Deadly Pursuit

49

Kirstie sat on the runabout’s sailing thwart and stared blankly at the water rushing past. Flecks of turquoise checkered the swells, dancing amid a flotsam of orange sun-sparkles. Pretty. So pretty…

“Son of a bitch.”

Glancing up, she saw Jack twisted in his seat, his gaze fixed on a sportfisher half a mile astern.

The Black Caesar? She thought it was.

He turned toward her. A child’s petulant fury distorted his face-helpless, shaking rage at a world that would not let him have his way.

“First a chopper, now a boat. Got a whole fucking armada on my ass.” He yanked the outboard motor’s throttle arm, and the runabout fetched east. “But I’ll beat ’em anyway. You hear me, Meredith?”

“I’m not Meredith!” she protested hoarsely over the buzz of the engine.

“Yes, you are.” The glittery malice in his eyes hinted at a deeper craziness, an insane obsession rooted at the base of his soul. “For me, you are.”

Behind them, the sportfisher altered its heading. It ran east, accelerating to twenty knots, rapidly narrowing the gap. The lurid light of sunrise smoldered on the choppy water. On the retreating horizon a wide fan of smoke unfolded slowly from Pelican Key.

Jack gathered up the three bags of supplies in the bow and hurled them overboard, lightening the boat. The sportfisher continued to close in.

“You can’t outrun them,” Kirstie said.

“Sure I can.”

“Their boat’s faster than yours.”

“But not as maneuverable. You know the nursery rhyme: Jack, be nimble; Jack, be quick…” He flashed a smile at her, a weird simulacrum of the cocky grin that had defined his earlier persona. “That’s me. Nimble and quick. I can slip through the reef, easy as threading a needle. That big mother will run aground if she tries it.”

Kirstie looked past him at the cruiser expanding with a roar of diesel engines. “You won’t even get to the reef.”

“Hey, show a little faith.” That smile again. “I’ve got a way of making them back off.”

He withdrew the Beretta from his waistband.

Leaning over the safety rail for a better view, training the binoculars on the runabout, Moore saw the pistol come up fast.

Instinctively she pulled back, a split second late.

The bullet caught her left arm below the elbow, shattering her radius and ulna.

Pain walloped her, knocked her reeling to the deck of the bridge.

Blur of action to her right. Pice seizing his Winchester.

What came out of her mouth was one long unpunctuated cry of distress: “No don’t you’ll hit the hostage!”

“Warning shot,” Pice snapped. He poked the gun barrel past the windshield and squeezed off a round, aiming high.

The rifle’s report cracked like a stinging hand clap over the water. Reflexively Kirstie ducked.

A strong hand closed over her shoulder and wrenched her roughly off the thwart. Jack thrust her in front of him and screamed.

“Shoot me now, you assholes!” Frenzied exhilaration shredded his voice. “Come on, shoot me now!"

He pistoned out his arm, the Beretta pointed like an accusing finger, and fired again.

Lovejoy was on his way across the bridge to help his partner when the venturi windshield exploded in a cloud of shards.

Pice shielded his face with his arm. Lovejoy, caught off balance, had no chance to protect himself. Crumbs of glass chewed through his face like rodent teeth.

“Jesus.”

He stumbled, blinking blood out of his eyes. For a heart-stopping moment he thought he had been blinded. No. Cuts scored his forehead and cheeks; blood had dampened his eyes only as it spattered.

At the steering console, Pice fired a second warning shot.

Lovejoy ran a handkerchief over his face and crouched beside Moore. He tore off the sleeve of her jacket, then removed his necktie and wound it around her arm at the elbow, making a tourniquet.

“This no-account mother’s gonna kill us both,” Moore said with a twitchy attempt at a smile.

“No chance. We’ve got him on the run.”

At least, he hoped they did.

The reef wavered on the horizon, a crooked line against a brassy smear of sun.

Jack had hoped the sportfisher would cut her speed, giving him time to find some narrow channel between the rocks.

No such luck. The cruiser was hard astern, bearing down on him like a runaway train.

Well, there was an alternate way of crossing the reef.

He gunned the motor, pushing the runabout to full throttle. The bow lifted. The boat bounced crazily, skimming the water and shooting up fans of spray, as the Yamaha outboard shrilled.

“Some fun, huh?” he asked Kirstie with a bark of laughter.

Her eyes, wide and strangely vacant, stared out from behind a foam-drenched net of hair.

Clutching her closer, ignoring her feeble moan of protest, Jack fired another shot at the sportfisher’s bridge.

The third bullet blasted a smoking hole in the control console, showering Pice with sparks.

“You okay?” Lovejoy yelled.

“Bastard missed me. Knocked out my oil gauges, is all.”

Lovejoy finished knotting the tourniquet in place. “Lie still,” he told Moore.

“Like hell.” She fumbled her. 38 out of her shoulder holster with her good hand. “Where I grew up, a flesh wound is about as serious as a paper cut. We’ve got to give Pice some protection.”

“All right, cover him from here-but stay down. I’ll try to draw Jack’s fire.”

He swung onto the ladder and descended to the weather deck, awash in spray. A sliding door admitted him to the galley. Lurching from handhold to handhold, he advanced to the main cabin, where a companionway ladder lowered him to the forward stateroom.

V-berths were built into the bulkheads. He stood on a berth and opened the overhead hatch, then hauled himself up onto the foredeck. On elbows and knees he wriggled to the stem of the prow.

The runabout was fifty feet away, a speeding arrowhead on a feathery shaft of wake, launched at the red bull’s-eye of the sun.

Lovejoy fired a round well wide of the mark, simply hoping to get Jack’s attention and prevent another shot at the bridge.

Jack heard the bullet whiz past and caught a glimpse of the man prone on the foredeck, intermittently visible as the sportfisher’s bow lifted and plunged.

The reef was less than a minute ahead. He could afford no further distractions.

Next time the bow swung down, he would take the fucker out.

The cruiser’s bow rose on a swell, then dipped as the wave passed. For an instant the gunman bobbed into view, a perfect target.

Jack pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

The Beretta was empty, the sixteen-round clip finally exhausted.

“Shit.” Jack pitched the gun overboard.

It didn’t matter anyway. If he cleared the reef, the sportfisher couldn’t follow. Either she would be forced into a hopelessly time-consuming detour, or she would founder on the rocks.

The Black Caesar shook with the twin diesels’ vibrations. Glass shards clinging to the windshield frame shivered and fell like melting icicles.

Moore saw the reef and yelled a warning to Pice. “Coral ahead!”

“I know it.” The captain’s voice was calm. “He’s trying to wreck us.”

“Won’t he wreck himself, too?”

“He doesn’t think so. He’s got a daredevil stunt in mind.”

“What have you got in mind?”

Pice showed her a grim smile. “Just hang onto that rail when I tell you to. And tell your partner to get below deck.”

The reef was close now. Thirty seconds.

Jack scanned the line of rocks and saw a short stretch of coral flatter than the main line of the ridge. He jerked the throttle arm sideways, aiming for that spot.

A lightweight craft running at top speed on a rough sea was capable of hydroplaning over a reef, skimming the jagged outcrops without being caught and torn.

It could be done. He’d heard stories of such maneuvers while hanging around boatyards in the Keys many summers ago.

The trick was in the timing. You had to catch a wave, ride it like a surfer, let the rolling carpet of water sweep you over the rocks to safety on the other side.

Ten seconds.

Jack, be nimble…

“Peter! Get below!”

Lovejoy heard Moore’s shout in the same moment when the reef appeared out of a whirl of spray, dead ahead.

He scrambled away from the stem and dropped down the hatch.

Through the bulkheads, the big diesels howled like tortured beasts. He gripped the companionway ladder, lacing his fingers between the treads.

What the hell was Pice up to? He seemed to be trying to get them all killed.

Five seconds.

Jack released Kirstie and pushed her into the bow. He nudged the throttle stick to the right, correcting for a few degrees of leeward drift.

Jack, be quick…

“Hang on!” Pice shouted.

Moore grabbed the safety rail with her good hand.

The reef was terrifyingly close. No way they could stop in time. She braced for impact.

Pice rammed the paired throttles into neutral and spun the wheel to starboard.

Lovejoy heard the sudden drop in engine noise, felt the boat’s shuddering turn. In the main cabin, something tipped over with a crash.

He tightened his grip on the ladder, knuckles squeezed white.

Silently he prayed.

Two seconds.

Jack, jump over…

One second.

… the candlestick.

The runabout reached the reef on a crest of surging water and rose, propelled by momentum, lifted on the blanket of spray thrown up by the rocks and rising higher, higher, sailing over the reef in a graceful slow-motion curve.

Somewhere Kirstie was screaming. Jack ignored her. He had done it. He was flying. Flying.

The boat’s nose tipped down.

The reef flew up.

He had time to realize he hadn’t cleared the rocks Crack-up.

The runabout slammed headfirst into the coral ridge and blew apart in a hail of shattered floorboards and hissing Hypalon tubes.

Moore clung to the handrail as the Black Caesar heeled to starboard, scraping the reef on the port side.

Dimly she was aware that Jack’s boat had broken up.

She hoped Mrs. Gardner was all right.

No more victims. Please.

The force of the collision catapulted Kirstie out of the runabout. Her world turned somersaults, reef and sky exchanging places, and then the reef was behind her, water rushing up in a kaleidoscopic glitter, cold shock of immersion, and she floundered, gasping, fists slapping the green swells.

Around her bobbed scraps of the runabout, pushed by the wind. Inflation compartments, their seams burst, shriveled slowly like punctured balloons. Splintered driftwood scraped the rocks. The severed stern slowly foundered, buoyancy chambers deflating, the weight of the outboard motor bolted to the transom dragging it down.

On the far side of the reef, the Black Caesar hove to. The brawny figure on the bridge was Captain Pice, pointing at her, while beside him a woman in a dark suit jacket shouted for someone named Peter.

It all seemed distant, unreal, an out-of-body experience. Perhaps she hadn’t survived the crash, after all. Perhaps she’d died with Jack.

Jack…

Had he died?

And if not-where was he?

Sudden urgency stabbed through her unnatural calm. She turned, scanning the water, and abruptly a huge dark shape filled her field of vision.

Jack rising up, mouth twisted in a snarl, hands reaching out like an animal’s claws.

Kirstie almost found the strength to scream, and then those hands closed off her throat, fingers squeezing, and she was plunged under the waves.

In his mind, Jack was eighteen again, alone with Meredith Turner in the swimming pavilion, holding her underwater, drowning her, drowning the bitch.

“Fuck you, Meredith,” he rasped as her blond hair fanned and rippled, graceful as a sea anemone. “Fuck you.”

Something tugged his right leg.

What the hell?

Another tug, and he was yanked below the surface.

Through the crystalline water he saw a taut cable extending from his foot to the submerging mass of the runabout’s stern.

The mooring line. He must have gotten tangled in it when he tumbled free of the boat. One end was cleated to the transom; as the stern descended, the rope was pulling him along.

If he released his hold on Kirstie, he might be able to free himself.

Yes, he might. But he would not try.

We die together, Meredith. I’ll never let you go.

Sinking deeper. Sunlight fading. The need for air a searing ache in her lungs.

She pummeled Jack, battering his shoulders, delivering weak blows to his head.

No use. His hands still wrapped her neck, a python’s coils, constricting tighter, tighter.

In desperation she raked her ragged nails across his chest, clawing his shirt to tatters.

Buttons popped loose. His vest pocket flapped open. Something compact and shiny spilled out and cartwheeled slowly through the water.

A knife. His Swiss Army knife.

She seized it. Fumbled the spear blade out of its slot.

Instantly the choking pressure on her neck was gone. Jack grabbed her knife hand, held the blade at bay. It glittered between them, silvery in the dimming light.

She struggled to break free of his grip. Impossible. His fingers were iron bars, unyielding.

Slowly he pushed her hand back, driving the knife toward her own throat.

He meant to savage her with the blade, kill her with the same knife that had ripped open Steve’s belly in the swamp.

Steve…

Probably dead by now. Or dying, alone in the dark. Because of this man in the water with her, this predator, this venomous snake.

Fury made her strong.

She stiffened her arm, stopping the blade only inches from her neck, and with a final wrenching effort she forced the knife forward, overpowering Jack as he fought to hold her back, and thrust the needle-sharp point into the soft skin below his jaw.

Blood erupted in a black spume. He released her arm, twisted free of the knife, and she stabbed again, gouging his face-again, slicing through his lips-again, grooving a horizontal slash across his forehead-again and again, her arm swinging wildly, while his hands flailed in a useless attempt at self-defense.

Air bubbled from his mouth, mixing with fluttery ribbons of blood. His eyes were wide and confused, and in them she could read his thoughts, his terrified, plaintive protest: This can’t be happening to me!

She thought once more of Steve, then of poor Ana, then of the seven women Jack had bragged of killing, and the knife hacked yet again, butchering his face, the blade carving savagely as fierce ecstasy swelled in her, an orgiastic exultation that craved blood and pain.

In that moment she understood the dark passions that had moved Jack through his days and nights of death. She knew how he’d felt when he claimed each victim’s life.

And she knew there was a part of him in her, in everyone. A part that must be resisted if it was not to be released.

Agony.

His face torn, a dozen new mouths opening to lick the water with tongues of blood.

He gave up trying to fend off the knife’s attacks. The hungry blade would not be denied.

Spasms shook his body. His legs kicked, arms thrashed; he jerked and twitched and flailed, convulsions hammering him out of shape.

His women had died this way. He’d relished their furious contortions, their final shuddering exit from this life.

But now he was the one dying in a spastic tangle of limbs, he was the one going down alone into the dark; and it was no fun at all.

The rope dragged him lower. Kirstie began to slip away. He made a last attempt to haul her with him to oblivion. His bleeding hands found her leg; his fingers closed over her ankle. She kicked free. And then she was above him, out of reach, and he went on dropping like an anchor, cheated of his prize.

Looking up, he saw her in silhouette against the sunstruck surface of the sea. She seemed to hover there, outlined in an aureole of sun. He thought irrationally of those near-death experiences people reported, the angel beckoning to the liberated spirit at the entrance to a tunnel of light.

But this angel wasn’t beckoning. She retreated from him, cruel in her indifference. The light faded. And he was plunging down in an endless, weightless fall, into a pit of night.

Kirstie watched Jack vanish into the gloom. The last she saw of him was his upturned face, incised with a crosshatched intaglio of scars, his eyes wide and staring, mouth stretched in a voiceless scream.

Then he was gone, lost somewhere within a rising cloud of blood; and with him went her anger and her strength.

A wave of weariness passed over her. Her fingers splayed; the knife fell from her grasp to join its master in the depths.

She had almost no energy left. But enough, perhaps, to reach the surface before her last residues of air seeped away. Enough to live.

Kicking hard, she climbed toward daylight.