HARD FAL
Page 19
“No. Stay here with me. If they’re not back in a few minutes, we’ll go for help.” He slowly inched the car forward so they had a good view of the road up the mountain.
Megan gripped the edge of the seat back, barely risking a breath. She tried to remember what her Kempo instructor said about releasing fear and controlling her breathing—same thing her mom always told her when they went shooting. But right here, right now, sitting in the dark with no idea what was happening, breathing was the last thing she could think about.
Lights flashed on the street above them. The ambulance’s headlights. A man’s figure was silhouetted in front of it—no mistaking Oshiro’s build—waving them an all clear sign. Dad put the car back in gear and drove up the mountain until they were parked across from where the ambulance sat on the side of the road.
“What happened?” he asked Oshiro, rolling down his window as if he wasn’t sure if he should get out of the car.
Megan was sure. She needed to check on June. She hopped out and ran over to the ambulance’s rear. The doors were open—one of the windows was shattered and there was blood everywhere. Walden was dragging a dead body out of the way, his body twisted since he could only use one arm.
When he saw her, he spun to block Megan’s view of the dead man, but it was too late. Megan stared at the man who was dressed like a soldier or hunter. She knew she should feel something—a man, a person, was dead—but all she could think of was June. “Are you okay?”
June nodded even as she clutched the rails of the stretcher she was strapped to, her face contorted in pain.
“She isn’t hurt.” Walden assured her. Her dad and Oshiro arrived behind her.
“Who’s that man? Did you shoot him?” Megan asked Walden.
“No. June did.” With Oshiro’s help, Walden gave the man’s body a final heave, rolling it out of the ambulance, giving them room to get to the medical equipment.
“The baby’s coming,” June gasped. Megan jumped inside the ambulance, almost slipping on the blood covered floor, and skidded onto the bench seat beside June, grabbing her hand.
“Breathe, June. Like this,” Megan demonstrated the panting she remembered from their health class video. “Dad, you know how. Can’t you help her?”
Dad climbed into the now crowded ambulance and scooted past Megan to sit closer to June’s head. “That’s right, June. You can do this.”
Walden finally found a kit labeled OB. He opened it and looked at the equipment: two yellow plastic clips, a bulb syringe, scissors, clamps, pads, sutures wrapped in tiny foil packets with illustrations of wickedly pointed curved needles on the front.
“I have no clue what half of this is.” He looked to Oshiro. “You’re a combat medic, right?”
“Yeah. I can use a tourniquet and chest tube—maybe amputate a limb if you need it, but this…”
Megan pointed to the yellow thing that looked like a hair barrette. “That’s an umbilical clip, you put two on and cut between them. But first you suction the baby’s mouth and nose with that.” She pointed to the bulb.
“You know about this stuff?” Walden asked.
She nodded. “A little.”
June cried out with another contraction, clawing at Dad’s arm. Megan swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Walden, set up that oxygen and put it on June’s face.”
Walden glanced past Megan to her dad. Anger sparked through her fear—just because she was a kid, didn’t mean she didn’t know what to do. After all, this baby was coming whether they were ready or not. “Dad, I’ve got this. Really.”
“Trust her, she’ll be fine.” Nick answered Walden’s silent question.
Megan wasn’t sure if he meant her or June, but that was okay. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and tried to remember everything she could from her first aid course and the health class. Thank God, she’d stayed awake for the whole thing.
“Oshiro, help June hold her legs back so I can take a look.” Ugh. This was the disgusting part. But the men looked a ton more afraid than Megan. She took comfort in that. “June, I’m just going to check, see how far along you are.” As if she knew—well, if she saw a baby’s head poking out, guess she could figure that out.
Instead of relaxing, June lunged up and grabbed Megan’s arm. “Promise me, Megan,” she said, ignoring the men, focusing on Megan alone. As if Megan was the one in charge, the one who could promise anything. “Whatever happens to me, promise me that my baby will grow up in a home like yours. Surrounded by love. I want her to be strong, to never surrender, despite whatever happens to her.”
“Like you,” Megan whispered. Another contraction. June squeezed Megan’s wrist so tight she felt the bones crunch.
“No,” June gasped. “Not like me. Not a victim. A hero. Like your mom.”
“My mom?” Megan was too scared and exhausted to control her surge of anger. “My mom got my grams killed. She’s no hero.”
She felt more than saw Dad’s grimace at that. Who cared? It was the truth and he knew it. So did Mom—that’s why she acted so distant and moody all the time. Just because they’d started talking again didn’t change the facts.
June fell back, panting. She raised her palm to caress Megan’s cheek. “She is a hero, Megan. She did what she did to save you. I want my baby to grow up with a mother like that.”
Now it was Megan’s turn to clutch at June. “She will. You’ll be a great mother, June. I just know it.”
There was a hiss as Walden finally figured out how to connect the oxygen. He gently adjusted the prongs beneath June’s nose.
June’s face shadowed with something more than pain. “I’m afraid,” she whispered. “I think I should give her up, maybe. Find a better family for her. The family she deserves.”
“No. June. No.”
Behind her, she felt Oshiro shift and knew he felt the same way. He reached down and stroked June’s arm, but said nothing.
June’s answer was cut short as a powerful contraction rocked her body. She screamed in pain then began panting. “I have to push. She’s coming. Megan. She’s coming.”
Chapter 35
BY THE TIME they reached the dam, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Lucy had Seth turn off all the lights, interior and exterior, before they got out. She circled around to the rear of the car, opened the trunk and retrieved a short tire iron.
“What’s that for?” Seth asked, leaning against the car. He was moving more slowly and unsteadily than she was.
“He said there was a lock on the gate.”
“He thought of everything, didn’t he?”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He pushed off the car, a strange smile shining through the dim light. “Yeah. I’m going to be a father. Hell, maybe I already am.”
She couldn’t argue with that perspective on things. Lord knew, it was the thought of her own family that had gotten her through worse situations. At least they were safe.
They linked arms and hauled each other up the slope to the gate at the end of the dam. The spillways were open, rushing water pouring through, echoing through the gorge and leaving the ground with the slightest tremor. Lucy didn’t like it—she had a hard enough time making sure her bad foot was planted firmly as it was.
She handed Seth her Maglite and he needed both hands to hold it steady while she dealt with the padlock. She didn’t bother trying to unlock it—the hasp was thick and sturdy, unlike the cheap chain link that held it in place and snapped with judicious leverage from the tire iron.
“You going to be able to fire that gun?”
“Got six bullets, only need one to do the job.” His tone was nonchalant and his posture open as if he’d left all his worries far behind.
“Okay, then.” She hauled the chain link gate open and they stepped onto the dam. It was only about eight feet across here at the top, the walkway interrupted by several hoists positioned to manually raise the floodgates if necessary.
“Stop there!” a man’s voice came fr
om in front of them. “Inside the gate there’s a radio.”
Seth waved the light around until it fell on a small Motorola walkie talkie. Lucy retrieved the unit and clicked it on. “We’re here. Let me see Taylor.”
“Did you really think we’d be making the exchange here out in the open where your snipers can watch and wait? There’s an access hatch below the first hoist. Open it and climb down to the catwalk. Taylor’s waiting.”
Lucy wasn’t too surprised by the change in venue—like she’d told Hambly earlier, Daddy thrived on control. But that meant she had a greater weapon: chaos.
In the form of a dying man with nothing to live for and everything to die for. Chaos as in an FBI agent who tonight had seen her career go up in flames—literally.
Chaos as in the other items she’d taken from Taylor’s trunk: two roadside flares. One for her and one for Seth.
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“WHAT’S HER NAME?” Megan asked June as Walden drove them down the mountain in the ambulance. She marveled at the small creature suckling at June’s breast, eager for her first meal. A surge of pride washed through Megan. June did most of the work and her father and Oshiro helped, but she’d just delivered a baby!
“I don’t know. I was so scared I wouldn’t ever get to see her that I couldn’t think of a name. It felt like tempting fate.”
Sounded like something her mother would say.
“Your birthday is in June?”
“I don’t know when my birthday is,” June said. “But the day I was born was in June. The day they found me, saved me. Not that I understood that then.” She shifted her weight and the baby made a cooing, sucking noise that made Megan smile and yet feel close to tears. “March—not such a good name. Not for a fighter like her.”
“Julia?” Megan suggested. “Like Julius Caesar?”
“Beware the ides of March? Isn’t that when they killed him?”
They hadn’t gotten that far yet in English class. “Oh. Guess not, then.”
“How about Lucille? After your mother? I would have never lived this long, wouldn’t have her without your mom.”
“Lucy isn’t short for Lucille. Her real name is Lucia. She hates it.”
Their eyes met and both of them laughed, the noise swirling through the ambulance and chasing the shadows and fears away. Megan had the sudden feeling that someone was resting their hand on her shoulder, giving her an encouraging squeeze.
“Your grandmother, then?” June asked. “She must have been a very special lady to have raised your mom alone. To make such a wonderful home. What was her name?”
Megan smiled—not at the request but at the warm memories that flowed through her. She touched her hand to her shoulder, could swear she felt another hand slip away, followed by the brush of lips against the top of her head. “Her name was Coletta. And I think she’d like that very much.”
Chapter 36
IT TOOK BOTH of them to open the service hatch, mainly because Lucy couldn’t plant her weight on her left foot. The heavy steel protested with a screech barely heard over the roar of the rushing water below. It fell open, clanging against the concrete, releasing a damp yet pleasant scent, not unlike the smell of the woods after a lightning storm.
Ozone from the water, Lucy guessed as she led the way down the ladder into the belly of the dam. It was slow going as she had to hoist herself down every other step to save her bad leg, but she couldn’t risk it going out from under her now. Seth’s pace was almost as bad, his balance wobbly, several times pausing to steady himself.
The interior passage was rhomboid shaped with the narrow end forming the ceiling. Two strings of incandescent light bulbs hung from wires suspended from the ceiling. The concrete walls angled away from them, leaving wide-open space on either side of the metal catwalk. Below the gush of water sent ripples of light across the walls and the vibrations ran from the metal into Lucy’s bones.
The catwalk had iron railings along both sides except where there were intersecting catwalks leading out to the floodgate mechanisms. Lucy dared to look down, clutching the railing tight, and immediately regretted it. Usually she had no problem with heights, but trapped inside tons of concrete with invisible hungry waters rushing eagerly below, made her head swim. Daddy had chosen his tomb well.
“Ready?” she asked Seth. She could barely hear herself but he nodded. She positioned herself as a shield in front of him as they slowly moved past the first hoist area into a stretch of uninterrupted catwalk. There was a good thirty feet before the next hoist mechanism and the shadows gathered around it.
“We’re here,” she shouted into the radio, wondering if it would work down here.
“I said no weapons,” Daddy chided.
Lucy pocketed the radio and held her jacket open, making a show of slowly removing her service weapon and placing it at her feet. She still had her backup weapon concealed at the small of her back, but he didn’t ask her to take her parka off.
“Good girl.”
“Show me Taylor.”
“Say the magic word.”
“Please. I need to see that he’s unharmed.”
A few moments later two figures appeared in front of the hoist mechanism. Taylor, his hands cuffed in front of him but appearing uninjured, and the man known as Daddy.
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“HERE’S HOW THIS is going to work,” Daddy said, pressing his gun against Taylor’s head with enough force that Taylor had to bend his neck. He spoke into a hands free microphone, as if by making Lucy use a handheld radio he would gain the upper hand.
The guy obviously didn’t know Lucy, was all Taylor could focus on. He couldn’t believe how relieved he was when she appeared—and how guilty he felt about Seth being there. Seth was innocent, a civilian. It wasn’t his job to risk himself.
“Taylor and Bernhart will walk toward the middle, pass each other, and continue until we each have what we want.”
“What’s the catch?” Lucy’s voice came over the radio. She was buying time, Taylor was certain—as was Daddy.
“No catch. You and Taylor are free to go after that. On my count.”
Taylor almost took a step forward, he was so eager to get away, but Daddy hoisted him back and spun him against the steel plate of the hoist mechanism so that they were face to face.
“You didn’t think I’d let you off that easy, did you Taylor?” Daddy said. He held Taylor in place with the flat of his hand and his weight pressed against Taylor’s throat. Before Taylor could raise his cuffed hands to fight back, Daddy flipped the pistol to hold it by its barrel and swung it in an arc against Taylor’s left side.
The blow landed with such force that Taylor would have collapsed to the ground if it wasn’t for Daddy holding him upright. He tried to gasp—would have screamed with the pain—but Daddy’s hand clamped tight against his throat until his vision swam red.
“Hey!” Lucy yelled. “Stop that!”
Daddy didn’t turn around but he did turn his radio back on so Lucy could hear. “That blow just fractured Taylor’s spleen. He’ll die of internal injuries if you don’t get him to a surgeon within twenty minutes or so.” Daddy’s smile was inches from Taylor’s eyes, filling his vision. “Like I told you, I know I’ll win because I control all the parameters. The players, the playing field, and now the clock.”
He released Taylor, hooking one arm under his before he could fall. The pain was unlike any Taylor had ever felt before—not even when he’d taken his close quarter combat training and the instructor had gotten below his guard and landed a kick to his solar plexus.
“Move,” Daddy commanded. “Now.”
Taylor stumbled forward, barely able to raise his head high enough to see Seth approaching from the other direction. Behind him Lucy waited, her hands in fists at her sides, body angled forward, tense, a sprinter waiting for the starting gun.
The pain grew with every step until he was forced to bend over and grab hold of the handrail to keep him upright. Just a little farther.
“I’m sorry,” Taylor murmured, hoping Seth would hear him above the roar of the water below.
Seth’s gait faltered and he glanced at Taylor. Then he did the strangest thing. He smiled. As if there wasn’t anything to be worried about.
One more step and he was behind Taylor. In front of him, Lucy’s fists opened and closed as if counting the seconds. Taylor tried his best to shuffle forward faster. But then he realized it wasn’t him she was staring at: it was Seth.
Of course she had a plan—Lucy always had a plan. Taylor relaxed. It was going to be okay, he was certain.
“Lucy,” Daddy called out in a jovial tone. “I did forget one little catch. You might want to tell your HRT boys to clear off the dam and get back to their helo.”
Taylor faltered and glanced back to see Daddy waving a smart phone in triumph. He’d spent time scouting the dam and surrounding area before letting Taylor out of the van—must have planted cameras. Damn spytech. It was making it so the bad guys had nicer toys than the good guys.
“I’ve rigged the dam to explode. No one leaves here until after I’m good and gone. I see your friends step off that helo again or if you try to open the hatch before I radio back that it’s clear and it all blows.”
Chapter 37
LUCY WAS FAIRLY certain Daddy was lying about the explosives. There was no way he’d have time to plant them—and why would he have access to explosives in the first place? He was bluffing. Had to be.
How many lives was she willing to risk on “fairly” was the question.
Taylor collapsed, one arm slung over the railing, still ten feet short of her position. But he was almost within reach of her service weapon. If he was in any condition to shoot, it would be one more advantage. Seth kept moving toward Daddy, marching down the center of the catwalk.