Her Perfect Grave: A completely addictive mystery thriller full of action and adventure (A Reece Cannon Thriller Book 6)

by Paul Knox

  Osmin realized he was sweating badly when his palms slipped off his leather steering-wheel cover. There was something about this chase that didn’t feel right. He was used to being in control, being the hunter. But right now he was the hunted.

  The pickup came up from behind and tapped his small car, temporarily knocking it to the side. Osmin straightened it out.

  He whipped around another corner—but this street was entirely flooded. He screeched to a halt. Putting it in reverse, he backed up from the water and onto the street he had just come from. He attempted to take off in the opposite direction, but the pickup had already turned around, and it flew at him, slamming into the back of the car again, this time two or three times harder than the first.

  Osmin tried to go with it, to not completely lose control as his car spun around. But he began accelerating too soon. A lamppost suddenly came into view and there was no time to swerve.

  His car crashed into it and immediately came to a dead stop.

  * * *

  Reece watched from behind as Osmin’s car slammed into the lamppost, which was hit so hard it completely bent sideways to the ground.

  She jumped out of the pickup and readied her gun, running over. The crash had destroyed the entire front of his car. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Osmin had flown through the front windshield and his mangled body lay in a bloody mess on the street. She could see his chest chaotically rising and falling, hyperventilating.

  By the time she made it to him, the breathing had ceased. She kneeled over him feeling for a pulse, but found nothing.

  “Wake up, Osmin! You weren’t supposed to die!” Reece yelled in frustration. “Where is Duke!?”

  Only the sound of rain answered.

  Her resolve derailed. She closed her eyes and felt the water dripping down her eyelids and nose and tracing her cheeks. Her jaw clenched and teeth clamped.

  Duke could potentially be dead. All because he chased after her, because he wanted to be with her. If something happened to him…

  Get a grip.

  Reece’s eyes snapped open and she shoved her hands in Osmin’s pants pockets, finding his wallet and phone. There was only cash inside the wallet. She angrily threw it on the street and stood up, pocketing his phone and taking out hers.

  Reece dialed Sandy while jogging back to the pickup. The first people began emerging from houses nearby. She had to get out of there before the PNC showed up.

  Sandy answered with: “Reece, Konstantin found us.”

  “Are you with Chang and Mario?”

  “That I am.”

  “Where is Konstantin now?”

  “Behind this crappy rental I’m driving, chasing us through the streets with unmatched artillery. A little help would be greatly appreciated.”

  39

  REECE had one eye on the road and one eye on the cup holder. INSITE was open on her phone as she raced toward Sandy’s tracking beacon, now blinking only a street away. Sandy was also on the speakerphone, communicating about the chase with Reece.

  And then she caught sight of them. The car Konstantin drove was unmistakably suave, just like the i8 had been.

  “I see you,” she said aloud. “There’s an alley two blocks to your right. Lead him into the alley and back south, the opposite way you’re headed now. I’ll cut him off two streets down.”

  “I won’t stand much of a chance in the alley,” Sandy said. “Something could easily go wrong.”

  “I just need things to go right for one more minute.” Reece veered off and in the direction of the alley, down a side street perpendicular to it.

  “Turning now!” Sandy called, above the sound of squealing tires and the revving of a little engine.

  “How fast are you going?”

  “Almost forty MPH. That’s as fast as—”

  “Just keep your speed constant. And tell me the second you pass the first street. How close is Konstantin to you?”

  “About thirty feet behind, but gaining. He’s having a hard time in this alley, too.”

  Reece did a little calculation in her head. The distance between that first street he’d pass, and the one she was waiting on, was somewhere between seven hundred to nine hundred feet. At forty MPH, Sandy was traveling about fifty-nine feet per second. She had about twelve to fifteen seconds before he’d pass by.

  “Passing first street…now!” Sandy called.

  If Konstantin was twenty to thirty feet behind Sandy, he’d pass the alley half a second later. And with a three-second margin of error, there was a large chance she’d miss.

  But she had no time to think about it. Four seconds had passed. She began accelerating down the side street towards the alley. She recalculated. The blocks in this area seemed to be on the shorter side; she estimated Sandy would pass by in closer to thirteen or fourteen seconds.

  The pickup’s speedometer was a blur of numbers in Reece’s eyes. She didn’t want to go so fast she would seriously injure herself, but needed to go fast enough to stop the car chase. Ten seconds passed. She began counting.

  Three…

  Two…

  Suddenly Sandy and the rental flew by. Reece was right on schedule.

  One.

  BANG!

  Reece’s pickup nailed into Konstantin’s car, T-boning into the passenger side. His car crunched against the momentum of the pickup. Reece’s seatbelt went taut, keeping her from flying forward. The airbag deployed and slammed her in the face.

  Everything went black.

  * * *

  Reece came to, and judging by the airbag particulates still thick in the cab, she had only been knocked out for a few seconds. She did a mental check on her body. Fingers and toes worked. Arms and legs weren’t in pain.

  Her gun was on the floorboard, which she retrieved. Jumping out of the wreckage, she ran to the car.

  No one was inside.

  She pivoted left, and then right, swinging her gun in all directions. Konstantin was nowhere to be seen in this rain and darkness.

  Then headlights appeared, speeding toward her. The rental. Sandy jumped out and ran over.

  “He’s not here.” Reece shielded her eyes from the rain. “I need to call Shanahan. I have a plan.”

  40

  “IT DOESN’T LOOK like anybody is here,” Reece confirmed to the group.

  She pulled alongside the curb and shut the headlights off. The windows of the little house were dark. The front yard was soggy, and looked more like a pool than a yard.

  “I’ll check it out,” Sandy insisted.

  He stepped out of the rental and crept around the house, peering in the windows and disappearing in the back.

  The rain had stopped and the wind had completely died. The night was silent and everything seemed calm, almost eerie. Yet Reece sensed the truth. This was the eye of the hurricane. Deceptively peaceful.

  Sandy returned to the car and slipped inside. “This Airbnb idea might just work.”

  “Good,” Reece said. “It’s not booked again until next week. Now let’s go inside and dry off. I’ve got a phone call to make.”

  After the group broke into the vacant Airbnb, they found some towels in the bathroom and a wash machine and dryer. Mario bundled up in sheets while Sandy put his clothes in the washer.

  With a towel around her hair, Reece dialed Shanahan.

  “Got something?” he asked.

  “I do. It’s a phone that belongs to someone named Osmin. Kai Castro is in the contact list and I have his number. Can you trace his location through the network?”

  “Finally some headway!” Shanahan exclaimed. “I can trace him if his phone is on. Nice work, partner.”

  “Here it is…” Reece gave Shanahan the number.

  “Okay, tracing now. This might take a…wow. It’s done. This equipment is phenomenal. Let me overlay a map on these coordinates…” Reece heard Shanahan typing away at his keyboard. “It looks like Kai is in a warehouse-looking building not far from where you are now. Yo
u’ll find him about fifteen minutes deeper into the city. Here’s the address…”

  * * *

  True to Shanahan’s estimation, fifteen minutes later Reece pulled up to the building where Kai was. Sitting outside, she dialed Shanahan again.

  “It’s quiet,” Reece said. “No cars out front. Doesn’t appear to be any guards or surveillance. Is Kai still here?”

  “Searching now… He’s on the move. Right now he’s five minutes west of you and his distance is increasing—he’s driving away. Do you want the road he’s on?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to check inside this place for Duke. I’ll call you back.” Reece disconnected.

  Glancing up at the night sky, Reece could make out a faint glow of the moon, the first she’d seen of it. The overhead sky was still mildly cloudy, but the clouds were thin and scattered compared to earlier. Off in the distance the sky was black and ominous. The hurricane’s eye wouldn’t last much longer.

  As she jogged toward the building, Reece scoped the scene. The building had a chain-link fence which circled the place and at least fifteen feet of gravel on all sides. There were no cars in the neighboring buildings’ lots, and no one around. The building had zero windows.

  She scaled the fence and hopped down, running to the front bushes which provided a small amount of cover.

  The main front door was made of glass. From what she could tell, all the lights inside were off. The place looked completely dead. If anybody was there, they’d be in the back.

  A wrought-iron security door covered the glass. She tried it. Locked. Reece considered banging on it and trying to bluff her way in, but doubted the chances of that working.

  So she took out her pistol and quickly shot through the iron door’s two locks. The sound of her gun echoed through the quiet surroundings. For the sake of time, she didn’t even try the glass door. She just blasted the lock. The bullets hit the tempered glass and it completely shattered into small pebbles. She kicked the door open and rushed inside.

  The inside of the building was like any commercial business. A front desk, a few chairs, and a hallway to the back.

  Suddenly a light shone from down the hall and she heard the sound of a single individual’s footsteps running toward her. She grabbed a glass paperweight about the size of a softball from the desk and crouched beside it.

  “Who’s there?” came a strident voice in Spanish. “What the hell!?” he called out after entering the front area.

  As he rounded the front desk toward the door, she hurled the solid paperweight. It caught him by surprise, bouncing off the side of his face. “Ughn!” he grunted, immediately collapsing to the floor.

  Reece dashed over and tore the gun from his rubbery grip. “How many more are here?”

  The man didn’t answer. He just howled in pain while clutching his face.

  Reece listened. There were no more footsteps. No talking. No more lights turning on.

  “Where’s Duke!?” she yelled.

  The man rolled to his side, moaning in pain. She kicked him in the ribs. “Where is he!?”

  “In the back. Oah… Oah…” he groaned.

  “Get up and show me!” she commanded.

  “I can’t,” he cried.

  Reece fired a warning shot into the ground a foot away from his head. “Now!”

  He got to his knees clumsily, barely opening the only good eye he had left. He stumbled toward the back. Reece followed.

  A few doors down she found Duke.

  His hands and feet were bound and he was lying on the cold concrete ground. His body was as silent and still as the hurricane’s eye, his hair matted in blood. His cheeks were puffy and bruised, and his eyelids were shut.

  A wall of emotion slammed Reece as she rushed to him, falling beside him. “They hurt you…” She gently took ahold of his shoulders. “Please, Duke…”

  Then a small groan escaped from Duke’s bloody lips. His eyes slowly fluttered open. “Reece…I knew you would come for me.” Tears began to fall down his face and his body spasmed.

  “Duke, I would never have stopped looking for you.” Reece stroked Duke’s hair and rubbed his back. She untied the ropes around his wrists and ankles.

  Then she used those same ropes to tie up the guard.

  Duke spoke slowly, between labored breaths. “I told him about his brothers and Konstantin. And he went ballistic on me. Blamed me…and you, I think.

  Reece fought down the internal rage that began exploding through her, silently promising herself that Kai would answer for his crimes. She grappled with the urge to kill the guard right there.

  Be strong, be strong, she recited internally.

  “C’mon,” she whispered to Duke, “we have to get out of here. Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”

  With Reece’s help, Duke got to his feet. He did a double take at the guard’s face, then strained his neck to look away. He leaned on Reece as she helped him out of the building.

  When they emerged through the front entrance, a blast of wind almost knocked them over. The once peaceful eye had passed, and the storm’s wall was moving toward them with ferocity.

  They made it to the car and Reece helped Duke get strapped in. Before she shut the passenger door, she placed her hands on his face, lightly tracing under his jawline.

  He squinted up at her, smiling with his twisted, beat-up expression. He reached out, but his arm didn’t want to move far. His hand settled for the back of her thigh.

  “No Jodas,” he whispered, reading her shirt. “Doesn’t that translate as no fu—?”

  “Shh,” Reece ordered. “It means I don’t mess around.”

  Then she leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

  “Ow,” he mumbled with a silly grin. “Kissing has never hurt so much.”

  “Want to do it again?” Reece asked.

  “Yes.”

  Outside, the winds began to howl and the storm picked up stronger than it had before. A large, top-heavy tree across the street uprooted and crashed to the asphalt. Rain pounded on the windshield like a thousand tiny hammers, and water flowed down the street like a shallow river. Thunder crashed and rolled.

  And then all the streetlights in the surrounding area flipped off and the entire city went dark.

  41

  KONSTANTIN threw back a shot of vodka. Cigarette smoke curled around him. The electricity was out across the city, but the storm had now begun to die down. Candles lit up the nearby counters and tables.

  The bartender set another shot glass down and it clunked against the wood. Konstantin glanced at the time. 3:59 AM.

  “What time do you close?” he asked.

  “When people stop paying,” came the response.

  Rolling the little glass between his fingers, Konstantin thought about things. He had now lost two cars to Reece Cannon. He had never lost a car in his life, and now two in two days.

  Yunru knows more than he’s telling me. If he’s such a big shot, why doesn’t he himself come down here to kill the Cannons?

  But Konstantin knew why. Yunru had pitted Kai and Konstantin against each other. Against the two Cannons. And set up an inevitable fight for the gold tablets.

  The more Konstantin mulled everything over in his head, the more he realized what was going on. Yunru wants the gold, too. And he was playing everyone, waiting until they were all dead, their bodies draped over eight tons of gold for the taking. Then he would swoop in and claim the treasure for himself. And he would have ultimate power.

  Konstantin took the second shot. The liquid burned on its way down, fueling his anger. He was determined to have the final say, to be the most powerful dragon.

  A light breeze blew inside, caressing the back of Konstantin’s neck as a newcomer entered Jaguar Morado through the back door. The candle flames flickered. The place went silent and all the patrons seemed to be holding their breath.

  Konstantin smiled as something heavy and cold pressed into the back of his head. He knew what it
was. But his nerves were calm. He had planned for this, had wanted it.

  The bartender backed away, shaking his head no.

  “Look away,” came the voice of Kai Castro toward the bartender.

  The bartender did as he was told and walked to the other end of the bar.

  “You come into my town, kill my brothers, and sit at my bar drinking my vodka? Do you think I’m merciful enough to end your life—with a single bullet? On your knees, Russian!”

  “It’s a lie,” Konstantin said carefully. “She killed your brothers. Do you believe the word of your enemy? Why would I kill my comrades?” Konstantin took a chance and slowly turned his head around to face Kai. “I came here to speak with my dragon family.”

  “Speak, Russian. You have thirty seconds before I empty the vodka from your stomach.”

  “Yunru has been in contact with you, yes?” Konstantin asked.

  “Twenty-five seconds.”

  “He has enlisted my services as well, and it seems he likes to keep secrets.”

  Kai cocked his head. His grip around the gun relaxed. “I’m listening.”

  Konstantin readied the lies in his mind. So far, so good. Apparently Kai hadn’t confirmed how his brothers really died. And as long as Kai didn’t know the Sandman had assaulted him at the jewelry shop, more lies should seal the deal.

  Yunru was the perfect scapegoat.

  Konstantin continued. “I heard there was a scuffle here and one of your associates was chased out. How do you think Reece found this place?”

  “Why would Yunru give her my information?”

  “Yunru’s secret contact told her. Who knows Yunru’s real motivations?—but I do. He wants the gold tablets. The gold you have been searching for all these years, the gold in your home country. All I want…” Konstantin turned his eyes back to his empty shot glass. He picked it up and let it drop on the floor, breaking into shards. “…is two dead Cannons. Can we work together on this?”

  “Bartender,” Kai yelled, “bring this man another vodka, and a chimère for myself.”