She put her head in the water and this time, she faced her greatest fright. Far away from them and to the right were two men in scuba gear. The water was so clear, she figured they were five hundred yards away, but swimming so hard, they were quickly closing the distance between them. In their hands were harpoon guns. When she saw one of the men turn to the other and point at them, she knew they had been spotted.
She lifted her head. “Two men. To your right. Harpoons. Coming straight at us. Get over here. We paddle from the left-side of the boat.”
He looked down, saw them and swam closer to her, lifting himself so his mouth was just above the surface. “They’re either going to shoot us or the boat. The harpoons will sink the boat. We need to get in it now and get out of here. There’s no choice.”
She knew he was right. Together, they scrambled low into the boat and when they did, another harpoon crashed through the hut and soared over their heads.
Carmen rushed to the front. This boat was no ordinary boat. It was sophisticated and cost her a fortune. A turn of a key would start the engine. But the moment she turned it, the dual engines were so powerful, all would hear them. She looked at Alex, who was leaning low against the side of the boat. “Hurry,” he said.
Hunching down as low as she could, she turned the key, the engines roared to life and suddenly the air behind them became alive with harpoons and gunfire.
She sped away.
Tried to speed away.
Below them, one of the men shot a harpoon. It smashed through the right side of the boat, but instead of shooting clear through to the other side, the harpoon sank into Alex’s thigh and pinned him to the boat. She looked over at him in horror and saw his face twisted in pain while scores of harpoons rained down on them, some glancing off the boat, most plunging into the water. “Go!” he said through gritted teeth. “Move before they shoot again!”
Without thinking of the consequences or what might happen to Alex given the dire situation of his wound, she forced herself to focus and roared away as the onslaught continued.
It was a nightmare. She could hear glass breaking behind her and then an explosion as one of the harpoons connected with the propane tank in the kitchen area.
She looked over her shoulder and saw her beloved hut alive and thrashing with flames. She’d spent so many years here and now it was gone. She pressed harder on the throttle and moved faster until they presumably were out of reach. She sped left and rounded into an inlet, while warm water leached around her feet. Her boat was going to sink. She pressed the throttle harder and moved into the inlet, which was miles from her hut and where some of the locals lived. She knew one of the families here. They could help them.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Can you see them?”
Silence.
She looked over her shoulder and saw that Alex’s eyes were closed and that he was oddly pale. She looked down at the bottom of the boat and saw that the warm water she thought she was standing in actually was his blood. The harpoon and his leg had created something of a plug, sealing off the water from the boat but not the blood from Alex’s leg. The harpoon had struck an artery. He was bleeding out.
Quickly, she removed her bikini bottom and tied it tight just above the wound. She patted his face and asked him to speak to her. Nothing. She gently shook him and asked him to say something. Nothing. She checked for a pulse. Nothing.
Panic rose within her. He had come to mean everything to her. She couldn’t lose him. It wasn’t right. She was in love with him. “Don’t leave me,” she said, shaking him harder. “Please don’t leave me. Please stay.”
She needed to administer CPR, but she couldn’t move him onto his back because of how the harpoon had pinned him to the boat. She’d need to improvise.
She pressed her ear to his chest and heard nothing. She checked to see if he was breathing, but he wasn’t. Immediately, she wrapped her arm around his back for support and slammed her fist against his chest in an effort to get his heart beating again. She pressed her mouth against his cool lips and forced air into his lungs, but there was no response. Again, she slammed her fist against his chest and gave him more air. She repeated the procedure four times before she felt for a pulse. But there wasn’t one.
He was dead.
She looked up at the distant shoreline and could see nothing but smoke rising into the air above a hood of trees. She looked down at Alex and everything within her rejected what she saw. She found a towel at the rear of the boat and placed it behind his head to make him comfortable. When she touched his cheek with the back of her hand and bent down to kiss him a final time on the lips, she noticed that her whole body was trembling with grief and rage. She wanted to go back and kill them all for what they’d done to him, but it would be suicide if she did so.
She stepped back into the driver’s seat and sat there. She felt weightless, hopeless, useless. She looked out at the ocean as the boat rocked and swayed. Water lapped against the side of it. It was soothing, almost hypnotic. She gave into it. Time passed. The sun moved across the sky. She only came around when something nudged against the boat. Pushed it. She looked around her as something whipped about in the water, startling her into focus. She looked down at the water and saw that it was boiling. Dozens of sharks were teeming around the boat, probably drawn by Alex’s blood, which likely was leaking into the water.
She had to collect herself. She needed to save herself. He’d be furious with her if she didn’t do so.
Think.
The family she knew within the inlet could help her. Contacts in the States could send her a new passport. To leave here, she’d need to change her identity, but those matters could be worked out abroad.
When her passport came, so would supplies to make her look like her new photo. She’d been in this situation before, but never quite like this. Never in love. She wanted to scream into the sun, but instinct kept her silent. She couldn’t give away her location. She’d be damned if they killed each of them.
She started the boat again and, with Alex at her back, she crept around the inlet, her heart turning to ice as she moved forward through the deep. A feast of sharks slapped their tails against the boat, but she ignored them and kept her eyes on the horizon. Help was ahead. Small huts were behind the swaying palms. She’d seek out her friends and then she’d seek out her enemies.
She’d have her revenge.
They’d pay for what they did.
# # #
FROM MANHATTAN WITH REVENGE
CARMEN’S R
EVENGE
CHAPTER ONE
She was being followed. She was aware of it. And she was prepared to act when they acted.
If they have a chance.
It was nighttime in Manhattan. Past eleven. Earlier, she tried to sleep, but since sleep no longer came as easily as it used to, she was walking down Fifth because outside, the city offered distractions she needed to lean on right now.
The Park was next to her. The cool fall breeze carried with it the smells of the city—exhaust from the cabs darting past her to her left, the rot of damp foliage off to her right, but also a crispness that hadn’t been in the mix when she was here three weeks ago.
Winter was coming. It was right at her back, not unlike the sound of those shoes keeping time with her as she strolled down the sidewalk.
Carmen Gragera listened to those shoes. She first became aware of them when she turned onto Fifth from Eighty-First Street, where she kept an apartment. At some point, she knew they’d find her, especially since she was back in the city.
What they didn’t know is that she also had come back for them.
She returned to Manhattan three days ago, after burying her fellow assassin and lover, Alex Williams, in Bora Bora, where he was murdered while they were on vacation. There, they were making plans to leave behind their professional lives as assassins so they could be together in a tropical paradise that offered a measure of
security due to the sheer remoteness the island provided.
But with his murder and the burning down of her longtime home, it proved a costly assumption. For reasons that still were unclear to her, the syndicate she and Alex worked for killed Alex and tried to kill her. She managed to escape, but now they were after her.
After all, the sound of those shoes didn’t lie.
She could tell by the definitive strike of the footfalls that they belonged to a man. When would he act? She didn’t know, but in her coat pocket was her Glock, her hand was wrapped around it and she’d use it if necessary.
Unless he shot her in the back, which was possible though it would be stupid on his part given that they were on Fifth, which was alive with traffic.
She could feel him behind her. The footsteps were coming closer. She kept her pace steady, her body loose. Fifty feet. Forty. Closing the gap and doing so in such a way that was so obvious, it was amateurish. Why was he giving himself away like this?
He was probably twenty feet away from her when she approached Seventy-Seventh Street. The traffic light was red and there were a line of cabs waiting for the light to change. Grab one? Plenty were empty. But if the light didn’t change quickly, he might be brazen enough to approach the cab and shoot her because otherwise, he would have missed his chance and disappoint whomever hired him.
Best to move on.
She looked as far down the sidewalk as she could and saw others coming toward her. The area was well-lit, just bright enough to quell a murder, unless the man following her was determined to take her out. Again, possible but again, stupid. Still, who knew what his orders were? Who knew if he was just young and naive enough to believe he could pull this off? If he was, she was ready for it.
In fact, when the light turned green and traffic roared to life, she decided she’d had enough. She stopped and faced him.
He also stopped. Their eyes met. He wasn’t the young man she was expecting. Instead, he looked somewhere in his late thirties. Tall. Brown hair. Good looking. Wearing a knee-length black coat to keep out the cold and also to better conceal whatever he was carrying.
“Carmen Gragera?” he asked.
She watched his hands. Said nothing. A couple brushed past them, the woman’s head on the man’s shoulder. Carmen could smell the flowery perfume the woman left in her wake.
“You and I should talk,” he said. “I’m a friend of Alex Williams.”
“That’s your first mistake,” she said. “Alex didn’t have any friends.”
His brow furrowed. “What gives you that idea?”
“Maybe you meant to say you were colleagues?”
“That’s not what I meant to say. I was his friend. Since childhood.”
“Then you know Alex well. Where did he grow up?”
“Indianapolis.”
Anyone could know that, but only those closest to Alex would know what she was about to ask. During their last two weeks together, when they spoke freely about their private lives, he brought up the one topic that haunted him most. It was something he said he’d never be able to live down. Not with himself, not with his family. “What was Alex’s biggest regret?”
“There were a few things.”
“Why not take a shot at one of them?”
“Should I start with his family?”
“If you want.”
“OK, so you want the obvious one. Alex regretted not being there for his father’s death. He had the opportunity to catch a flight and spend some time with him, but instead he chose to take another job. He thought his father had more time. He was wrong. He died while Alex was away. Alex regretted that and when he asked me if I agreed that he made a mistake, I told him that he did. He knew better. He should have been there.”
It was the correct answer. He took a step closer and she took a step back. Watch his hands.
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Even if you were, I’d kill you first.”
“I’m here to help you.”
“Help me with what?”
“I work for Katzev.” He raised his eyebrows as if in bemusement. “Strike that. I used to work for Katzev. Now, he wants me dead just like he wants you dead. If we talk frankly, we might be able to help each other. I think that would be a smart idea.”
“How do I know you’re not working for him now?”
“You don’t.”
“Well, there’s a balm of reassurance. Take your hands out of your pockets.”
He did.
“Who are you?”
He looked around him. “We should get a cab,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know inside. Right now, we’re too exposed.”
“Can’t handle it?”
“After what happened last night, I’ll admit I’m on edge.”
“What happened last night?”
“They came after me. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“I wonder how lucky I am that you are?”
He didn’t answer.
“How did you find me?”
“Do you want the 101 version, Carmen? I used my contacts. You were seen at LaGuardia. You were followed to your apartment on Fifth and Eighty-First. Done.”
“Bullshit. I wasn’t followed.”
“Sorry, but you were.”
“Nobody followed me. I would have known.”
“Apparently, you didn’t, because you were followed, just as you and Alex were followed to Bora Bora.” He paused. “Which you also knew about. Right?”
Obviously, she didn’t know. Point taken.
“I received a call from Alex not long before his death. It was just before you went to the island. He told me he was in love with you, which concerned me. You have a reputation for being arrogant. I told him to stay away from you.”
“I wish he had. He’d be alive now.”
“We don’t know that. All we know is that Alex and you were targeted, and now so am I. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then maybe we should help each other figure it out before each of us winds up dead.”
“What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer.
She sighed. “What do you want me to call you?”
“Jake.”
“Jake?”
“You got something better?”
“I’m Carmen Gragera,” she said. “But you already know that. We’ll call you Jake for now. When you’re comfortable telling me the truth and that your name is probably Hamlisch, or worse, we’ll likely be on better terms. As for now, you’re Jake.”
She nodded at the street. “So, Jake, let’s grab that cab so you can tell me everything you think I need to know. I’m eager to hear.”
CHA
PTER TWO
In the cab, they told the driver they were new to the city and that they just wanted to drive around and enjoy the night. The driver, a middle-aged woman with dark hair pulled back in a thick braid, was happy to oblige.
“I’ll give you the full show,” she said.
“Perfect,” Carmen said. “Would you mind a bit of music?”
“What type?”
“Dance?”
“You got it.”
“Thanks.”
The driver turned up the volume and they drove down Fifth. The thump, thump, thump of the driving dance beat was just loud enough to conceal their voices. It would be awhile before she trusted this Jake person, but his hands had yet to dip back into his pockets and he was correct about Alex’s chief regret. Her hand was still around her gun. She was ready to act if she thought for a moment that he was a shill. Still, she had to give him a chance because if he was legit, he might have information she could use.
“How long have you worked for the syndicate?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“Three years.”
“How many jobs?”
“A dozen? Fifteen?”
“You don’t know exactly?”
“I work for a few different organizations.”
“Who doesn’t? Over the past seven years, I’ve done twenty-two jobs for them. So, I’ll ask again. How many.”
He thought for a moment. “After last week, fourteen.”
“Who was last week?”
“There were two. Each a board member at Light Corp.”
“How’d you do it?”
“I was told by Katzev to shoot each in the head.”
As far as Carmen was concerned, before his death, Jean-Georges Laurent was the former unofficial head of a syndicate she knew very little about, which is how they wanted it. He tried to trick her and Alex into killing each other, but it didn’t work. They found out about it, which was bad luck for Laurent, who was tracked down and took their bullets in his face instead.
“Have you ever met Katzev?”
“Never. You?”
She shook her head. While Laurent had been her chief contact at the syndicate, she often worked directly with the person she assumed was second in charge—Katzev. With Laurent dead, Carmen had to assume that Katzev now was leading the syndicate. “We’ve only spoken via encrypted emails and satellite cell phones, each untraceable. And I doubt his name is Katzev.”
“Maybe it’s Hamlisch.”
Carmen ignored the joke. She didn’t know this man and she certainly didn’t know if she could trust him. She was willing to listen to what he had to say, but not without her gun trained on him. “What happened last night?”
“Two men came after me.”
“Details?”
“I was having dinner under the Gowanus in Brooklyn. I’ve gone to the same restaurant for years. It’s a hole in the wall, but I like it there because the food is OK, it sits on a corner, and it’s obscure. It blends in on a street filled with porn shops and similar low-rent joints.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“For people like us, it is.”
“I was being serious.”
“The layout is good,” he said. “You can sit at the rear of the restaurant, facing the front glass door while keeping an eye on it. I was keeping my eye on it. Two men walked past the door twice during the hour I was sitting there. I recognized one of them. I did a job with him once for Katzev. I knew what happened to you and to Alex, so I saw what was coming. I ordered another coffee and waited for night to fall. When it was dark, I approached one of the owners. He knows me as a regular. I asked if there was another way out. Without missing a beat, he took me to a side door. No questions asked. The door led to a side street. With the exception of some transients, it’s kind of dead down there, which is another reason I like it. When I stepped outside, the man I didn’t recognize was on the sidewalk having a cigarette. He was startled to see me, but before he could drop the cigarette and reach for his gun, I had my arms around him and crushed his chest. It was quick. I lowered him to the pavement so he was leaning against a car. He didn’t look dead so much as he looked passed out. The owner watched all of it. When I finished, I looked over at him and he just sort of shrugged and said, ‘Coffee?’ I declined.”
From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set Page 7
