Thank God, thank . . .
A gunshot, muffled but unmistakeable, exploded inside the car. Julie screamed and dropped from view. Gone, just like that. Mac’s heart stopped, he almost pissed his pants, and he gave a great leap forward, grabbing for the door handle, staying low. He yanked the door open just as another gunshot shook his eardrums. Julie tumbled out, falling backward, eyes and mouth wide and screaming as she hit the grass.
* * *
For a split second Julie simply lay where she had fallen, stunned. When the second shot exploded almost in her ear, she’d been curled into as tiny a ball as she could make of herself, head down, arms around her legs, pressed as far back against the hard barrier of the door as she could get. With her eyes scrunched shut, she’d felt a warm liquid spatter her legs. She’d gone all light-headed and bells had rung and lights had flashed and she’d stopped breathing. Then she had felt herself tumbling backward, falling into nothingness, into empty, open air. The thought that had run through her mind was that she’d been killed and was being sucked straight down to—heaven?
She realized she was screaming only when Mac’s face intruded between her and the sky. His hand wrapped around her wrist just as another gunshot exploded right over her head. Mac dropped her wrist and staggered back, cursing. Julie scrambled to her feet, crouching near the rear tire, ducking her head and covering it with her folded arms. Her heart was pounding so hard she had to be alive, she realized. She could feel her stomach churning, feel blood pumping through her veins. Oh, God, she was alive! She was alive!
“Run!” Mac screamed at her, or maybe it was the little voice again, because she didn’t think she could hear anything outside her own head. Her ears were ringing so badly she might as well have been Quasimodo in the bell tower. But run was what she wanted to do anyway, and run was what she did. Mac grabbed her wrist again and took off, and she was with him every step of the way, abject fear giving wings to her feet. Mac kept turning around to snap off shots at Basta, who, she saw with a quick, terrified look over her shoulder, had emerged from the car now and was coming after them, crouched low like they were, shooting too.
Basta dodged and ducked when one of Mac’s shots kicked up turf near his feet, giving them a few extra, precious seconds. Suddenly they were out of the moonlight, running like all the hounds of hell were after them into the concealing shadow of the trees, where the Blazer loomed like a solid black box in front of them.
Julie had never been so glad to see anything in her life.
Mac let go of her wrist.
“Get in!”
This time there was no doubt the voice belonged to Mac. Julie jerked the passenger door open and dived inside, nearly crushing Josephine, who leaped nimbly into the back in the nick of time. Mac’s butt hit the driver’s seat at the same moment. Julie huddled in the seat, feet on the edge, fists pressed to her face, shaking and gasping, as Mac wrenched at the gearshift. She looked up just in time to see Basta coming after them, his bulky body silhouetted for a moment against the backdrop of the moonlit clearing. She screamed, the Blazer careened backward, and she was almost toppled from her perch, catching herself with a hand on the dash. When she looked again Basta was nowhere to be seen; she assumed that he was rushing toward them through the concealing darkness beneath the trees.
“He shot Sid!” It was a near-hysterical shriek. Her voice shook with horror. The first bullet, the one she’d thought was meant for her, had blown Sid’s face off. Just like that, his features had been blown away and replaced with an oozing crimson pulp that made her want to heave when she remembered it. The smell of blood—she’d never realized blood smelled like bad meat—had filled the air. Then Basta had turned the gun on her. . . .
“Who? Who shot Sid?”
Julie screamed, ducking as bullets tore through the body of the Blazer with the fierce, sharp rat-a-tat of some kind of deadly popcorn. The windshield shattered; pellets of glass pelted them like storm-driven hail. Mac cursed and drove, turned halfway around with his arm slung over the back of his seat, looking over his shoulder as the Blazer bumped and rocked and skidded backward down the little dirt road. Panting with a combination of fear and shock, Julie turned and looked that way too.
“Who shot Sid?” It was a roar.
“Basta! The hit man! The one—I bit his nose!”
Another hail of bullets hit the Blazer. Julie dove screaming for the footwell. Then the gunfire stopped. Just like that. Nothing. The sudden silence was almost as terrifying as the thunder of bullets had been.
Cautiously she lifted her head. Either they were out of range or Basta couldn’t see them, but Julie knew deep in every fiber of her being that he was still giving chase. As she crawled limply back into her seat, she realized that she was shaking like a leaf; adrenaline rushed through her veins, making her jump at every bump or sound.
“This Basta—is he the one shooting at us?”
“Yes!”
The dirt road being too narrow to permit them to turn around, they were still flying backward without lights; how Mac saw to drive Julie couldn’t imagine. The stockade of giant trees she had seen on the way in was rushing past on both sides, now reduced to a featureless blur. The trees melded seamlessly with the road and the night itself to her eyes. If they wrecked, Basta would catch up to them; at the thought, Julie went all light-headed, and her heart threatened to thump clean out of her chest.
Oh, God, please, she didn’t want to die like Sid.
“How did you get away from the cops?”
“I managed to persuade them to see reason.”
“They were dirty: they were taking bribes from Sid.”
“You know, I had begun to suspect that.”
Miraculously, during the course of this conversation, they somehow managed to stay on the track. When the first glimmer of approaching headlights appeared through the woods Julie thought for an instant that Mac must have succumbed to human limitations and turned on the Blazer’s lights.
No such luck.
“Shit,” Mac said, and as Julie realized the truth she echoed the sentiment in her head. The headlights belonged to another vehicle, which was coming toward them from the direction of the road. The dirt track was too narrow to allow two vehicles to pass; trees formed a nearly impenetrable wall on both sides.
They were trapped.
“No,” Julie moaned, hanging on to the edge of her seat with both hands as she stared back at the oncoming vehicle.
“Hang on.”
Julie nearly bit her tongue as the Blazer veered. Mac, whose eyes were apparently a lot better than hers, sent them haring off the track to the left, somehow managing to find a space between the trees.
The good news was, they were now going forward. The bad news was, they didn’t get far.
No sooner had the headlights passed them, continuing on up the track toward the clearing without pausing, which made Julie think they hadn’t been seen, than the Blazer plunged nose-first into some kind of hole or ditch.
“Yow!” Julie was thrown violently forward and smacked her forehead hard on the dash. It took a couple of seconds for the stars she saw to recede. By the time they did, Mac was at her door, flinging it open and dragging her from her seat.
“We’re stuck. Come on.” His voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. Head pounding, stomach churning, knees weak with fear, Julie nevertheless hit the ground running. Basta could be anywhere, near or far. He could be right behind the nearest tree. At any second he could open fire.
Against her will, Julie once again remembered Sid’s destroyed face and had to fight back a wave of dizziness. Icy prickles of fear raced over her skin; gorge rose in her throat. Her hand welded to Mac’s, she plunged through the forest like a frightened deer.
The next bullet might find her. Or Mac.
The realization kept her legs pumping as fast and furiously as her heart.
Seconds later Julie stepped on a rock, and nearly yelped in pain and surprise. Only the thought of Basta enabled her t
o bite back the sound and keep going with little more than a single, one-footed hop. It was only then that she realized she was barefoot: she had lost her shoes in the first wild rush toward the Blazer. The ground beneath her feet was slippery with leaves and sort of squishy, except for the occasional bruising rock. The humidity was thick as fog, and the smell of rotting vegetation hung heavy in the air. Under the trees, the night was so dark she could see Mac only as a dense shape plunging through the undergrowth just slightly ahead of her. All around, little glowing disks flickered on and off: fireflies. Mosquitoes were out, too. Julie could feel herself being bitten. She did not dare slap at them, for fear the sound of skin smacking skin would give them away. Although, unless Basta was right on their heels, he probably wouldn’t hear. The night was alive with the whirr of insects, the eerie piping of tree frogs, the deep bass accompaniment of bullfrogs, the rustling of the forest itself. Nature’s chorus was so loud that their own breathing and the soft thudding of their feet against the ground was barely audible even to herself.
As she listened, it suddenly occurred to Julie that Mac must not be in as good a shape as he looked to be, because his breathing was labored. Really labored.
In fact, he was rasping like a dying man.
“Mac . . .” Alarmed, she meant to ask him if he was all right.
At that moment he plunged forward with a splash and would have fallen on his face if Julie hadn’t been slightly behind him, hanging on to his hand for dear life, her weight enough to counterbalance his forward impetus.
“Fuck,” he said, just as she found it too, her foot plunging through liquid to sink ankle-deep into muddy ooze. This time it was he who kept her from going down face-first, grabbing her arm and helping her keep her balance.
Julie stopped from sheer necessity. Her feet felt like they were mired in wet concrete.
“We’ve got to go back,” she whispered, clinging to his hand for balance and trying to turn around even as she spoke. The mud—she thought it was mud, it felt like mud, squishy, gooey mud—was reluctant to release its grip. The water that covered it was knee-deep and warm. Its smell was the rotting vegetation smell that had struck her earlier, only stronger. Julie realized that they’d stumbled into one of the swamps with which the area abounded. Rushes and foxtails grew all around them, brushing against her each time she moved, towering above her head. Tiny eyes stared at them from the trees. Raccoons? Possoms? Beyond that, Julie didn’t want to speculate.
“We can’t. Look.”
Julie looked. Glowing disks about the size of softballs were bobbing behind them. Flashlights: she realized what they were as she saw a tree suddenly illuminated by a moving beam. They were just reaching the place where they had abandoned the Blazer, Julie calculated. . . .
“Josephine!” Horror struck through to her soul.
“She’ll be all right. Nobody’s after the dog. Come on, we’ve got to keep going. One good thing about this swamp: They won’t come in here unless they have to.”
Mac pulled her on, his feet making squelching noises with every step that Julie hoped, prayed, couldn’t be heard much beyond their ears. She splashed after him, hanging on to his hand, moving carefully, both to minimize the sound and to keep from falling flat on her face.
By now she was way beyond terror. She was going on pure adrenaline, with Sid’s fate for an impetus. If they were caught, that was what would happen to them. . . .
Without warning, Mac went down on one knee. Tethered to him by their clasped hands, Julie was nearly pulled over the top of him. He let go, and she pushed herself erect with one hand on his back, barely hearing the steady stream of under-his-breath curses that he was letting fly with.
She was too busy looking fearfully over her shoulder at the oncoming flashlights.
Until she registered that her hand on his back was covered with a warm, sticky liquid. Lifting her hand, turning it over, she saw that her palm, which should have been a pale blur, was not. It was black.
Horror struck at her heart like a blade.
“Oh, my God, Mac,” she whispered. “You’ve been shot.”
33
HIS FUTURE WAS ON THE LINE. Hell, his life was on the line. Basta knew it, and it was all he could do not to panic.
He had to get Julie Carlson back and send her off to join her husband. As for the man who had snatched her right out from under his nose for the second time, he was dog food. Basta knew who he was now—Daniel’s little brother.
That made what was getting ready to happen almost poetic.
Sid’s wife and Daniel’s little brother, gone bye-bye together: talk about déjà vu all over again.
But he had other business he had to take care of first.
“How could you let this happen?” The Big Boss’s face was etched with grief. Tears glinted in his eyes. He turned back from the Taurus, took a step, and had to support himself on the Lexus’s trunk. He was dressed in a dark suit, and looked every inch the successful businessman he was. “My son. Oh, my son.”
“He came out of nowhere, Mr. Carlson: Mac McQuarry. Dorsey and Nichols were supposed to take him out, but something must have gone wrong. Somehow he followed us out here. We never even saw him until he snatched the girl out of the car and shot your son, just like that. I got off some shots, but they escaped into the woods. They’re in there somewhere. We’ll get them back, I give you my word.”
“Your word doesn’t seem to be worth much these days. If you’d done your job properly, the little bitch would have been dead days ago and this would never have happened.” John Carlson’s eyes were as cold and distant as glaciers. Basta had seen that look in them before, although it had never been directed at him. The people it had been directed at were all dead.
Carlson turned to the flunky behind him. “Get some more men out here now. Tell them we need a heat-seeking device. Have some of them ring the perimeter of the area. I want these people found, and I don’t want any more mistakes.”
“Yes, sir.” The flunky stepped a little apart from the group and whipped out a cell phone.
He’d made the right decision about his future, Basta thought. Before, he’d been a little unsure. If anything went wrong, his ass would be history. But that look told its own tale: He was history anyway unless he did something to save himself.
The Big Boss, the capo of capos, the mind behind the most efficient organized-crime operation on the East Coast, was done with him. And when the Big Boss turned his back, whoever he turned it on was toast.
Basta gnawed at a thumbnail, thinking.
“Excuse me, I gotta take a leak,” he said to Carlson, and walked away into the dark. If he could have just kept on walking, that’s what he would have done. But the Big Boss was one of the few people who knew where to find him. He would never let Basta just walk away. Fair enough, Basta thought, emptying his bladder against a tree. Walking back toward where the boss waited near the cars, he pulled the small silver silencer from his pocket and screwed it onto the end of his pistol. Ordinarily, out here, he never bothered, because the area was remote enough that no one ever heard anything.
But tonight there would be people near enough to hear. Such as the boss’s flunkies. If he screwed up again, it would be the last time, literally. He would be dead.
He’d taken out Sid on his own, as part of his plan to break free of this life once and for all. He’d meant to take out Julie, too, not because he was being paid to—he didn’t care about that any longer—but because Julie could identify him and was, thus, a loose end. It never paid to leave loose ends. None of them would be here tonight if they had not left a loose end dangling fifteen years ago: Mike Williams. After Daniel’s unfortunate demise, Williams had cut and run. Nobody had known then that he had taken the object of their frantic search with him—Williams had been little more than a flunky, after all—but still, the very fact that Williams had taken off should have set alarm bells ringing. Somebody should have followed up on it then, found Mike Williams and taken care of him, but no o
ne had.
As a result of that screw-up, here they all were.
He rejoined the Big Boss, putting an arm around him and walking him across the grass, listening and nodding sympathetically as the man went on and on about his son. Something the boss had once said to him popped into his mind, and the sheer appropriateness of it made him smile inwardly: Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer. To John Carlson, those had been words to live by, and undoubtedly still were.
Tonight the Big Boss was his enemy, and he was going to stick to him like a burr until the job was done. To survive, he was going to have to kill the man. He’d faced it earlier, known it was the only way out. Even before the debacle with McQuarry, he’d planned to hit them all tonight: Sid and Julie, and then, on his way out of town, John Carlson.
He’d been going to make them all disappear. That was the only way to keep himself safe.
Sid had started fucking up the plan by calling him on his cell phone earlier in the day, raving mad because his wife was being unfaithful—with Daniel’s little brother, yet—and insisting on being present when she bought the farm. The plan had been for Sid to be safely in Atlanta while Basta did the job, but Sid had screwed that up by coming home early, so crazy angry he wasn’t thinking straight. That had actually worked out well, because Sid knew Basta’s daytime identity, too—the Big Boss had been grooming Sid to take over one day, and Sid basically was in on everything—and was going to have to be taken out anyway. Basta had told him to come on, come join him, figuring on killing two birds with one stone even as he said it.
With Sid, the pissant little punk, in tow, he’d tracked Julie, even managed to get his hands on her despite complications. Then things had started going wrong. Daniel’s little brother had rescued her seconds before she would have joined Sid in the great hereafter. And then, right on the heels of that disaster, the Big Boss had shown up out here without warning, complete with flunkies. According to one of the flunkies, speaking on the sly while the boss tearfully examined his son’s remains, it seemed Sid had called him, apparently while Basta was in McQuarry’s office building retrieving Julie, and had told him what was going down and where, and the boss had made the trip out here to make sure that this time the job he’d hired Basta to do got done. Basta suspected that his own demise was also on the agenda. This was the perfect spot, after all.
To Trust a Stranger Page 34
