Mortal Pursuit

23

Blair Sharkey pulled a Tekna flashlight from his hip pocket and fanned its beam across the shallow waters of the lake.

He had to admit he’d thought it was a waste of time to patrol the shore. Cain wanted both the front and rear access points covered, sure, a standard precaution, but who the hell would be out here

Well, someone was-and he knew who. That little rookie had gotten out of the trunk.

He couldn’t begin to guess how she’d pulled off that stunt, but it didn’t matter. As soon as she came up for air, he would wax her.

Blair was good with a gun, especially this laser-sighted Glock. Wouldn’t have missed her the first two times, except he could hardly believe she was actually there. Surfacing in the starlight, she’d been a vision as unreal as a mermaid.

He wouldn’t miss again.

“Come on up, Robinson,” Blair whispered to the night. “Come up and die.”

Trish hadn’t had time for a deep breath before submerging. She couldn’t stay under for long.

Pale light shifted on the water overhead, a flashlight beam restlessly skimming the surface.

She had survived one death trap only to blunder into another. Terror blended with furious, irrational indignation at a world that could toy with her so cruelly.

Roughly she pushed those distractions aside. She needed cover. Was there any place the beam couldn’t touch

The dock. Huddled alongside it, she would be screened from sight.

Staying well below the surface, she swam toward the nearest piling, her cuffed hands pawing water in a clumsy approximation of a butterfly stroke.

She didn’t think he could see her. If she was wrong, she would find out when the next bullet stopped her heart.

A darting shadow.

Robinson. Swimming for the dock.

Blair lifted his gun-too late. The streak of motion had already passed behind the farthest pilings.

From the beach he had no decent angle of fire. He broke into a run, boots raising white geysers of sand.

Stealth was unnecessary. The cop was unarmed, defenseless.

For all practical purposes, she was dead already.

Mossy wood brushed Trish’s hands. She gripped the piling and lifted her head to breathe, and then she heard it, felt it.

Rattle and shiver. Rapid footfalls on the planks.

He’d guessed her strategy. He was coming.

She kicked away from the piling, took refuge beneath the dock. The lake was shallower here, only six or seven feet deep. She waited, treading water, while green floating plants, some species of waterwort, swirled lazily around her.

The footsteps passed overhead, then stopped. The flashlight probed the water near the post where she had hidden moments earlier.

There was something unreal about all this. For most of her twenty-four years she’d led a monotonously ordinary life. Now here she was, handcuffed, bobbing in dark waters, while a man with a flashlight and a silenced pistol hunted her with the cold intent to kill.

He doesn’t even know me, she thought, aware that there was no possible relevance to this fact, stupidly astonished by it nevertheless.

Blair was enjoying himself. There was an intense, almost sexual thrill in stalking human prey. It could be addictive.

He really should have radioed Cain by now. That was the drill: In case of trouble, get on channel three and report.

But Cain would send Tyler and Gage, and Blair didn’t want their help. He wanted to bag Robinson himself.

It wouldn’t be hard. She had to be hiding under the dock. Out of sight, but not for long.

He crossed to the ladder and descended, almost regretful the game would soon be up.

Black boots on aluminum rungs. Trish submerged.

The flashlight searched for her. Even on the lake floor, her hands plowing the silty bottom, she wasn’t deep enough to escape its reach.

But she didn’t have to be. The thick scum of waterwort clogging the surface deflected the beam and kept her safe.

For the moment her adversary couldn’t find her. But he must know she was here somewhere, and he would not stop looking until he made her dead.

To survive she had to think. Come on now, think.

She’d seen a pair of boats moored at the dock. If she could circle around the boats and surface behind one of them, screened from his view …

She moved forward along the lake floor, her lungs emptying, the need for air urgent once again.

Where was she

Balanced on the bottom rug of the ladder, Blair peered below the dock at a green carpet of heart-shaped plants. Robinson was under there, he would bet on it, but where

He waited another full minute, then reluctantly concluded that only a real mermaid could hold her breath this long. She must have given him the slip.

No choice now but to summon help. Together he and Tyler and Gage would flush her out of hiding.

Pocketing the flashlight, he took out his transceiver. His finger was poised over the push-to-talk button when he heard a soft splash.

It had come from behind the nearest sport boat.

Of course.

Trish couldn’t help making noise when she surfaced alongside the fiberglass hull. Her craving for oxygen had reached the critical stage. Nothing mattered except air.

She gulped breath after breath, and then the boat lurched, someone hopping aboard.

Down.

Blair crossed the bow in one stride and peered over the port gunwale into the dark water.

Directly below him, a blur of silt and thrashing legs.

He fired twice. The Glock’s sound suppressor was degrading with use; these shots were louder than the last.

The diver vanished under the boat. Had he nailed her She’d been close, but he hadn’t had time to aim. It was just point and shoot.

He watched hopefully for a cloud of blood.

Trish knew she’d been shot at, didn’t think she’d been hit.

Still, the man knew where she was. He had the high ground. He could get her as soon as she emerged from beneath the boat.

What now, Trish Think.

Think or die.

No blood in the water. Robinson had one of her nine lives left, it looked like.

But only one.

Blair pivoted in the bow, scanning the water on all sides. The boat was small, a Sea Rayder mini-jet, lightweight and barely bigger than a dinghy. He could cover every angle from this vantage point. She couldn’t get away. She-The boat listed with a sharp impact from below.

What the hell

Another blow-starboard side-the boat rocking.

Trying to capsize him, the little bitch.

His radio dropped into the bow. He groped for a grab handle, missed it, and the boat lurched again.

Stumble. His knees banged the gunwale, momentum carrying him forward, and suddenly the world was spinning like a turntable as he was pitched headlong into the lake.

A fist of black water closed over him. For a split second he was disoriented, helpless.

But he’d grown up near water, been dunked plenty of times.

And he still had the Glock.

He whirled in a haze of his own air bubbles, scanning the dark for a target, and something flashed past his face.

A chain-handcuffs-she’d snagged him from behind, drawn the chain around his neck.

Although the surface was only inches above him, he couldn’t raise his head, couldn’t breathe.

The gun. Shoot her.

He raised his arm, elbow bent at an acute angle, the Glock pointing upside down over his shoulder, and risked a blind trigger pull.

Trish saw the gun come up, saw the silencer twist toward her.

She leaned hard to her left as the Glock bucked, bubbles hissing from the tube, a 9mm round blowing past her face like a torpedo.

Probably he couldn’t shoot again. Probably the water pressure would prevent the slide from cycling fully, and the gun would jam.

But she wasn’t counting on it.

Knees wedged against the killer’s back, she twisted her wrists, jerking the chain taut.

He fought her, thrashing savagely, a whipsawing marlin, and she hung on, her mouth squeezed shut against the urge to scream.

Her wrists were on fire, the cuffs biting deep. His larynx must have been crushed by now-God, he couldn’t hold out much longer, just couldn’t.

The gun swiveled directly at her face. He jerked the trigger. Nothing happened.

It had jammed, thank God.

An instant later air burst from his mouth in a silent shout, and he went limp.

The pistol dropped from his slack fingers. She pulled free, snatched it, then broke water, gasping.

Below her, the killer sank slowly into the silt, maybe unconscious, maybe dead.

Leave him there, a hard voice said in her mind.

But she couldn’t. She needed the gear on his belt.

Anyway, that was the reason she gave herself as she crammed the Glock in the waistband of her pants and submerged.

She grabbed him by the neck of his nylon jacket. He was impossibly heavy, a hundred sixty pounds of inert mass.

It was a hard struggle to haul him to the surface, harder still to kick for the shore with her burden in tow.

The beach wasn’t more than ten yards away, but her vision was graying out, her heart skipping beats by the time she reached it.

Staggering, gasping, she dragged the man onto the sand and rolled him on his back.

Exhaustion dropped her to her knees. She leaned over him, staring into his face.

He was so young. A teenager. Seventeen Not even.

With a shaking hand she felt his left carotid artery. Pulse faint but regular. Her ear to his lips, she heard no whisper of breath.

She’d been trained in CPR but had never expected to use it under circumstances like these. Part of her rebelled against the idea.

But she couldn’t let him die. Though he would have killed her and laughed about it, he was a person, wasn’t he He mattered to somebody.

Pinching his nostrils, she tilted his head to face the sky. His airway should be open; still, he wouldn’t breathe.

She pressed her mouth to his, blew air into his lungs. His chest lifted but didn’t deflate. She fed him another breath, and this time his chest heaved as air hissed out of his mouth in a splutter of droplets.

He coughed, eyelids fluttering. Awake.

Intent on keeping him alive, she hadn’t stopped to consider that he was still a threat.

She reached for the Glock, but before she could grab it, his right hand closed over the chain of her handcuffs and snapped both arms forward, holding them uselessly outstretched.

For a frozen moment he stared up at her. “You saved my life,” he rasped in a voice like sandpaper.

Mutely she nodded.

He bared an evil smile. “Big mistake.”

With his left hand he plucked the Glock from her waistband.

Nobody had ever taught her the proper defensive move for this situation. Instinct guided her as she ducked under the gun and thrust her upper body forward.

The crown of her head caught him hard on the chin. His jaws clacked. The Glock cast up a white puff of sand as it fell, and for the second time in five minutes, she felt him go limp.

Was he really out or just stunned Get the gun, get the gun.

She scrabbled blindly for the pistol, recovered it, cycled the slide manually as she rolled on the sand, kicking clear of him in case he went for her with his knife or his fists.

When she looked up, she saw he hadn’t moved. Unconscious-or faking

Rainbows dazzled her, filling her field of vision, pulsing in sync with the ache in her head. She blinked the colors away and looked more closely at the young man in black.

Blood leaked from his mouth. His eyelids twitched.

Out. Really out.

And she had the gun, and she was safe.

“Congratulations, Officer Robinson.” Her sudden hoarse whisper was startling in the stillness. “You’ve just made your first arrest.”

A laugh hiccupped out of her, and then she lowered her head and her stomach flipped and she was sick on the sand.

Death had been close, very close. She’d nearly ended up like Wald. Nearly said goodbye to the world. Nearly.

Nausea subsided into shudders, racking her body like fever chills. Her teeth chattered, and her shoulders shook.

Trish sat on the beach and hugged herself as best she could, her chained wrists crossed over her heart.