‘Are you mad?’ Lucia called ‘We’ve got a baby on board!’
‘And some bastards on our tail. We’ve got to shake them off before things get too hot, don’t you think?’
Kea did not wait for an answer but stepped on the gas again. A truck driver hooted angrily as she cut him up and he had to brake hard.
The BMW seemed to be glued to their tail.
‘They’re persistent bastards!’ Lucia growled who had been glancing over her shoulder. ‘We’ll have to think of something to lose them.’
‘Got any good idea?’
‘Maybe. Can you get the heap to stop after the next bend?’
‘Sure. But how is that going to help?’
‘You’ll see soon enough.’
Kea kept her lip buttoned. She simply hoped that Lucia had something up her sleeve. It was more than likely that her friend had been in deep shit like this more than once before.
Kea, on the other hand, had always avoided problems or confrontations. At least, in her almost forgotten previous life.
To the left and right of the Scheldelaan stretched harbor basins lined by enormous cranes. Before her loomed a sharp right-hand bend, she braked a little, reduced speed to avoid losing control over the car.
Luckily, there was no oncoming traffic, for she drifted into the left-hand lane. Her heart hammered. Her blouse stuck to her sweaty back. She pushed the brake pedal down hard and almost immediately the Porsche squealed to a halt close to the curb.
Lucia stepped out, the baby still strapped to her chest.
She gripped her pistol in both hands as the BMW raced around the bend.
Lucia pulled the trigger.
The bullets struck the left front tire and blew it to pieces. It seemed as if the driver tried to correct the sudden loss of cohesion. But it was hopeless. The BMW hit the walkway at full speed, tore through a wire fence and landed in a spray of water in the dark waters of the Schelde.
‘Problem solved.’ Lucia commented dryly before she tried to calm Adrian who had been woken and was crying again.
In the distance, the siren of a police car wailed. Kea was not sure whether the shots in the park or the wild race through the night had alarmed the police. Or both.
The two women drove on. Kea used mainly side roads and kept strictly to speed and traffic restrictions. They dumped the Cayenne in a dark spot two blocks from the hotel. Then, luckily, they reached the hotel without sighting a single police vehicle.
Lucia had, the evening before, bought diapers and other baby articles, a preparation which Kea had thought optimistically premature.
But the success proved Lucia right.
Kea sought her bed immediately. Slowly the tension of the past hours drifted away and were replaced by a leaden tiredness.
‘How will it all end, Lucia?’ She asked sleepily.
‘I’ll call Gordon.'
40
On the other side of the Atlantic, the telephone rang. The time difference between Belgium and New York City was six hours. But that hardly mattered, since Gordon had long given up following a normal day-night rhythm.
Finally he answered. Lucia’s heart beat faster when she recognized his voice.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me!’ She gushed. ‘We did it – Adrian is well and healthy. Kea is just changing his diapers.’
For a moment there was only silence. Lucia suddenly had a very bad feeling.
‘Ah, that’s super news,’ Gordon finally answered. But he sounded about as cheerful as a priest at a funeral.
‘What happened?’ Lucia asked in an inquisitorial tone. Her own voice suddenly sounded hard and cold, as she realized herself.’
Gordon breathed deeply and rasping as he answered.
‘Your brother … Mario is dead.’
Lucia’s blood pounded in her head. Her forehead was suddenly covered in cold sweat. Kea cast a worried look at her. She saw tears running down her friend’s cheeks and the pain that laid like a choking hand around her throat.
Before her breathing failed her, Lucia seemed to have lost all strength. He legs no longer held her upright. She stumbled to her bed. Her lungs ached. She could not think straight. It took an eternity before she could utter a few broken words.
‘The cops --- they killed him?’ she whispered.
Again Gordon hesitated. How could he tell her the truth?
‘Gordon, tell me what happened. You know me, I’ll find out soon enough. If it wasn’t the fuzz, who was it. Did Old Barns send his killers after Mario?’
‘No, Lucia. You know my security system, the automatic defense gun. The construction was a masterwork. It should never have been activated by Mario.’
‘You --- you mowed my brother down with your fucking invention?’ Lucia suddenly screamed.
‘Please, listen to me before you condemn me. None of this was intended. The camera at the entrance is guided by an artificial intelligence. The weapon comes into action when it is confronted by a police uniform. And Mario --- for some reason he wore a security uniform so that the system took him for a cop …’
‘So the system believed him to be a cop?’ Lucia replied bitterly while tears streamed down her face. ‘So all is in order, then ? It’s nobody’s fault … his death was just a software glitch.’
‘I can understand how you feel. I was thunderstruck myself, when I received an alarm on my Smartphone. My place has so much espionage software in case someone should search it. That’s how I could listen in on the cops from a safe distance and make sense of what they were saying. I’m still at large, but I can forget returning to my hideout.’
Lucia hardly heard what he was saying. But she could still formulate her next sentences clearly.
‘You have the death of my brother on your conscience. That I can never forgive you. I never ever want to see you again. And if I ever do, I will kill you!’
Without another word, she ended the call and switched her phone off.
Kea had risen from her bed and took her in her arms.
‘Mario is dead.’ Lucia sobbed. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Adrian lives. And so do we.’
Lucia wiped the tears from her wet face with her palms. She stared at Kea.
‘Yes, we live. But we can’t fly back to the States. Old Barns wants to see blood, as he has proven often enough. And his grandson --- I won’t hand the child back, Kea. It doesn’t matter that he’s not my own. I won’t allow that Adrian must return to his stupid mother, his weakling of a father and his psycho-granddad.’
‘Then let’s simply keep him. People may take us for a pair of lesbians, but I don’t care.’
Lucia seemed irritated as she looked at her.
‘Does that mean you want to stay with me?’
Kea shrugged her shoulders.
‘I don’t know where else I should go. I can’t go back to my old life in Germany. I don’t even want to do that. I am a killer girl, you know.’
Lucia nodded slowly and took Kea’s hand.
‘The world is a big place, isn’t it? We will find some quiet corner where we can raise Adrian without fear of losing him And, maybe, just the three of us will find a better life than we could ever have hoped for.’
THE END
Dear reader,
we sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading this novel and would like to thank you in advance for a review on Amazon.
If you found anything that should be improved or corrected, please let us know at
[email protected]
We promise that your feedback will be considered to make this novel even more enjoyable.
The editor
rayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Killer Girls Page 17
