Final Scream (31 page)

So no magic.

Just his silenced handgun.

When Nick arrived in the area
Geronimo
pointed out to him, Foster was gone.

Damn!

Suddenly, a gun barrel was pressed into Nick’s lumbar area.

“You’re a long way from home, Bellamy,” Johnathon Foster growled. “Looking for anyone in particular?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact.
You
.”

Foster poked him with the gun again. “Turn around and head back toward the E.K. Fitzgerald. See that green forklift stacking those small containers?”

“I see it.”

“We’re going to stop on the other side of those containers.”

The pair wove through the masses until they reached their destination, where they couldn’t be seen.

“I don’t believe in longwinded speeches, Bellamy. Let’s just leave it at
goodbye
.”

Foster pulled the trigger and emptied the clip in Nick’s back, but Nick faded using his
Mortal Eclipse
maneuver, and Foster’s bullets passed right through him and into the containers. Several Chinese workers on the other side of the stack heard the gunfire and warily walked around toward the sounds.

When Foster’s gun clicked empty, Nick materialized and shot Foster in the forehead four times. The bleeding criminal’s eyes rolled white as he fell back into the stacks. Nick holstered the gun and vanished just as the workers rounded the corner.

They glanced at Foster’s bullet riddled forehead and the empty gun in his hand and figured Foster was another suicide victim. They were experienced enough to know not to report violent crimes to the local police. The paperwork alone would take them hours to complete, much less the interrogations. The E.K. Fitzgerald was scheduled to leave port in less than three hours, so they quickly swore a pact to never mention the suicide victim again. Two of them rolled Foster into the filthy port waters, where the authorities would discover Foster’s partially eaten corpse days from now. By then, the workers would be loading cargo on a different ship, and no one would be the wiser.

Nick was finally at peace with the world. The last of the bloody
Final Scream: Terror Island
conspirators was terminated.

Case closed.

He contemplated the unknown nature of his next assignment but thrust those thoughts aside. He had a promise to keep. And there was a little matter of returning her engagement ring to her over a cozy candlelight dinner and a glass of champagne.

************************

The hulking mutant’s horrible features were shrouded behind the deep folds of the black robe’s cowling. Partially hidden in the shadows, the freak of nature leaned against the E.K. Fitzgerald’s upper deck railing and witnessed Nick turn the tables on the stranger and shoot
him
. Four times. The mutant’s heavy sigh was a raspy wheeze.

Good ole predictable Nick. He employed his timeworn standby trick,
Mortal Eclipse
, to save his skin. Again.

Its terrible mouth split into a coldhearted grin. That tried and true ploy protected Nick from Foster’s bullets, but it wouldn’t shield Nick from
him
.

A bass growl rumbled in its beefy chest.

There was
bad blood
between them …
only Nick wasn’t aware of it yet
.

But he soon would be.

The monster intended to even the score between them, forcing Nick to feel its excruciating pain by seeing the people he cared about die one by one.

Starting with his fiancée, Gabriella Wolfe.