Dying for Revenge (11 page)

She asked, “How much do you usually charge? How much do women usually pay?”

“Thirty American dollars.” He shrugged. “Eighty E.C.”

“Really?”

“But ’cause you look so sweet, me can gee you fi twenty U.S.”

“Twenty dollars.”

“Jus’ hook me up wid some weed and couple beers an me nar charge you more than twenty U.S.”

“You buy your own weed and beer. I’ll share some E.”

“Okay.” He chuckled. “Twenty U.S. Fifty-two E.C.”

Twenty dollars. Less than the sales tax on a pair of Blahniks.

She paused, thinking. She was on an island. A beautiful island. Next to a beautiful young man.

She loved men. And she loved sex. And she loved sex with swarthy men.

No one would know. What happened on the island, what happened before she left, her secret.

She said, “There is a red phone booth down at Coconut Grove; it’s right where Antigua Village ends and Siboney begins. One hour. I’ll look for you by the red phone booth. I’ll have a room by then.”

She slipped on her Blahniks. Flesh-colored. Nappa stitching detail. Scalloped edges. Flat heel. With a smile she gathered her things and headed toward Coconut Grove, feeling nervous, anxious to rent a seaside room at the Siboney. A woman deserved a husband and a lover. She had the husband.

It was the other part she needed to work on.

She called Matthew again. He didn’t answer. She paused, wondered why he didn’t answer, wanted to know what he was doing. He hadn’t answered for two days. Jealousy lived with insecurity. She did love him. Did miss him. That wasn’t a lie. A woman deserved to have a man who loved her. But marriage had become a dungeon. She just wanted more. She needed more.

Life was too short to sleep with one man.

She finished her call and glanced back; the slender rent-a-dred was on the beach, hustling his wares. The boy was so damned handsome. A natural beauty. So unspoiled in his own way. She continued toward the Siboney, moved up the narrow, sandy footpath behind Antigua Village, and took steps closer to a more private, more discreet hideaway. Again she stared out toward the quay.

Then she remembered the yacht, the fabulous view, how magnificent it had been at sunrise.

She wished she were about to have a rendezvous on a superyacht.

Another fantasy came to mind.

Blahniks on her feet, getting fucked good on the deck of that superyacht.

Then she remembered the bodies she had left behind.

The bullet left in the wall.

She had missed a shot.

And one of the men she had failed to kill with one shot had tried to kill her on All Saints.

She replayed it all in her mind, remembered everything she had done, what had gone wrong.

And she remembered how she had lost focus and fucked up in London.

If only she had killed Gideon.

Maybe that’s where Matthew was now.

Back on that Detroit contract that had them stressed the fuck out.

She nodded. That had to be why her husband hadn’t called her back.

Gideon had been located and her husband had to be on the move.

She imagined that El Matador was somewhere killing the target.

Putting his knife in the heart of the handsome man who had the eyes of a devil.

That made her angry.

That made her jealous.

Seven

seven doors to death

Last night had been a stormy night, tornado warnings in Rocket City and the surrounding areas.

With the weather like it was, I didn’t want to chance it on the highway, so I stayed at the Embassy Suites across from the Huntsville-Madison library, got some much needed rest, and now I was back on the road, GPS guiding me toward the land of Jack Daniel’s, country music, and Super 8 motels.

A two-word message popped up on my iPhone: FUNDS TRANSFERRED.

Konstantin had sent me to the Bible Belt and I had taken my trade to a section of America heavily invested in aerospace, education, health care, banking, and various heavy industries, including automobile manufacturing, mineral extraction, steel production and fabrication. The news on the radio was about a fourteen-year-old who’d flushed her newborn baby down the toilet. Did that in a school bathroom. Then they let the world know nine third graders had conspired to torture and kill their teacher.

Third graders. Killing. About the same age I was when I first pointed a loaded .22 at a man.

I changed the station, focused on driving, the smell of cordite rising from my flesh. Rain was coming down hard. Sixty degrees, gray skies, strong winds, and an aggressive downpour turning the city into Southern soup. Stopped tuning the radio when I made it to a morning show, jokes in progress.

I took Jordan Lane, also known as Ardmore Highway, also known as Highway 53, passed by Grainger Industrial Supply and a Conoco gas station. I was coming up on Woody Anderson Ford when it looked like I had picked up a tail. I wasn’t sure, slowed down and almost turned off into AutoZone, but if it was a tail I’d box myself into a parking lot, and that was a major no. It was best to keep moving, stay in front of whoever it was. Had seen the same car leave the Embassy when I had pulled out of the lot.

I told myself it was nothing. Highway 53 was a main road, everybody took this route.

I slowed down. The car behind me did the same, but not before I saw that two people were in that car, one in the backseat, right side of the vehicle. Two people. Like in London. I took it up to the speed limit. That car did the same. Two in that car, that could mean a driver and a shooter. I could be outpositioned and outgunned at this point. Again I slowed, again they did the same, sped up, the same.

Cat and mouse; cat and mouse. Man against man in the heart of Dixie.

I slowed again. That car did the same. I sped up. That car did the same.

That dark car with the unknown occupants stayed about an eighth of a mile back. A few cars moved between us, each car or truck exiting at some point, but that sedan was still there.

I searched the landscape for some way to get off of this route. Two-lane road, some housing developments on the edges of fields, larger homes at Mountain Cove. At Burwell Road, off to my right, were open fields that led to tree-covered hills and mountains, almost spring, trees still barren. That area was too wide open, too isolated to take a chance, not when I didn’t know the land or what kind of trouble was following me. The car on my tail slowed down like it was about to turn off the road, but it didn’t turn, adjusted and remained a good distance back.

I took 53 out of Huntsville toward Nashville.

The car behind me did the same.

I double-checked my widowmaker, made sure it was loaded to the teeth. It was a new gun, had been supplied with this car, had been left in the car in case I needed it for the job.

Nothing changed but time, and soon I cut to the right, took I-65 heading north; the rain came down harder, the storm sat on top of me, speed limit seventy miles per hour but was barely able to do fifty in the madness. I took my trepidation deeper into Tennessee. Eighty miles away from Nashville. Storm wouldn’t let up. Visibility decreased with every second. Forced my speed to do the same.

Hard rain turned into hail; terror came down from the skies so hard my windshield wipers worked overtime and didn’t make any difference. Was as effective as using a paper cup to throw water off the sinking
Titanic
. Visibility diminished rapidly and soon I couldn’t see behind me at all, looked like that part of the world had been erased and the world in front of me no longer existed. I was surrounded by wetness and whiteness, fogged over and barely able to see ten feet of reality, just as impossible to see the horror driving behind me. Man against nature in the land where Civil War pitted brother against brother.

My car jerked when it was rammed from behind. I gripped the steering wheel, turned the wheels the opposite direction of my skid; my heart pumped as I brought it back under control. My gun slid away from my grip, moved across the seat, and fell between the passenger seat and the passenger door. Slamming into my car had caused that driver to struggle for control while I did the same.

I cursed and accelerated, the wall of fog and rain refusing to give me any reprieve.

Again I was rammed from the rear, caught off guard and forced to deal with my skidding car, the layer of water between the tires and the road making it almost impossible to keep the car on the road.

I tried to speed up, didn’t know if I was about to crash into the back of a stopped car, truck, or eighteen-wheeler. I was driving blind, eyes wide open, whiteness and hail clogging my vision.

My rear window exploded, the din from the hail and storm covering the wanting sound of death, the report of an unseen gun smothered by the forces of nature as it fell like thousands of golf balls.

They had sped up, afraid they were going to lose me when visibility wasn’t in their favor, had raced through fog and hail, and now they were on top of me, the gunman firing shots, the driver swerving toward me in the middle of the hailstorm, slamming into me as I struggled to keep my car on the road.

They had waited to get me off the two-lane road, into the in-between land, the open highway offering them instant escape, especially now, when the forces of nature were on their team as well.

Again they rammed me, made everything jerk when they hit me with a police-style maneuver.

My car lost control, hydroplaned, began spinning.

I gripped the steering wheel as the car took flight and left the road.

Eight

five minutes to live

My car crashed
through a series of smaller trees before coming to rest at a larger one.

Whoever was after me wasn’t with the police. Their car had skidded out and they had to park and rush down into the mud, mud that was almost powerful enough to suck off shoes with each step.

The hail. The poor visibility. It was like driving through an endless cloud.

The storm roared like a demon, a monster breathing its frigid breath.

They came through the mud and hail shooting, no hesitation between shots. Two men emptied their clips and then reloaded as they walked toward my car, fired like they were professional killers paid to kill someone thirty times over. Gunshots, the psychopathic roar of tough guys. They put bullet holes in the car, shot the driver’s side the same way the officers from Texas and Louisiana had shot up Bonnie and Clyde’s car in 1934, killed those desperados on a desolate road near their Bienville Parish, Louisiana, hideout. And now I was being gunned down in the mud, somewhere between Huntsville and Nashville.

They were up on the car, emptying their clips into the air bag. The storm had the same effect as a silencer, hid the sounds that created death, swallowed all noises, their shooting so rapid and fierce that it sounded like one elongated sound of terror. They shot and shot while the skies coughed and wheezed. One of the men was tall, at least six-seven, the other at least six feet tall and almost as wide.

Dimming visibility cloaked them until they were right up on the car.

Shooting, reloading, shooting, reloading.

They were meaner than the notorious Kray twins.

Not until then were they able to slosh through the mud and get close enough to pull the destroyed air bag out of the way, not until then did they realize there was no blood in the driver’s seat. No blood, and no body. And the passenger-side door was open; on that side footprints were being filled with rainwater.

I wasn’t in that crippled car that had its front end wrapped around a one-hundred-year-old tree.

I was twenty yards and ninety degrees away, my body covered in a chilling rain; the season was spring but the rain and hail belonged to the coldest winter. I was muddied up to my chest, mud on my body from where I had fallen down when I fled the vehicle as fast as I could. Eyes squinting as hail changed into a freezing rain and made a river across my face.

Gun in my hand. Trigger pulled back.

Blunt trauma from the air bag made holding a gun feel as if I were supporting a forty-pound weight in the palm of my hand. And it felt as if hot gases from the air bag had burned my skin when that air bag had deployed. Teeth clenched, controlling my breathing, I aimed, arm trembling. It was kill or be killed, fight or flight, flight from a fight not encoded in my DNA, the DNA I had inherited from an unknown warrior.

Those were the lies I had been told. Those were the lies that haunted me.

Those were the lies that had become my truth.

The pain from the air bag smacking me resounded, echoed, had almost deafened me.

My first shot missed them both, the bullet hitting the car, creating awareness of my position.

Then they both turned my way.

I aimed, shot, missed, adjusted for pain, compensated for the weight of the gun.

Water dripped across my eyes as my enemies tried to move in the mud, but the mud had them glued where they stood, made them stumble in a torrential downpour, man versus man as man fought with nature. One of them dove in the mud and yelled as the other fell against the car, reloading his gun.

I focused on the one with the gun. From my angle he was the closer of the two. He was the taller of the two. The other one, the heavier one, was slipping and sliding in Mother Earth.