Sole Witness (26 page)

She changed her mind when she hit the ground toes
first, arms windmilling.

Her left foot twisted in the sand, taking her ankle
with it. Lori landed hard on one side and tumbled next to the grapefruit tree,
smacking her head against the trunk.

Sharp pain shot up her leg. She couldn’t wiggle her
toes. Her ankle throbbed.

A car door slammed. Gasoline fumes choked her lungs.

The house exploded above her head.

Heat and flying debris filled the sky. Lori rolled
behind the grapefruit tree, covering her face with her hands.

Sudden tears rushed to her eyes, as hot and salty as
the white sand beneath her body.

It was over.

She couldn’t run.

She couldn’t even stand up.

*          *          *

Crouching, her back still flush
against the side of her car, Amber did an ammo check on her Glock.

Empty. Figured.

Her refills were in her purse and
her purse was in her trunk. Emergency? Not really. It’s not as if anyone
could’ve survived an explosion like that.

Then again, the cops were bound
to show up any second, so she might as well reload and get the hell out of
Dodge.

Slowly, Amber struggled to her
feet, brushing ash and charred bits of whatever out of her hair. Maybe not the
best time to light another cigarette.

She turned to face the beach
house.

Beautiful.

It looked like freaking campfire
marshmallows. Giant balls of flame atop the remnants of wooden sticks. Even as
she watched, the last bits of still-upright house crashed to the ground below,
joining the blaze.

Amber shielded her eyes from the
glare and squinted through the flames.

What was that motion?

There, behind the fire, back by
the tree. Was that just random debris, settling to the ground? No way was it
Lori Summers, book-thrower and super slut.

All the same, no sense taking
chances.

She popped open her trunk. Her
purse was in there somewhere. She was going to have to clean all that crap out
sometime soon.

Ah ha. Pay dirt.

Amber dumped the ammo into her
hand and quickly reloaded her gun.

Time to make sure dead things
stayed dead.

*          *          *

Carver’s cell phone was the one
ringing this time.

Davis shot her an expectant look
until she finally answered.

“Hello? Yeah, this is Carver.
George Culver? No I… Isla Concha. Okay. When did she come in? I see. And I’m
not sure I understand what she… okay. Thank you—we’ll keep in touch.”

She snapped her phone shut and
stared back out the window.

“You’re not getting off that
easy,” Davis said. “If it’s got something to do with this case, you’d better
spill.”

Carver pursed her lips.

“That was the bank manager of an
Isla Concha branch outside of town. He apparently had some kind of relationship
with our girl Tompkins. Said she came by yesterday to see him, but sent him off
on some errand. When he got back, she was gone. Today he found out she’d been
on his computer.”

Davis frowned. “So?”

“After seeing her face and Miss
Summers’ face plastered all over the news, he figured out why. Turns out
Account Managers of banks can hunt up bank accounts.”

Duh. “Hence the name Account
Manager, right?”

Carver curled her lip. “Hence our
killer is a very clever girl, Hamilton. She’s an Account Manager at Isla
Concha. Lori Summers banks at Isla Concha. Hell, I bank at Isla Concha. Lori
must’ve been using her debit card everywhere she went, just like everyone else
on the planet.”

He blinked. “Holy crap. I knew
there wasn’t a department leak. No wonder we couldn’t figure out how Tompkins
tracked her.”

“Yeah.” Carver sighed. “She
wasn’t safe anywhere.”

Davis gripped the wheel even
tighter. His voice cracked when he spoke.

“She isn’t safe now.”

*          *          *

Lori scooted backwards until she
leaned against the tree trunk. She could move her toes a little, but her left
ankle was already twice the size of the right.

Clearly, this was why she hadn’t
pursued a career as a stunt double.

A sudden spasm wracked her lungs
and she bent forward, coughing. The acrid smoke burned her throat and her eyes.

Bubbling debris rustled in the
cinders of the beach house. Lori rubbed her face with her hands.

Poor Davis. All his drawings,
gone forever.

A car door slammed. The killer?

Using the tree trunk as a crutch,
Lori hauled herself up and rested her weight on her good ankle. She tested the
other and bit back a yelp of pain.

“That you, Summers?” called the
too-familiar voice from across the burning rubble.

Cripes.

She had to move. Now.

Lori took one tentative step and
couldn’t suppress a groan of agony.

“You little bitch,” came the
killer’s amazed voice. “You really do have nine lives. Well, guess what? I’ve
got more than nine rounds, and they’ve all got your name on ’em.”

Great.

Lori clutched the grapefruit tree
and shuddered. She had a little time. Nobody could run in all that black smoke.
Even if the killer walked around the burning pile fairly quickly, Lori at least
had a few minutes’ head start.

A shot rang out and grapefruit
innards splattered across Lori’s face.

So much for her head start.

“Suck it up, Summers,” Lori
whispered to herself and wiped her eyes. She squinted toward the beach.

Ten, maybe eleven yards. She
could do it. She had to.

Lori took a few short steps and
screamed into the back of her hand. Heaven help her. Ten yards seemed like ten
miles with a foot the size of a watermelon.

Without the tree to steady her,
Lori wobbled on her good ankle and flailed her arms around for balance.

Nine more yards. Eight.

She hobbled a little further.

Seven more yards. Now six.

Arms outstretched, she hopped
forward on one foot for several feet.

Five yards. Four. Three.

Another shot rang out and Lori crumpled to the
ground.

By the time Davis hit Gulf Boulevard, roiling plumes
of black smoke filled the sky.

Carver had her phone out in a millisecond.
White-knuckled fingers still gripping the handle above her window, she barked
orders like a drill sergeant on training day.

With the last number she dialed, however, Carver
listened.

In Davis’s experience, listening was not a good
thing.

He slanted a sideways glance Carver’s way as the car
flew past beach condos and palm trees. Listening meant there was something you
needed to hear.

And when the sky above the last known location of
the woman you loved looked like the site of a nuclear warhead testing ground,
there weren’t too many good things left to say.

Which pretty much left bad things.

Carver snapped her phone closed and turned to Davis.
She pursed her lips.

“Listen.”

Oh boy. No good conversation ever started with that
word.

“Okay,” he said.

Davis repositioned his hands at ten and two. He
stared through the windshield and tried to pretend everything was going to be
all right.

“That was the Chief.”

“Yeah?”

Cracking sounds came from Carver’s open mouth as she
bit down hard on one of her infernal lozenges. “I got good news and bad news.”

“Tell you what,” Davis said as he guided the car
onto the drawbridge. Half a mile and he’d be home. “I could use some good
news.”

“Good news is Miss Summers wasn’t in the house when
it caught fire. Exactly. Neighbor saw her jump out of a window as the house
exploded behind her. Hit her head on some kind of tree in your backyard and
seemed to break her ankle when she hit the ground.”

Yeah, nice. Davis forced a grim smile. “I guess
that’s good news.”

“Of course it’s good news. You kidding me? Nobody
wants to be burned alive.”

True, true. But nobody wanted to break an ankle
while cracking her head open on a grapefruit tree, either.

“The bad news?” he said aloud.

“Bad news,” Carver answered, turning to face
forward. “Is that Amber Tompkins is fine and dandy. No bumps. No bruises. All
attitude.”

Davis swallowed. “Is it too much to hope that she’s
fleeing the scene?”

Carver shook her head and pointed at distant
flashing lights.

“No fleeing. Neighbor saw her reloading the gun.”

*          *          *

With a loud bang, another grapefruit blew up behind
her. Lori scrambled to her feet.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she hobbled
forward one step.

Two.

Three.

Just a couple yards to go. Already the hot sand
turned moist and squished between her toes. Broken fragments of white and pink
seashells littered the beach and glittered in the sun.

Lori took a deep breath and lurched closer.

Spiking agony from her left ankle masked the pain of
jagged shells slicing into the bottom of her tender feet.

When the first ripple of water brushed against her
bare toes, Lori launched herself forward, throwing her arms in front of her
chest to break the fall.

Her face submerged in half a foot of water and she
came up sputtering.

Using her hands and arms like massive claws, Lori
dug into the sandy ocean floor over and over, hauling herself forward.

In seconds, she was deep enough that her torso
floated and she could barely reach the bottom. Kicking with her good leg, Lori
cupped her hands, curved her arms, and propelled herself away from the shore as
fast as she could.

The buoyancy of the water eased the pressure of her
ankle and Lori broke into a full-fledged breaststroke until she could tread
water without her toes touching the ground.

She shook wet hair from her eyes and squinted in the
blinding sunlight.

Her teeth ground against tiny grains of sand. Lori
opened her mouth to suck in a deep breath and a wave splashed across her face.

She spit out the salty water, hoping the gritty sand
went with it.

A gunshot blasted through the air.

Still treading water, Lori turned and caught sight
of the killer standing on the shore, feet spread and arms akimbo.

“Missed me by a mile,” she muttered. “Can’t see me
so well with the sun behind me, can you?”

The killer waved her gun above her head and shouted.

“Come back here, you freak. I’ll kill you!”

Yeah, right. As if Lori mistook the gun-waving
maniac for the Welcome Wagon.

She hurled herself toward the horizon, wincing with
each stroke and swimming as hard as she could.

Another shot rang out. The bullet splashed less than
a meter from Lori’s face.

For Pete’s sake.

The killer had ridiculously good eyesight.

*          *          *

A barrage of choice curse words spewed from Amber’s
mouth.

Screeching tires and flashing lights rolled to a
noisy stop in front of the once-standing beach house. Any minute the cops would
be right behind her. Already too late to head toward her car.

Voices rose over the cacophony of screaming sirens.

There was no way out.

No escape to Mexico.

Shit.

Well, she’d be damned if she was going down without
taking Lori Summers with her.

Amber aimed her gun at the retreating form bobbing
in the sparkling water. She squeezed off the rest of her rounds in rapid
succession and tossed the gun to the sand.

No sense wiping off her prints at this point. There
wasn’t even time for a smoke.

She crouched down in order to unbuckle her shoes.
What a day to pick strappy sandals. What the hell had she been thinking?
Precious time was wasting while the Super Slut swam further and further away.

New rule. From now on, she only killed in
flip-flops. And shorts.

Amber wiggled out of her leather miniskirt and waded
into the water. She crossed her arms over her chest and slid her spandex tank
top up and off. Flinging the shirt aside, Amber ducked underwater and started
swimming.

Sassypants Summers thought she was the only one with
skills in the ocean?