Snow Blind

by Jim Heskett

  Layne pushed through the water. Hands still cuffed, he did everything he could to hold on to the pistol. He had to swing his arms back and forth to navigate the water, which prevented him from shooting. He was lucky the thing still fired when wet.

  When he popped up on the other side of the pier, he aimed his gun at the last remaining hostile, who was using a truck’s passenger door as cover. Only his head and shoulders were exposed, which made him a tiny target.

  As bullets whizzed around, Layne closed one eye and aimed down the sights.

  But, the hostile’s head snapped to one side. A bullet blasted out of the other side of his head, and he sank to his knees.

  Had to be Serena. That explained her absence. She’d been putting herself into position to take out this last one.

  But, the danger was still not behind them, as long as Z was out there.

  Layne noted the children, clustered together, a few hundred feet away. “Run!” he bellowed. “Into the trees!”

  But, they didn’t move. Layne would have to reach them and physically transport them out of harm’s way.

  He still had to deal with Z, which he intended to do as soon as he’d collected and freed the children. The big Asian had disappeared into the maze of trucks a few seconds before. Hopefully, he had chosen to flee, which meant he was no longer a threat.

  Free the kids, put them somewhere safe, and then contend with Z.

  Layne raced up the shore, water slicking off his legs as he emerged from the ocean. He hustled forward, kicking up sand, eyes scanning around to locate Serena. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally shoot her.

  “Rojas!” he shouted. “I’m moving north!”

  He skirted between two trucks, trying to reach the captive children, but a flash of metal filled his vision. Layne managed to hoist his hands up just in time to stop a curved sword from splitting his head in two. The blade sliced across the palms of his hands and only stopped when it clanged against the handcuffs.

  The pistol went flying from his grip as blood made his hands too slick. His eyes followed it down to the grass below.

  The sword raised again, and Layne now took in the visage of Z, teeth gritted. He swung the sword down at Layne’s head, and Layne ducked to the side. The blade passed within an inch of his left ear. It sliced through the edge of his jacket, splitting off a piece of his sleeve. Missed his shoulder flesh, though.

  Layne planted his feet and tried to dive forward, but Z was too fast. He leaped back and spun, gathering speed for a slash to Layne’s midsection. Layne tried to stop himself in mid-jump, and the resulting motion made him lose his balance. His feet skittered backward in the sand. Before he knew it, he was thudding onto the beach as the sword swiped the air above his head.

  Z pointed the blade at his face. “Do not move. Not an inch. I need to catch my breath.” He grinned. “I should have had you killed days ago at the SMRC. I should have killed you earlier today, the second you showed up at the farm, clinging to the underside of our truck. I should have killed you thirty minutes ago while you were sitting on the pier behind you, but I didn’t. I held back because other folks wanted the honor of killing you a lot more than I did. These are my mistakes. But, I’m going to rectify this error right now.”

  Layne knew, on his knees and with his hands cuffed, he didn’t have the leverage to hop to his feet. If Z jabbed forward, Layne might not even be able to dodge.

  It was over. Z had him.

  And then, a crack echoed across the sky. The back of Z’s head exploded in a mist of gray and red. The sword slipped from his hand and landed in the grass. His eyes went blank as he first stumbled to the side and then fell forward, his body sprawled on top of the sword. Face-down, arms and legs spread wide.

  Layne looked up to see who’d fired the shot.

  His mouth dropped open. Marching along the beach was redheaded Victoria Overton with a Desert Eagle in one hand, dragging an unconscious Serena with her other.

  53

  Layne frowned at Victoria. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “You’re not the first person to say that to me.”

  “I saw an assassin cut you down.” After the words had left his mouth, he noted a bump along her waist, underneath her shirt. She was bandaged.

  “My ex-husband’s killers have no grasp on what they’re doing. They didn’t even bother to check my pulse. I’m fortunate that, despite those who betrayed me, there were still some who remained loyal. They moved me down the mountain and gave me the medical treatment I needed to save my life.” She spat on Z, sprawled dead in the sand between them. “He never had any idea what he was doing. In a way, it’s sort of what attracted me to him in the first place: how he could breeze through life and find success while having no clue.”

  Layne cast eyes down at Serena. With his hands bound, on his knees, he was at a serious disadvantage against the hand cannon Victoria had pointed at him. He needed Serena to wake up and cause a distraction so he could even the playing field and rise to his feet.

  “Z should have killed you the second he opened the shipping container that brought you here. But, he allowed you to live, because of his pride or his ego or something, and now all of his men are dead. I’m not complaining about that fact, though. You and your little girlfriend here have done me a huge favor.”

  “It was coincidental, trust me.”

  She grinned. “You have no idea how surprised I was when I figured out who you are. How close you came to unraveling my empire.”

  Serena moaned and shifted in the grass at the edge of the beach. Victoria responded by stepping to the side to add a few feet between them. Then, she holstered her pistol and drew a small object from her pocket. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, it was an electronic device with a few buttons on the side. She flipped a switch, pressed a button, and then held it down.

  Layne didn’t know the make and model of the device, but he recognized a remote explosive detonator when he saw one. And she was holding the button in place because if she now removed her finger from it, the explosives would trigger.

  Layne looked over at the kids, still huddled together, even though their captors were dead in the sand next to them. Collectively, they vibrated with terror. Frozen in place. “Let the kids go.”

  Victoria shook her head. “I’m taking over his shipment. It should have been mine all along, but Z swept in and undercut my price at the last second.”

  “Janine Paluski was working for you, same as Rudy and Grant.”

  Victoria sneered. “You’re only partially right. Grant and Rudy were my guys, yes. But Janine, I only thought she was my guy. She was working for him the whole time.” She wrinkled her nose down at Z’s corpse. “As you’ve probably figured out, I sent in the first wave yesterday. I was trying to clean up the mess. To make sure there were no loose ends after Janine skewered my two best by killing Rudy and Grant. I had no idea Z had a larger crew of cleaners incoming later that day.”

  Layne’s mind whirled. He had confirmation that the white jacket crew had come from Victoria, and the second crew had killed them all. But the real surprise was that Janine had killed both Rudy and her own husband Grant to throw a wrench into Victoria’s plans. She must have removed their corpses from the SMRC to keep them from being autopsied.

  “Why are we still alive?”

  Victoria sighed and ignored his question. “The SMRC was my thing. My chance to go legit. But, you know how that goes. First, it’s a little bit of side action, then, it’s a lot of side action. It was better to burn it all down and start fresh, anyway.”

  Layne pursed his lips and held firm, awaiting an answer. She didn’t seem inclined to give one.

  “You have absolutely no notion of how hard I’ve worked to get where I am. How hard it is for a woman in this industry.”

  He resisted the urge to argue with her about the glass ceiling in human trafficking. Serena shifted again and tried to push herself upright. She stumbled and then rolled over onto her back. He
r eyes were blank, and she sucked in wheezing breaths. Probably fighting a concussion.

  “Zinan was constantly in my way,” Victoria said, taking another step back from Serena. “Getting someone like Janine to turn against me must have taken years of effort. Quite frankly, I was impressed, when I realized he’d flipped her. But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it? You want to know why you’re still alive? With him gone, this opens all new avenues for me. But not if the Mounties are after me for his murder.”

  Layne cleared his throat. “You'll blow us up, along with this island, so you can make it look like we did it.”

  “That’s right. And I need you not full of bullet holes to make that work. In truth, I was going to blow it up anyway, but then you showed up. This is better. I’m improvising here, but it’s all working out, I think.”

  Serena, shaking her head, shifted into a seated position.

  “Don’t move,” Layne said. “She’s holding a remote detonator for explosives.”

  Victoria chuckled, looking impressed. “Layne Parrish, always the smart one. Now,” she said, nodding at Serena, “I need you to uncuff him. The keys are probably in Z’s pocket. If not, well, we’ll have to figure something else out.”

  Serena looked to Layne for approval, and he nodded for her to proceed. As long as Victoria was holding that detonator, she had all the leverage. Would she blow herself up to keep them from capturing her? Hard to say. But Layne wasn’t willing to make a move yet. Not until he had a better plan and he could coordinate with Serena to execute it.

  She crawled over to Z and grunted as she rolled his body to the side. Her eyes grew wide when she saw the sword pressed into the grass below him.

  Still gripping the detonator in one hand, Victoria drew the Desert Eagle with the other. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I thought you needed us not full of holes,” Layne said.

  “No, I need you not full of holes. I don’t care about this bitch one bit. She’s been nothing but a pain in my side all week long, playing her little spy games down in Seattle.”

  Serena gave Victoria one of the meanest glares Layne had ever seen, but made no effort to retaliate. She dug into Z’s pockets and came up with a set of keys. A small handcuff key clinked against the others.

  As she picked it out from among the set, Layne heard something in the distance. A high-pitched whine, barely audible. He studied Serena to determine if she could hear it too, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

  The whine drew closer. A drone. Probably launched from next-door Bowen Island, it was coming up via the southeast, over the water. He watched Victoria, and she seemed oblivious. She was too focused on Serena.

  In an instant, Layne had his plan.

  “Easy, now,” Victoria said as Serena approached Layne to unlock his cuffs. “I can make your death as messy as I want.”

  As Serena inserted the key into the handcuffs, their eyes met. Layne flicked his gaze up into the sky, in the direction of the drone. Then, he nodded—only a fraction of an inch—at Serena. There was no secret word or hand signal for what he wanted to accomplish. No time to blink it to Serena in Morse code.

  He would just have to hope she understood his meaning.

  She didn’t nod back at him, but she maintained eye contact as she removed the handcuffs and dropped them into the sand. Her chest rose and fell, her arms pressed at her sides, her gaze fixed on him.

  “Good, good,” Victoria said. “On your feet, please, both of you. And take a step away from each other.”

  Layne and Serena both obliged. The whine from the drone grew a little more prominent, almost louder than the sound of the water. Any second now, Victoria would be able to hear it, too.

  “How are you going to keep us here while you blow up the island?” Layne said.

  Victoria holstered her pistol. “Excellent question.” She reached into her back pocket and removed a small black box. She popped open the top and drew out a syringe. “This was going to be for Z, but this works fine in my new plan. Layne, you will inject yourself, or I'll shoot your lady-friend in the stomach, and we can both watch her bleed out together. The other option is you can play along, and I do the humane thing by putting a bullet between her eyes. Your choice.”

  Layne, Serena, and Victoria stood in a perfect triangle.

  For a few seconds, no one spoke or did anything. Victoria pursed her lips, impatient. Awaiting Layne’s response. The drone hummed and whined and Victoria could surely hear it by now.

  Time to move.

  The drone appeared at the edge of Layne’s vision, flying erratically over the water. The waves were pretty choppy, so that made sense.

  Victoria raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. Serena turned full around, just as Layne had hoped. “What’s that?” Serena said.

  “Hey,” Victoria barked. She raised an arm toward Serena, but then she seemed to realize her hands were full. Detonator in one, syringe in the other. Her gun was in her holster. By the time her eyes snapped down to it, realizing she was unarmed, Layne was on her.

  He leaped across the small grassy space between them. He clamped one hand down over her detonator hand, forcing her to keep the button depressed. With blood flowing from the cuts on his hands, he focused his energy on holding tight, not letting it slip. He swung his other fist around, trying to knock the syringe from her hand. Droplets of blood trailed his motion through the air.

  She stabbed the syringe toward him as he grappled with her. He managed to block her forearm with his forearm, and despite her sizable bicep muscles, he was stronger.

  She must have realized the disadvantage because she opened her palm to let the syringe fall away, and she whipped her hand free of his grasp. She snaked her fingers downward, toward the gun in her holster.

  Layne grabbed that hand and pinned her wrist back. He applied pressure, turning it toward her body. Almost—but not quite—breaking her wrist.

  Victoria let out a scream as she tried to wilt away from his grasp, but he held firm. She tried to backpedal, so he pulled her arms toward him, keeping her rooted in place.

  While Layne struggled to maintain control of her, Serena leaped in and laid a jab on Victoria’s chin. The older woman’s head snapped back, and when she recovered, her eyes were bleary. Now she was drooping inside of Layne’s grasp instead of fighting him.

  Layne moved his second hand to support the first, the one controlling the detonator. He carefully slipped his slick fingers inside her palm, moving his index finger under her thumb, currently holding down the detonator’s button.

  Layne jabbed it in there, and the button didn’t slip as he transferred the device from her control to his.

  Layne jerked the detonator away from her as Serena cocked Victoria again in the mouth. This time, with a right hook, and Victoria’s head bobbled before she stepped back and then sank to the ground. She thudded into the grass, her mouth dropping open, and she hitched in a breath.

  As soon as she hit the ground, Layne liberated her of the pistol. He shifted a few steps to his right, next to Serena. With his eyes still a little blurry, he trained the gun on Victoria. He saw three of her, so he picked the middle one.

  “Did you hear the whine of the drone?” Layne said.

  Serena shook her head. “Nope. I just knew you were about to do something and was waiting for your signal.”

  “I think it worked out okay.” He flicked his head toward the trucks next to the beach. “Please go get the kids. They’re probably in shock.”

  Serena took one last look at Victoria and said, “Okay, looks like you have her under control. I’ll take care of it.”

  When Serena left to free the captives, a cloudy Victoria, sitting in the sand, tried to lean over to swipe at the syringe, a few feet away in the grass. Maybe to stab her own neck to spare her from what would be to come.

  Layne kicked it away. “I don’t think so. There’s no easy way out of this for you.”

  “I suppose you’re pleased with yourself,” she said
, seething.

  “Not really. But I’m pleased you’re not going to hurt anyone else ever again. And I’m especially pleased that we didn’t have to kill you to get you to stop. Do you know what they do in prison to people who hurt children?”

  Victoria spat on the ground and said nothing.

  “That’s fine,” Layne said. “You’ll find out.”

  Footsteps shuffled to Layne’s right, and he pivoted to see the cluster of teens, still shackled, wandering toward him. Serena escorted them. At the front was the kid Terran, the one who had taken a rifle stock to his face to blurt his name at Layne. Blood caked his chin, but he still held his head high.

  Layne, body aching and bruised, walked a few steps across the grass to meet him.

  “Terran,” he said.

  The kid nodded, his chest heaving. Fighting back the tears. He didn’t say anything, though. The hit to the face had probably knocked out a few teeth and fattened his tongue.

  Layne wiped some blood from his hand onto his pants, and then he gripped Terran’s shoulder. He dipped down a few inches to meet the young man’s bloodshot eyes.

  “It’s time to go home to your family.”

  54

  Layne stood behind the railing at Denver International Airport, his eyes tracing over the escalators in their relentless cycle. In one bandaged hand, he gripped a stuffed wolf. In the other, a banana mango smoothie. Condensation sweat from the smoothie leaked through, making his bandage feel slick.

  Heads appeared atop the escalator. The new arrivals. His heart thumped as each person exited the escalator and a subsequent body followed behind that person. He had to wait for five full minutes before he saw either of the faces he'd been expecting.

  First, his six-foot tall, blonde and statuesque ex-wife Inessa Parrish materialized and then exited the escalator. Right behind her dawdled a miniature version of Inessa, Cameron Parrish. Three years old. A little creature who mirrored her mother's hair and cheekbones. When they walked through the archway out into the terminal, Cameron saw him first.