Sin (The Waite Family) (16 page)

~~~

Coop watched her pace as she talked. He knew
,
for whatever reason
,
he’d pushed her too far. But he couldn’t back away now.
If he did he might as well shoot her himself.
He slid the gun to the back of his pants
,
leaned against the tree
,
and waited.

“Shipley and I hadn’t trusted them from the get-go.
There was something…something off about their knowledge of the area.
They knew it
.
N
ot like they lived there, but had studied a map.”
Her snort made him smile.
“I could read a fucking map.”

He watched her pace more, her face a study in concentration. The moon danced across her face each time she turned toward it and took his breath away.

“
Then that last day
,
we heard the chopper overhead. The men, Davidson and Hurley
,
seemed relieved.
That
,
of course
,
put us all on alert.
But we had a job to do, extract the hostages.”

“How many?”
She looked at him
,
startled, as if she’d forgotten he was there until he spoke.
“How many hostages were you to get out?”

“Five.
We’d done it before. That was our
assignment.
That’s all we did
,
actually.
Go in, kill the fuck-tards willing to give up their lives for a few buck
s
,
and get the friendl
ies
out.
But this time was different.
They’d taken our personals.
All of them…most of them.”

“Personals?
I don’t…your ID’s?”

She continued pacing, answering his question without thought.
“Cells, cloth
e
s, packs
—
anything and everything that they wouldn’t have to bring back when we were dead
were to be left behind
.
We’d had to leave it at the last ent
ry
point…the last unit we’d been at.
But I didn’t trust them, none of us did.
We each had a drop, a cell we kept paid up but not on, nothing traceable.
We took them with us everywhere. The only people who knew the numbers were people we trusted.”
She frowned.
“Or I guess people we thought we could trust.
The moment we turned them on they were all over us.”

He knew she’d never thought this through before
. H
e could see by the look on her face that it had never occurred to her that whoever had the cell numbers
had
betrayed them.
He thought she’d make a hell of a detective.
Prickly one, but a good one.

“The men showed up first, then later the goon squad.
I don’t remember them, I’d already been hurt, already been…Shipley told me later they wanted them to leave the area, get on a chopper and hand over their weapons.
They wouldn’t leave me…leave without at least my body.
So my men…the men disarmed them and held them until they did.
Find
me
,
that is.
David showed up about that time.”
She looked at him.
“David
,
I trust. He was too…those men, they were sent by someone. They said…”

“Said what, Sydney? What did they tell you?”
She started pacing and instead of answering him
,
she continued on.

“I was making my final sweep before lights out.
Davidson had come along.
He said he wanted to point out something he’d seen earlier. Something that wasn’t bad, just curious.
I had a thought to say no, but something happened.
Something he said…”
She paced more
. H
e could see she was trying to remember.
“He said something about his mother.”

His mother?
“So he was a native. His mother was nearby
?”
Coop wished he had a pen and paper.
He was trying to remember as many details as he could.

“No, that’s not it.
It’s something else.
The first shot hit me in the chest. I wasn’t even aware it was a bullet until the second one hit me.
I drew and turned on him at the same time and shot.
He dropped immediately.
I
guess we’d been walking for about twenty clicks when this happened.
The next bullet hit my head
.
I remember falling, thinking this is it.
But
I didn’t black out. I couldn’t hear, but I didn’t black out.”

Three shots, he knew there w
ere
more because she’d been shot
seven
times and beaten up.
He waited
,
knowing that she wouldn’t hear him even if he asked her. She was reliving the story now and in deep.

~~~

“His body hit mine, it was just there.
His fists were banging away at me, my face, arms.
I knew there was someone…more than one
,
I guess
,
that came up behind him.
The man on me, he
tumbled forward and fell off.”
She stopped suddenly and closed her eyes. “My gun jammed. The man standing said
,
‘
my gun jammed.
Beating you to shit wasn’t supposed to happen.
’
Can’t explain that away as unfriendly.
I stared up at him, wondering
who he was, what he wanted.
I reached for my gun
,
but he kicked it away.
‘
Can’t have that now
,
can we
,
Sydney
?’
the man had said.
‘
You and your team have to disappear. You’ve made too much noise to all the wrong people.
But
for you…killing you
,
I get an extra bonus
….’”

“My men won’t go easy.
They’ll find you.”

His laughter rang around
them
as he looked down
.
Then he
leaned down before he spoke
again
.
“You
r
men are already dead
,
my dear.
They just don’t know it yet.
The
team that lands in twenty minutes will make sure there isn’t enough left to identify once we’re finished.”

The gun at her waist
, the one she’d kept hidden
,
was out an
d
at his chest before he could think
.
Sin shot him twice
concurrently
.
She let him drop on her, not knowing what was still out there and who might come up next.

The next shot fired hit in the dirt next to her head
,
spraying undergrowth into her face.
She
lay still
,
not sure where it had come from other than it was in front of her.
She closed her eyes when she heard a twig break close to her.
Pain had her coming up immediately as something
snapped her leg.

Not looking
,
she was sure whoever it was had taken it off at the knee.
Firing wildly
,
she knew she hit him when he yelled out in pain. Lying back down, she waited. He would either sh
o
ot in her direction or not, depending on how badly he was hurt.

Pain woke her again.
She must have
blacked out because she wasn’t sure what had happened for several seconds when something hit her again
,
this time low
in
the belly. The muzzle flash had her firing again
,
but she couldn’t see much.
Blurring
images kept shifting
around her
. After firing again
,
she knew that she would soon run out of ammo if she continued.

Dizzy now
,
she couldn’t hold her eyes
open
;
her body was losing blood. She pulled out her cell, but couldn’t make the numbers come into focus. Blood on her fingers and her shaking hands
made
her drop it.
She felt the world tilt
back and forth then she was out again.

The next time she woke
,
she was being dragged. A man had her by the boot and
was
pulling her along behind him. She put her hand on her belly wound and found her gun.
He
must have thought she was dead or he’d checked and found her to be too far gone to worry with.
Lifting the gun took more energy than she had
,
but she knew that wherever he was taking her, she wasn’t going to come back from it. Lifting the gun up
,
she fired until the slide came back
,
signaling she was empty.
If anyone else came, she was dead
,
she thought.