Midnight Vengeance

by Lisa Marie Rice

  He stood, panting, looking at his bike lying on its side like a wounded beast. Snow was already sticking to the deep red paint, red and white. Just like the ground at his feet. Red and white.

  He was losing a lot of blood. His emergency aid kit was stowed neatly against the side. He opened it, pulled out a package of QuikClot, ripping it open with his teeth.

  He kept his riding leathers neatly folded inside a gym bag. Wrestling the bag to the edge of the ramp, he pulled out his motorcycle jacket. It even had armor plates in the front in case he ever took a fall from the bike. Or got shot. Bit superfluous now.

  The jacket was deliberately tight so there’d be no wind resistance. Hurt like a fucker to zip it up but he finally did it.

  He checked his cell. Lauren was 7.7 miles away. In a little while she’d be lost to him. Portland airport was big. Hat Guy wouldn’t put her on a commercial flight but he could have a private jet anywhere on the tarmac. Once she took off, Jacko would never find her.

  No one to shoot at.

  Speaking of which...he’d forgotten his weapon. Which was unheard of for a SEAL. A SEAL felt for his weapon first thing in the morning, last thing at night. Lucky thing Jacko believed in redundancy. He reached, wincing, for the gym bag again and pulled out his Beretta Pico with three magazines, because if it took a firefight to get Lauren back, so be it. He put the pistol and magazines in the jacket pocket and zipped the pocket closed. He had a shoulder holster but it wouldn’t fit under the tight jacket. Full-face helmet and gloves and he was ready to go. Pulling his bike upright was merely a question of more pain.

  Piece of cake.

  The snow was coming in flurries mixed with ice so thick it pinged against his helmet. Soon, it would be hard for a car to make it over the streets, but not his bike. He pulled out his cell again and saw that Lauren was 9.1 miles away but the speed of the vehicle she was in had slowed.

  That’s right, you son of a bitch. Weather will slow you way down but not me.

  He switched on his engine and felt the familiar power between his thighs. He was good on his bike, the movements familiar and smooth. He pulled out, pulled away, chest touching the tank, making his corners tight because he had a lot of ground to cover and not much time.

  He kept his cell on a special holder on the handlebars, keeping Lauren’s position and his position on the screen, with an overlay of a map of Portland. It shifted as the car made its way down Bleecker. Slowly. Well there was an app for that. Speed. Jacko was all about speed, especially on his bike. He’d topped 150 miles per hour on race tracks. Speed had always been his friend.

  Except when he raced, he had full use of his body. He steered with the handlebars but with his body too. And right now, his body wasn’t very responsive. His right side hurt like a bitch. Hurt was the wrong word. It felt like someone was sticking red hot knives in him. He could ignore pain but he couldn’t ignore the weakness. Without the full use of his right arm and hand, his steering was seriously compromised.

  No matter. He’d have gone as fast as he could even if someone had lopped off his right arm, because with each gear change and increase in speed the space between the green dot that was him and the red dot that was Lauren decreased. Nothing else existed in his world but that red dot and watching while he raced to her, gaining on that fucker who’d kidnapped her.

  He had to get to her, had to. He had to save her because the future without Lauren was this vast featureless emptiness he couldn’t face. He’d never had a woman of his own, hadn’t wanted one. But Lauren? Now that he had her he would never let her go. Couldn’t. She gave his life color and warmth. A reason to come home. It felt like he’d just now discovered sex though he’d been fucking since he was thirteen. That wasn’t what he had with Lauren. What they had was something else completely. He’d found it only with her, and it would disappear out of his life forever if she died.

  If she died, his entire life would be one long wait to die himself.

  And he hadn’t told her he loved her.

  That was what burned most of all, the thought that if she died, she’d die not knowing what he felt. Bad enough that he’d wasted four fucking months circling her, scared shitless of her.

  He wasn’t going to lose her, not now, not when they had a life to build together.

  The roads were icy but he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly how to get to that red dot that could just as well have been his heart, beating out of his chest. He had maps in his head. He’d never been lost after seeing a map, even once. And since he’d been in Portland he’d crisscrossed it endless times. He cut through a city park, knowing exactly where the benches were, where the fountain was.

  He crossed through backyards, knowing which had fences and which didn’t.

  With every passing minute, he drew closer. It was as if the red dot was standing still and he was an arrow that had been shot from a powerful bow.

  Down two side streets the wrong way, jumping over a small meridian, going into a controlled slide, then upright again and shooting through a parking lot, sailing over a small ditch right onto Bleecker Street. It was almost empty. Good.

  He checked the cell. They were separated by the width of a finger. If it weren’t snowing, he’d be able to see the car. He increased his speed slightly, bent lower and...there it was! Two red taillights, the fucker braking constantly.

  He hadn’t told Lauren he loved her. He was going to, as soon as he could.

  But first—

  Jacko understood cars and bikes and vectors. He knew exactly where to ram the car. If Lauren weren’t in it, he’d ram the shithead right off the road, but he had Lauren so this would go more slowly than Jacko liked. Though the end result was never in doubt.

  He’d lost a lot of blood. He was conscious because he narrowed his focus so tightly he was only aware of the back fender and the two red taillights looking like the eyes of Satan.

  He kicked it up a gear and rammed the car from the right. The driver overreacted, braked heavily, started to spin. Fucker didn’t know how to drive in the snow.

  Jacko rammed the other side and felt the driver lose control, just a little. He turned right and came up against the passenger side window and there she was! Slumped against the window, face pale in the darkness. It was impossible to see whether she was conscious or not.

  The pistol in his pocket felt heavy. Such an easy thing to take it out and shoot the driver point blank in the face. His fingers itched to do it.

  But the driver had sped up, was fishtailing. Jacko couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that his shot would hit the driver and not Lauren, and he wasn’t going to shoot unless he had that certainty. Even if he came up on the driver’s side and shot him in the head he couldn’t be absolutely sure it wouldn’t go through the son of a bitch’s head and hit Lauren too.

  He was used to problems that could be solved with a well-aimed shot but this wasn’t one of them. He had to stop the driver with his bike. Jacko rammed him again and saw the driver flail, saw his hand slip on the gear stick.

  Did Lauren have her eyes open? She wouldn’t recognize him in his full-face helmet.

  Hold on, Lauren, he thought. I love you.

  * * *

  Lauren’s eyes fluttered open briefly, then closed. She licked dry lips, tasted bitterness in her mouth. Her head leaned against something cold and hard. It hurt fiercely, as if someone had hammered nails into her skull. Shifting her head slightly hurt so much she thought she was going to throw up. She swallowed bile, knowing instinctively she couldn’t throw up—it would be dangerous.

  She didn’t know where she was but a sense of menace was in the air, so powerful it penetrated even the fog in her brain.

  She hurt all over but especially on the side of her neck, a deep pointed pain.

  Eyes closed, she tried to take stock. A deep rumbling sound. A car. Someone next to her, close to her, cursing. A man. The car was starting and stopping and every time it stopped something tightened against her chest, across her wai
st. The seat belt. She was tied in to a car seat by a seat belt pulled way too tight. She flexed her hands slightly and discovered they were tied together with unbreakable plastic handcuffs.

  Darkness behind her closed eyelids, interspersed with weak light. They were on a road with streetlights.

  The sound of the engine rose when the vehicle took a tight corner. When the car turned, she shifted in the seat, rolling with the motion. She didn’t try to resist but rolled loosely with it. For a second the car slid, tires no longer gripping the road. A vicious curse came from next to her. A male voice. Not Jacko.

  Jacko!

  Memory rushed in. Opening the door, Suzanne’s client entering and, in a move so outrageous she didn’t believe her eyes, pulling out a gun.

  Shooting Jacko.

  Jacko on the ground, lifeless. Then the man sticking her with a needle and then darkness. He’d killed Jacko and then drugged her. Where he punctured the skin it hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as the thought of Jacko, dead. She tightened her closed eyes, willing the tears back. Tears could be fatal.

  Whoever had taken her obviously thought she was still out. She couldn’t afford to cry. If the driver turned around and saw tears he’d know she was conscious.

  Like a suddenly gravityless planet, she understood Jacko’s importance in her life by its absence. She understood how much she looked forward to living with him, having him in her life. His massive quiet presence, that stoic face that never betrayed any emotion. Though she was starting to decode that face and understand the strong emotions beneath the impassive façade. She was starting to read him.

  He’d surrounded her with loving care, and now he was dead.

  Killed by the man driving the car.

  Son of a bitch.

  She was weak still, with no strength in her arms, brain still fuzzy with the effects of whatever it was he’d injected her with. She was helpless. Her only hope was to gather strength as quickly as she could, let the drug dissipate in her system, gain consciousness and then try to kill the sick bastard driving even if it cost her own life.

  He was going down.

  He wasn’t going to kill Jacko and get away with it. Not while she could draw a breath. She was perfectly willing to die to bring him down, and she didn’t care. The bastard had killed a magnificent man, her man, and he was going to pay.

  So she played possum while trying to draw deep breaths, keeping it quiet. The fog in her head lifted slowly, dissipating unevenly like mist under the morning sun. Her hands and feet, the extremities, had been numb. Now feeling was coming back, more slowly to her hands, which were tightly bound. No matter. She could use her feet. If she had to destroy him with her teeth, she would. Nothing was going to stop her.

  She flexed one hand slowly, then the other. Slowly pointed one toe then another. Took more deep breaths. Awareness grew stronger with each passing minute.

  Slowly, imperceptibly, she opened her eyes a crack again, looked out the window. They were in the middle of a snowstorm. Small globes of light slowly pulsed in the sky. The streetlights, high overhead. The kind of streetlights on highways. The windshield wipers made a heavy sound as they tried to shift heavy masses of snow from the windshield.

  The car slid again as they hit a patch of ice. Dark curses came from the driver. He had a light tenor. The voice of the man who’d called her up, who’d appeared at her door.

  The man who’d killed Jacko.

  Rage welled up inside her, an almost unstoppable wave of it, black and so bitter she thought she’d choke on it. Hot and primitive. She wanted to slash his chest open, yank out his beating heart and slice it to shreds. Make him pay in pain and blood.

  Make him suffer, make him...

  A powerful thump came from behind the car. It fishtailed, the driver cursing as he fought the wheel. Another thump from the other side and the car started into a tailspin, straightened out at the last second.

  Lauren kept her face averted, leaning against the cold windowpane. Through barely opened eyes she could see the faint reflection of the driver’s face against the dark car windshield, lit by the dashboard lights. Lit from below, his face looked like that of a demon.

  Maybe she didn’t have to be so cautious. He never looked to his right toward her, not once. Right now she could probably shout and flail and he wouldn’t pay her any attention. He was too busy trying to keep the car on the road. Another hard thump and he slammed his fist on the steering wheel in frustration as the car sideslipped again.

  It was dark, the bright headlights throwing light ahead, sleety snow visible only in the cones of light. The wind was howling so strong it drove the snow sideways in frenzied flurries.

  Another hard thump, from somewhere close to the passenger side door. The driver was screaming in frustration now. The car was barely in his control.

  Her thought processes were so very slow, like walking through sludge. It took her a full minute to realize that someone was trying to get the driver to stop. Why? Were they under attack? Did this man have enemies who were trying to stop him?

  The next thump was so close it could be felt through the car door, the noise rising above the wind. She opened her eyes again and saw...she opened her eyes wider. She saw someone right outside her car window, so close she could touch him if the window weren’t closed. It was a man, no question. Dressed in a biker jacket molded around massive shoulders. The biker had a red helmet and a dark visor. There was no way to know who he was. Then the biker turned his head, looking straight at her, and though she couldn’t see him, her heart made a wild leap in her chest because her heart knew before her head did.

  Jacko!

  Jacko somehow come back from the dead, coming to rescue her.

  The driver turned his head to look at Jacko, face frozen in a snarl. He didn’t even notice that Lauren was conscious. He only had eyes for Jacko, who was in his way. Without warning, the man swerved the car to the right, trying to bump Jacko off the road.

  But somehow Jacko knew because he suddenly braked, falling behind, the car swerving uselessly.

  Oh God. Even knowing that Jacko was saving his own life, she felt bereft. Seeing him on his bike, a massive force of nature curved forward, huge gloved hands on the handlebars, made her feel better. As if there could be some hope after all.

  Because this wasn’t going to end well. A bike against a car—death was riding right behind the biker.

  There he was again, looking into the vehicle. He seemed like an otherworldly creature, faceless, barely human with the visor and jacket with plates set into it like the carapace of a dinosaur. Some creature from the mists of time. The big gloved hands moved on the handlebars and the heavy bike slammed again into the door and the driver screamed with rage and frustration.

  The biker disappeared. Lauren didn’t dare swivel her head to see if she could catch a glimpse of him. Her heart gave a sharp punch in her chest. Had something happened to him, happened to Jacko? Had he crashed that big bike? Conditions on the road were horrible, the tires barely gaining traction, visibility down to a few feet. A car was heavier than a bike and this car was barely holding on to the road.

  Was Jacko even now lying in a ditch, bleeding out? And—could that have really been Jacko or was she hallucinating, the drug making her see what her heart wanted to see? Jacko, alive and here with her.

  Of course it wasn’t Jacko. Now that the fog in her head was clearing, she distinctly remembered his being shot. Maybe twice. Things were fuzzy in her memory so she didn’t remember exactly how many times he’d been shot, but that he’d been shot was beyond doubt.

  Everything else was hazy but that image—it would stay with her for the rest of her days, however long she had left to live. The man pulling up his arm with a gun at the end of it, shooting Jacko. Jacko knocked off his feet, sprawled on his back, eyes closed, bleeding.

  That was her last image of him before the man had plunged a needle into her neck.

  So how could the rider be Jacko? The biker was someone who had to
be after the driver, an enemy somehow. Had to be. It had nothing to do with her.

  She heard tapping then the driver talking. The glow of a cell phone was reflected in the windshield. “Yes,” the man said impatiently. “I know the weather is deteriorating. When are they closing down the airport? Shit. Okay, I’m not far. I’ll be there in about half an hour. Be ready to take off immediately.”

  Airport? Take off?

  Oh God. He was taking her to a plane? A plane could fly anywhere. Doubtless he’d drug her again and she’d wake up who knew where? No one would know where she was. She’d be lost, friendless. At least in Portland she had Jacko’s friends and colleagues. They’d look for her; they’d care. John Huntington has said she was “one of ours.” Outside Portland...outside Portland she had literally no one in the world.

  She had to escape before this terrible man put her on a plane. Her life was lost if she didn’t. But she didn’t have anything. Her hands were literally tied. How could she...

  Another huge thump, the hardest yet, from the other side of the car, the driver’s side. He almost lost control of the car. Lauren could smell him now—the tangy acrid sweat of fear. She heard him fumbling with his coat and saw him draw something out, a familiar shape in the reflection of the windshield.

  A gun! He lifted the gun, driving one-handed. The gun was positioned across his chest, aiming out the window at the biker. Lauren finally turned her head, not caring if the driver caught on that she was awake.

  She didn’t give a damn because awareness flooded through her. The man on the motorcycle keeping pace with the car was Jacko and the driver was going to shoot him. There was no way Lauren was going to let that happen. She’d die first. She quietly unlatched her seat belt. The driver’s arm lifted...

  “No!” she screamed and launched herself at the driver. She used her body, her teeth and fists. She swung her tied fists at his face, straight at his nose, screaming at the top of her lungs. He lifted an arm, eyes so wide she could see the whites of them. He had a berserker where he thought he had a drugged woman. Screaming at the top of her lungs, she batted at him, trying to hurt him with every cell of her body. He shouted when she latched onto his ear with her teeth, snarling and tugging until she felt cartilage in her mouth coated with the salty taste of blood. The space was so small he couldn’t defend himself against her as she writhed and swatted and crashed against him, bringing her tied hands up to his eyes, thumbs gouging.