Rules of Revenge

by AJ Quinn

  A helicopter.

  And Darien was alone, exposed by the light of dawn. Chills ripped through her.

  “Tango one,” she said urgently over the com-link. “You need to get out of there. Now. Head south. Do you read me, Tango one?”

  *

  Darien didn’t question the instructions. The urgency in Jessie’s voice alone was enough to make her move swiftly. As she swung her leg over the motorcycle, she twisted her hair, slipped the helmet back into place, and dropped the visor. With one touch, the powerful bike roared to life before settling down to a soft rumble. Heeding Jessie’s warning, she gunned the engine and urged the machine back onto the road. Heading south.

  A twist of the throttle and the world quickly became an amalgam of darkness and light—the shadows of the hills and trees, the ethereal blue of the air, the gray sky, and the black undulating ribbon of highway that stretched out into the horizon. She accelerated through a series of curves and listened to the throaty growl of the motorcycle echoing in the stillness of the early morning.

  Darien had always credited her instincts for keeping her alive this long, certainly not something to disregard or ignore. Those instincts had told her not to question Jessie’s instructions, but she still had no idea what the danger was or what direction it was coming from. All she knew was her instincts were screaming, and as she leaned into a sharp curve in the road, she found herself paying closer attention to her surroundings, looking for the trap she sensed was near.

  Just as she rounded the bend, Jessie’s voice answered her unasked questions, issuing another warning over her com-link. “SAT showing possible hostiles. Your eleven o’clock.”

  Eleven o’clock? Darien immediately scanned the sky. At first it was only a shadow, barely discernible against the pewter of the early morning sky. An instant later, she spotted it more clearly. A sleek helicopter, skimming the treetops as it gained altitude.

  The windows were tinted dark and there were no numbers visible. No markings at all. Just like that, the day went downhill in a hurry and she knew she was in serious trouble.

  Her eyes darted from the road to the helicopter. She needed to reach Jessie and Ben, but as her mind furiously calculated time and distance, she knew she wasn’t going to make it. It was only a matter of time—seconds—before she was in the helicopter’s line of sight, if it hadn’t already happened. Certainly not enough time to disappear into the shadows of the towering pines. She was left scrambling for an alternative plan to survive, and surviving the next few minutes had just become highly questionable.

  Seconds later, the probability of survival diminished even further as the beat of the helicopter grew louder. It turned, circling to the south over the road, then hovered just over the trees. As if in slow motion, the side door opened and Darien saw a muzzle flash. Gunfire erupted, strafing across the road, chewing up the asphalt around her.

  Fly, damn it. She found herself begging, impatient for more speed, as a deep-seated anger settled in her. She had no desire to die, and after everything she’d done and everything she’d been through, this was not the way she’d choose to go. She urged the machine faster. Racing at spine-numbing speed on the slick road, coaxing every last ounce of power the bike could give her.

  But then she felt the shock of white-hot searing pain as a bullet struck the Kevlar vest she was wearing, all but knocking her off the bike, while another furrowed through the flesh in her forearm. The exploding burn spread like a wildfire across her torso and down to her fingers. Unable to breathe or maintain any kind of her grip on the throttle, she began to lose precious speed.

  The rapid deceleration probably also saved her life. As another barrage of bullets rained down around her, a tire blew. The motorcycle reacted violently, and in the next instant, she was catapulted into the air.

  *

  Jessie flinched as she heard the distinctive stutter of automatic weapons fire echoing in the distance. The sound was familiar enough for her to readily identify it, but she knew they were still too far away to be of any immediate help, and she was afraid Darien didn’t have that much time. She felt a chill slide over her skin as a bolt of fear laced through her, and she hissed out a breath.

  Reaching for the console, she tried to hail Darien.

  No response.

  She waited through several heartbeats before trying again. “Tango one? Do you read me? Give me your status. Can you lose them?” She swallowed. “Darien? Can you hear me?”

  But there was still no contact. Not then and not on her subsequent try.

  “Elle?” Jessie inhaled sharply and tried to ignore the dread washing over her. “I need you to help me out. Can you boost the signal?”

  Elle quickly tapped some keys, frowned, and intensified her focus as she tapped a few more times before making a disappointed sound. “It’s no good,” she said. “All I’m picking up is static and dead air. I’m not sure how, but I think we’re getting jammed.”

  From the driver’s seat, Ben swore softly as the van sped along the highway, trying to close the gap between them and Darien. More surprisingly, Jessie heard the unexpected sound of nerves in Ben’s voice. It took a moment, but she recognized the cause. Fear. For Darien.

  An instant later, the sound of renewed gunfire could be heard over the van’s engine. A short burst followed by a longer one. With her heart pounding, Jessie turned and stared at the monitor and for a moment, her world narrowed to one goal. Keeping a close watch on Darien’s tracker beacon as it moved on the screen, inching toward them. She willed it to hurry as it drew tantalizingly close.

  In the next instant, she watched helplessly as it suddenly disappeared.

  Her gaze snapped to Ben and her composure wavered. “Oh, Jesus, Ben. Her signal—Darien’s signal just disappeared. It’s gone.”

  Oh God, Darien. Please be alive.

  Ben’s features tightened. “Hang on.” As he spoke, he pressed harder on the accelerator, causing the tires to screech as he took the van through the next curve, taking it high and tight and much too fast.

  Jessie grabbed the console for balance but was still slammed back into her seat. As she recovered and glanced in his direction, she could see emotion in Ben’s face. The beginnings of grief blending with the tension already there. Knowing Darien had been a part of his life for so many years, she couldn’t imagine what he was feeling, and her heart ached for him. Her own eyes were burning. Her throat tightened and she had to swallow before she could speak.

  “She’s strong. We’ll find her.”

  “Um, Jessie,” Elle said as she watched the readout on a palm-sized electronic device. “It’s not just her tracker that’s gone silent. We’re not getting any communication whatsoever from her. Just dead air.”

  Time seemed to slow down and the tension inside the surveillance van grew thicker as they raced to Darien’s last known location. Jessie felt numb. She refused to believe they’d lost Darien. That wicked grin of hers was starting to mean something to her and she refused to accept she wouldn’t see it again. Pushing negative thoughts aside, she tapped into all of her training and struggled to stay focused.

  “We’ll get her back.”

  Ben glanced in the mirror and sent her a weak smile. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the fleeting moments after the motorcycle fell away from beneath her, there was no time for fear, much less anger. Darien landed hard. The impact stole what little remained of her breath and left her momentarily paralyzed as she slid across the asphalt. Unable to stop or begin to slow herself down, even as she felt pain tear through her.

  She flew over the edge of the highway and down the embankment, the moss proving to be much less cushioning than it appeared at first glance. She tumbled helplessly over thick undergrowth, gnarled roots, and rocks until her momentum finally exhausted itself, and she came to an abrupt stop by a copse of trees near the bottom of the ravine.

  For sec
onds—or possibly longer—she remained perfectly still, nearly overwhelmed by a bleak sense of disbelief that she’d been taken down so easily. Wanting to deny she was potentially minutes away from capture. From death.

  She heard herself moan, low and deep, and the metallic scent and taste of blood filled her senses. She needed to open her eyes. But even before she did anything, in some part of her concussed and swollen brain, she knew instinctively any movement at all would hurt. Really badly. Even something as simple as opening her eyes. At least for now, she was alive. And that seemed to trump everything else.

  But then time and her thoughts slowed. Darkness embraced her and everything faded to black.

  When awareness returned, the pain in her body also returned, with a vengeance. Everything hurt. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out, but it couldn’t have been long. She waited several seconds for the worst of it to pass while she concentrated on trying to breathe.

  She tried to think, but her mind was foggy, filled with fractured thoughts and images. She knew she was lying on hard, cold, damp ground. Her leathers were torn and wet, and she was shivering uncontrollably. And then it hit her, all at once. Nadia Petrov. The helicopter. Gunfire. Flying off her bike.

  Her eyes flew open. Just blinking took effort, and she lay still for a few seconds longer, knowing she needed to move but unsure about the extent of her injuries. Forced to wait until the world around her stopped spinning while pain manifested itself in countless ways.

  Swallowing against the waves of nausea that were threatening to take her under again, she forced herself to push through the discomfort as she tried to move. Slowly at first. Testing her extremities, starting with fingers and toes, grateful to discover everything was still functional—more or less.

  But even the slightest movement hurt, and she began to think her head was worse than she’d originally believed. It was throbbing fiercely, and she knew she was dangerously close to sinking back into oblivion where nothing mattered. Clearly, that was not an option.

  As the will to survive reasserted itself, she fought against the beckoning darkness and forced herself to concentrate. To breathe. One breath at a time. Even then, it took all the effort she could muster to remove her helmet and assess the damage.

  Her heartbeat was erratic, and beneath the Kevlar her chest throbbed where at least one bullet had struck her. It made breathing difficult, but it wasn’t too bad if she didn’t breathe deeply. Bruises were already making themselves felt all over her body, and her arm screamed in protest, bleeding where another bullet had done some damage. Pain was radiating up to her shoulder, and she could feel blood snaking down her forearm and seeping through the tear in the sleeve of her jacket, its scent a sharp bite in the damp air.

  She would need stitches, she thought, absurdly irritated by the realization.

  But the good news was she didn’t think anything was broken. The Kevlar-and-titanium vest under her jacket had unquestionably saved her life, and the ruined leathers had done their job. They had saved her from leaving multiple layers of tender skin on the road. Or worse. The definitive diagnosis was she was alive. Painfully but undeniably alive. And if she wanted to stay that way, she needed to start moving, get out of the area as quickly as possible.

  As if to support her decision, the distinctive sound of a helicopter penetrated her thoughts. It confirmed what she had suspected—that her pursuers hadn’t gone away. They would be scanning the crash site, looking for any sign of movement, of life. But, at least for the moment, they were still in the air. In spite of a brief lapse in consciousness, she didn’t believe there had been enough time for them to land and commence a ground search.

  She tried hailing Ben and Jessie, but met with no success. Not even static. Tried for Nicola, but got the same result. Nothing. After three fruitless attempts she gave up.

  She pulled the tiny communications earpiece out and stared at it numbly in the shadowed light. It had probably become disabled during the crash, not that it mattered. Without adequate light and the proper tools, there was little she could do to fix it. Assuming she got out of this mess, she promised herself she’d see what she could do to make it more resilient. In the meantime, it meant she was on her own.

  With her control hanging by a thread, she forced herself to sit up.

  She hissed as pain flared and pulsed through her with every heartbeat, threatening to take her back under. But she persisted, reaching down and slipping her Kel-Tec PF-9 from her ankle holster. She balanced the weapon carefully in her left hand while she waited for the dizziness to subside.

  Considering it was the lightest and flattest 9 mm ever mass-produced, the weapon felt unusually heavy. But she was nearly as good a shot with her left hand as she was with her right, and under the present circumstances, nearly as good would have to do. She just didn’t fancy the odds of taking on an as yet undetermined number of well-armed assailants.

  She needed to move.

  Sore and bleeding, it took a bit longer before she tried to stand up. On the third attempt, she managed it, clenching her teeth as she staggered to her feet, only to be thrown off balance by her inability to use her right arm. She struggled not to fall, then almost immediately was forced back down to her knees, lowering her head as the light-headedness threatened to overwhelm her.

  Keeping her forehead down on her knees, she ignored the pain slicing through her head like a knife. She could feel her skin go cold and moist—shock?

  It didn’t matter. Instinctively, she knew any further delay was out of the question. The cool light of dawn was already spreading and would make it easier for whoever was out there to find her. That made pain secondary to the need to escape. To survive.

  Looking up, she saw the trees towering above her, their branches lifted to an unseen sky. Only minimal light managed to filter through the dense canopy. That was a good thing. The trees would make it difficult for whoever was after her to track her from above and would force them down to the ground.

  That would buy her some time. And she was strong, she reminded herself. Resilient. She took two quick, deep breaths, feeling them burn in her bruised chest, buried the pain deep enough, and got back to her feet.

  Her abused muscles immediately made their objections known. She sympathized but overruled them. Biting down hard on her already bloodied lip, ignoring the pain that jolted through her every time her feet struck the ground, Darien began to move as fast as she could, running parallel to a stream flowing twenty feet below.

  Adrenaline fueled her muscles and served as a temporary painkiller. She knew it wouldn’t last, but for now, it allowed her to swiftly cover ground, barely aware of her surroundings. It wasn’t easy. The terrain was dense, wet, and irregular, littered with fallen trees and moss-covered stumps. She knew one wrong step could bring it all crashing to an end. Just as she knew there was really very little choice.

  She was running for her life.

  *

  Jessie opened the door and jumped out the back of the surveillance vehicle before Ben had brought the van to a complete stop. She stumbled and nearly fell but managed to stay on her feet. Once she was clear of the van, she quickly glanced up into the hazy sky, looking for the helicopter she could still hear somewhere in the vicinity. But the sound of the beating blades was growing more distant, and she knew it was moving away.

  “Bloody hell,” Ben shouted at her. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? I thought you were smarter than that.”

  Jessie ignored him, not really giving a damn what Ben thought. She needed to find Darien, and her only objective was to follow the skid marks she’d seen scored into the asphalt. Slowing only when she reached the edge of the road, she looked down and felt her heart stutter painfully as she tried to make sense out of what she was seeing.

  For a long drawn-out moment, she simply stared down. Wanting to deny the evidence, willing to trade everything for a chance to change reality. “Oh God.” The words escaped her as she stared, unblinking.

  Thirty fee
t below her was what remained of Darien’s motorcycle. The once gleaming Ducati was now a barely recognizable tangle of twisted and crushed metal resting haphazardly against a tree, one wheel bent and pointing toward the sky. Jessie felt her heart freeze in her chest and struggled to accept that the scene below was real as she scanned the nearby area. But try as she might, she could see no sign of Darien.

  Please let her be okay.

  She swallowed painfully and tried not to think of Darien lying somewhere nearby. Hurt…or dying…or…no, she refused to go there. But as she looked for Darien, she found herself simultaneously calculating the odds of Darien’s survival and bracing herself for what she believed was inevitable.

  Daylight barely penetrated the forest canopy, but as her eyes became accustomed to the interplay of shadows and gloom, she began picking up minute details. Bent branches and other signs where Darien’s body had disturbed the ground as she’d hurtled from the road toward the bottom of the ravine.

  Conscious of Ben and Elle following close behind, Jessie began her own descent, scrambling precariously, her boots sinking and slipping on the soft wet earth that made up the steep incline. Mindful of the rough terrain, she followed the broken trail Darien’s impromptu slide had left behind, coming to a stop near the bottom when she saw where Darien’s fall had ended.

  The imprint of her body was still visible in the mud and flattened vegetation, and for an instant Jessie swore she could smell sandalwood, Darien’s distinctive scent. It was her imagination, of course, but it propelled her into action.

  She quickly searched the surrounding area, expecting to find her battered and broken. But in the gray muted light, the only thing her eyes picked up was Darien’s badly dented helmet, with traces of blood visible on the shattered visor.

  “At least she’s still mobile,” Ben said, echoing the thoughts running through Jessie’s mind as he stepped up beside her.