Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) (27 page)

Shaking and sweaty and blood-smeared from the saw blade, her hands slipped on the smooth plastic.
Come on. Concentrate.
She turned the phone until she was sure of its orientation. The speed-dial button was at the bottom of the screen. There. At last.

She pressed, hoping she’d remembered correctly.

All she had to do now was talk. If Cole was conscious, he would hear her and know where she was. Or the others would. If he was de— no, she couldn’t think about that — maybe her voice would help the others find him. And her.

Please someone, listen to me!

“Why are you doing this, Isaacs? Are you really this hit man, this Janus? Or is Markos blackmailing you into murder?”

The wind howled like a furious ghost. Rain sheeted through the rickety shed’s opening. Thunder cracked the night and rattled the sliding door.

The stool where the lantern sat wobbled.

She chewed her lower lip.
Don’t let it fall
.

Isaacs bent over her, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern.

That’s it. Come closer. So someone can hear you.

In the flickering shadows, his dark eyes were empty sockets. A frisson of revulsion skittered down her spine.

“Blackmail? Nothing so banal. Janus is my alter ego. The two-faced Roman god of doorways. For seven years, I’ve fooled them all. Occasionally government agents come under suspicion of espionage, but no one has ever suspected my little hobby.”

“But why? You have respect, a decent salary, excitement in your work.”

He stalked toward the shelving beside the lantern. “Excitement? Maybe that’s how it looks from the outside. First in the ATF and now DARK, all I get handed is the boring background work, the surveillance. This gig is more of the same crap plus grunt work trimming hedges. So I make my own excitement. No one suspects. And I get well paid for it.”

“You were spotted in Boston making the deal with Markos. Wasn’t allowing your face to be seen dangerous?”

He tilted his head back and laughed, a hoarse rasp that grated on her nerves. “I’m smarter than the Feebs. That was my associate. He makes my … arrangements.”

He hadn’t caught on to her temporizing. Museum board meetings had taught her that inflated egos liked to expound on themselves. “You punctured my brake lines and fiddled with the gas heater? It was you who shoved the piano at me?”

“More than I should’ve needed to do. You’ve been a tough gig. Thanks to Stratton. Your macho lover kept turning off the gas valve. Ruining my plans. But a boat shed fire will be the final answer.” Another hoarse laugh punctuated his grim joke.

“Won’t the fire marshal know it was arson? What happened to your accident plans?”

He shook his head. “This old firetrap has too many fuel sources. They might guess arson, but they won’t prove it. What difference it makes to Markos, I don’t know.” He lifted a paint can and set it back down. Next he hefted an anchor.

A paint can? An anchor? Her pulse shot to the roof. He was choosing something to knock her out with. Time was running out. “Switching the boats was a clumsy attempt. Not professional.”

“Not professional is right. That lovesick idiot Burt bragged to me about his little boat-switching scheme. Thought he’d race to your rescue and be your hero. He didn’t count on Stratton being Johnny-on-the-spot. So I backed up his story.”

Poor Burt. Cole had been right about his feelings for her.

“But the ham-fisted plan worked for me. Made Stratton think Janus had paid the local yokel to do you.”

The suspicion on Burt had been enough to confuse Cole temporarily.

The combustible fuel was soaking into flammables all around the shed. At any moment, the storm could rattle the shed and knock over the lantern without any help.

Her heart sank to her toes. No one heard her call. Or Isaacs’s confessions. No one was coming.

SHE HAD TO do something. Fast. An old six-foot oar that didn’t fit any of the newer, smaller boats lay on the floor where the now sunken skiff used to be. Laura scooted her legs around and rolled to her knees. Pulling the white-painted oar toward her, she judged its usefulness. Much longer than a tennis racquet, and heavier.

A weapon.
Bracing herself with the oar, she pushed up. Up, up, inch by inch, until she stood wavering on her bound feet.

Her captor’s back was to her, apparently certain of her helplessness. He didn’t hear her over the roar of the storm.

With the oar as a crutch, she scuttled toward him. The dirt floor and the pounding rain covered her steps to within two feet of the man. Striking distance.

She lifted the oar high over her head.

Isaacs hummed while he worked. He picked up an old wooden lobster buoy. “Just the thing. It might even burn up in the fire.”

She slammed the oar down on his head. Her overhand serve knocked the man to his knees. Still clutching her weapon, she hopped, hobbled toward the open door.

“No! You bitch. You won’t escape again!”

An iron grip on Laura’s ankles stopped her dead, sent her crashing to the floor. Pain splintered through her from her knees to her temples. Bruises on bruises, she thought inanely as she kicked at him.

“Let me go!” She struck out blindly with the oar. Heard the solid thud against bone and muscle.

He roared in pain, but didn’t release her.

A shot rang out.

The hit man lay still. His hand fell away from her ankle. A flow of crimson soaked the dirt beside him.

Panting as though she’d swum the length of the lake, Laura scrambled away. Thank God. One of the DARK officers had heard her.

The man shoving the creaking door wider wasn’t her savior.

The man who stepped inside was Alexei Markos.

***

Cole reached the boat shed as a gunshot split the night.

Laura! No!

He was too late. His blood ran cold. Then hot. “I’ll cut out his beating heart!”

“Hold on, buddy.” Simon Byrne, rain streaking his hair into his eyes, clamped Cole’s arm. “That bump on the head is playing tricks with your vision. Look inside.”

Cole squinted through the downpour that screened them from the view of those inside.

The prone figure was not Laura.

He swiped a hand across his eyes. Thank God.

Hands and feet bound, she was pushing to her knees. The man she confronted like a warrior held a pistol pointed at her. A Ruger. A .22.

Alexei Markos. Cole would recognize the smarmy Continental bastard whether he was drenched or dry. Perfectly styled ebony hair gleamed wet like shiny plastic in the lantern light. His dress pants and leather jacket were the real deal, designer expensive.

Cole flicked the safety off his 9mm.

“Be cool, Stratton,” the other officer warned. “We need him alive.”

Not knowing what Markos would do flayed strips off Cole’s heart. His fear for Laura was huge, primitive, a fire burning him from the inside out. Blocking those thoughts, he reminded himself why they needed him alive. Husam Al-Din and the New Dawn Warriors, Markos’s extremist playmates. Damn. “You’ll get the bastard alive.”

But maybe not in one piece. Not after what he’d done to Laura.

“What’s the plan?” Ward, braid streaming over her shoulder in a wet ribbon, said in his ear.

Watching their backs, Snow waited at the corner of the building. He’d discarded his cane in favor of a Glock.

Cole rubbed his bruised sternum and thanked his instincts for making him don a Kevlar vest that evening. He might have a couple broken ribs and bump on the noggin, but he was alive. He’d swum to consciousness imagining he heard an angel calling him. The angel was Laura on her phone alerting him to her danger.
Her words froze his veins, but propelled him to his feet. Moments later Byrne and Ward had found him as he staggered from the storage area.

“He’ll be expecting his henchman. We’ll use that.” He waved them to positions beside the crooked old door.

He edged closer to the opening and peered inside.

“My dear, you have caused me an intolerable amount of trouble.” The importer seized Laura’s arm and yanked her to her feet.

Dirt smeared her shirt, and blood and dirt streaked her jeans and the white braided rope binding her wrists. And she had a new purpling bruise on her left cheek to match the cut on the other.

Another chunk he’d take out of Markos’s hide.

Otherwise, she looked beautiful, just scared and angry. He allowed a second to feel relief. Then he concentrated on finding an opening, some vulnerability in his enemy.

“You’ll be in a lot more trouble if you hurt me,” she spat at the importer.

Yeah, sweetheart. Rile him. Distract him.

“I think not. Eliminating you once and for all will give me such satisfaction I won’t mind having to leave this country for good. After a slight detour to my house. Too bad you can’t accompany me.” He pulled her close to him and caressed her bruised cheek with the pistol barrel. Used it to tuck stray strands of hair behind her ear.

Cole gripped his weapon tighter. If the bastard didn’t have a gun at her head…

She averted her face. “What are you going to do?”

Markos dragged her closer to his employee’s body and kicked the dead man’s head. “The fool. He was supposed to be the best, but he failed at every turn. He would have permitted you to escape. However, his plan for this evening was sound. Time wasted on the confusion of one extra body will give me the time I require.”

“You won’t escape.” Outrage burned in her eyes. She struggled, but the grip on her arm held firm. “Government officers are here. By now they’ve surrounded the shed.”

Cole’s jaw clenched. Damn. He ducked back an inch.

Markos roared with laughter. “Ingenious of you, my dear. If your friends arrive, my man outside will alert me.”

The maggot thought she was bluffing. Cole grinned.

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you certain of that?”

“You have not forgotten my colleague Kovar, have you, Laura?” When she blanched at the name, Markos nodded. “I see you recall his dexterity with a knife.”

Pale but with fire in her eyes, she lifted her chin.

Markos turned away to examine the dead man’s handiwork. “Ingeniously simple. A tip of the lantern and — poof!”

He was going to incinerate the place.

Cole backed up another inch. Uttering indistinct mumbles to mimic Markos’s gorilla sidekick, he bumped the hanging door.

“Come in, Kovar,” the importer said, a smile in his tone. “You’re in time to watch me set off the pyrotechnics.”

“Hurt,” growled Cole, banging heavily against the door. He had to get the bastard to move away from the damn lantern.
Come on, come on.

But Markos hadn’t cozied up with terrorists without developing know-how on the subtleties of treachery. He clamped Laura against him with one arm. Together they stepped cautiously toward the door.

“See, I told you.” She continued to strain against her captor. “The Feds are here. They’ve jumped your thug and wounded him. He can’t help you. Give yourself up.”

Markos didn’t respond to her assertion, but tugged her around in front of him as a shield. He pressed his Ruger to her temple. “Wounded or not, show yourself or I won’t wait for a fire to take care of her.”

To Laura he said, “To Kovar, shooting you now will not matter, but to your friends…”

Cole sagged.
He stepped into the door opening, his sidearm ready. His finger twitched at the trigger. “Federal officer, Markos. The lady was telling you the truth. You’re surrounded. Put the gun down and let her go.”

“Cole!” Relief lit her face like the sun coming out. “You’re alive.”

The importer took a step back, but quickly recovered his aplomb. “Ah, the lover. I should have known this piece of offal—” he spat on the hit man’s body “—would also fail at eliminating you.”

“Put the gun down and move away from her,” Cole repeated. An ice cube’s chance in hell Markos would surrender. He held his weapon steady.

The pulse beat frantically in Laura’s throat. She was clearly terrified, but kept her gaze on him. He could see the trust in her eyes. He had to make this work.

If this madman shot her, killed her… But he wouldn’t let himself think it. Couldn’t.

He stared into her eyes, willing her to remember, willing her to understand his next move.

“Surrender? Hardly.” A sneer on his snotty aristocratic mouth, Markos jabbed the gun barrel hard against her temple. “But I do have a change in plans. Laura and I are leaving together now. You will allow us to depart, or the lady will have a new hole above her lovely ear.”

“You kill her, and you’re a corpse.”

The man’s lips lifted into a cold curve as thin and deadly as a scimitar. “Then we both have much to lose.”

Cole raised his pistol. “Laura,” he said, his gaze on his target, “
Samla. Samla
!”

The wind howled, and the rain pounded at Cole’s back.

Markos tilted his head. The hand with the gun wavered. “What trick is this?”

Laura’s exhausted mind turned over Cole’s cryptic word. Then she knew.

Samla
. Get down.
She went boneless in her captor’s arms. Folding, she dropped to the floor. She tackled his knees.

Above her, gunfire exploded like thunder.

Cole dived at Markos. The two men crashed into the wall. As they fell to the floor, they bumped the stool.

Laura rolled away from flailing arms and legs. She stared helplessly as the fuel inside the sputtering lantern sloshed.

The stool rocked once…

Twice…

Over the edge crashed the lantern onto the shredded cushions and bunched sails.

A monstrous whoosh, and flames burst upward. Like a live creature fleeing the grappling men, the blaze leaped to the back of the shed. In seconds a raging wall encompassed everything. Her eyes and nose stung with the acrid fumes of the flaming synthetics.

Her eyes streamed, and she couldn’t see Cole clearly. Was he all right? Had he been shot? The thunder outside was no match for the pounding of her heart. She rubbed her eyes to clear them.

The two men rolled and pummeled each other amid the burning cushions. Blood smeared them both.

One pistol lay beneath the fallen stool, out of reach. But where was the other?