One of the Boys (12 page)

“Well, it didn't. Jake's lucky he survived.”

“It wouldn't have broken my heart if the bastard went down in flames. He couldn't keep his hands off Carol from the first day he got here.”

“That's not true!” Lisa cried.

Springing off the sofa, she stood beside Maura, every slender inch quivering with anger. Her silent fury communicated itself to the animal still held tight
in her arms. Bea's gums pulled back over a set of sharp-toothed fangs.

Maura's throat closed with suffocating fear. If Pete could so casually condone Jake's death in a plane crash, he was in deeper than she realized. With blinding fear, she realized he didn't intend for her and Lisa to survive his admission of guilt, either.

As if reading her mind, Pete pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket. Maura swallowed convulsively and looked down the barrel of a pistol.

A deadly silence filled the cottage, broken only by the rain pounding on the roof and the low, growling rattle Bea expelled with every breath. Whimpering in fear, Lisa pressed close against Maura's side.

She wrapped a protective arm around both girl and cat, her gaze locked on the gun. She'd never seen one before, much less had a barrel aimed straight at her. The small piece of steel looked obscene in Pete's tanned hand.

Tearing her eyes from the pistol, she lifted them to his face. “You can't do this.”

“I don't have any choice.”

The utter lack of emotion in his reply frightened her more than anything else. Terror, hot and metallic-tasting, choked through her.

“It's you or me,” Pete said grimly. “The boys I deal with aren't exactly small-town shopkeepers. They don't tolerate mistakes or informants.”

“But you can be protected from them.” Maura forced the words through numb lips. Her heart ham
mered painfully with every breath. “I don't know what kind of sentence you'd get or where you would go to, but surely you'd be protected.”

“Not hardly. My associates would see I was put away permanently before I could damage their network.”

“My God, Pete, you can't do this. You can't step over the line between selling a few pieces of hardware and murder.”

Maura knew her plea was futile. Pete had passed the line months, if not years, ago. He couldn't stand there so coolly, holding a gun on his partner and his friend's daughter, if he had any conscience left. She took deep, gulping breaths, trying to swallow the bile threatening to choke her.

“I told you,” Pete said with a show of regret, “I have no choice.”

Tightening her arm around a shaking Lisa, Maura took a backward step. A stack of boxes piled haphazardly against the wall blocked any further movement. Her frantic eyes flicked over the tiny living room in search of a weapon, any weapon. The only thing with even remote possibilities was a heavy crystal decanter on the sideboard, but Pete stood between her and the bar.

“Outside,” he ordered.

“What?”

“Outside.” He gestured toward the kitchen with the gun. “I'll shoot you right here if I have to, but I'd rather arrange a little accident.”

He eyed them with deadly speculation. “I think you and Lisa will have to drown. Everyone will wonder what the two of you were doing out on a night like this, but they'll never know, will they?”

Lisa's terrified sob unlocked the paralysis gripping Maura's mind. She was damned if she'd let Pete harm the girl, no matter what the cost. Taking a deep breath, she gauged the distance between her and the gun. If she turned at an angle and lunged, maybe she could take the bullet in her arm or some other nonvital part. She had to hold Pete long enough for Lisa to get away.

“I said outside.”

Snarling now, Pete raised the gun as if to strike her. Maura coiled her muscles to leap. Lisa screamed. And Bea, jostled roughly in the girl's arms, sprang directly at Pete's face with claws extended.

“Aaah!”

Pete twisted wildly, swiping at the animal with one hand. His gun went off, and a bullet shattered a lamp across the room. Acrid smoke filled Maura's lungs, stinging her eyes as she dived for the gun. Dragging on it with both hands, she forced the barrel toward the floor.

“Run, Lisa!”

She threw a desperate look at the girl, only to see her frozen in fear.

“Get out of here!”

“Let go!” Pete snarled.

He fought desperately to dislodge both Maura and the animal, which now had its claws dug into his shoulder. Blood ran down his face and splattered on Maura's outstretched arms. His left hand came up in a vicious blow that knocked Bea to the floor. She yowled in fury, then streaked through his legs to make her escape.

The combination of Maura's weight pulling on his arm and Bea between his feet threw Pete off balance. He staggered and fell forward into the stack of boxes. Maura almost went with him. At the last second, she jerked on the gun with all her might. It twisted out of Pete's hand and fell with him in a shower of crashing cardboard, unpacked books, assorted dishes and a long-lost steam iron.

The rubble half covered Pete, but he scrambled quickly to his hands and knees. His hands dug frantically through the jumble for his weapon.

Maura didn't wait around for him to find it. Whirling, she grabbed Lisa's wrist and yanked her out the back door into the pelting rain. She knew the cottage to her right was vacant. The one on the left housed an elderly couple. Fifty yards separated the two buildings, but the emptiness seemed to stretch for a mile.

As she and Lisa raced through the thundering night, Maura searched frantically for a light in the bungalow ahead. There was nothing, not even a glow.

Praying her neighbors were asleep and not gone, she hauled Lisa behind her. They were almost to the
cottage when she heard the screen door slam behind them. She didn't have time to pound on her neighbors' door and wait for the elderly couple to answer it.

“Head for the beach,” she panted to Lisa.

Altering the angle of her run, she herded the girl toward the narrow shoreline barely visible in the distance. Thank God they both wore old sweats, already darkened by the soaking rain. They should be nearly invisible in the darkness.

Crouched low, they raced for the beach. At any moment, Maura expected to hear the sharp crack of gunfire. She strained every sense to catch signs of pursuit. Listening intensely, she cataloged every sound and sensation.

Lisa's sobbing breath rasped in her ears. Stinging pellets hit her face and eyes. They blurred her vision and obscured the night as much as the suffocating darkness. With one hand locked around Lisa's wrist, Maura used the other to push her wet, heavy hair out of her eyes.

She almost sobbed with relief when her feet sank into squishy mud at the water's edge. Hanging on to Lisa, she slithered down the shallow bank. The girl tumbled down beside her. Panting, they crouched against the mud and risked a quick look back. Darkness lay like a thick blanket.

A tiny spark of hope shot through Maura. If they couldn't see Pete, he couldn't see them, either. They could slip away in the blackness.

“Maura!”

The reedy shout sliced through the wind and the rain. Their stalker was between them and the house, heading their way.

“I'll find you,” he yelled. “You can't get away. There's nowhere to run.”

A bright beam suddenly cut the darkness, and Maura cursed viciously. Pete must have found the little cache of hurricane supplies she'd stashed beside the back door. After the last hurricane exercise, she'd invested in a waterproof flashlight, among other survival items.

Putting her mouth against Lisa's ear, she whispered quick instructions. “We've got to get around the curve of the bay, out of Pete's range. As soon as we're clear, I want you to run for home. I'll stay behind and hide. If he picks up our trail, I'll delay him somehow while you call for help. Ready?”

“Yes.”

The whisper was thin and high with fear, but Lisa grabbed the hand Maura held out. Backs bent low, they ran along the narrow beach. The bank offered little protection, but at least the soft sand muffled their footsteps.

Normally a good three feet of packed-sand beach edged the water, but tonight the wind and rain whipped the waves right up against the bank. At places, water covered the beach completely.

Rolling troughs of murky water slapped against Maura's calves and knees, slowing her pace and
threatening her balance. They'd almost made the far edge of the cove when another yellow beam sliced through the darkness.

“Down!”

She dropped like a stone, dragging Lisa down beside her. The beam stabbed over their heads and aimed off to the right. Spitting out sand and salt-water, Maura struggled to her feet and tugged Lisa into another run.

Long, agonizing moments later, they rounded the curve and splashed into their own private cove. For a few moments at least, they were out of Pete's sight. Maura grabbed a tree trunk to steady herself and helped Lisa climb the chest-high bank.

“Run for home. Or for any house where you see a light. The path goes straight through from here.”

“I don't want to leave you!”

“You've got to. You've got to bring help.”

“Come with me,” Lisa pleaded.

“I can't. Pete might come around the curve any moment. He knows where you live. He knows your dad isn't home and will try to follow us there. I've got to stop him, somehow. Now, get going, kiddo. I'm counting on you to send help.”

She managed a shaky grin at the pale face hovering above hers. Lisa bent down to give her a quick, desperate hug, then scrambled to her feet and took off.

Maura waited until the driving rain had swallowed the phantom figure before she began to feel her
way along the bank. Unlike the cleared shoreline around the cottages, this one was wild and undeveloped. And the storm had added even more natural obstacles. Broken branches and debris littered the narrow beach. Whole sections of the bank had given way under the force of pounding rain and relentless waves.

Mud sucked at her shoes. A twisted, half-submerged tree stump caught her foot in a hungry grasp. Swearing under her breath, Maura threw out a hand to steady herself and fought her foot free.

Halfway along the cove she found the indentation she'd been searching for. It was wider and deeper than she remembered, probably due to the storm's erosion. A tall, thin pine towered at the edge of the bank right above the opening, its roots exposed and reaching down toward the sea to form a natural curtain over the shallow cave.

Maura groped in the darkness for a branch to use as a club, then slipped behind the slime-covered tree roots. Wedging herself as far back into the dark earth as possible, she tried to slow her pumping heart and still her rattling breath. Seconds crawled by with agonizing slowness. Minutes. Hours, or so it seemed.

Sheltered in her earthen cocoon, she couldn't hear anything except the splat of rain hitting the waves outside. Her universe consisted of shades of darkness, the water distinguishable from the earth and air only by its faint, pearly sheen. Maura ran a hand along the branch she'd dragged inside, needing the
reassurance of its weight and feel. To her dismay, the water-rotted wood crumbled under her shaking fingers. She wanted to scream in frustration. As weapons went, it wasn't much, but just the thought of a stick of wood in her hands had given her courage. False courage, she now knew.

Dragging in a shuddering breath, she edged toward the slimy roots. She'd have to slip out and find another branch. Just as she started to slither through the slimy curtain, a yellow shaft of light appeared.

Maura slammed back against the earth wall, her hands spread out on either side. Her fingers clawed the dirt in fear. Breathless, she saw the narrow beam of light sweep the cove. It sliced past her hiding place, swung back again. She bit down hard on her lower lip to still her rasping breath. Her frantic hands dug deeper into the wall, as if she could tunnel through the bank behind her to safety. Earth crumbled beneath her fingers.

Suddenly, she touched something smooth and cold and round. Maura snatched her hand away with a terrified gasp. Lisa's stories about Indian burial grounds flashed into her mind. She could almost hear the girl's light, high voice recounting with ghoulish delight stories of bones and remains found in this area. The thought that she may have closed herself in the darkness with a skull almost sent her plunging out into the rainswept night. Only the slow, deadly sweep of that damned flashlight kept her still.

Almost paralyzed with fear, Maura watched the
beam grow stronger. Pete was coming her way! The light stabbed the darkness in short, staccato bursts as it swept back and forth across the cove.

Knowing she had to have some weapon, Maura forced her trembling hand back to the earth wall beside her. Her fingers touched the round smoothness, jerked away and fumbled for it again. Twisting to the side, she scrabbled in the dirt holding the object. To her intense relief, it wasn't bone, but clay. Round and smooth and still half buried.

A pot wasn't much of a weapon, but maybe it had a ragged edge she could use to cut and slash with. Her fingers dug deeper around the piece, trying to pull it loose. After a few frantic seconds, she cleared enough of the dirt to get a grip on the rounded portion.

To her utter amazement, a heavy clay jug came loose and tumbled out. She ran her hands over its smooth shape, testing its solid heaviness. Around the rim the pads of her fingers could detect an intricate pattern of indentations. The handle was still whole and attached.

Her fingers closed over the handle. Heart pounding, she watched as the light stabbed closer and closer.

Okay. This was it. Edging her way to the far side of the opening, Maura filled her free hand with muddy earth. She knew she'd only have one chance.

When that chance came, she was ready. Pete was only a few feet from her hiding place when Maura
slid out from behind the root curtain and let fly with the mud.