The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  31

  Ellory disappeared beneath the waves.

  I rushed through the snow toward the river’s edge as Alexei ran for the bridge downstream. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a semi approaching, but my attention was on Ellory, who bobbed to the surface gasping for breath, flailing his arms. Then the water swallowed him again.

  Go, go!

  I fought my way through the trees, through the thick snow, scrambling to stay ahead of him, all the while looking for a branch I could use to fish him out.

  Nothing.

  The angry current was not going to bring him closer to shore.

  You have to He surfaced again, his eyes wide with terror. He sputtered for air, gave a strangled call for help.

  “I’m coming!” I yelled.

  He went under again. There was no other choice. None.

  I took a deep breath, braced myself, and leaped into the river.

  Shock.

  Frozen knives stabbed at me everywhere. The current immediately cut my feet out from under me, tugged me under. Breath escaped me.

  I strained for the surface, instinctively gulped for air, swallowed water.

  Planting my feet on the bottom, I pushed off and splashed to the surface, spit out the water. I struggled for breath, my chest clutched tight from the cold. Paralyzing. Terrifying. I couldn’t see Ellory and guessed the current had almost certainly taken him past me by now. I swam forward to catch up with him.

  The bank of ice was less than twenty meters away.

  I groped through the water, trying to find him, shouting his name. Desperately I pressed off a rock with my left foot, but the rock spun, trapping my ankle. The current dragged me forward, twisting my ankle free, sending a sharp streak of pain up my leg. I lost my footing and fell forward, sweeping my hands through the swirling water, trying to find an arm, a leg, Ellory’s jacket, anything, but came up empty.

  Every second it was harder to breathe, harder to move, as my body tried to conserve heat by sending blood to my vital organs-my heart, my lungs. The things that matter most. Fingers, toes, limbs-all expendable. But not the heart. Not the lungs. Survival trumps everything.

  But I wouldn’t survive unless I could move; unless I could get out of the river.

  Once again I found my footing, and pain shot up my leg as I inadvertently put pressure on my injured ankle-sprained, maybe broken. But none of that mattered. I launched myself downstream again, daring to believe I’d find Ellory.

  Ten meters from the ice.

  I searched the water.

  Nothing.

  Get out, Pat, you’re not gonna make it!

  I grabbed a breath and dove under one last time, swam into deeper water, and felt something bump against my leg.

  I thrust my hand down.

  Snagged Ellory’s armpit.

  Kicking hard and stroking with my free hand, I went for the surface. My head broke through the water, and I drew in a desperate, uncontrolled breath.

  The current tried to yank Ellory from me, but I wrapped my arm tight around him and squeezed. Scissors-kicked toward shore.

  Five meters to the ice.

  But at least that far from shore.

  Options: a few branches stretched across the water, but they were still out of reach. A root system slithered out from the base of a tree and disappeared into the ice, but I could only grab its roots if I were under the ice.

  Get out, you have to get out!

  Muscles weak. Failing.

  A dark and terrible thought grabbed me: I was not going to be able to save Bryan Ellory.

  Two lives lost.

  Two or one I fought the current, trying to Two meters.

  Decide!

  Now!

  The edge looks thick.

  Thick enough.

  It’ll hold.

  One meter.

  Clinging to Ellory, I threw up my free hand, took a deep breath, and then ducked my head to avoid smashing my face into the edge of the ice.

  And I went under.

  32

  What happened next seemed to happen all at once and yet in slow motion, frame by frame, time condensing in on itself. Collapsing.

  Expanding.

  My forearm slammed into the edge of the ice as the current tugged at me; my arm slid down the ice to my hand, just as I’d hoped, and I was able to clutch the lip of the ice.

  Don’t break, please don’t break!

  The ice broke.

  The current swept me farther under, but I snagged one of the roots, clenching it with finger-strength earned from years of rock climbing.

  But it was moss-covered and slippery and I wouldn’t be able to hold on for long.

  Oxygen escaping me, I strained to pull toward freedom, but with Ellory’s weight and the force of the current I couldn’t do it. I’d never be able to get him to the surface.

  No!

  Dark water.

  Death.

  The real.

  Two lives or one.

  I let out my last gulp of air.

  Please no!

  I cried out in my heart, God, don’t let him die. Please don’t let him die!

  But no help came.

  There was nothing else to do.

  I let go of Bryan Ellory.

  The river took him from me, and I threw my other arm up so I could cling to the root with both hands.

  No air in my lungs.

  You let him go, Pat.

  You let him die.

  As quickly as I could, I worked my way up the root system, hand-over-hand, until finally, gaining leverage, I managed to grasp the edge of the ice. This time it held. One more tug and I was able to slide my elbow up, over the lip of ice, allowing me to get my mouth to the surface.

  Quick breaths.

  Life.

  I breathed, breathed, breathed, both numb and weak, and realized I wasn’t shivering-a bad sign. My body was already shutting down. I had to get to shore. Now.

  I twisted so I could keep my mouth above the surface. Then, with one arm hooked over the ice, I slid my other hand along the ice’s edge to pull my way toward the branches jutting out from shore.

  It took all my strength to keep my head above the surface.

  Though my body was numb and cold, somehow my left ankle still seared with pain. I swung my other leg down, planted my foot against one of the roots, and stretched for a large branch hanging above me.

  But as I did, the ice cracked beneath my weight.

  Lunging for a closer branch, I caught hold of it.

  It sagged and dropped clumps of snow on my head and all around me in the water, but it did not break.

  Thank God, it did not break.

  One hand at a time I pulled my way toward shore.

  You let Ellory go.

  You let him die.

  Finally, the river was shallow enough to stand, but I was too fatigued to do it; I crawled ashore, the wind-whipped snow lashing my face, the arctic cold immediately making its way through my drenched clothes.

  Backup, they’re coming.

  No, not without a GPS lock they’re not.

  My frozen fingers felt useless, but I fumbled through my pocket in search of my phone, only to remember that I’d given it to Sean before I took off on his snowmobile.

  Thoughts blurry.

  Lost in a fog.

  I tried to stand but couldn’t even push myself to my knees. No shivering meant my pulmonary system was bypassing my limbs to keep my core warm enough to survive.

  But it was failing.

  I collapsed, able only to draw in shallow, quick breaths.

  Then I felt my stomach clench, and I vomited a mouthful of water.

  As best I could, I dried my face with my gloved hands to forestall frostbite. My thoughts bumped into each other, piled, buried themselves beneath the moment. I was both aware of where I was, and not aware, all the world unraveling like a thin, warped dream.

  You let him go.

  White merged with black, then somehow
blurred with the pain riding up my leg.

  Alexei got away. You let him get away.

  And Ellory is dead.

  Grief struck me, but so did the cold, and it seemed to be a living thing with a will and a goal-to swiftly and resolutely take my life.

  I fought off the dawning realization, but it was stark and undeniable: unless I could get dried off, warmed up, I had only minutes to live.

  Clouds and snow and water and death.

  The driving snow was letting up, at least for the moment, and I scanned the area, didn’t see Alexei anywhere. My breathing became rapid, shallow, quick, quick, quick, and then the world turned into a sea of white.

  One last time I tried to stand, but couldn’t. Dropping to the snow, I was vaguely aware of the river snaking along beside me, a stretch of white marred with a gash of black where the water refused to freeze. The water that’d taken Ellory beneath the ice.

  He’s dead.

  And you let it happen.

  I looked toward the bridge and saw that the semi had pulled to a stop.

  The world became dim in a sweep of gray, then the moment enveloped me and became threaded with images of winter trails winding through a forest-the snow cruelly dotted with the blood of a mother and her four-year-old daughter.

  Images.

  A dream.

  Of dark water rushing through the trees and flooding the trail, carrying the body of Bryan Ellory, dead and bloated, toward me. I’m up to my chest in the waves, and as I try to move away, he bumps into me, his arms wrap around me, and his flaccid lips press against my cheek in a cold, cruel kiss.

  And then, all is black.

  33

  Alexei would have preferred letting the truck driver live, but when the man pulled a compact 9mm Beretta while he was taking possession of the semi, Alexei was forced to disarm him and, as he resisted physically, to deliver an immobilizing jab to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe.

  One strike was all it took.

  The man fell to the ground, gasped, and clutched at his throat. Alexei turned away, heard soft garbling behind him, then thankfully, before long, it was over. Just a brief, weak struggle against the inevitable. A quick and quiet transition.

  Returning to the body, Alexei saw that the man wore a wedding ring, and he hoped that there would only be a wife mourning his passing-that no children would now be growing up without a father.

  In order to slow down the discovery of the missing truck, Alexei carried the driver’s body to the edge of the bridge near the shore. There was no open water here, but he tipped the body over the guardrail, sending it smacking onto a snowbank beside the river far below. Within minutes the falling snow would cover the corpse and, looking like just another mound of snow on the riverbank, it would be weeks, maybe months, before anyone would find him.

  He returned to the still-idling semi.

  Repositioning the mirrors, he saw a photo on the dashboard-the driver standing beside a slightly obese woman and a dark-haired boy of about seven or eight. All were smiling. A family.

  He flipped the picture down so that he wouldn’t have to look at it, then glanced toward the river where he’d thrown the deputy in.

  Through the blizzard he could just barely make out a body on shore. The clothes told him it was the federal agent.

  But there was only one body, which meant that the agent-the one Ellory had, under slight coercion, informed him was named Bowers-had failed to save the deputy.

  Alexei saw that Bowers lay motionless. If he wasn’t dead already, in this weather it wouldn’t be long at all before death took him.

  Just a brief, weak struggle against the inevitable.

  A quick and quiet transition.

  Alexei gripped the steering wheel.

  Paused.

  It was impressive that this agent had tried to save Ellory, had actually jumped into the water to go after him. Not many people would do that, especially with an ice floe just downstream.

  And now he was going to die for his courage, if he hadn’t already.

  Alexei’s eyes found the photo he’d tipped upside down. He had a job to do, and there would always be casualties and consequences in this line of work, yes, of course, but he’d killed two people in the last five minutes, and that was more than enough.

  A federal agent brave enough to rush into an icy river to save a drowning man deserved to live.

  Alexei pulled out his cell.

  For a moment he watched the snow pelt the windshield and waited to see if Bowers was moving.

  He was not.

  Alexei made his decision, tapped in 911, and told the dispatcher the location of the agent.

  He found a tarp in the back of the cab, took it to the river, and wrapped it snugly around Bowers’s body to at least afford him some protection from the wind. Then he carried him closer to the bridge, and jammed a tall stick into the snow beside him so EMS would be able to find the agent if the snow covered him before they arrived.

  It might not be enough, but it was something.

  Then he returned to the vehicle, released the air brakes, and took to the road to put some distance between himself and the river.

  It was time to find out who was really leading Eco-Tech, and what exactly they were up to.

  Cell phone in hand, he punched in Valkyrie’s number and access code.

  34

  Alexei waited twelve rings, but Valkyrie did not answer.

  He lowered the phone.

  Nothing about this felt right on any level.

  Maybe it’d all been a setup from the start, from that very first conversation with his mysterious employer last spring. But why? Just to make him look guilty for the death of a woman and her child? Could that be all? There had to be more.

  He’d never had any trouble with Valkyrie before.

  Yesterday, when Alexei had first heard about the Pickron murders, he’d tried to let the news of their deaths slide off him, tried not to let it distract him, but it’d crawled around in the back of his mind ever since. Bothering him.

  You do not kill children.

  And you do not kill women.

  Alexei had eliminated his share of targets over the years, but it was not in his nature to take the lives of those he felt the need to protect.

  And now as he thought about the woman and her daughter dying yesterday, a fresh gust of anger swept through him.

  You do not kill women.

  You do not.

  He remembered the day he found Tatiana in their apartment in Moscow.

  The argument they’d had earlier in the afternoon. Telling her that he never wanted to see her again. Words he didn’t mean. Words he would always regret.

  And then discovering her body.

  The bullet wound in her forehead.

  The blood still spreading out, soaking into the creamy white cotton sheets.

  His frantic and fruitless search for her killer.

  After his wife’s murder, Alexei had vowed that when he found the person who’d killed her, he would return the favor, but her killer’s passing would not be as quick as hers. At first Alexei would make that person beg for his life, but he was confident that there would come a time when the murderer would beg for the opposite. Alexei planned to make death the most desirable outcome of all, and then, to withhold that from his captive for as long as possible.

  And Alexei had skills. The process would go on for a while.

  But now, shaking those thoughts loose, he tried to direct his attention to the matters at hand.

  The wise move at this point would be to leave the area, but before he did that, he wanted some answers.

  He doubted that Valkyrie would have left the remaining $1,000,000 at the dead drop, and it didn’t look like he would be delivering the money to Eco-Tech after all.

  But he could put it to other use-if he could retrieve it.

  He phoned Nikolai Demidenko again and said, “I need whatever you can get me on this number.” He passed along the phone number a
nd the alphanumeric pass code for reaching Valkyrie. “Trust me when I tell you that if you can lead me to Valkyrie, I will make it worth your while.” He also told him the information he’d gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg the day before.

  “All right, my brother. I will find this Valkyrie for you. You have my word.”

  Alexei had an idea of where to go from here, but it meant switching vehicles and then returning to the house where he’d left his equipment-after picking up the remaining $1,000,000 from Valkyrie’s prearranged drop site.

  If it was even going to be there waiting for him at all.

  Tessa was having a hard time.

  The roads were a mess.

  She’d passed a small roadside motel about a half hour ago but had figured she should press on. Now, she wasn’t so sure that’d been a good idea.

  She didn’t even know where she was, but at this rate she guessed it would still be another couple hours to Woodborough, where she was gonna meet up with Patrick. To make matters worse, the rental car hadn’t been handling the cold or the roads very well, stalling out twice and not grabbing the pavement like it should. Three times in the last twenty minutes she’d slid precariously close to the ditch when she hit patches of ice.

  So, status report: in the middle of nowhere, not making good time on roads that were becoming more and more impassable.

  Brilliant.

  Though she wasn’t looking forward to his reaction, she decided she needed to call Patrick, tell him what was up. But when she tried his number, Sean answered.

  After a quick greeting she asked if she could talk with her stepdad.

  “He’s working on the case,” Sean said simply. “Where are you?”

  “I have no idea.” She explained her situation, that she was on her way and caught in the middle of the storm.

  “Did you get to Hayward yet?”

  All these little towns ran together in her mind. Besides, the snow was distracting and the visibility horrible. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “What kind of car are you driving?”

  Okay, odd question.

  “Some kind of Chevy sedan thing.”

  “All right, that’s all right. Are you good with gas?” She could sense an underlying urgency in his questions, though it seemed like he was trying his best to downplay it.