Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2)

by Mather, Matthew

  “Coming your way,” hissed the walkie-talkie by Giovanni’s feet.

  He stood, knocking the board on his knees onto the ground. A roar erupted outside. Elsa stood by a tear in the hangar fabric, a pistol in her hand.

  “Cosa c'è?” Giovanni ran to Elsa. She pulled the fabric wide enough for him to see a flash of white. A car rumbled past on the road outside.

  “Leone!” Giovanni yelled, pushing past Elsa to get a better look. It was a Volkswagen Beetle. “Get—” He turned, his hands out, urging the rest of them forward. But his words slid away into silence.

  Rita stood next to the Cessna, her feet planted wide. Her red hair was pulled back, her face scowling. She had a rifle pointed at Giovanni. “Dammi la borsa.” Elsa pointed her pistol at him as well.

  “The bag?” Confusion, anger and fear jockeyed inside Giovanni’s head. Rita wanted his backpack? Why?

  The roar of the car’s engine faded, replaced by the crackling pop of the fire. Leone stood in the hangar door behind the Cessna, a swirl of flakes settling around his feet. He glared at Rita, then at Elsa, his lips curling. “Stronze …”

  “Just give them whatever they want,” Roger shouted. He was still beside the fire, his hands up. Hector sat on the concrete beside him, his small eyes on Giovanni.

  Gunshots echoed outside. A voice screamed. Hector jumped to his feet and ran squealing at his uncle, who sprinted forward and scooped the boy into his arms.

  A deafening burst of gunfire reverberated inside the hangar.

  Giovanni fell to the floor and pulled Hector beneath him. He skidded to stop next to the fire, not feeling anything. Glancing back, he saw Elsa’s body jerk into the air. Blood spattered against the hangar wall.

  Rita screamed, a guttural shriek of terror and rage. She fired her weapon, but not at Giovanni.

  Lucca had taken Giovanni’s pistol. He was the one who shot Elsa. The down blanket he was wrapped in exploded in a mist of feathers, but he’d already rolled away under the Cessna, leaving the gun on the ground. Leone stepped in front of him, bringing his pistol around, but Rita kicked her way through the embers of the fire, her rifle pointed squarely at the Baron and the boy.

  At first she tried desperately to pull the backpack from Giovanni’s back, but then, seeing that he wouldn’t let go of it, she grabbed hold of Hector’s wrist and dragged the screaming child around the still-burning coals. She held him tight, and, her chest heaving in and out, pushed him to the ground. “Scusa,” she cried, but brought the rifle around, the muzzle tip shaking, and pressed the end of the barrel against the boy’s head. She glanced toward Elsa, who hadn’t made a sound since being shot.

  Giovanni scrambled to his feet. He saw hesitation in her eyes, but also wild rage. Her sister was just shot. This woman could do anything. He pulled the backpack off slowly, holding one hand up in the air in surrender. “Prendilo, take it. But why? Do you even know what this is?”

  “I do, and I’ll take it,” Roger said, his voice calm. “And we’ll take this too.”

  In his left hand was the plastic bag with the wrapped package of Jess’s father’s laptop, and the bundle of data CDs and tapes.

  Jess crouched against the seawall. Another shot rang out, and the man on the snowmobile closest to her slumped. The machine veered off to one side. She looked up to where Massarra was, next to the crumpled man in khaki, and saw a rifle muzzle flash. Crack. Another shot. This one at the two snowmobiles approaching from the distance. Snow sprayed into the air near Massarra and she rolled out of view. Jess looked back at the Volkswagen. A man pulled himself out of the open door.

  Not a man. A boy.

  He limped forward.

  She saw his face clearly. It was the same boy she’d shot in Bandita.

  The scavengers.

  What the hell was going on? Nobody was firing at her. Not yet. But everything was converging on her.

  She glanced over the sea wall. A fifteen-foot drop into a mess of tumbled rocks and ice. There was a jetty a quarter mile away, toward the beached cruise liner, which was still intact. A light snow had started. Jess looked to the horizon. A thin line of blue in the distance, but ice stretched hundreds of yards from the shore. She looked back at the kid, the one she shot. He had his gun up, but he didn’t fire at her.

  Jess took a deep breath, swung her legs over the wall, her AK still in her right hand. Her left hand tried to grip the concrete but slipped. She gasped and fell through space, crunching in the rocks after a second of free fall, and splayed backward. Her prosthetic came loose. Her rifle clattered away from her into the rocks.

  She tried to suck air back into her lungs as she propelled herself away from the wall on her back through the snow and ice. The kid’s head appeared, a bobbing black dot on the seawall, fifteen feet overhead. He didn’t know if she still had her weapon. She pointed her arm at him. His head darted back.

  Jess rolled onto her stomach and cursed. She needed to lead them away. She needed to give Giovanni—

  Shots echoed, but not close this time. Muffled; the sound of this gunfire drifting through the snow. From the top of the ridge. From the hangars.

  Giovanni’s chest heaved in and out. Spittle covered his chin. He licked his lips and bared his teeth at Roger. The traitor’s face remained impassive. He held out his right hand. “Give me the backpack,” he repeated. “I need to be sure. It’s the only way.”

  “You piece of…” Giovanni glanced back at Rita, her foot pressed into Hector, her shaking gun still pressed against his head. “Okay, okay.” He handed the pack over.

  Roger took the bag and added it to the collection in his left hand, reaching back with the other to take the pistol from the ground where Lucca had scrambled away.

  “Stupida cagna,” Leone roared. He darted forward, a mad bull rush straight at Rita.

  Her eyes wide, she swung her rifle up from Hector’s head and fired.

  It didn’t stop the old man’s charge. He bowled into her, knocking her from her feet. Roger turned to look at them. Giovanni grabbed the knife from the floor swung it in an arc at Roger, who flinched back to avoid the blade burying itself in his cheek. Giovanni lunged and brought the blade down hard, straight into Roger’s outstretched hand as it reached across the plywood ski for the pistol. The razor-sharp blade went straight through the middle of Roger’s hand and sank deep into the plywood.

  Roger screamed, his voice high and shrill. He dropped the bags from his left hand.

  Hector had already scrambled away and thrown himself into the blankets by Giovanni’s feet. Roger’s scream curdled. He clawed at the blade, cutting his fingers to shreds as blood poured out.

  Rita was back to her feet and had her gun square on Giovanni. Leone crawled on the floor by her feet. She lowered the rifle toward him, but again she hesitated. The old man slumped against the concrete.

  “No more. Fermare. Take it.” Giovanni kicked the bags Roger dropped across the floor. “Just take it.” Hector mewled at his feet.

  “Wait!” Roger shouted to Rita. “You can’t activate it without me.”

  Keeping her rifle sighted on Giovanni, Rita picked up the bag. She backed away toward where her sister lay in a pool of her own blood. A thin wail filled the air. “Elsa?” she sobbed

  No reply. Just the soft whistle of wind outside.

  Rita looked back at the men as she continued to back away toward the flapping tear of fabric at the side of the hangar.

  “No, wait!” Roger wailed, his blood-soaked hand flailing and slipping on the knife’s handle.

  Taking one last look at her sister, Rita disappeared through the hangar wall. An engine snarled to life. It revved high. Ice crunched beneath metal as the machine pulled away.

  The engine noise faded.

  Leone groaned.

  Raffa appeared through the same tear of fabric that Rita had just exited, his chest heaving. “Giovanni, dov'è Lucca? Rita?” he said breathlessly.

  The hangar door behind the Cessna opened a crack. “Sono qui,” coug
hed his brother, slipping through the door and staggering forward.

  Giovanni picked up Hector and spun him around, checking him front and back. No blood. No wounds. The boy squirmed from Giovanni’s grip. “Dove è Jessica?”

  Shaking his head, unable to answer the boy but as desperate to know as he was, Giovanni ran to the inert Leone, blood pooling beneath him.

  Jess hobbled over a pressure ridge of ice. Water slopped in the crevasse. The snowfall had thickened. Plump flakes fell soundlessly. The orange-red sunset was deepening. Darkness crept into the fog and snow. How far had she come out onto the ice? A hundred yards? Two hundred? She wasn’t sure. Each breath burned her lungs, every step flared pain into her stump. Her prosthetic wobbled and got stuck in the snow again and again.

  But she pushed on. She pushed outward.

  The boy’s head appeared again on the seawall. Two more heads had appeared next to him before they disappeared into the snow-gloom. Somewhere to her left, a single snowmobile engine droned. Its noise faded in and out. More muffled shots. But now Jess had only one thought. Get them as far away from Hector, and from Giovanni, as she could.

  Bent over, she skidded on the ice.

  It wasn’t covered in snow now. It was slick, smooth. Black. She took another step. A bubble of air slithered past underneath, the ice splintering in cracks. She hesitated. Her body shook.

  “I would not go any further,” said a voice behind her.

  She stopped, shivering, and turned.

  A man appeared through the churning snow. His hair white, a slash across his lip. “Stop, Jessica.”

  The boy appeared beside him. He limped forward.

  “Who are you?”

  “Who I am is not important. But you knew my nephew, Nico.”

  It took Jess a second to register. “Are you friggin’ kidding me?”

  “He was misguided.”

  “What the hell do you want with me? What is wrong with you people?” She stood up straight, defiant, and edged further out.

  “I mean you no harm.”

  “Then get away from me.”

  Almost reluctantly, Salman raised his arm and showed her the pistol in it. He squeezed the trigger. Jess flinched, but the bullet wasn’t aimed at her. It impacted the ice ten feet behind her.

  “I am not my nephew. I have no interest in the Ruspoli. I will not harm the boy, or you, or your new lover. I just want your father’s laptop.”

  “This?” Jess slung her backpack off and held it in the air. “How did you know?”

  The man shrugged. “Ask your friend Roger.”

  The snowflakes fell around them in Jess’s furious silence. “What’s so valuable about it that you’d risk your neck chasing me out here?”

  The man shrugged again. “You might be able to answer that better than me.”

  “Fine.” Jess threw the pack across the ice, as far to her left as she could.

  The boy hobbled over to pick up the bag.

  “I need you to come as well,” Salman said.

  “Screw you.” Jess took another step back, but planted her foot, ready to run forward. She tensed and lowered her stance.

  The ice cracked in a wet pop and Jess felt her right leg fall into the freezing water. The man and boy backed up in alarm. Her other leg slipped into the water, submerging her up to her waist. She flopped forward onto her stomach, stretching her hands onto the ice, her gloves sliding against the slick surface. “Help me,” she wheezed.

  The water stung, as if she rolled naked through a field of nettles. She gasped, her diaphragm tightening, forcing all the air from her lungs. The sheet of ice she clung to cracked and tipped up, angling itself into the air. Jess slid back, desperate to hang on.

  Her body plunged into the water up to her neck, her skin shrinking around her body, her brain shooting signals to the capillaries in her extremities to clamp down. With a final desperate scramble, she pulled herself six inches back onto the ice.

  For a second it held her.

  Snowflakes settled.

  Then the ice cracked.

  In her mind, Jess saw the small boy’s face once again, her little brother so many years ago, his eyes wide as he held onto the ice. As he slipped away. She plunged into the dark water, her head submerging. Jess fought to swim, but the water flooded her parka and boots. Stuck in molasses.

  The dim blur of light above faded, the cold water like tiny, sharp needles. She struggled in the blackness, fighting the need for oxygen, but there was no use. She screamed soundlessly, frigid water filling her lungs. The needling cold faded, replaced by a warm fuzz that crept along her fingers and into her chest. The dim blur faded. A spasm overcame her as her lungs tried to push out the water.

  Her heart thumped slowly. Once more, then twice.

  But not a third time.

  19

  SALMAN WATCHED THE black pool surrounded by frosted ice. A breeze rippled wavelets across the water, but nothing stirred beneath. He realized he was holding his breath, and finally exhaled to let his lungs draw in the icy air. Snowflakes floated onto the rippling surface and melted, becoming one again with the ocean from where they came.

  He’d wanted the girl, but now she was beyond reach. Gone.

  But he had the laptop. He had the package. That he was sure of.

  And he had Roger.

  Off to his right, a hundred yards away, a man stood on top of a snowmobile. He watched Salman through binoculars. A gunshot rang out, ice bursting into mist beside the man. He swung his rifle from his back and fired it.

  Not at Salman.

  At a small figure sitting on the seawall. The figure disappeared from view. One shot. Two. The bullets ricocheted off the concrete seawall.

  “Sbrigati,” the old man said to his boy, who limped back to him as fast as he could, the backpack in his hand. “We must hurry.”

  The snowmobile’s engine whined to life, and the man steered it around, away from Salman. His silhouette faded into the snow.

  Salman grabbed the boy by his collar and led him back toward the seawall, but at an angle, away from whomever it was who now hung down from the ledge. He had what he needed. Now he needed to get away.

  Leone was alive, but for how long? Giovanni had no idea. He had a bullet wound that needed more attention than he had time to give. Right now, he had to find Jessica. They needed her. He needed her. He dressed the wound as best he could and stood over the old man. How long had he served his family loyally, looked after those he loved? How could it have come to this?

  Giovanni jumped into the Range Rover and gunned the engine as he shifted into reverse. “Watch him!” he yelled, leaning out of the truck’s open window to jab a finger at Roger, who was tied with frayed yellow nylon rope to a strut of the Cessna.

  Cursing, Giovanni lifted the clutch and the truck squealed over the smooth concrete of the hangar floor to rocket through the open door, up the snow-and-ice embankment to lurch into the air. He jammed on the brakes, flipped into first gear, and spun over the snow.

  Over the noise of the engine—gunshots. Down by the water. Raffa told him that the last time he saw Jess, she was climbing over the seawall. He saw the Volkswagen drive past, he said, but that there were also snowmobiles, the same as at Vivas. Giovanni heaved the steering wheel, swinging the truck into the narrow street sloping down to the water. Fresh tracks in the snow. He followed them, the truck bouncing up and down, left and right.

  Up ahead, through the snow, the Volkswagen appeared.

  Two men crouched behind it. One of them stood. Not a man, but a boy. He pointed at the water before the other man pulled him back. Giovanni pushed on the brake. The truck slid through the mush, fishtailing. The man and the boy edged around the Volkswagen, keeping it between them and Giovanni.

  He didn’t see Jess with them.

  Off in the distance, past the seawall, someone scurried across the ice. Giovanni revved the engine, released the brake, and the truck weaved forward. He slammed sideways into the seawall. The truck ground
to a stop against the concrete. He threw open his door, and was halfway out before he paused, breathing heavily.

  The small figure had stopped on the ice, paused in front of a black oval a hundred and fifty yards out. Giovanni turned in his seat, grabbed the spool of yellow nylon cord and what was left of the medical kit and his pistol. He jumped from the wall, slammed into the ice and rocks twelve feet below, rolled to his feet and ran.

  He strained to see through the swirl of snow.

  Was that Jess? No. The figure was too slight. It was Massarra, her rifle up, aimed at him, but she dropped it in recognition. She waved, pointing at the black oval of water in front of her. His stomach tightened. He knew.

  “In the water?”

  “She’s gone.”

  Giovanni skidded to a stop ten yards from the edge of the cracked ice. He threw the nylon cord onto the ground and grabbed one end, unspooling arm lengths with each pull. “How long?”

  “Five minutes, perhaps more.”

  “How?”

  “A man chased her here. The one in the car.”

  Giovanni swore under his breath. He should have come with her. “Anyone else? Vivas?” He kicked the spool of cord behind him and pulled off his parka.

  “I shot two. Two escaped.”

  His pants and boots came off next. “And who was the man in the car?”

  “I don’t know, bandits, the same ones that—”

  “You and I both know that’s not true.” He didn’t look at her as he said it, but concentrated on tying one end of the yellow cord around his waist. One knot. Two. He tested it, pulled hard, and shivered in the cold. Wet socks weren’t any protection against the cold ice.

  Massarra didn’t respond to his accusation. She stood silent.

  Giovanni squeezed his eyes shut and took two deep breaths before opening them. He held out the nylon cord. “Three sharp jerks, and you pull me back.” He locked eyes with her. “You understand?”

  She returned his gaze and took the offered cord, then backed away, snaking the line through her hand. She wrapped the end around her waist and nodded.