Kill or be killed. Her motto. Her mantra. Her epitaph, someday.
She shouldn’t live like this. No one should. But she didn’t know any other way.
Des had been mistaken when he said she missed her parents. But he was right that she’d lost something. She’d lost her sense of safety, her trust in the basic decency of the world. She’d lost the luxury of being able to relax and let down her guard, ever.
Since that night fourteen years ago, she had lived like a wild animal—and even now, half-civilized, she could revert to savagery at any time. She knew it. It troubled her. Scared her, even.
Still, there was one saving grace. Last January, in the snowy twilight of the Pine Barrens, she had experienced a moment of vulnerability.
Kurt Land had needed killing, but at the last moment, she’d flinched from the job. Sure, she’d left him to die. She’d been certain he was finished. But she hadn’t pulled the trigger while she looked into his eyes. That was a line she couldn’t cross. She was not entirely devoid of conscience. Not wholly a bloodthirsty predator that killed without compunction.
A small thing, but she had hugged it tight on sleepless nights, and it had warmed her. A little.
And now it turned out that her one concession to human frailty had kept Kurt Land alive. She should have taken care of him when she had the chance. Holding back, surrendering to pity, was a luxury someone in her line couldn’t afford.
Kill or be killed. No middle ground, no gray area. Kill or die. That was all there was.
She had been lying to herself to think it could ever be any other way.
CHAPTER 30
Pascal was pleased with the conversation. He had let the girl believe he was reluctant to do battle. Naturally it had not occurred to her that he had kept the cell phone turned on solely in the hope that she would call with just such a proposition.
Kurt the rat was in position, as was Pascal himself. Together they would give the girl quite a welcome—and quite a good-bye.
Ordinarily he would have wanted to keep Parker alive in order to find out where the Kirbys were. But he had learned to take no chances with her. He would deal with her quickly and decisively, then locate the Kirbys on his own.
Beneath the black leather gloves his hands tingled, but not with cold.
With anticipation.
***
Bonnie was well along the boardwalk now, having groped and struggled through three blocks of wet, clinging sand. There was a cut on her left hand where she’d scraped a broken bottle, and a tatter of newspaper pasted to her shoe, trailing her like a ribbon of toilet paper from a restroom. All in all, she’d had better nights.
But she was almost there.
The pavilion’s observation deck flared out over the boardwalk, which meant she could emerge from hiding with no risk of being seen. Unless, of course, he had abandoned his post and taken up a position by the door. She didn’t exactly relish the prospect of emerging from cover only to meet Pascal face to face. At the very least she needed her firearm at the ready.
Rolling onto her side, she fumbled at the fanny pack lying hard against her hip. She unzipped the pouch and peeled away the Velcro strap that held the gun in place. In the stillness and close confinement, the soft tearing sound seemed terrifyingly loud, a sure giveaway of her position.
Then the gun was in her hand, and she felt a little better. She crawled to the edge of the boardwalk, sat up, and raised her head, scanning the boards in both directions.
Empty. The flat expanse stretched into darkness, a dim line of streetlights fading away in a mist of rain and sea spray.
He wasn’t down here. Must still be in the tower.
The pavilion door, she noted without surprise, hung ajar.
She gripped the boardwalk’s railing and hoisted herself up, then stood, distantly aware of the ache in her joints from the long, hard crawl. Silently she crossed to the open door and went inside.
She found herself in a small lobby adjacent to the snack shop. Directly ahead she recognized the staircase leading to the basement locker rooms. To her right was another stairway, which rose to a landing where a steel ladder offered access to a trapdoor in the tower. Lightning flickered through the trapdoor, propped open as if in invitation.
As long as she made no noise to betray herself, she could climb the stairs and the ladder, pop up through the opening, and take out Pascal before he could react.
Stealth—then speed. It ought to work.
Hell, it pretty much had to.
***
She was here.
Pascal saw her clearly as she stepped into the lobby, clad in a shapeless raincoat that dripped on the floor. For the past quarter of an hour he had crouched on the stairs to the cellarage, smelling saltwater and mildew and rot, and watching the door.
He had known she would reconnoiter the area and spy the sentry in the tower. And he had known she would find a way to reach the sentry without being seen. She was resourceful, this Bonnie Parker, and reckless enough to tread where a more sensible adversary would not go.
She climbed the other staircase and began to scale the ladder in the dark. Her gun was in her hand. She thought he was up there, and she expected to take him by surprise.
Soundlessly he crept up the basement stairs into the lobby. He would wait until she was at the top of the ladder, reaching for the trapdoor, in a position of maximum vulnerability. Then—one silenced shot, and she would tumble down the shaft, dead before she hit the landing, the vinyl poncho covering her like a body bag.
She would never know what happened. He felt a bit sorry about that. He would have liked her to know.
***
Bonnie had nearly reached the top rung of the ladder when she heard the heavy tread of a footstep overhead. He was shifting his position again.
She paused, listening to the clack-clack-clack of his uneven stride.
Something about that stride bothered her. He’d been wounded, obviously. Shot in the leg ...
But the bloodstain on the farmhouse door had been at shoulder height. And the trail of blood in the parlor had been consistent with evenly spaced footfalls.
Pascal hadn’t been wounded in the leg. Which meant ...
He wasn’t the man in the tower.
She spun on the ladder. Below her, movement in the lobby. She fired down. The unsilenced Glock roared in the darkness, spitting purple muzzle flashes. In the flicker a dark figure dived for cover, rolling onto the basement stairs.
The guy above her was probably armed, too. Bracing her feet against the steel rails, she slid down the ladder firepole-style. As she descended the staircase to the lobby, she aimed two shots at the trapdoor and two more toward the basement. Another two shots—one high, one low—provided cover as she sprinted out the door. From the basement stairs came an answering shot, carefully aimed, striking the door frame inches from her head.
Then she was outside, on the apron of the boardwalk fronting the pavilion. The only available cover was the colonnade of brick pillars holding up the observation deck. She ducked behind the nearest one, the poncho flapping at her hips.
Someone shot at her from the pavilion doorway. The bullet struck the pillar, chipping flecks of brick. She fired back blindly and retreated to the next pillar, closer to the beach.
Couldn’t stay here long. If both men were armed, one of them could pin her down while the other worked his way around to the side and picked her off.
Staying topside was no good. She needed to go below the boardwalk again.
She snapped off two more rounds, then swung under the railing and dropped to the beach. She burrowed beneath the boards and crawled north, away from the pavilion, putting distance between herself and her pursuers.
Pursuers, plural. Who the hell was the second man, and where had he come from? She’d pegged Pascal as a loner. He’d been alone in his motel room, alone at the Kirbys’ house. How’d he find himself a playmate in the middle of the night?
At least
under the boardwalk she should be safe. They might come after her, but as long as she watched for any intrusion, she would have the edge. The western side of the boardwalk lay flush against the dunes, affording no access to the crawlspace. If they came, they would come from the eastern side—the beach. She only needed to stay alert.
She had elbowed her way pretty far along now, far enough that she was no longer screened from the rain by the observation deck. Silvery threads of rainwater streamed like tinsel through cracks between the boards. The top layer of sand was wet and cold, like a thick crust of mud over the dryer, looser sediment beneath. She dragged herself forward a little farther, then stopped.
By her count she’d expended nine rounds, emptying more than half the magazine. She removed it and stuck it in her pocket, then pressed in a fresh one. If she had to fire, she wanted as many shots as possible.
She lay there, straining to hear any sounds besides the smash of thunder, the wet lash of rain, and the groan of the surf.
There was nothing. They might not be after her, not yet.
But they would come.
***
Pascal—on the hunt and feeling fine.
He was unconcerned about the failure of his original strategy. Something had alerted Parker to the deception at the critical moment. It was unimportant. One must always be prepared to improvise. Was it Napoleon who said that no plan of battle ever survived one’s first encounter with the enemy?
His new friend Kurt seemed less philosophical about this turn of events. Stationed in the lobby, trading shots with Parker outside, Pascal had glanced behind him and seen the rat clearly—his eyes swimming in his blanched face, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the mat of tangled beard, his shoulders hunched and stiff. Everything about him spoke of blind panic. He had expected to witness a quick and easy kill. Instead he was caught in a firefight.
Well, let him tremble. Parker was all that mattered. She was still nearby, hiding below the boardwalk, imagining that she was safe. But he had an advantage over her, one she did not suspect.
He only had to find her and put an end to things.
CHAPTER 31
Huddled in the cold, drenched with rainwater, Bonnie waited, listening.
Past the noise of the storm, she heard the low creak of a board. A sound like a slow, cautious footstep.
She lay immobile, letting seconds tick by as fingers of rain probed through the cracks and poked chilly fingertips into her scalp.
Another creak, closer than the last. It vibrated through the boardwalk, releasing a trickle of grit from the crossbeam above her face.
He was coming this way. Moving stealthily, on the prowl. Moving directly toward her, as if he had zeroed in on her position.
But it didn’t make sense. Her couldn’t hunt her from above. Couldn’t see her, couldn’t possibly have any idea where she was.
She was trapped under the boards, with barely enough space to roll over, unable to move faster than a crawl. Her only hope was that he was as blind as she was, but he wasn’t. Somehow he knew just where she lay.
Another step. He was close now. Less than ten feet away.
One man, not two. Just one of them was hunting her, and she knew which one it had to be.
He stopped. She waited through a long moment of howling wind and punishing rain.
Very softly, one of the boards creaked, but this was a different sound, a long drawn-out wheeze. Not a footstep. More like someone shifting his weight, altering his stance by a few degrees.
Panic flashed through her, and she knew she had to move, move now.
She flung herself sideways, rolling away, and there was a soft percussive noise and a spray of sand and splinters as a shot impacted the ground where she’d lain a moment before.
She started moving, blindly elbowing her way into the dark.
Above—the tread of his shoes on the boards. Tracking her, following her progress.
He knew where she was. Somehow he knew. He could fire at her whenever he wished. And she couldn’t shoot back because she had no way to pinpoint his position. She might as well have been disarmed.
Not good, Bonnie. Not an ideal situation to be in.
The footfalls stopped again. This time she didn’t hesitate.
She dived to her left, scrambling away from two muffled pops that dropped a rain of splinters on her back.
How could he keep finding her? Did he have X-ray vision, for God’s sake? Could he see right through the planks?
She scrabbled at the ground, clutching up handfuls of loose sand as she drew herself forward. Her heart shuddered in her chest, banging at her ribs. She wasn’t used to being prey.
She knew he was still somewhere above her, remorselessly keeping pace. She couldn’t outdistance him, and if she left the cover of the boardwalk, she would be exposed against the beach with no cover, and he would gun her down, an easy score.
Reverse course, then. Crawl backward, see if you can shake him.
She gave it a go, backing up, glad to be trying something, glad to be thinking. It was hard to think when you were scared, and right now she was more goddamn scared than she had ever been in her life.
She had time to hope she might have lost him, and then she registered a soft scuff on a board, perilously close, and she veered to her right.
The gun coughed again, blowing another hole in the planks, showering her with dust.
God damn it, he was still on her ass.
The shots were quiet; as before, his weapon was fitted with a suppressor, and he must be shooting light loads to keep the velocity subsonic. There were limits to a silencer’s effectiveness, but the shots were muffled enough to pass for firecrackers or coughs of thunder. They got a little louder each time as the suppressor wore out, but at the rate he was closing in on her, he wouldn’t need many more tries.
So think, Bonnie. Stop shivering, damn it, and think your way out of this mess.
She crawled aimlessly. Sweat and raindrops blurred together on her face like tears. Her teeth were chattering. It would be lights out for her in the next thirty seconds or so. She didn’t like it. Getting killed was a real pain in the butt.
The worst thing was that she didn’t know how it was happening, how he could see her. It made no sense. She was invisible.
Invisible—like the infrared beam in the farmhouse. And yet somehow he’d known it was there.
An infrared beam ...
She got it.
It wasn’t anything supernatural. He was using night-vision gear.
The son of a bitch could see her body heat through gaps in the boardwalk.
And that meant there was no place to hide.
***
Pascal was cautious. Of course he enjoyed every advantage. He owned the night. The night-vision headset he had carried in his satchel was his secret weapon—an ITT Exelis binocular system, head-mounted, with an infrared illuminator. He had picked up the equipment in Europe, paying 10,000 euros.
The infrared goggles, like insect eyes, perceived a band of the electromagnetic spectrum alien to human vision. The warmth of the girl’s body showed up on the 40° display as a faint green iridescence, flickering in the cracks between the boards.
He had turned off the Beretta’s laser targeting assist. The laser beam might give her a target. The same professional caution made him keep his distance from his quarry. If he got too close, she might be able to determine his position and squeeze off a lucky shot.
He was content to play it safe. Guided by his enhanced vision, he fired from a distance, hopscotching nimbly from plank to plank, catching glimpses of her body heat, a feeble luminescent trail. She was clever, always changing course, zigzagging like a cockroach. The rain gear she was wearing dimmed her heat signature. The rain itself was another complication; it smeared his goggles, blurring his artificial vision, while flashes of lightning briefly whited out the display.
It was difficult work, tracking the girl—like chasing threads of St. Elmo’s fi
re on the shifting deck of a storm-tossed vessel.
But he would score a hit before long. It was purely a matter of time.
He glanced at the pavilion, now well behind him, and made out the green glow of Kurt the rat by the doorway to the lobby. The man was waiting, watching, afraid to get too close. His only purpose had been to wriggle like a worm on a hook, luring this one particular fish. Now he was merely a distraction, to be dispatched when this was over.
First things first. Parker.
Though he had grown to respect her, he could not deny that it was her time to die.
***
Bonnie scrambled to the nearest trestle and huddled behind it, trusting the stone arch to conceal her. She had to make herself invisible. She was playing hide-and-seek, and if she lost this game, she wouldn’t get to play again. It hardly seemed fair, though—her in the dark, and him with his goo-goo-googly eyes.
Still, she couldn’t have been showing up very clearly on his infrared display, not with the boardwalk blocking most of her heat signature. If he lost track of her, he wouldn’t know where to pick up the search—
Champagne corks started popping around her. He was firing again. She hadn’t lost him. He was shooting at her position, and only the concrete mass kept her safe as she clung to the cold stone and the sand erupted like geysers. The fusillade went on and on.
Then it ended. His gun must be empty. But he would reload. Then all he had to do was circle around to the side for a clear shot.
Evasion wasn’t working. Escape was impossible. Basically he was going to nail her for sure unless she changed tactics.
So stand and fight. Her only option. Hell, she was better on offense than defense anyway.
She rolled onto her back, pointing the Glock’s barrel upward, unable to aim because she had no target. She pulled the trigger. The pistol kicked in her hands. She fired through the boards, her gun barking, the hollow-point rounds blowing holes in the fake wood.
The reports boomed in the confined space. She pumped out eight shots and paused, not wanting to blow her whole wad on one try.
He might be moving overhead, but if so she couldn’t hear it over the furious chiming in her ears. She allowed herself to hope he’d been wounded—killed, even.