her core. She’d never imagined such evil.
“Leave her alone!”
“Shut up. Now!” The gun was pointed at her head. “Stacy, if you don’t come out here like the good little girl we know you are, your mother’s going to be as dead as your bodyguard.”
“Don’t listen to him, Stacy!” Meredith screamed.
Wind whipped smoke and glinting ashes from the burning store. The man coughed, then aimed the gun lower, at her heart. But at the last second, he jerked his aim inches to the left as he pulled the trigger. The ground beside her exploded in a spray of rock and dust.
“Mom!” Stacy shrieked and came scrambling out from under the Explorer to throw herself across her mother.
“Leave us alone!” Meredith sobbed. “What do you want from us?”
“I want her.” He pointed the gun at Stacy. Then flipped it in his hand so he was holding it by the barrel, and sprang at Meredith like a panther.
The last thing she saw before he cold-cocked her were those indifferent, mismatched eyes.
The girl threw herself on her mother, sobbing. It took Raoul no longer than six seconds to uncork the vial of chloroform and soak the square of cloth he pulled from his pocket. This time, the sharp-toothed little mouse would not make so much as a squeak.
CHAPTER THIRTY
7. . .6. . .5. . . the elevator whooshed downward. As it neared the fourth floor it slowed for a halt. David pulled Yael closer in case they needed to get out fast. They tensed as the doors slid apart, but the sharply dressed businesswoman who stepped on dragging her luggage barely gave them a glance.