Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “I can’t let them get to me. You have no idea what they would do—What they’ve done. If you’d just given me the damned card while we were on the road, it wouldn’t have come to this. And then Willett showed up before I could just take it.”

  I watched Diggs, trying to figure out what was happening. Was Juarez talking to him? Was Jenny here yet? Did anyone have any clue where Kat was?

  “Just get me the memory card, Diggs,” my father said. His voice was cold now. Calculating. I tried to remember that part of him from my childhood. I couldn’t. “It’s in the bag, right?” He nodded in the direction of my backpack, now a sodden lump at the base of the pyramid. “Bring it to me.”

  “I don’t think so,” I heard Juarez say. I searched the clearing, trying to figure out where he was. He stepped out of the trees with a rifle held high, aimed straight for my father’s head. The fury in his eyes was terrifying. I was looking at a different man. “We keep the card. You let her go. There’s no other deal.”

  “I hope you’ll reconsider, Jackie,” Dad said. Juarez stiffened, tensing at the name.

  “And if I don’t?” he asked.

  “Then I’ll hurt her,” Dad said. I struggled against him, trying to get away. Every move I made just meant he held me tighter. “I’m sorry,” my father said. And he sounded it, this time. “It’s not what she deserves... You know that.”

  He dug his fingers in just below the entry wound in my side. Someone screamed, loud and long. It took a second before I realized it came from me. I fought to stay conscious. When my knees went out from under me this time, my father tightened his hold around my stomach. The pain became white light, pulsing through me in a blinding, endless fire.

  “Put the gun down, goddamn it,” Diggs shouted at Juarez. “Give him the card. What the hell does it matter now?” He went to the backpack and rooted through until he came up with the card. Juarez didn’t lower his rifle, though. And my father didn’t loosen his grip.

  When Diggs turned again, he’d gone deathly pale. “Please, Jack,” he said to Juarez.

  “Where were you in October, 2008?” Juarez asked my father. Dad was shaking hard against me, sweating. His gun hand stayed steady. He dug the barrel into my temple.

  “That wasn’t me, Jack,” Dad said. “I’m not the one you’re looking for. I can give them to you, though. I can lead you to the men who killed your wife. I can take you to the man who made it happen.” For the first time, Juarez wavered. “Just let me have the memory card.”

  Juarez looked at Diggs. He held up the memory card. “Please,” Diggs said. I’d never seen him so pale. So scared. “Let me give it to him. Whatever Adam did, Erin shouldn’t pay for it.”

  “I’m still right here,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like my own. The gray closed in. “Don’t talk about me like I’m already gone, for Christ’s sake.” I shifted, trying to force some strength into my legs. It didn’t work.

  Diggs took a cautious step toward us. He held the memory card like an offering. Juarez lowered his rifle, but his eyes remained hard, his body taut.

  When Diggs was no more than a couple of feet away, he paused. “You let her go—then you get the card,” he said to my father.

  “No,” Dad said. “Even exchange, on the count of three. One.”

  Diggs came closer. Dad loosened the hand at my side, getting ready to grab the card. The gun stayed at my temple, though.

  “Two,” Diggs said. He held out the card.

  My father held out his hand.

  Something rustled in the trees.

  I heard a voice, tinny and close.

  My father heard it, too:

  Someone shouting into the earwig in Diggs’ ear.

  Before we ever got to three, the rustling of trees got wilder, the tinny voices closer. My father froze.

  Diggs froze.

  Juarez lifted his rifle again.

  Dad’s hand came back around my middle, pulling me snug against him. He was warm and damp, his fingers stretched to my side all over again. It didn’t matter how much he hurt me this time, though.

  When Jenny stepped into the clearing, I could tell she didn’t give a rat’s ass about my pain.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  “Drop the gun, Adam,” Jenny said. Her face was purple, one eye swollen shut. She sounded calmer than anyone else in the whole damned place, though. Beside her was a man I didn’t know—a giant with a gun pointed at Juarez. Kat stood by the tree line. Cameron was beside her, two other men I didn’t know holding guns on them both.

  My father wavered, but he kept the gun to my head. I thought of holidays when I was little, on the island. Hikes along the shoreline, my hand in his.

  “I don’t care if I have to shoot through her to get to you,” Jenny said. “You know that. So, just let her go. And you, blondie—” She nodded to Diggs. “Take a step back. Put the memory card on the ground.”

  “You have to let Kat go,” I said.

  “I’ll let her go just as soon as I’ve sorted out this clusterfuck you’ve got going here,” Jenny said shortly. She came closer, her gun up. Pointed at my father. I heard a soft snick as she released the safety. “I’m not going to say it again, Adam. Back off. Let her go.”

  My father continued to hold onto me, pulling me tighter. I didn’t think he even knew he was doing it anymore. Pain roared. Grew teeth. Jenny took a step closer.

  “Now, Adam.”

  Dad’s hand relaxed just slightly around me. The pain remained, like it had been carved into the bone.

  He lowered his gun.

  Let me go.

  Without someone to hold me up, I fell to my knees. Diggs started to come toward me, but Jenny waved him off.

  “She’ll be fine,” she said shortly. “Stay where you are. Adam, put your gun on the ground. Slide it toward me.”

  This time, he didn’t hesitate. He crouched and set the gun in the mud. The memory card was there, too, in a little plastic baggy. I focused on that. Forced myself to my feet. I had the vague notion that I might somehow rally and grab the gun. And the memory card. And develop mad fighting skills and the healing powers of one of the X-Men, and take everyone down then and there.

  I got as far as standing up.

  Jenny got the gun and the memory card. I didn’t know where Monty and Carl were. Or Jamie. Juarez had lowered his rifle at sight of the Giant with the gun trained on him, but he looked pissed as hell. Poised to attack.

  But then, pretty much everyone did.

  “So, how do we run this?” Diggs asked Jenny. “You take the card. You take Adam. You kill Kat. Are you killing us, too?”

  Jenny frowned. She looked honestly annoyed. “I told you: We had a deal. The memory card for your lives. You lived up to your end of the bargain.”

  The Giant shifted. I caught Kat’s eye. She looked... not scared, really. Resigned. Her hands were tied behind her back, one of the men beside her holding tight to her arm.

  “Jenny,” the Giant said.

  “I know,” she said. Quiet. He was in charge, not her. She went to him with the memory card. I saw her look at Cameron—just a sideways glance. Between the pain and my vantage point, I couldn’t see much, but it seemed like something passed between them.

  I tensed.

  Jenny took another step. Diggs looked at me. “Wait,” he mouthed to me. I nodded. I didn’t see a lot of alternatives.

  The Giant held out his giant hand.

  Jenny set the memory card in it. Waited until his fingers closed over it.

  Then, faster than my mind could even follow in the dim light, her gun came up.

  She fired without taking the time to aim.

  Without hesitation.

  The air exploded in a hail of pink mist as the Giant hit the ground. Maybe a millisecond after, Cameron threw his elbow into his own captor’s gut. His hands, bound as far as I’d known, were suddenly around the man’s throat. Someone fired again. The man holding onto Kat went down. She backed away fast, headed for me. My father turned
and started to run.

  “Stop!” Juarez shouted. He fired a warning shot that barely missed Dad’s head. My entire body went tight.

  My father stopped, hands up.

  Meanwhile, Jenny pried the memory card from the Giant’s clenched fist. She still had her gun up. No one else was fighting, though—both men who’d been holding Kat and Cameron were now dead on the ground. Our entire party was still intact.

  Relatively speaking.

  I sank back to my knees, those gray edges closing in. Obliterating the picture around me.

  Kat was the one who caught me. “Just relax,” she said. “You’re all right.”

  “I know. I’m fine,” I agreed. When I put my hand to my stomach, it was wet. It wasn’t from the rain, I knew. Somewhere far off I saw Cameron say something to Jenny. She nodded. I expected her to leave. Instead, she stayed where she was. Cameron came close.

  “Is she all right?” he asked Kat.

  “She will be,” I said. All the third-person was starting to grate. Kat pushed my sopping hair back from my sopping head. “I’m glad you’re all right,” I said to her.

  “You too,” she said. She wiped at her eyes. Her hands were shaking. “Don’t pull this shit again.”

  “No problem. This is the last time I save your life. You’ve got my word.”

  Cameron looked back at Jenny. She stayed rooted where she was.

  “Katherine... Are you coming?” he asked.

  Kat looked at me again, then focused on Diggs. “Infection’s setting in. There’s a doctor in Melbourne—Reggie Bergen. He’ll take care of her. He won’t ask questions. Find him, and tell him I sent you.”

  Kat got up. Diggs pulled her into a hug before she could resist. “Take care of yourselves,” I heard her say.

  “You too,” Diggs said.

  She pushed him away and wiped her eyes again. Cameron raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded.

  When they ran away, disappearing into the jungle without a trace, no one tried to stop them. I just laid there, on the ground with Diggs beside me, staring at the sky. Everything sounded like it came from inside a tunnel.

  Kat and Cameron had barely left the scene when Monty raced down the path toward us, shouting something. When he saw me lying on the ground, he faltered.

  “What is it?” Juarez asked. He still had the gun on my father. I struggled to sit up and catch up to the rest of the scene, shifting my focus.

  “Willett—he’s on his way,” Monty said. “And it looks like this Project may have reinforcements, too. We need to move.”

  When I looked around, I saw my father watching me. I thought of Allie Tate. Had she known I was there, when she died? Had I tried to save her? I swallowed a fresh surge of fear. When I looked at my father, I saw something long past repair in his eyes.

  “You’re everything I ever wanted, baby. God saved me, when you came.”

  “We’ll try to buy you some time,” Juarez said to Diggs. “The plan’s still the same: You run. You’re not safe otherwise.”

  Using Diggs as a crutch, I forced myself to my feet. “And my father? What happens to him?”

  “I’m taking him,” Juarez said. His eyes were hard. Dad looked at me again. In the greenhouse on Payson Isle, he’d taught me about evergreens. Photosynthesis. The name of every constellation.

  Now, he smiled at me. I realized he was crying.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “How much time do we have?” Juarez asked Monty.

  “Not much,” he said firmly. “They’re headed our way. Maybe five, ten minutes. That’s best-case.”

  No one was even paying attention to my father, too busy mobilizing to get out of here. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, though. The way he watched me. The way he wept.

  Diggs took my arm, careful not to touch my side. “We have to go. Can you walk?”

  My father took something from his pocket—something small.

  It gleamed, silver in the moonlight. He took a step away from Juarez.

  The world slowed. The gray receded. Everything came into crystal-clear focus, suddenly: the overhang of jungle above; the smell of soil and trees, life and death; the feel of Diggs’ hand on my arm. The gun my father lifted to his head.

  I pushed myself forward, forcing Diggs away from me. Forcing everyone away.

  “No!” I shouted. The word came out raw.

  “Nothing happens the way we want it to, baby. Forget the dark spots. Live in the light.”

  I watched Dad swallow. Saw the way his face changed. He didn’t say a word. The gun came up. I watched him turn his back.

  I screamed.

  The gun went off.

  Epilogue - Diggs

  The beach stretched on for miles in both directions: golden sand, strong surf, the sun just coming up on the horizon. A brunette, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, ran flat out across the sand—arms pumping, legs strong. She was lean, her body lithe and corded with muscle, her eyes focused straight ahead.

  I felt a familiar pull, an ache that blew me sideways with its unexpected power. Nine months after her father shot himself in a remote Mexican jungle, the Solomon who shared my life and my bed seemed a different animal than the one I’d mentored in Littlehope more than a dozen years ago. She still smiled, she still laughed, she still drove me mad...

  But now, there was a piece of her that I couldn’t reach—a sorrow that she held locked up tight, refusing to let anyone near it. As though acknowledging that pain would make it bigger than she could manage.

  When she was finished trying to outrun her demons, Solomon flopped down on the sand and stared out at the sea. I waited a few minutes, then went to her. I sat down just behind her. She leaned back against me, her back damp with sweat.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  It was two days till Christmas. We were living in a ramshackle cabin on the shore of northern Australia, though, so it was tough to tell.

  “Maybe we could give Jamie a call,” I said. “You’re overdue for a chat with Einstein.”

  “We shouldn’t risk it,” she said. “Last time...”

  Last time was three months ago. A day after our call, we got word from a friend that two suspicious-looking men were asking about us at the local airport. We were on the move again within the hour.

  “If we’re more careful, it might be okay,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s all right. I thought we might try to reach Kat, though.”

  “Okay,” I said, surprised. “Sure.”

  We didn’t know where Kat was, but Cameron had left us with instructions for how to reach her when we hit Australia. It was an intricate process involving Craigslist and code words, and we’d only used it twice. The first time was when we’d first arrived here, when Solomon was still healing. Still so deeply in shock over what had happened to her father, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get her back again. I was the one who reached out to Kat that time.

  One phone call, which quickly escalated to a shouting match between the two women, was all it took to pull Solomon back from the edge.

  The second time had been Sol’s idea: A birthday call, for no other reason than to say hello. Kat had seemed as baffled as I was. Not displeased, necessarily... just baffled. During the call, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell us if Cameron was with her, or why Jenny had suddenly turned on the Project that night in Mexico and saved us. That whole turn of events remained a mystery. She and her daughter talked about the weather, and Solomon’s rapidly-healing wounds, and not much else.

  Neither of them mentioned Adam.

  Of course, Solomon never mentioned Adam, so that wasn’t a huge surprise.

  As far as I knew, she had only cried for her father once since his death—the night he pulled the trigger, grief spilling from her like life blood as she breathed air into his lungs, pumped his chest, desperate to save a man long past salvation. If she cried about her father after that black night in Mexico, she kept those t
ears to herself.

  On the other hand, she welled up over her damned dog every day. Every puppy we passed, every stray, every hound on a greeting card or a magazine ad, earned a second glance. The other day she’d gotten teary about a fucking dingo.

  I kissed her neck, tasting the salt of the sea and the sweetness of her skin. Wrapped my arms around her.

  “I think it’s time,” she said.

  I knew she could feel me tense against her. She waited for my response, letting me come to it on my own. Over the years, Solomon and I have had some legendary battles. In the past nine months, however, we’d gotten along remarkably well for being together twenty-four/seven. This was the only thing we fought about now.

  “I never said I was doing this forever,” she said. She twined her hand with mine, resting on her flat stomach. “I needed to regroup. But you agreed—we’re not letting them get away with what they did. I can’t.”

  I could tell she was expecting a repeat of the same argument we’d been having since Mexico. Instead, I nodded, ignoring the fear rising in my chest.

  “Just tell me when and where. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  She twisted in my arms. “Thank you,” she said. She pressed her lips to mine. “When this is over...”

  I didn’t say anything, waiting for her to finish the thought. We hadn’t talked much about the future since leaving Mexico. We hadn’t talked much about the past, either. In fact, for two people rarely at a loss for words in the real world, Solomon and I had been damned quiet for the past nine months. We kept to ourselves, avoiding the locals, living off the money Cameron had provided and the occasional odd job wherever we landed. I taught her to surf. We caught up on our reading. We made love with an intensity I’d never experienced before—as though infusing every kiss, every caress, with all the love and fear and pain neither of us could voice.

  The reprieve was what we’d both needed, while we healed from the hell of that first year pursuing her father’s secrets. But now, she was right: It was time to go back. I would never get back the woman I’d fallen in love with, if we didn’t.

  “When this is over…?” I prompted, when she didn’t finish the thought.