Crooked River

60

Her mind swam back into consciousness and for a moment she braced herself instinctively, assuming the worst, hand tightening around a stiletto that wasn’t there. Then everything came flooding back: the roaring noise, being picked up and tumbled about like a rag doll... and then blackness.

All was eerily quiet except for a steady falling rain. Constance raised her head, annoyed to find she was almost completely covered in mud for a second time that evening, but the warm rain was already washing it off. She lay on the river embankment, giving herself a minute to recover. The docks and outbuildings had been torn to pieces, an unrecognizable shambles of splintered piers and roofless structures. Their boat lay overturned where the waterspout had thrown it, about a hundred yards downstream, half on the embankment and half in the water, its hull split.

But where was Perelman?

She struggled to sit up, body aching. It was so dark she could barely make out anything on the ground beyond the nearby gleam of her stiletto.

“Chief Perelman?” she called in a weak voice, and then louder: “Perelman?”

“Over here.”

The strained reply came from the blackness about twenty feet from her. She gingerly rose to her feet, wincing.

“Are you okay?” Perelman asked.

“I believe so. But are you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She carefully felt her way toward his voice. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated him, sprawled on the muddy embankment. One leg was twisted beneath him in an ugly, unnatural way.

She knelt by his side. “Your leg?”

“Broken, as you can see. Can you... help me out of this mud?”

“Yes.” Constance put her arms under his and pulled him up the embankment and to a grassy area within a grove of trees.

“My poor boat,” he said.

Constance laid a hand on his forehead. It was clammy. He would be going into shock.

“Get my cell phone out of my pocket,” he said. “I’ve got to make a call.”

She reached in and took it out of his slicker pocket. It was smashed to pieces and dripping water. He fished a flashlight out of his other pocket and turned it on.

“Oh shit. What about your phone?”

“Gone.”

“Looks like we’re out of commission.”

“You’re out of commission,” said Constance. “I’m still in commission.”

“You?” He groaned. “What are you going to do now?”

Once again, in a swift movement Constance unsnapped his gun from the holster and slipped it out.

“What the hell do you plan to do with that?”

“It’s going to prove more useful than a stiletto.”

“You can’t go in there alone. It’s suicide. We need to get out of here and call in a massive raid. Which is what we should have done in the first place.”

Constance tucked the gun into her waistband, saying nothing.

“Constance, please listen to me. There’s no way you can do this without getting killed. You’ve got to get help. Call Pendergast’s boss at the FBI, what’s his name, Pickett.”

Constance tightened his slicker around him, making the chief as comfortable as possible. Then she stood up and stared at the lights of the facility rising above the trees. “We’ve been over this before, and there’s no more time. Pendergast is in that compound. If you call in a raid, they’ll kill him. I’m going in alone.”

“No.” A pause of disbelief. “No, no, that’s totally insane.”

“I’m sorry to leave you. I expect you’ll survive.”

“Constance, I beg you for your own sake not to go in there.”

Without giving any indication she’d heard him, she turned and slipped into the trees, heading for the complex. Perelman’s protests were quickly lost in the sound of wind and rain.