She paused there on the threshold, waiting for something to feel right before she darted into this breach. She thought of when she was a little kid trying to swallow a Tylenol or something, she had to wait for just the right moment to wash the capsule over her gorge, her chin jutting forward at the apex of the swallow, a gesture like a chicken thrusting its head back and forth.
It was time. Now. She swung into the open space beyond the corner, weapon ready. But the space wasn’t open. A huge dark shape stood in her way. And in that split second, she knew it was him. He’d been waiting for her.
He had something in his hand, not a gun, but something curved and saggy and colorless, something she could only perceive as a gray snake, lifted about shoulder high. His body language suggested direct threat, screamed out that he was about to strike.
A gasp hiccupped into her involuntarily, pulled into her lungs with a scraping sound. Her feet skidded to a stop.
The muscles in her arms sprang to life, the long fibrous strands flexing hard. Her finger squeezed the trigger.
At the same instant, he brought the raised arm down, and she saw what he held now — a length of thick chain. It extended, reached out to mitigate the distance between them, arcing downward. It bashed into her forearms with incredible force and wrapped around her wrists, wielded with a strength that felt superhuman.
Pain jolted from the point of impact all the way up to her shoulders and down to the tips of her fingers, but she managed to keep hold of the gun. The heavy metal links cinched tight, and the crazy momentum flung her forward.
Her shot fired uselessly into the gravel, the weapon still bucking in her hands, but the chain’s force didn’t stop.
Down it went, pulling her along with it, ripping the gun from her grip, and throwing her off-balance. There was a pop, and she felt something in her ankle give.
Just before her chin bashed into the hard, rocky ground, she saw the gun tumble into the dark recesses of shadow along the building. It was out of reach, closer to him than to her.
Her teeth clacked together, and a flash of white static filled her vision. The world flickered out for a moment but came back, like a candle left in a drafty corner. She was conscious but dazed.
She sensed his hulking mass hovering over her. And she could see exactly why Lijah had called him the Striga. He looked beastly and menacing, especially in the fading light.
She flung herself more than she tried to get up, twisting to her side and rocking backward to go from belly to back to face him. Her ankle screamed out when she moved. Sharp pain even worse than when the chain had crashed into her. The word “ruptured” sprang into her head in big bold letters.
Jaworski dropped the chain down. Fished a gun from his belt.
He pointed it at her, gripping it with both hands.
Her hand scraped at the ground. No thoughts now. Just action. She ripped a handful of gravel and sand from the earth and whipped it into his face.
He gasped, and then he was the one wincing and turning away, hands reaching for his eyes.
Darger scrabbled back like a crab, using the side of the building to claw her way up and onto her feet. Her ankle screamed out when she put weight on it, but she had no choice.
She limped around the corner.
Chapter 45
Blind. Sand in his eyes.
Jaworski staggered in the gravel, mashed his knuckles into his eyelids and rubbed, scratched the shit out of everything. Screaming little scraping feelings assailed everything within the eye sockets, the little shards of dirt gritting at the gelatinous orbs in his head like tiny pieces of glass, gnawing at the flesh surrounding them.
No. He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t panic. Couldn’t rub. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do that, that it wouldn’t help.
He retracted his hands. Blinked through the pain instead, trickles of water streaming down those seams running between his nose and cheekbones, the flow building until everything was wet, until the fluid gushed out of the tear ducts and he could taste the salt in the corners of his mouth.
Little by little, his vision returned. He was able to hold his eyes open for longer and longer fragments of time, though everything remained blurry, splotched with angry red shapes and smeared with tears.
He stayed patient. Kept blinking as the painful sensation morphed through various stages of stinging and perforating, as the tears slowly washed the sand away.
At last, he held his eyes open, watched the world sharpen into hard angles and contours again.
He saw gravel. Endless gravel. Her gun was still there.
He lifted his head. Looked for her.
She was gone, at least from the immediate vicinity. And he’d known that, of course. Could feel it — sense it — the way he always sensed human presence in these heated moments of conflict. When he let the animal instincts take over.
The slice of the lot he could see was empty. Void of life and movement. But the grid of storage units blocked much of his view, walled him in like a hedge maze.
He needed to get moving. To close on her while she was unarmed.
His car sat ahead and to his right. He glided that way, moving toward the front of the lot. Quick. Quiet. Light on his feet.
He scanned the perimeter of the car, glanced into the windows, finding the vehicle empty both inside and out as expected.
She’d made it out of this row, at least, but he didn’t think she’d made it out of the lot yet.
He listened.
Somewhere in the distance, an engine idled. Grinding. Immobile. He was pretty sure it was the stray he’d heard pass through earlier and not hers. Its growl sounded bigger and meaner than that of her newer model sedan.
But the noise triggered a realization. That idling engine was the only car noise he had heard. No slamming doors, revving engine, tires kicking up gravel as she raced away. She hadn’t gotten that far.
Darger was still on foot, then. Perhaps hiding, perhaps hurt — he thought he’d read a jolt of pain on her face when she was flailing on the ground, could still see her grimacing in his memory, that flash of agony drawn on her features for a split second.
He knew, based on sounds he’d heard earlier, the vague direction in which she’d parked. Jaworski moved that way now, building up to a run, no longer disguising his footsteps, no longer making any attempt to hide his gun.
Fuck it. Time to finish this.
She was unarmed and gimpy, and now death would come ripping.
Chapter 46
Darger staggered on, kept moving, putting another building between her and Jaworski.
Shock fractured her thoughts. Emptied her head. It couldn’t quite block out the pain her ankle, but it probably helped some.
She could still hear the gun blast in her ears, could still feel where the metal slammed and raked over her arms, disarming her. He’d been waiting. Prepared.
Shit. Had this whole thing been a trap?
Loshak. She had to call Loshak.
But no. He’d never get here fast enough to save here. No one could.
The mob didn’t fuck around. They were going to snuff her out just like they had Kyle Huettemann. And when they were done, they’d dump her in the river, and the currents would take her, the dirty water washing her downstream into Lake Erie.
She had to get to the car.
But her ankle was slowing her down, and each dragging step was another stab of pain. It was broken, she was almost certain.
She heard Jaworski now, stomping around, looking for her. The sounds in this place echoed strangely, bouncing off the walls of the buildings and the hard surface of the concrete underfoot. His steps were choppy and angry, pounding at the gravel. Like a bull in a rodeo arena.
When she reached the open ground between two of the storage buildings, she halted, unsure. She had no idea where he was now. He could be anywhere, waiting for her to hit an exposed place like this, ready to strike. Fear froze her there, cold sweat trickling down her back.
Then she hea
rd something — the low growl of an engine and the crackle and pop of gravel beneath tires. It was a car. Creeping closer.
Shit. Had Jaworski gotten in his car? If so, she was screwed. He could shoot her or run her down that way. Killer’s choice.
Then she saw it. The stray car from earlier, creeping past her in slow motion once more. What the fuck were those fools doing? Had they not heard the gunshot?
She huddled under the eave of the roof until the car passed her by, the grinding engine noise trailing away again.
She took a few deep breaths. Time to run for it. Or whatever she could manage with her bum ankle.
Just as she took off, she heard the sounds of a scuffle behind her.
An engine revved. Brakes squealed. Car doors thumped closed.
She heard footsteps patter over the gravel.
And then a single thud.
Chapter 47
Jaworski stopped upon rounding the corner, his crunchy footsteps cutting off all at once. He did this on autopilot. Obeying instincts now. Barely thinking at all.
He raised his gun. Held his breath. Waited for her to poke her head out.
Angles of cinder block and pleated steel doors formed an industrial grid before him. Gravel filling the spaces between them. All rough textures. Muted colors. Lifeless. But he knew she was there. Somewhere. A pop of color, of life, waiting to complete this scene, to draw his eye.
Yes, his gut screamed that she was near. He could feel her out there. Close and getting closer. An angry impulse that pulsated in his limbs, vibrated in his skull, beat in his blood.
He listened for a stretch. Heard nothing.
Now he pressed forward. Gliding steps. Slow and quiet.
He scanned the lot as he moved, careful to eye the shadowy places along the cinder block edges, the places the yellow circles of light from the lamps above couldn’t quite touch.
And as he moved, that surety of her nearness only intensified, that electrical current of instinct only burning brighter in his head.
He paid no mind at all to the sedan creeping along behind him, the growl of its engine drawing vaguely closer. Tourists, he thought. People from the straight world in the wrong place at the wrong time. Possible witnesses, although it was getting dark. They might end up dead here in a bit. Might not.
Right here and now, killing the fed was all that mattered. Putting two slugs in her head. Turning her lights out. That was it. All else could be ignored until that task was completed. The rest of the world dropped. Blocked out. The car and its occupants were like flies buzzing around. There but insignificant for the moment. Not worth thinking about.
Something twitched out there ahead of him, and his eyes snapped to a spot along one of the units about eight doors up from his spot — a little jutting piece of cinder block perhaps big enough to conceal her.
He held his breath for a beat. Nothing moved there now. He wasn’t even sure he’d seen anything for certain. But his instincts rarely failed him regarding these matters.
He pressed forward.
The creeping car drew very close now. Right behind him. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. The car sounds would cover his footsteps.
It occurred to some small part of his brain that the headlights should be all over him, though, shining so bright over everything, and they weren’t. These fools were driving around in the dark. And the tiniest siren of panic sounded in his head, the most paranoid part of him screaming bloody murder, but he blocked it out like everything else.
Had to kill the girl first. Had to finish it.
She jumped out of her spot like a spooked rabbit just as a car door bashed shut behind him. The sound rattled him, but he refocused quickly. Gritted his teeth. Fixated on the target.
Everything went into slow motion.
She hobbled into the open, a terrible hitch in her step that made her whole body shudder every other step. Loping. Wounded.
He swiveled the gun to line it up with her, moved his finger off the trigger guard, felt it drift toward the trigger. Ready to squeeze. Ready to kill.
And then something blunt cuffed him on the side of the head. Tilted the whole world sideways all at once.
He didn’t have time to register the blow until he was on his hands and knees in the gravel. Blinded by the tears flushing his eyes.
His thoughts occurred in fragments. Little pieces he could only partially decipher.
A blindside shot. Something hard. Bludgeoned. Almost like a policeman’s nightstick or something. Knocked him down.
When he lifted his head, a second shot blasted him in the mouth, and he felt some teeth give, little stones gone loose in his mouth.
The world darkened around him. The light sucking out of everything. The black nothing almost putting him under.
Was it her? She got the jump on him somehow. No. Impossible. He remembered her hobbling. Moving away.
He blinked a few times. Realized he now lay prone, face down in the rocks. The sharp edges pressed into his skin from head to toe.
He picked up his head enough to spit out a couple of teeth. Watched them disappear into the gravel right away, though the blood spatter gave him that pop of color he’d been waiting for, brilliant red against the dusty gray rocks, just not how he’d expected.
He let his head plop back to the earth, wanting to look around but not quite able to do it. Neck weak. Too dazed to do anything more than wait for the reverberations in his skull to die back.
And then it occurred to him.
The car.
The guys in the car.
That could only mean one thing.
A hood slid over his head. A black fabric bag blotting everything out. It cinched tight around his neck. A drawstring pulled snug.
He climbed to his hands and knees out of instinct. Body going through the motions. Some survival coding trying to save him even if it was too late.
And though he still couldn’t think clearly enough to form words into complete sentences, he recognized the little puff of laughter near his ear.
It was Marasco.
The next heavy thump to the head knocked him back to the ground, and this time he stayed down.
Chapter 48
Darger ducked behind the first row of boats and saw her car parked at the far end of the grassy area. She was so close.
Some part of her brain prodded for meaning in the noises she’d heard, the scuffle and slamming car doors, but most of her focused on survival, on getting to the car and getting the fuck out of here.
Another sound came from behind her then, the building crescendo of an car engine accelerating.
She scrambled around the back end of a sailboat and pressed herself against the hull. The plastic crinkled under her weight.
The wedge of illumination from the headlights showed itself first, and then the car zoomed past. It was the stray sedan.
Darger caught a glimpse of the men in the back seat. Where there had been one, there were now two.
And under the blue-white glow of one of the flood lights on the premises, she saw that the man seated on the left was tall and broad and had what looked like a dark pillowcase over his head.
It took a moment before she realized what she was seeing: Jaworski with a bag over his head. It had to be.
And while her brain was too slow to make sense of this, she knew that if she lost the car, she’d lose both Jaworski and her chance at finding Vinny the Bull. For all she knew, that car was on its way to see him right now.
She swore under her breath. Her own vehicle was still twenty yards away, and she pushed herself to run for it, ignoring the screaming protests of her ankle.
She fumbled with the key fob in her pocket. Unlocked the car. Ripped at the door handle. Thrust herself into the seat. The engine turned over before she even had her door closed.
She threw it into gear. Cranked the wheel. Used her uninjured foot to stomp on the gas.
Gravel thunked against the rental as she flew down the driveway, trying to catch up.
> When she reached the road and scanned to the left and then to the right, she found only darkness. There was no sign of the car.
She cursed again. If she chose a direction she’d have at least a 50/50 chance. She turned right and jammed the gas pedal hard, tearing down the blacktop a good distance but seeing no one.
Desperate, she turned back the other way. Sped several miles that direction.
Nothing.
She stopped, car idling in the middle of the road. Darkness all around.
A numb settled over all of her but the throbbing ankle. The emptiness of defeat.
She’d lost them.
Chapter 49
Jaworski’s eyelashes brushed against the fabric bag draped over his head. That little fluttering of his eyelids was as close as he got to seeing through it. One tiny part of his eyes could touch the fabric but nothing more.
Instead, he experienced only the dark. The black nothing.
He’d come around from unconsciousness in stages. Baby steps.
He could feel the car moving first, the centrifugal force as they rounded turns, the vibration of the engine rumbling, a shiver in the soles of his shoes. He was in the back seat from what he could tell, head and shoulder leaned up against the door.
Once he grew alert enough to do it, he attempted to bring a hand to his neck, to free himself from the sack over his head, but his arms wouldn’t obey. Pinned behind him. Stuck together. They were bound, of course, though he couldn’t tell with what. Marasco generally used cuffs from what he could remember. Part of him thought he should be able to feel the cool of the metal, or at least the bite of the steel edges pressing at his wrists, but no. The warmth of sleep made everything feel anesthetized, dull, a little distant. Whatever bound his wrists felt like part of him, sleep hot and numb like all the rest.
And he could vaguely recall hearing murmurs, quiet conversations while he was still out of it. He remembered the tones of the voices — hushed and deep and grave and perhaps a little excited — but the words themselves eluded him.
Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood Page 23