Jackal: Barrett Mason Book 3
Page 20
“The heart monitor!” Was all he said. Then his feet kicked and he scrabbled away from me.
The thing was beeping in my hand.
I spun around. Saw Greer leaping over a big tank, trying to sprint away. I threw the monitor at his back. I dunno if it hit him, or even if it made a difference. I just wanted the damn thing away from me.
As soon as I tossed it, I scooped Carolina into my arms. She felt light as a feather. My whole body had kicked into overdrive. Adrenaline jetted through me. I dove over the concrete path. Soared down the embankment.
Fury and heat kicked up behind me. An explosion that rattled through my bones. The shockwave drove me ass over teakettle through the air, but I think the embankment shielded me from the worst of it. Because I fell downward, and rolled, tried to protect Carolina by wrapping my body around hers.
And when it was all over and I opened my eyes. I could breathe again. Almost. I choked on smoke and my nose burned from some kind of chemical in the air. Alarms crowed around me. Water sprayed everywhere. The explosion from the missile must’ve kicked off some kind of fire suppression system, but I’m guessing it was half-wrecked, at least.
Fire still burned up the hill, where I had just been moments ago. I saw a thick plume of smoke climbing into the air.
I was ready to leave all that mess behind. So, I picked up Carolina.
I carried her down the dock, and somehow, I got us both on Greer’s boat—a nice cabin cruiser, sort of like the one I’d left Puerto Rico in. I found the keys, turned the boat on, and got us the hell out of Venezuela.
Chapter 34
CAROLINA ORTIZ WOKE up with the worst headache she’d ever had. Her skull felt shattered open. Her mouth was dry. Before she opened her eyes, she touched her ear, wondering if her brains had leaked out while she slept.
No. Only dry skin. A little of her hair. She tucked the loose strand behind her ear.
Then, she started to open her eyes. Took a while. She practically had to peel her lids open. And, even then, the light in the room was bright enough to kill her. Or at least it felt like it.
She blinked a few times. Tried to rub her eyes with her left hand, but couldn’t move her arm up to her face, so she settled for her right.
Then she went cold. She couldn’t move her arm. Why? What happened?
She sat up. She was in a bed. No. She was on the floor, but the floor was padded. She was in a small room with a door near her feet. She looked at her arm. It was in a sling made from torn bedsheets with little pink and green flowers on them.
What the hell had happened?
Carolina touched her face. She’d been scratched somehow. The tips of her fingers prodded at her cheeks, and she felt something hot and itchy—a burn. How had she been burned?
Then, she remembered. It all hit her like a steel pipe to the back of her head. The oil refinery. Climbing through the pipes with Barrett. Picking up a rifle, being shot.
That particular memory—the memory of a hot bullet sinking through her—kicked up a sharp pain in her right hip. She braced against it, biting her teeth together, making a fist with her hand.
She ripped a cotton blanket off her legs. She was wearing someone else’s pants. A man’s dark blue sweatpants. Carolina lifted the elastic band and peeked down.
A white gauze covered her hip. A towel, she thought. A small, dark circle, about a centimeter in diameter, peered out at her from the center of the dressing on her hip. Dried blood.
“Barrett?” she called. But he wasn’t around. Or he didn’t answer.
Slowly, Carolina inched her way forward. Scooting her feet through the small door. Doing it hurt like hell, and was slower than anything she’d ever done, but she had to figure out where Barrett had gone, and what had happened to her.
She pulled herself out of the bed. And as soon as she tried to put weight on her hip, she wished she hadn’t. It was, by far, the worst pain she remembered feeling. Maybe worse than being shot, though, mercifully, her mind seemed to have pushed that memory to some distant corner to protect her.
“Barrett where are you?” she screamed.
Still no answer.
Carolina took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to be left behind in whatever little house this was. How could he have abandoned her here, anyway? What in the hell was he thinking? Did he assume she was dead?
She’d show him who was dead. She’d kill him as soon as she saw him.
Carolina worked her way through a tiny dining room. Looked like the inside of a motor home. Everything miniaturized, but just big enough for an adult to make use of. The curtains were all drawn here. Part of her wanted to stop and take a look outside, but there was something inside driving her forward. Something begging her to keep going.
So she did.
She climbed up a pair of small steps, toward an open doorway. It was agony. It was worse than getting out of that strange bed, but she had to do it.
Carolina emerged on a boat. There was a ship’s wheel to her left, a white bench seat to her right, but forget all that. Because something much bigger lay ahead.
Land. Other boats. She was in a marina. And up on the shore, there were trees like ones she had only seen on American TV shows or in American movies. Their trunks were rough, and their leaves thin. The air was drier here. A little cooler, too.
Cold, in fact.
She shivered and rubbed her arms. She didn’t want to answer the question running through the back of her head, but she knew, deep down, that she already had. Just by looking around this place—the trees, the blue-brown water, the carpet of green stretching out to a parking lot in the distance. The cars, themselves—half of them appearing brand new.
Barrett had taken her to America.
“Carolina?”
She looked left, toward the sound of her name. And there, standing where the marina went up to shore, was Barrett. A woman at his side, and a dark, small girl between them.
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Other works by Stewart Matthews
The Barrett Mason Thriller Series
Book 0: The Lost Son
Book 1: Matador
Book 2: Tyrant
Book 3: Jackal
The Detective Shannon Rourke Series
Book 1: Chicago Blood
Book 2: Chicago Broken
Book 3: Chicago Betrayed
Book 4: Chicago Lies
Book 5: Chicago Creed