by Logan Ryles
“He’s got a boat!” Reed snarled, starting forward again.
Maggie caught his shirt, pulling him back.
“Wait! You’ll never catch him that way. I know where another boat is.”
Forty-Two
Banks planted her boot into the back door of the house, knocking it open with a crash and charging through with no regard for what lay on the other side. The light blinded her momentarily, and she heard a click to her right as she blinked into focus.
She saw the man lying on the floor a moment too late. His giant belly rested on his thighs, and blood seeped from a bullet hole just above his navel. His face was washed white in agony, but he held a snub-nose revolver and pointed it toward Banks, his finger wrapping around the trigger.
Lucy’s sword flashed like a silver bullet, flicking downward and slicing through the fat man’s forearm. Both his hand and the pistol dropped to the floor with a thud, but he didn’t have time to scream. Lucy’s second blade circled down from the left, slicing into his neck and decapitating him effortlessly.
Banks’s stomach convulsed, but she was too blinded by adrenaline to stop. A female’s scream broke out from down the hallway, and she turned in that direction.
“Check upstairs,” Lucy shouted. “We’ll take this floor!”
Banks burst down the hallway and found herself confronted by a narrow stairway that led upward toward the pain-filled screams. The closer Banks drew to their source, the younger the screams sounded. Like a child.
“No! Please! Help me!”
Banks took the steps two at a time, leaping to the top and spinning to the left. The two rooms were both shut and dead-bolted from the outside.
“Please, don’t!”
Banks flicked the dead bolt open to the second room and kicked the door open, her vision once again flooded with light.
A half-naked girl was tied to the bed, blood running from long lacerations in her exposed stomach, and her eyes searched the ceiling as she continued to scream for help.
Standing over her was a shirtless white man with a dirty beard and Arian tattoos covering his torso. Music blared so loudly from his earbuds that Banks could hear it from across the room. He raised a folded leather belt over one shoulder and peered down at the girl with wicked delight, but that glint rapidly faded into fear as he turned toward the door.
Banks processed the scene in a split second, her focus landing first on the girl, then the man, then the belt. She raised the shotgun and clamped her left eye shut, the muzzle of the weapon hovering over his pelvis.
Panic filled his eyes as he shouted and held up a hand. Banks pulled the trigger. The gun belched fire into the room, sending a load of buckshot ripping through the air and slicing into the man’s left hip. He flipped sideways off the bed, a horrible howl ripping from his throat as Banks circled the bed and pumped another shell into the chamber. Blinded with tears and rage, her blood pumped so hard and hot that she felt as though her body was burning from the inside out.
The man lay on the floor, writhing in blood as he clawed at his obliterated hip.
“No! Please!” he screamed.
Banks lowered the muzzle until it hovered only inches from his face, and she jerked the trigger.
Lucy and Kelly cleared the bottom floor of the house and progressed into the darkened stairwell that led to the basement. From overhead, Lucy heard screams, followed by the boom of Banks’s shotgun—once, then a second time, back-to-back. She started to turn, but Kelly shoved her forward.
“Move, ninja girl. This isn’t over.”
Lucy led the way into the stairwell as they both adjusted to the darkness. The boards squeaked under their feet, and then Lucy’s toe caught on something hard and unmoving. She stumbled forward, struggling to break her fall as one of her swords clattered to the floor. A gunshot rang out inches from her ear, sending a cracking sound ripping through her skull like a tidal wave.
“Duck!” Kelly snapped.
Lucy stumbled and tried to face her attacker, but Kelly was quicker. A short, rat-like man huddled in the shadows two steps down the stairwell, a handgun clamped in his shaking hand as his beady eyes glared upward.
Kelly rushed forward and knocked the gun out of the way. Her left forearm swung upward, catching the rat-man by the throat and pinning him against the wall. Then she rammed the muzzle of her pistol against his gut and fired three times while staring straight into his eyes.
The body collapsed to the floor, and Kelly kicked the fallen sword out of the way as she continued down the steps. Lucy scooped up her weapon and followed, casting a glimpse at the rodent man to make sure he was down.
At the bottom of the stairs was an unlocked door, and Kelly yanked it open while flicking a light switch with her left hand.
At the end of the short hallway, she saw an open steel door and two open hotel-style doors on either side. Kelly led with her gun as Lucy followed, clearing first the left-hand room before moving to the right. Kelly froze in the entrance of the second door, the pistol hovering at eye-level.
Lucy caught up, peering over her shoulder and immediately realizing why Kelly stopped.
Sitting on a king-size bed, surrounded by tangled sheets was a Japanese man with a small handgun clamped in his hand. The muzzle of the weapon was pressed against the temple of a small girl—no older than twelve, Lucy guessed—with raven hair and crystal blue eyes. She was naked and curled into a ball to cover herself.
“One more step, and I blow her brains out!” the Japanese snarled.
Kelly’s fingers turned white around the pistol, but she didn’t pull the trigger.
“Put down the gun!” the man yelled.
“Not a chance,” Kelly said. “You’re dying tonight, one way or another.”
The Japanese sniffed derisively. “You don’t know who I am, do you? Money, power…these things mean nothing to me. They are like water, in the hand, flowing—”
Kelly twitched to the left, exposing a slit between her right side and the doorjamb. It was enough. One of the two long knives cleared the sheath with a whispered whir, only a millisecond before Lucy flicked it forward. It whistled through the space and found its home in the Japanese man’s right elbow, immediately disabling his arm as Kelly rushed forward. He fell backward with a scream, struggling to fire his gun, but his arm convulsed uselessly. The girl shrieked and pulled away as Lucy ran forward and scooped her up, dragging her to safety.
“It’s okay,” Lucy whispered. “I’ve got you now.”
Kelly didn’t even glance at the girl. She stepped to the far side of the bed where the Japanese man had fallen, clawing at the blade jammed a full three inches into his arm.
He looked up and gasped, holding out his good hand.
“Please! I have money—”
“Spend it in Hell.”
Kelly placed the muzzle between his eyes and pulled the trigger. The room erupted with the crack of the gun, and he fell back without a sound, most of the backside of his head missing.
Lucy held the sobbing girl, her frail body now wrapped in blood-splattered sheets, and she gently rocked her back and forth.
“It’s okay. He’s gone. You’ll never be hurt again.”
Lucy looked up and saw in Kelly’s face a reflection of the anger she herself felt—a mindless, blazing rage.
“The third door,” Lucy whispered. She didn’t have to explain. She didn’t have to say out loud what she already knew lay behind that steel door, and Kelly didn’t need to hear it.
Without a word, the masked woman stepped back into the hallway, the gun held at her side.
Forty-Three
“This way!” Maggie shouted as she dashed into the trees, leaping fallen logs and crashing through mud puddles like a deer on a run for its life. Reed followed, the rifle swinging from his hand as they hurtled down an invisible trail.
“How far?” he said.
“Not far. Half a mile, maybe.”
Reed picked up his pace, pushing her from behind as Mud
dy Maggie led the way through the trees, heedless of pits or dangling tree limbs. He realized she knew this land like the back of her hand. She knew exactly where to go.
Five minutes later, they broke out of the woods, panting and stumbling onto slightly drier land. A small house with a slouching back porch loomed out of the shadows. Maggie ignored it and turned toward the water, beckoning Reed to follow. A small tin shed leaned next to the water as though it were only a breath of wind away from collapsing. Maggie paused at the door to input a combination into the lock, then snatched it off and undid the chain.
“Watch out for snakes!” she said as the door creaked open.
Reed cast a furtive glance around the interior of the shed as they slid inside. The small structure was no more than six feet wide and twice that deep, with an open back overhanging the water. A flat-bottomed metal boat sat on the bank, sheltered by the shed, and chained off to a post. Maggie knelt to undo the lock, kicking a black snake out of the way as she did.
Reed recoiled, but the snake slithered into the water without striking.
“This is it?” he said, staring down at the rusty old boat and the dilapidated outboard motor hanging from the stern.
“I’m sorry. Does your family have a cigarette boat handy? My family is poor!”
Reed raised his hand, waving off her outburst as she hopped into the boat and moved toward the motor. He followed, pushing off from the bank and using the shed’s wall to maneuver them toward open water. Maggie yanked on the motor’s pull cord, and it coughed and whined but didn’t start.
“There’s not much gas,” she said. “We’ll have to be quick.”
“Get me within three hundred yards. That’s all I need.”
The motor coughed again as Maggie pumped the primer bulb, then yanked the cable twice more. Dark exhaust spurted from the exposed propeller, and the motor rumbled to life.
Maggie shoved the foot of the outboard into the water.
“Let’s ride!”
Reed knelt in the front of the boat, still cradling the rifle. Maggie twisted the throttle to max speed, and the nose of the boat rose just a little off the water as they rumbled away from the bank at twenty miles per hour.
“It’s not enough, Maggie.”
“I can’t give you much more. It’s an old boat!”
Maggie flipped the cover off the motor and grabbed the throttle directly, pressing it wide open with her thumb. The motor whined just a little louder, and they plowed through the rancid water.
“That’s all she’s got. Do you see anything?”
Reed squinted across the surface of the sleeping lake. As they moved away from the bank, the lake appeared much larger than it originally had, but no deeper. Stumps and pieces of rotting logs stuck up at random from the brackish water, but Maggie wove between them with practiced ease as she moved them back toward Gambit’s lake house.
“I see them!” Reed pointed across the lake to a distant glimmer of reflective metal five hundred yards away. A bass boat, long and sleek with a big motor, had run afoul, and the right rear corner of the vessel was perched up out of the water at an awkward angle. Gambit’s surviving goon was struggling to dislodge it from whatever they were grounded on, poking at the water with a canoe paddle.
“Take us in,” Reed ordered, kneeling in the boat and bracing his right elbow against his right thigh. He lowered the rifle and squinted through the scope. The little boat hopped over an underwater obstacle—probably a rotting log or an alligator—and Reed almost pitched overboard. He caught himself on the boat’s edge as Maggie called from the back.
“Remember! I need Gambit alive!”
Reed raised the rifle and gritted his teeth. After jamming a gun against David’s skull, Gambit’s fate was sealed. Maggie would have to interview a corpse.
Another tremor in the water, and Reed brought the crosshairs over the shoulder of the goon just as he saw Gambit’s boat slide free of the obstruction and sink back into the water. The motor roared, and the boat’s bow rose toward the sky, shooting forward far faster than Reed and Maggie’s pursuit vessel.
Reed cursed and pivoted his sights away from the goon to the exposed bulk of the big outboard motor.
He placed his finger on the trigger as the boat shook beneath him. It was a two-hundred-yard shot, rapidly becoming a two-hundred-fifty-yard shot. He placed his finger on the trigger as the boat shook beneath him, took half a breath, held it, then squeezed.
Smoke trickled up from the outboard as it coughed and the nose of the lead boat slumped, but the vessel didn’t stop. Gambit sat in the driver’s seat, screaming at his goon as he turned his limping boat away from open water and toward the closest bank fifty yards away.
The goon stumbled to the back of the boat and raised his assault rifle, but before he could fire, his forehead exploded under Reed’s next shot. Gambit ducked beneath the bulkhead, steering himself directly toward shore.
Maggie turned to follow, closing the gap between the two boats as Gambit’s vessel crashed into the soft mud of the bank. A burst of automatic gunfire erupted toward them, and Reed and Maggie ducked as bullets whistled overhead.
Reed knew it was only cover fire and that Gambit was making a last desperate attempt to disappear into the woods. Reed lifted his head above the side of the boat and saw Gambit stumbling into the trees, dragging David Montgomery behind him. A pistol glinted in Gambit’s left hand, and Reed raised the rifle.
In the clear moonlight, he saw Gambit look over his shoulder as the crosshairs descended over his face. Reed sighted in on the base of Gambit’s neck, then wrapped his finger around the trigger and pressed it home.
The pistol cracked only a millisecond before the rifle did. Both Gambit and David crumpled to the ground, and blood erupted into the air like a geyser. Reed felt the boat’s nose scrape bottom, and he jumped out, rushing up the bank. Maggie shouted for him not to shoot, but it didn’t matter. Long before Reed made it to the two bodies, he knew one thing for certain—neither man would ever stand again.
Gambit lay on the mud with his face turned skyward, a hole the size of an orange blown through his neck. The dying light in his eyes faded into darkness as Reed slid to his knees next to the two bodies.
David Montgomery lay across Gambit’s legs, his face twisted in agony as blood bubbled up from the bullet hole in his ribcage. He looked at Reed with confusion, pain, and so much fear.
Reed dropped the rifle and scooped his father out of the muck, pulling him close to his chest as the sobs came. There was no stopping them—no checking them. His chest shook, and he cried like he hadn’t cried since he was a small child.
“Dad . . . Dad, it’s Reed. I’m here. Don’t go . . .”
David’s head twisted toward the sound. Reed heard the soft footfalls of Maggie just behind him, but he didn’t look up. He stared into David’s eyes and saw the dark clouds of a mind driven into insanity—no recognition, no humanity, just pure biology, as if David’s body were a house and nobody was home.
Reed clutched him closer, then fumbled to find the wound, trying to block the flow of blood. But there was no use. Even if he could stop the bleeding, Reed could tell by the trail of blood exiting David’s mouth that at least one lung was cut, not to mention other vital organs.
Reed gripped David’s hand.
“Dad, it’s me. Please, don’t go before you see me.”
David’s gaze fixated on Reed, shadows crossing behind it, still without recognition.
“Dad, it’s your son, Reed. We were motorheads together. The car, Dad. Don’t you remember?”
David coughed and sprayed blood across Reed’s chest. His breaths were growing weaker, less frequent. Reed could feel the cold touch of death seeping into David’s hands. He blinked, then a strange light passed across his face, and the faintest hint of a smile tugged at this lips.
“The car . . .” His hoarse voice was barely audible, so Reed leaned in close. David swallowed blood, then his lips parted again.
“Th
e car . . . trusts you.”
An overwhelming rush of longing surged through Reed’s core as he bent forward and hugged his father close. David Montgomery remembered. Almost two decades had passed since that moment in the garage when Reed first nursed an old car to life. Those had been his father’s words that day: “The car trusts you.”
Reed sobbed, rocking back and forth as he felt the last warmth of life fade from David’s body, his soul vanishing into the night. His breath stopped, but the memories remained, his last whispered words sending a stronger message than an entire speech ever could have.
“The car trusts you.”
David Montgomery remembered.
Forty-Four
Banks sat in the bed and rocked the girl for the best part of an hour. After untying her and wrapping her in the warmth of a clean blanket, she hugged her and whispered soft words.
The little girl cried, shook, and sobbed, and she buried her face in Banks’s chest while the blood of the dead man on the floor grew cold and began to dry. In the heat of the moment, Banks had done something she never imagined herself capable of—she had brutally killed somebody, driving first one, and then a second load of buckshot through his body.
But in the context of this broken, weeping girl, Banks didn’t care. She almost wished she could do it again, more brutally this time, by pressing her foot on his throat and breaking his neck.
Banks kissed the top of the girl’s head and rubbed her back.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
When the girl spoke, it was in a heavy Eastern European accent. “Polina.”
Banks smiled, gently brushing the tears away from her face, then she squeezed her hand.
“Well, Polina, I want you to know something. I know you’re hurt, but you aren’t broken. You’re strong. You’re a survivor. Never forget that.”
Polina buried her head in Banks’s chest.
