by Erik Carter
Gone.
They’d kicked it into nothing. Tissue and blood and flaps of skin.
But he was still alive. Unconscious with slight movements in his chest and horrible puttering, wheezing noises coming from his lips.
The guy was a freaking survivor.
His skin was turning blue. She looked at his throat. It was collapsed, a deep indentation in the center.
Only moments left to save him.
She frantically scanned the room for something she could use.
There.
A legal pad and pen on a small table in the back.
She sprinted to the table, grabbed the pen, sprinted back to Rowe, dropped to her knees.
The pen was metal—a gold Cross pen. A godsend. Metal was better than plastic for what she had planned.
She fought to keep her hands from shaking as she disassembled the pen.
Then she traced her finger along Rowe’s throat and found his Adam’s apple, a task that should have been simple but was a challenge with the mangled condition of his neck. From there, she slid further down to the cricoid cartilage.
The spot between the two—between the Adam’s apple and the cricoid cartilage—was her objective.
She took her pen knife from her jeans pocket, snapped open the blade.
And sucked in a quick, deep breath.
She’d never done this before.
An emergency tracheotomy.
She brought the blade to Rowe’s battered flesh and pressed down with a good amount of pressure. The sharp blade pierced the flesh cleanly. Blood raced out, snaked down the side of his neck.
A horizontal incision, a half inch long and a half inch deep.
His neck now open to her, she saw the yellowish cricothyroid membrane. She placed the blade on the membrane, pierced it.
Blood spurted on her face.
And a horrible wet gasp came from Rowe’s open throat.
She stuck the metal tube from the pen into the now accessible airway, put her lips around it and sucked to verify that air was moving through the tube and into Rowe.
Lumpy, warm fluid filled her mouth.
She turned, spit. Blood and nastiness speckled the rug.
Airway clear.
She’d done it. Shit, she’d actually done it.
No time to revel in glory. There was still very imminent danger in her environment, on the floor above her. She looked back to the stairs where Burton and Glover fled, mangled by the rounds she’d squeezed off.
She sliced through the nylon ropes, swiped them off Rowe’s arms and legs, then hooked him under the armpits and dragged him to the front door.
Chapter Forty-One
Glover had been in a lot of crazy situations in his life of petty crime, especially in recent months since joining up with Lukas Burton.
But he’d never been in a situation this crazy, one so crazy that even Burton took a moment to calm down, to develop a plan. Glover hadn’t seen the man like this—so lost, so out of control.
They were in a darkened spare bedroom on the second story of Burton’s house. A guest room with, like the rest of the house, large floor-to-ceiling glass. This room was on the north side of the house, and so it looked out on the water of the sound as opposed to the Gulf on the opposite side of the island. There was a queen bed with dark gray bedding, perfectly flat and smooth. A sleek dresser.
And a gun locker.
Burton unlocked it and pulled the metal doors open, reached inside and grabbed a pair of Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine guns, handed one to Glover.
Glover looked at the weapon in his hands then looked at Burton. “Goddamn, man! Christie… I mean, what are we gonna—”
Burton shoved him to the side. “Shut up!”
He looked away, thinking, fingers playing on the banana-shaped magazine of his HK.
Finally he said, “All right, we can’t just go running back down there. We’ll take the side route.” He pointed to the sliding glass door and the balcony beyond where there was a set of steps that led down to the sand. “The way she took down our guys … She’s been trained.”
Trained?
“You think she’s a cop?” Glover said. “Christie? Like, undercover?”
“That’d be my guess. Which means—”
There was a muffled sound of a car engine firing up outside, followed quickly by the chirp of tires.
“Shit!” Burton said and ran out of the room.
Glover chased after him.
Glover squeezed the HK between his legs, needing both hands to grasp the Jaguar’s leather passenger seat as Burton jerked the car around traffic on the quiet, sand-strewn street, honking at the lackadaisical nighttime traffic and beachgoers. The tires squealed. The smell of hot rubber filled the cab.
Burton swerved around another car, and a set of taillights appeared farther down the street—another car that was driving fast, erratically.
“That’s Christie’s Cutlass,” Burton said. “She’s going for the bridge, headed back to Pensacola proper.”
The street in front of them was now open. Burton smashed the gas pedal. The Jaguar howled. The gap between the vehicles shrank.
The Cutlass swung right, onto a cross-street.
Burton continued straight, flying past where Christie had turned.
Glover looked out the window as they passed the street. “What the hell are you doing? She went that way.”
The Jaguar’s engine roared as Burton gave it more gas.
“Setting a trap,” he said.
Glover looked at the submachine gun pinched between his thighs. “How do you want me to handle this? I mean, that’s your girl.”
Burton didn’t take his eyes off the road, only tightened his grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel.
“Finish the bitch off.”
Chapter Forty-Two
The woman calling herself Christie Mosley clenched down hard on the steering wheel of the Cutlass Supreme that had been her vehicle for the last several months.
It had been a good car, but she’d never had to test it like this.
The tires screeched as she swerved past a car parked halfway on the street. She stole a glance to the rearview mirror.
The street behind her was empty.
Burton had been back there moments earlier, before she’d taken the latest corner.
He wouldn’t have backed off. That wasn’t his style. He was up to something.
She looked to the passenger seat.
Bloodied and unconscious, Jake Rowe undulated with the movements of the vehicle. Though she’d seatbelted him in, his completely lifeless form moved violently. Her eyes found the glinting metal tube coming from the center of his throat, swinging precariously. She put a hand on his shoulder to stabilize him, looked through the windshield, then another fast glance to the rearview.
Still no Burton.
Ahead was a red stop sign and a main, well-lit crossroad: Via Del Luna Drive, the road that would take her to the bridge and back to Pensacola.
She came to a stop, waited for traffic to pass, then turned left onto the lazy, two-lane street, the main beach road. She immediately accelerated and swerved around the loitering minivan in front of her, then bolted off.
Suddenly, a car cut across from one of the side streets ahead.
Burton’s Jag.
“Shit!”
She tightened her grip on Rowe’s shoulder and yanked the steering wheel to the side. The Cutlass shuddered as its entire mass spun around, tires squealing. Headlights blasted through the windshield, making her eyes squint. The surrounding cars laid on their horns, some of them darting to the shoulder.
She slammed on the gas again, taking off in the opposite direction, against traffic for a moment until she reached the small path of road that crossed the median strip.
A glance to the rearview showed the Jaguar coming up fast.
Ahead, the houses’ lights gave way to empty, dark, undeveloped beach. She was headed away from Pensacola Beach, to the
state park, even farther from Pensacola proper.
Another look to the rearview. The Jag was right behind her. Glover emerged from the passenger-side window. He held a submachine gun of some sort, a MAC-10 or an MP5K, maybe.
He took aim.
Then there was a golden glow of muzzle flare in the darkness.
Loud metallic thuds as the rounds struck the side of the Cutlass.
Whack! Whack!
The Cutlass rocked to the side. The tires screeched. She battled the steering wheel, forearms burning. A rusty tailgate came up fast in the glow of her headlights—an old, slow-moving Chevy truck. She yanked the wheel to the left.
More shuddering from the tires. Around the truck. She released Rowe’s shoulder, reached under the passenger seat, retrieved her Beretta.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
Rounds struck the rear bumper. There was the crack of a taillight shattering.
She turned in her seat, fired three times. The rear window shattered, crumbles of safety glass raining down. The cab amplified the roar of the gun. Her ears rang into silence.
The Jaguar’s windshield spider-webbed as one of her rounds struck. It swerved off the road, whacking into the sidewalk, hopping into the air before landing with a crunch and a squeal of the tires.
This bought her a bit of time. The distance between the two cars grew as the last of the houses passed by. They were now at undeveloped beach. Dark. Black sky peppered with stars. Moonlit ocean.
She spotted a state park parking lot ahead.
And an idea came to her.
She tore into the lot.
Chapter Forty-Three
Burton eyed the red Cutlass Supreme greedily, laughing at the blunder Christie had just committed.
Wow. Unbelievable. And to think—for a moment there, he even believed she was some sort of spy or something. Ha! How foolish of him.
Whoever she was, she certainly wasn’t a local. A local would never get their car stuck in the sand. And he couldn’t see a federal agent being that unworldly either.
She’d definitely had some serious training, but now his mind was forming new hypotheses. She must have been a hired gun for one of the new enemy factions he was gaining as he built up his criminal enterprise from the shell of the Farone organization. Maybe, even, she was a friend of the Rojas—a double-cross to his double-cross.
No matter who she was or whatever kind of training she had, he had her pinned now.
A sitting duck.
He smacked Glover’s shoulder. “Look at that! The dumb bitch got stuck in the sand.”
Glover laughed too.
Ahead of them, the Cutlass rocked back and forth, the reverse light coming on and off, the typical response of someone unaccustomed to parking in sand. Nine times out of ten, once you were stuck, you were stuck for good. Trying to rock the vehicle out was only going to make the situation worse.
Burton slowed down, pulled to the opposite side of the road, several yards behind the Cutlass, grabbed his MP5K from the back seat, and motioned to Glover.
They got out and approached Christie’s car, HKs aimed. Burton watched both sides of the vehicle. She might not have been a federal agent, as he’d briefly thought, but she’d proven back at the house that she was a skilled shot—and unafraid to take lives. He would need to be very cautious with her.
A roar of the Cutlass’s engine. It barreled backward toward them.
It wasn’t stuck in the sand after all.
She’d been faking it…
“Shit!” Burton shouted as he dove to the side, the bumper coming inches away from clipping his leg.
Something small and round flew out of the Cutlass’s driver-side window, and bounced on the street with a metallic clang, rolling within a few feet of the Jaguar.
The Cutlass swerved violently, tires billowing smoke. It screeched all the way around to the opposite direction and bolted off.
Then Burton looked back to the small object on the ground by his Jag.
It was a grenade.
He leapt to the side as a massive explosion destroyed the car. His ears rang, and a wave of heat flushed his skin, his hair. A fireball lit the darkness.
Pieces of metal and plastic and safety glass fell from the sky, peppering him, as he crouched in the sand at the side of the road, arms clasped protectively over his head.
He panted. Slowly uncovered his head.
The heat was intense, and his forehead broke out in sweat. Crackling, snapping sounds mixed with the sound of the distant waves, like the world’s largest beachside bonfire.
He slowly stood up.
The Jag was in flames, a roaring metallic candle lighting the empty road and beach.
He loved that damn car.
Glover stumbled toward him, coughing, his face black with soot. He bent over, put his hands on his knees, looked up at Burton.
“A grenade?” Glover shouted, exasperated. He tried to stand, and a coughing fit bent him over again.
Burton looked off into the distance. The taillights of the Cutlass grew smaller as it zipped away, returning to the lights of Pensacola Beach.
Okay, maybe she was a federal agent.
“Who the hell are you, Christie?” he said.
Chapter Forty-Four
Jake’s eyes opened.
His visibility was a thin strip bordered with a white, crosshatched texture. Bandages. He felt them on his forehead, nose, the tops of his cheeks.
He was in a tiny hospital room. Very dark. The walls were close on either side of him, and the space was cramped with beeping machinery, whose various lights—LED greens and reds and blues—were the only illumination.
He looked down, and his chin nearly fell to his chest like a sphere of steel. His neck was weak, helpless against the weight.
From his downcast position, he saw that his lower body was covered with white sheets and bordered by the handrails of a hospital bed. There was pressure across his thighs, like something heavy lying across them. His arms were outside the sheets, covered to his fingertips with bandages. His left forearm was in a brace.
Something brushed his chin, his lower cheek, and as he moved his jaw, he realized that his hearing was muffled, ears covered with bandages. His entire head must have been covered. He raised his right hand to investigate.
And it came to a halt, sending a medicinally numb current of pain through his arm.
His heavy head drifted downward again. He looked.
His arm was hovering a few inches off the bed, ascending no farther, tethered like a kite to the handrail by a thick, double-looped cable tie, a style that Jake recognized from the police department—it was a plastic handcuff. A flex cuff. The other arm was secured to the opposite handrail.
He took in a shuddering breath.
The EKG monitor beeped more rapidly.
His eyes fluttered.
And then they closed.
He returned.
To C.C.
Months earlier.
They sat on a bench in the shade of a massive live oak tree with massive branches that drooped from the combined effects of weight and time. Tendrils of Spanish moss lilted in the gentle breeze. Behind them, past an expanse of bright green grass, was the Farone mansion, bathed in sunlight, its towering walls partly covered with creeping ivy and lined with palm trees and manicured hedges and shrubs.
They’d been discussing something of supreme importance: the films of Mel Gibson. When C.C. had placed Bird on a Wire higher than Lethal Weapon, Jake could continue the conversation no further.
Jake turned to her with a smile. “For someone so quiet, you’re awfully opinionated.”
“Quiet people can’t have opinions?”
“I would think if someone had an opinion, he or she would voice it.”
“A ‘loudmouth’ like you would think that. Ghandi said to, ‘Speak only if it improves upon the silence.’”
Jake gave her that smug, incredulous look that frustrated her so: one raised eyebrow, a superior twist at
the corner of his lips. “Ghandi was one of the most outspoken individuals of this century, ya know…”
She shot him her own look of superiority. “Exactly. Think about it.”
Jake opened his mouth but couldn’t form a retort. As she did so often, she’d taken him aback, and he wasn’t certain whether he was admiring her quirkiness or impressed by her steadfastness.
“Never underestimate quiet people, love,” she said. “Mouthy people like you assume the quiet ones aren’t listening. But we are. Quiet people are the ones you need to watch.”
“You must not have been paying attention all these months if you think I’ve underestimated you. If you haven’t noticed, I kinda like ya.”
She rolled her eyes then looked across the grounds. “That’s what worries me about the world now. It’s getting so loud. So many voices. So much chatter. Sowing division. There’s no time for quiet anymore. Self-reflection has become a punchline.”
Jake put his hand on her knee. “Don’t feel like you need to change the world all on your own, C.C.”
She turned back to him, happiness and warmth returning to her face. “I have something important to tell you.”
“Doesn’t that negate what you just said about being quiet?”
“Shut up, smartass,” she said but smiled softly.
When a moment passed and she hadn’t told him this important thing she needed to say, a rush of anxiety shivered through him.
Maybe she was about the give him bad news. The worst news. The news he’d been dreading.
The whole time they’d been together, he’d had a nagging feeling that someday she’d wise up, realize how disproportionately amazing she was, leave him.
But what she said then was, “I love you, Pete.”
He released the breath he’d been holding. And waited a moment before he replied.