Adrenaline

by Bill Eidson

  “Bullshit. In my experience, they never happen unless you make them.”

  Steve gestured at the pictures on the wall. “People like you who take idiotic risks for the sake of the thrill aren’t having an adventure, you’re playing a game—a sport at best. You’ve got a choice, and you choose not to risk anything important.”

  “Nothing but my life,” Geoff said.

  Steve spoke slowly, willing Geoff to listen. “You also play Russian roulette like some people play Scrabble. Me, I’m trying to save Lisa. She means more to me than my own life. My adrenaline’s pumping right now because if she dies, everything I value is gone. If you really want to challenge me, then play fair. Take a real risk for once in your life.”

  Steve waited. He saw that Geoff took it in, that he knew it was a challenge, and a transparent one at that. But what Steve had said was true.

  “You think having Carly there will stack the cards in your favor?”

  “Our favor. When you show up without weapons, with her and the money, you’ll be doing just what they expect. You show up without her, you won’t even get on the boat to see Raul. It’s that simple.”

  Geoff nodded slowly. “You realize that if Carly’s with me, I’ll have to leave something for Lisa—something on a timer—so if we don’t come back, she’ll die too.”

  Steve inhaled. Then he nodded. “I expected that, yes.”

  Geoff drained the last of his beer and threw the bottle into the trash. “Carly will be there.”

  Chapter 35

  Geoff had no trouble renting the equipment, even though the sum of his scuba experience was limited to a one-week certification course during a vacation in the Bahamas. “Give me full gear for two divers: a large man’s wetsuit and one for a woman who weighs about one hundred and fifteen pounds. Six tanks, regulators, and an extra set of mask and fins, dive lights.”

  The clerk whistled. “Six tanks. Busy night ahead, huh?”

  “Very.”

  Geoff whistled on the way out to the van, feeling good as he and the clerk hauled the gear. Damn good. Carly was going to be along to watch him do his stuff.

  Back at the house, she tugged at the smaller wetsuit. From the set of her mouth, the quick looks she darted his way, he could tell Carly was afraid of the stark equipment: the lead weight belts, heavy tanks, the gauges, hoses, neoprene, Velcro, and buckles.

  “You don’t have to worry,” he said, teasing her along.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” she said.

  “You won’t have to,” he said. “I’d never ask you to do something you couldn’t handle.”

  Steve finished water-sealing the case he had bought that afternoon. He ran through his checklist: The explosives were ready. The guns were cleaned. Batteries charged for the Powersled and the electric outboard. The boat was fully gassed. He had the sketch of the cove taped up on the bulwark, and from the chronograph beside it he saw he had two hours to go.

  Although he had no appetite, he grilled himself a steak. As he chewed the food slowly, he played back the messages on his answering machine: Two from his secretary, desperately trying to reschedule his missed meetings, and one from J.C., his designer down in Charleston. “Steve, I’m just calling to say I’d like to follow up with your guy, Alex Martin, on the Blue Water. Can’t raise a call from him.” A bluff message from Keiler, head of one of the electronics divisions, kidding him about his “extended vacation” but pressing him for answers, too. There were no calls from Jansten, which was surprising to Steve. He expected there were some pretty ugly rumors circulating by now about the new president. Unreliable. Jekyll and Hyde personality. Questionable use of funds.

  Steve was faintly troubled by that. But more than anything, he felt distant from that life. That foolish life he had worked so hard to achieve.

  What he had before him was all that mattered. He had made his plans, and he was as ready as he could be. Calm under the butterfly stomach, calm under the bitter tension that made him wish the game could start right that minute.

  Feeling pretty much the way Geoff wanted him to feel.

  Carly hated the tears. Hated herself for letting another man twist her around. “You lied to me!”

  That made him mad. She could see it in his face: His understanding look vanished, and he turned thin-lipped and cold. “I need you there.”

  She pressed herself against him, willing her body to thaw him again, to give her another chance to show that all she wanted from him was a chance to run away forever. “Screw the money,” she said. “We’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars! You don’t need to prove anything else to me.”

  “It’s not the money,” he said, as if she hadn’t even touched him.

  She pulled away. “Like hell, it isn’t.” Her shoulders began to heave, and she turned away from him. She knew he hated weakness.

  “You’ve got to know that I can’t be pushed. You’ve got to see that I’ll take care of you no matter what.”

  “Please, Geoff, please. Let’s just get in the van and go.”

  “You want me to shoot those two down the hall? Just murder them?”

  She bit her lip. “No. I never wanted you to kill anyone, except maybe Jammer. Just leave them tied up, put some food and water near them. We can make a call from Florida. Once we’ve had the plastic surgery, we can go anywhere, you said it yourself.”

  Geoff looked at her like she was a little kid. “Lazar is a cop, and you shot him. We’re going to need time to recuperate from the operations, and we won’t make it out of Miami if he can name us.”

  “Don’t just shoot them. Don’t do what you did to that old man.”

  Geoff smiled at her as if she had just agreed with him. “That’s what I mean. These things have to work a certain way.… I made a deal with Steve and I’m going to keep it, to a degree.”

  “A deal! Geoff, you’ve got his wife—you can’t trust any deal.”

  “I said to a degree. And I know that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money to you, but it’s not for the life I have in mind for us.”

  “Sounds like a lot of money? You’re damn right it does. I don’t care how rich you were before, we can go anywhere in the world—for a while anyhow—on a hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “I’m not interested in ‘a while.’ ”

  She brushed that away. “Geoff, what more do we need?”

  “We need to kill Raul and take his money,” Geoff said, quietly. “We need to show each other that we’re willing to stand together and take down anyone who gets in our way.”

  “Why?” She laughed uncertainly as she said it, afraid suddenly of what he might answer her. And just as afraid that he wouldn’t say it.

  He did.

  She knew she was supposed to laugh. That this was a real scream. She should be hugging herself it was so funny. She was only eighteen but she had been a hooker for two of those years, and she knew damn well not to believe it when a man said he loved you and that he was going to take you away to be with him forever.

  But she didn’t laugh.

  She didn’t cry anymore.

  She stood there staring at him while he waited for an answer. Until, at last, she said, softly, “All right.”

  Chapter 36

  You can’t be serious,” Lazar said.

  But he saw from the look on Lisa’s face, the way she was clamping her jaw tight, that she believed Mann. And given what he had done to her before, putting her in the freezer, he probably was. Lazar felt his knees start to shake, but he kept the bluff tone. “I’m not doing it.”

  “Up to you,” Geoff said. He had them outside, standing on top of the small hill that ran from the top of the house to the ocean. It was just a little before midnight and the floodlights from the back deck provided illumination. The smell of the sea was strong, and Lazar could hear the slap of the waves hitting the private pier. Beside them, the doors and windows of Jansten’s Mercedes were wide open. “You probably won’t make it if you don’t
put on the wetsuit, though. Hypothermia.”

  “We’re not going,” Lazar said.

  Geoff shrugged and pushed his wet hair away from his face. He pointed at Lisa. “She’s going. Even if I have to toss her in the front seat without a wetsuit, she’s going because I made a deal with Steve—he’s got a chance to get her back alive.” Geoff smiled. “Not a good chance, but a chance. As for you, Lazar, I figured, why not? You prefer me to shoot you now, put you in the trunk, that’s fine—but Lisa still only gets two tanks of air.”

  Lazar glanced to the left. Carly was standing about fifteen feet away, aiming the rifle at him. Close enough for her to make a sure hit, but too far for him to get to her. Between the loss of blood and the hobble, he couldn’t manage much more than turtle speed. Lazar licked his lips, feeling awfully tired. “I’m still not doing it.”

  “Shoot him, Carly,” Geoff said, indifferently.

  “No!” Lisa stepped between Lazar and Carly’s gun.

  “Oh, give me a reason,” the girl said.

  Lisa ignored her and grasped Lazar’s hands. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

  Geoff hammed it up, acting as if Lazar were refusing to dance with his date. “Come on, Lazar! Put on the wetsuit and get in the car. Her husband has a rendezvous in half an hour with me and Carly. A half hour to do the job, a half hour to get back. If he gives me a good enough reason, you might get another chance.”

  “And what if he doesn’t?” Lazar said, dully.

  Geoff nodded to the Mercedes. “Everybody’s got to die sometime.”

  Ten minutes later, he had lashed them to the front seats with clothesline. Lisa was trying to contain her panic. Trying and barely succeeding to remember what she had learned from the three dive lessons Steve had once given her in a pool before she had decided it wasn’t the right sport for her. Too claustrophobic.

  The thought made her laugh now, a hysterical little gasp that made Geoff smile at her oddly as he checked over his work. He had tied two scuba tanks to each of their seats in the back and ran the two regulator hoses over their shoulders using duct tape to fasten them so they wouldn’t fall away. He said, “Keep your mouth clamped tight over your mouthpiece as you go off the pier. I’ll put masks on you so you can see the pressure gauges, here—you’ve got three thousand pounds in each tank. That line’s got enough slack so you can switch mouthpieces once the first tanks are empty. You’ll be in about thirty feet of water. When I dove down tonight, I went through most of that in just under an hour—of course, you might be breathing a little faster than I was.”

  Geoff began whistling as he wound their legs with a chain and bound them to the seat mounts.

  “What difference does it make?” Lazar’s voice was shaky; something Lisa hadn’t heard from him before. “Dead in forty-five minutes or dead in an hour and a half. We should’ve made him shoot us both.”

  “It matters, doesn’t it, Geoff?” She talked fast, feeling that if she didn’t, she would just sit there and hyperventilate and that was no good. Couldn’t get in the habit of running through air if Geoff was going to sink them in that black water. “You’re not going to just drown us, you’re going to leave us an opening, aren’t you, Geoff. You’re not just a murderer.”

  He grimaced as he put a facemask on her. “Technically, I’m afraid I am. So you better make your own opening. There. Test your air.” She took a tentative breath out of each regulator mouthpiece. The air rasped through easily enough. She looked over at Lazar and saw that he was doing the same thing.

  Geoff took Lazar’s wristwatch off and strapped it onto the steering wheel. He taped a dive light to the base of Lazar’s headrest and turned it so the beam hit the watch face. It was just minutes before twelve. “If you’re lucky, it’ll still be pointing that way once you hit bottom. If you’re not—well, you’ll know your time is up when your last tank is empty.”

  He snapped the headlights on, leaned through the driver’s door past Lazar and put the car in neutral.

  Lazar grabbed him.

  The car began rolling down the hill. Geoff snorted. “Give it up, will you?” Lisa could see Lazar’s grip was just around Geoff’s arm.

  The car picked up speed. Carly was left behind, screaming.

  Even in that instant, Lisa knew if Geoff wasn’t able to meet Steve, then she and Lazar would certainly never get out of the car. But she reached for Geoff anyhow, straining against the rope to get hold of him somehow, to somehow take him down with them. But he pulled away, and stood on the rocker panel, crouching outside the car. Still Lazar held his arm tight.

  They rolled onto the pier and were heading down the center to the dark water at the end. A piling flashed by and as the next came up, Lazar lifted his knee to try to push the steering wheel. She saw he was trying to hit it with the open door and crush Geoff.

  But Geoff reached out with his left hand and calmly headed the car down the center. They missed the piling by inches. Then he reached around to his back pocket and something glittered dully in his hand. Lisa saw it was the razor, Carly’s razor. “Nice try, guys,” he said, as he sliced the back of Lazar’s hand.

  Lazar cried out into his mouthpiece and let go. Geoff fell in and braced himself momentarily on the center console with the hand holding the razor. Lisa instinctively reached over and grabbed it. The blade bit down to the bone but still she held on—and then it was hers as Geoff let go and shoved away from the car.

  The nose of the car dropped abruptly and the headlights lit the surface of the water an instant before they hit.

  Metal screeched as the hood buckled. Water roared into the open door and the car canted to the left. Lisa panicked, certain it would roll, certain that they would sink upside down.

  Then the weight of the engine pulled the car down and water poured in through her window and rose over their heads. The sound of the air rasping through the regulators changed as they were fully submerged. Silver bubbles burst in front of the dive light beam.

  Lisa had a brief glimpse of the muddy bottom below, not too far away, and then the lights winked out.

  The dive light shook crazily as Lazar fought in the confined space, trying to free himself from the clothesline. The shockingly cold water found its way into her wetsuit. Her ears hurt, and she swallowed rapidly, clearing them as fast as she could. For a time, the only thing she could hold on to was that she still had air. She was still breathing.

  She had no sense of how long it took to reach bottom, whether it was minutes or seconds. She looked to her left and Lazar looked back. It was a surreal scene. His facemask reflected the peripheral glow from the dive light. Air bubbled from his mouthpiece.

  Good, she thought. He’s still breathing.

  She saw his air was just rushing out and she realized hers was, too. Goddamn it, we’ve got the right, she thought, grinding her jaw against the excruciating pain in her ears. She swallowed and yawned the way Steve had taught her and the air squealed through her ears as the pressure equalized. She looked over and saw Lazar was shaking his head. The pain had to be intense for him, and she wished there was a way she could tell him what to do.

  As she forced herself to slow down her breathing, to inhale, one-two-three, exhale, one-two-three, she felt a sharp pain in her hand and remembered that she had cut her hand on the razor.

  Remembered she had taken it from Geoff.

  She cried out in sudden hope, and, just as quickly, in frustration.

  Her hand was empty.

  Chapter 37

  Geoff held Carly’s wrist and looked at her watch. “They’ve been down thirty minutes.”

  She jerked her hand away. “I’d like to join them, right about now.”

  Geoff knew she was terrified, sitting there in the van with him outside of Raul’s gates. But he liked the way she was trying to tough it out. He drew the four-inch blade from Jammer’s belt that he now wore around his waist. “This will give us all we need, once we hear Steve’s boat.” He thumbnailed what he and Steve had discussed.

>   She looked more frightened than ever. “You’re counting on Steve? How do you know he’ll come through? And what if they have guns?”

  “We can count on both things: They will have guns, and Steve will come through. As for how we take care of it … well, that’s where the fun comes in.”

  “Fun? Jesus Christ, why do you talk that way?”

  He put his hand over hers. “Basically, just go along with everything I say. You’ll know what to do and when.”

  Geoff felt good. It was just like before a football game in high school. Everyone else was nervous, either looking like they might puke or yelling at the top of their lungs to prove they weren’t scared. He would just sit there feeling good. Knowing that he could move so fast. Knowing with absolute confidence that his body would do the right thing at the right time. That he would do whatever it took to win.

  That his luck would hold when the odds were impossible.

  Geoff laughed out loud, surprising Carly. She looked over at him, her cheeks wet. “Hey, hey,” he said, wiping the tears away with his thumb.

  She said, “Don’t you know he plans to cut me up in front of his camera? Literally?”

  “Sure I do. But he doesn’t know what I intend.”

  “Neither do I.”

  He kissed her lightly. “You’ll see.”

  Strike counted the money while the Hispanic guy frisked them. The guy took his time with Carly, grinning over at Strike as he touched her. The thing almost got out of hand when she scratched him across the face.

  “You bitch!” The man drew back his hand.

  Geoff got between them and said to Strike, “Raul likes sloppy seconds?”

  Strike’s eyes glinted. “The man don’t care about that, but he wants them whole when he gets them. How she get cut? She damaged goods, man.”

  “She did Jammer. He didn’t go down easy.”

  Strike grinned at her appreciatively. “Yeah? Managed to kill your last man, huh?”