by Jeff Lindsay
Brian looked at me with a face full of panic and jumped forward to stop her, but he was too late. Debs was already in the room and moving rapidly across a thick shag carpet. My brother stepped back from the door, glancing about wildly. I followed Debs into the room.
The kids were there, all of them. Cody and Astor were on the nearest bed, sound asleep and snuggled up together. Lily Anne and Nicholas, the babies, were on the other bed. Nicholas was kicking his feet and gurgling, the sound that had clued his mother in that he was here.
And lying next to the two babies, also asleep, was a stocky young woman. She had dark hair and wore a pink flannel nightgown, which I thought was an odd touch for a drug lord’s nanny. But it would be far too much to hope that she would remain asleep for long. I could think of only one sure way to keep her quiet while we took the children and ran for home. So as Deborah carefully scooped up Nicholas, I took my fillet knife from its sheath and stepped forward—and an iron hand clamped onto my arm.
“No!” Debs said in a ferocious whisper. “Not like that!”
I looked at her with exasperation. Of all the times to be saddled with empathy, this was one of the worst. One tiny peep from the sleeping woman and we were all dead—but no, I couldn’t make her permanently quiet. “Then how?” I whispered back.
She just shook her head and nodded at Cody and Astor. “Wake them,” she said softly.
I stepped around Deborah to the bed where Cody and Astor lay sleeping. I leaned the shotgun against the wall beside the bed and put a hand on Astor’s shoulder, shaking her gently. She grumbled, frowned, and then opened her eyes. She blinked at me several times, then shot straight up in bed.
“Dexter!” Astor said excitedly.
I waved frantically for her to be quiet, and she bit her lip and nodded. I shook Cody, only twice, and he sat right up and looked at me, fully awake. “Knew you’d come,” Cody said, and it was a mark of his excitement that he actually said it loud enough to hear.
“Quick as you can,” I told them, soft but urgent. “And be quiet! Up the stairs and out—my boat is tied to the back. Go!” They blinked at me, then at each other, so I said it again. “Go! Now!” and Astor jumped up, grabbed Cody’s hand, and the two of them hurried out.
Deborah was standing impatiently in the middle of the room, her pistol in one hand and Nicholas in the other. I moved around her and back to the other bed, where Lily Anne slumbered on. She lay quietly beside the sleeping nanny, sucking fiercely on a pacifier. I bent over with all the quiet care I could muster and slid a hand under the baby’s head, then the other one under her bottom. I lifted her slowly, carefully, and I had her nearly halfway up before she grumbled and spit out the pacifier. I held my breath, but Lily Anne settled right back into sleep. I looked down onto the bed to retrieve the fallen pacifier, and saw right away that it would not be possible.
The pacifier had fallen right onto the nanny.
And the nanny was now awake, staring up at me with very wide-open brown eyes.
And then her eyes went wider and she opened her mouth just as wide. I juggled Lily Anne quickly to my left arm and clamped my right hand tightly on the nanny’s throat. “Silencio,” I whispered, sounding as deadly as I could. “No un sonido.”
Her mouth slapped shut and she nodded vigorously. I stepped back, keeping my eyes on the nanny, and handed Lily Anne to Deborah. “Take them to the boat,” I said.
Deborah tucked Lily Anne into her other arm, but only took a step backward. I glanced at her and saw that she was preparing to argue about running to the boat. Before either of us could say a word, Brian stuck his head in the door. “What is keeping you?” he whispered savagely. And then, “Oh, for shit’s sake,” as he saw the nanny staring at us with gigantic eyes. “She’ll scream any second,” Brian said, and he stepped toward her, pulling out his knife.
But he was wrong. The nanny didn’t scream. She didn’t say a word. She looked at my brother approaching with knife at the ready, and calmly reached under her pillow, drew out a revolver, and fired point-blank at Brian.
I could not see where, but I was sure he was hit. Even so, he leaped forward with incredible quickness. Before the woman could fire again, Brian’s left hand was pinning her gun to the bed, and his knife was in her throat. She thrashed briefly; I couldn’t see what Brian did, but his shoulders bunched with effort and the thrashing stopped abruptly. Brian stood, much slower than he’d jumped onto her, and there was blood all over his hands, the front of his shirt, his pants. Throat wounds can spray horribly, and most of the mess had to be from the nanny. Most of it, but not all.
As Brian straightened he swayed slightly and put a hand to his abdomen, just above and to the right of his navel.
It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it? It might have been because I was stunned by the incredibly loud bang of the gunshot in this small room, but whatever the reason, my head was spinning. And for half a second it flashed through my mind that Raul would need a new nanny, and I pictured what the ad would say. Nanny wanted. Must be comfortable with Spanish, English, and small arms. But Brian wobbled again and I shoved the thought away.
“Brian,” I said.
That’s all I got out. From somewhere outside the room I heard a shout, and then another. A gunshot in close quarters is a remarkably effective alarm clock, and the nanny’s shot had been enough to wake the other guards. “Debs, go!” I said, and this time she didn’t argue. She spun on her heel, a baby under each arm, and sprinted for my boat.
“Brian,” I said, moving to his side. “Are you all right?” It was a stupid question, since I knew he’d been shot, which is not “all right” no matter how you care to define it.
But Brian just gave me a pained look. “I believe we may have lost the element of surprise,” he said. He grinned feebly, and I was worried enough not to notice what a terrible job he did.
“Can you make a run for it?” I asked him.
“I don’t see very many choices,” he said. He dropped his knife to the floor and pulled out his pistol. “I think we’re going to want that,” he said, nodding at Deborah’s shotgun. I grabbed it, racked a shot into the chamber, and we hurried out of the room.
The moment we stepped into the hall I was very glad the shotgun was ready to go, because the door opposite, where we’d heard the snores, was inching cautiously open. Without bothering to aim, I pointed the gun at the door and fired.
The noise was deafening, far beyond the sound the nanny’s pistol had made. But the result was truly gratifying. A hole the size of a basketball appeared in the door as it slammed partway open and then bounced shut again. I turned and hurried up the stairs.
Brian was already there, kneeling beside the top of the steps, rummaging in the canvas bag of Ee-bahng’s toys. He was moving stiffly, obviously in pain, but other than that he looked like he was enjoying himself. “I knew these would come in handy,” he said. He pulled out a chunk of something grayish-brown, about the size and shape of a brick, and held it up happily. “Ivan did very good work,” he said. He pointed to what looked like a calculator taped to the side. “Simple to use, and very effective.” He poked at the calculator with a finger. “Just set the timer, and—”
I heard more noises below, voices raised and clearly urging each other to get up and get ’er done. “Brian,” I said, but he ignored me. I crouched down, half-behind my brother, shotgun ready.
“One, two,” Brian said. He threw the brick, hard, down into the hall. He turned his head toward me, almost certainly to say, “Three.” And he might have said it. But if so, it was drowned out by the enormous roar of an explosion, a huge bright ball of noise and smoke and flame and debris that lifted Brian up and flung him right at me, and I went over backward and into a dark red-tinted place where there was no light and no sound except a terrible painful too-loud ringing noise that wouldn’t stop.
And I lay there. At first I couldn’t move, and then I just didn’t. I couldn’t think at all, not even the simplest thought, and apparently
you need to think in order to move.
So I just lay quietly. I don’t know how long. It could not have been as long as it seemed. Eventually I became aware of something heavy on top of me. Then I had my first thought, which was: It shouldn’t be on top of me. I let that ring for a while, and then slowly, syllable by syllable, I added: I should move it off.
I did. I shoved at the heavy thing. It slid to one side and I sat up. That made my head hurt a lot. For a few more moments I just sat there and clutched my head. I still couldn’t hear anything, but if I opened an eye I could see things now. When my head didn’t hurt as much I opened my eyes.
I looked at the heavy thing. It looked a lot like it used to be Brian. It wasn’t Brian anymore. It didn’t move and it didn’t breathe. It just lay where I had pushed it and watched the ceiling with calm, wide-open eyes. His face was frozen into a half smile, that same awful awkward terrible fake grin plastered forever now onto that face that looked so much like mine.
I just stared until the word came into my head. Dead. Brian was dead. My brother was gone and I would never have another one. Dead.
I felt a small rush of wind on my face and I turned to where the stairs had been a few minutes ago. I still couldn’t hear anything but the ringing noise, and I couldn’t see the stairs anymore. Instead there was just a lot of smoke. A few tiny flames flickered under it, down very low. They were pretty. I watched them for a while. My head was pounding and it felt like it was full of thick dark mud, and I couldn’t think of anything at all, not right now, so I just watched the small twitching flames under the great bloom of smoke.
Then something moved out of the smoke.
At first it was just a dim shape in the hall below, a slightly darker shadow in the surrounding darkness. It moved slowly toward me, gradually taking on the shape of a person. Slowly, one careful big cat step at a time, the shape came out of the smoke until I could see what it was.
It was a man. He was average height and build. He had dark black hair and a smooth olive complexion. It didn’t make sense, but he was wearing only a pair of dark green boxer shorts. Why would somebody dress like that? I frowned and shook my head to clear it, but it didn’t work, and it didn’t change the picture. The man still wore nothing but green boxers, and he still came forward. He had several pounds of gold chain around his neck, some of it with large and gaudy gems attached. He looked at me, and then he smiled. That didn’t make sense, either. I didn’t know this man. Why would he smile?
But slowly, as he took one more tiger-smooth step toward me, another word formed in my brain: Raul.
I thought that over. It was hard to do, but I tried, and I thought of something about Raul. That word was a name. I knew something about that name, but I didn’t know this man. Was it his name?
And then he raised his hand. It had a pistol in it, and I remembered, and I knew why he was smiling. And I was right, because as he aimed the pistol right at me his smile got bigger. I watched him, trying to remember what I was supposed to do. I knew I should do something, but with the pounding in my head I couldn’t think of it. Say something? Maybe ask him not to shoot me? Or did it involve movement of some kind? So hard to think…
Just before the man pulled the trigger, I remembered something else. Guns can hurt you. Stay away from them. And at the very last instant I thought, Run!
I couldn’t run. I was still sitting down. But I rolled to one side and somewhere very far away I heard a tiny muffled bang!
Something hit my shoulder very hard, as hard as if somebody had smashed me with a metal baseball bat. I felt my mouth go open, but if I made a sound I couldn’t hear it. But the pain did something. It made my brain start to work just a little. I knew I had to move again, get away from the man with the gun, and I began to crawl away from the stairway.
It was very hard. The shoulder that had been hit didn’t work. Neither did the arm hanging from it. I pulled myself along the floor with the other arm, and my brain was working even better, because I remembered that I had guns, too. If I could find one I could shoot Raul. That way he couldn’t shoot me again.
I raised my head and looked. The big explosion had flung everything back, away from the stairs. Far away, over by the door that led out onto the deck, I saw the heavy canvas bag that had caused so much trouble, and beside it I saw what had to be the shotgun. If I could get that, I could shoot the man.
I crawled harder, faster. But I hadn’t gone very far when something grabbed my ankle and yanked and flipped me onto my back.
The man with the gun stood above me, pointing at me. Raul. He was staring down at me like I was a stain on the carpet. He looked very dangerous for somebody wearing only green boxers and a lot of gold chains. And then he smiled again. He squatted down beside me. I could see his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. He cocked his head, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he frowned and poked my hurt shoulder with his gun.
The pain was enormous. I opened my mouth and I heard a strange, animal noise coming from far away that matched the shape of my mouth. It was a horrible, inhuman sound, but the man liked it. He poked me again, much harder, and this time he twisted the gun barrel inside my shoulder and I felt something inside where he touched it give way with a kind of snip and I made the noise again.
But Raul must have gotten tired of my noises. He stood and stared down at me with a look of complete contempt. He raised the gun and looked at me like he could make me vanish just by staring at me hard. And then he nodded and pointed the gun directly at a spot between my eyes.
And then he vanished.
Dimly and distant I felt a huge roaring percussive bang. It slapped the air in the room into a sharp jerking bump, and it was so loud that I could hear it too, just a little. It blasted out once and took Raul away and then it stopped. I lay still for a moment, in case it happened again. Before I could decide to move a new person appeared and knelt beside me and I knew who this was right away.
Deborah.
She was holding the shotgun in the crook of her arm and looking at me and moving her mouth urgently, but I still couldn’t hear. She put a hand under my shoulder and helped me sit up, still moving her mouth and looking at me with terrible concern. So I finally said, “I’m fine, Debs.” It was a strange sensation, knowing I had said something, and feeling the vibrations of it in my throat and my face, and still not actually hearing my own voice. So I added, “I can’t hear anything. The explosion.”
Debs looked at me intently a moment longer, but then she nodded. She moved her mouth in an exaggerated way and I am pretty sure she said, “Let’s go,” because she stood up and helped me stand up, too.
For a few seconds it was almost as bad as when I sat up right after the explosion. Huge and violent waves of dizzy nausea crashed through me, accompanied by a thundering pain in my head and my shoulder. But it didn’t last quite as long this time. Debs led me over to the door and I could walk okay. And oddly enough, even though everything inside me seemed to be much too loose and my legs felt tiny and far away, my brain started to work again. I saw the canvas bag beside the door and I remembered one last important thing. “Evidence,” I said. “Get rid of evidence.” Deborah shook her head and tugged at my arm, and it was the wrong arm, the one that was attached to the shoulder with the bullet in it. I made a sort of dumb spastic aaaakkh sound that I couldn’t hear and she jumped back.
The shoulder pain didn’t last. It dropped down into a kind of dull background agony. I looked at the wound. I was wearing a black shirt, of course, for nighttime stealth, so there wasn’t a lot to see other than a surprisingly small hole. But there seemed to be an awful lot of wet shirt around it. I patted it with a hand, gently, and looked. My hand was very, very wet with blood.
To be expected, of course. Gunshot wounds bleed. And when Raul had poked it the second time, I thought he might have broken a vein or something in there. It did seem like rather a lot of blood, though, and I don’t like blood. But that could wait until later, and anyway Debs wa
s tugging at my arm again. I shook her hand off. “We have to blow it up,” I said. I felt the words in my mouth without hearing them.
Deborah heard them. She shook her head and tried to pull me out the door, but I lurched away, back into the ruined cabin. “There’s too much evidence, Debs,” I said. “From the kids, from the guns, Brian’s body. It connects to you, Deborah. And to me.” She was still shaking her head, looking more scared than angry, but I knew I was right. “Have to blow it up,” I said. “Or we both go to jail. Kids all alone.” I knew I was speaking much too loud, and the words were taking too much work and they felt sort of wrong, too, as if I wasn’t quite shaping them properly.
But she clearly understood me, because she shook her head and tugged me toward the door, moving her mouth rapidly and urgently. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t hear her. “Have to blow it up,” I said in my hollow wrong-sounding unheard voice. “Have to.” I bent and picked up the canvas bag. For a moment everything spun in bright red circles. But I straightened at last. “Go,” I told her. “With the kids. I’ll be right there.”
Her mouth was still moving as I took the bag and stumbled back toward the stairs, but when I was halfway there I turned to look. Deborah was gone.
I paused for just a moment. The bomb that killed Brian had made a lot of noise, smoke, fire, but it had not made a hole in the boat big enough to sink it. I had to put this bomb in a better place. Someplace where it would take out the whole superyacht. Maybe next to the fuel tanks? But I didn’t know where they were, and I wasn’t sure I could move around until I found them. And the bag was much heavier than I remembered and I was very tired. And cold. I was suddenly feeling very cold. Why was that? It was a warm Miami night, and I didn’t think the air-conditioning could still be working. But a definite chill settled over me, all of me, and some of that bad red-tinged dizziness came back at me. I closed my eyes. It didn’t go away, so I opened my eyes again and looked at the stairway ahead. I could just put the bomb down there. It would probably do the job. And it couldn’t really be as far away as it looked. I could probably get there in just a few more steps.