Perfect killer

CHAPTER 16

I stood with the Jambalaya's galley on my right as I faced the stern. My hip touched the corner of the counter that jutted about three feet toward the centerline of the cabin creating a small alcove, but it was little cover. The fixtures had deliberately been designed as light as possible to avoid flotation and balance issues. The H amp;K's slugs could readily parse the flimsy paneling I was using for cover and dissect me with ease.

"Toss your weapon outside," the voice commanded me. I set the safety and sent it flying into the cockpit.

In the moment of ensuing silence, my ears took in the loud hammering from the Jambalaya's diesel and, just barely detectable through the noise, frantic shouts, voices, air horns. The VHF squawked a verbal collage of sudden traffic, none of it intelligible as one transmission after another sank beneath the frantic verbal hash.

"Dr. Stone, hand over the Blackberry Vanessa Thompson gave you."

"I have no idea-"

In the next instant, a pinpoint of red laser light shone remarkably steady on the teak bulkhead immediately to my right, then vanished through a hole with remarkably clean edges. The shot passed so close to my head I heard the slug's high ripping whine.

"I can shoot to wound you all night long, Mr. Stone. If you play games, it will cost you a great deal of pain."

I ransacked every memory of the past year.

"I can't remember-"

I didn't see the laser dance this time and realized what had happened only after I heard the gunshot and felt the warm stickiness flowing down the left side of my head. I touched the top of my earlobe and found the wound slight and the pain faint.

"That's my last warning," he yelled above the din from the VI–IF and the urgent voices outside.

In the next few fractions of a millisecond, I replayed the short scene in the graveyard and felt the pleasure as Vanessa slipped a hand inside my suit coat. The pleasure of her touch had overshadowed anything cognitive, especially because she was killed a second or so later. I had no idea about a Blackberry, but I needed a story to buy time.

"I have it in a safe at my office. I can get it for you."

"No." The laser dot danced again. "No. Give me the combination and I'll get it." The laser dot disappeared again, undoubtedly illuminating some part of my body that I had grown fond of.

Before he could shoot, the Jambalaya pitched forward with a thunderous deceleration that sent her rolling and yawing. My assailant cursed; I heard the deep thump of him colliding with something stationary. I lunged up into the cockpit. Gasoline fumes filled the air. I looked forward toward an epicenter of screams and curses and saw the Jambalaya's bow impaled in a flashy Cigarette boat.

I grabbed my Colt and almost fired at my attacker before my nose stopped me. I lunged topside and jumped overboard. The water geysered all around me as the H amp;K's slugs stitched into the sea. I dove under the surface just as the full-automatic muzzle blasts ignited the spilled gasoline from the Cigarette boat's ruptured tanks.