Deadly Pursuit (28 page)

Slowly he pushed her hand back, driving the knife toward her own throat.

He meant to savage her with the blade, kill her with the same knife that had ripped open Steve’s belly in the swamp.

Steve ...

Probably dead by now. Or dying, alone in the dark. Because of this man in the water with her, this predator, this venomous snake.

Fury made her strong.

She stiffened her arm, stopping the blade only inches from her neck, and with a final wrenching effort she forced the knife forward, overpowering Jack as he fought to hold her back, and thrust the needle-sharp point into the soft skin below his jaw.

Blood erupted in a black spume. He released her arm, twisted free of the knife, and she stabbed again, gouging his face—again, slicing through his lips—again, grooving a horizontal slash across his forehead—again and again, her arm swinging wildly, while his hands flailed in a useless attempt at self-defense.

Air bubbled from his mouth, mixing with fluttery ribbons of blood. His eyes were wide and confused, and in them she could read his thoughts, his terrified, plaintive protest: This can’t be happening to me!

She thought once more of Steve, then of poor Ana, then of the seven women Jack had bragged of killing, and the knife hacked yet again, butchering his face, the blade carving savagely as fierce ecstasy swelled in her, an orgiastic exultation that craved blood and pain.

In that moment she understood the dark passions that had moved Jack through his days and nights of death. She knew how he’d felt when he claimed each victim’s life.

And she knew there was a part of him in her, in everyone. A part that must be resisted if it was not to be released.

* * *

Agony.

His face torn, a dozen new mouths opening to lick the water with tongues of blood.

He gave up trying to fend off the knife’s attacks. The hungry blade would not be denied.

Spasms shook his body. His legs kicked, arms thrashed; he jerked and twitched and flailed, convulsions hammering him out of shape.

His women had died this way. He’d relished their furious contortions, their final shuddering exit from this life.

But now he was the one dying in a spastic tangle of limbs, he was the one going down alone into the dark; and it was no fun at all.

The rope dragged him lower. Kirstie began to slip away. He made a last attempt to haul her with him to oblivion. His bleeding hands found her leg; his fingers closed over her ankle. She kicked free. And then she was above him, out of reach, and he went on dropping like an anchor, cheated of his prize.

Looking up, he saw her in silhouette against the sunstruck surface of the sea. She seemed to hover there, outlined in an aureole of sun. He thought irrationally of those near-death experiences people reported, the angel beckoning to the liberated spirit at the entrance to a tunnel of light.

* * *

But this angel wasn’t beckoning. She retreated from him, cruel in her indifference. The light faded. And he was plunging down in an endless, weightless fall, into a pit of night.

Kirstie watched Jack vanish into the gloom. The last she saw of him was his upturned face, incised with a crosshatched intaglio of scars, his eyes wide and staring, mouth stretched in a voiceless scream.

Then he was gone, lost somewhere within a rising cloud of blood; and with him went her anger and her strength.

A wave of weariness passed over her. Her fingers splayed; the knife fell from her grasp to join its master in the depths.

She had almost no energy left. But enough, perhaps, to reach the surface before her last residues of air seeped away. Enough to live.

Kicking hard, she climbed toward daylight.

50

The search-team leader and the chopper pilot were first to reach the row of shacks on the east end of Pelican Key.

To the south, palm trees writhed and twisted like damned souls in the fire’s hot breath. Flames had consumed the Larson house with astonishing rapidity. The smell of gasoline had hung in the air throughout the search team’s brief, dangerous reconnaissance.

When it had become obvious that no one could be left alive in the inferno, the team leader had ordered a retreat from the house, then paired off his people and sent them to search the rest of the island.

He and the pilot approached the first shack in line, service revolvers drawn. They positioned themselves on both sides of the door frame. Silent count of three, and the team leader kicked open the door and pivoted across the threshold.

The shack was empty.

Next door down, same procedure, same result.

Next door, same procedure—

He froze in the doorway.

Someone was there. Lying motionless on the lower bunk.

“FBI, hands up!”

The figure did not stir.

“I said,
put your goddamned hands up
!”

Nothing.

He beamed his flashlight at the bunk.

“Oh, Christ.” That was the pilot.

The team leader thought it had been a long time since he’d seen that much blood from just one man.

The two of them moved toward the bunk, less warily now, with nothing to fear. The man they had found was unmistakably dead. His eyes were shut, mouth open, skin bleached of color. Blood had run freely from a wound in his abdomen. It dripped on the floor, monotonous as water torture. A few somnolent, fat flies crawled lazily over the vivid red stains.

“Nice smell, huh?” the team leader observed, sniffing the copperish reek.

The chopper pilot didn’t answer. For six years he had seen duty as a street cop before taking to the air. The lesson had been drilled into him that his first priority in a situation of this kind was to confirm that the subject was deceased.

Conscientiously he pressed his thumb against the dead man’s carotid artery.

He felt a pulse.

“Hey. We’ve got a live one here.”

The team leader took a moment to register this information. “Jesus,” he said softly, staring at the parched mouth and sunken cheeks. “What could keep him going?”

“Willpower.”

“We’ll need a paramedic crew to medevac him off the island—”

“Medical chopper will take twenty minutes just to get here. We can airlift him ourselves in my Huey.”

“This guy needs plasma, oxygen. You don’t stow life-support gear on board.”

“If he’s survived this long, he may hang on till we get him to the mainland. It’s our best shot.”

The team leader nodded. “Point taken. Let’s move.”

Together they lifted the unconscious man off the bunk.

A groan, a flutter of eyelids. The bloodless lips moved, forming a barely audible word.

“Forgive ...”

The team leader grunted, backing out of the gloom into the blossoming day. “You don’t need to worry about forgiveness, pal. Whatever it is you’ve done, nobody will say you haven’t suffered enough.”

* * *

Lovejoy, swimming in suit pants and button-down shirt, had just made it over the reef to the scattered flotsam of the runabout when Kirstie surfaced in a spreading slick of blood.

“Mrs. Gardner!” He was already reaching for his gun, hoping water hadn’t damaged the cartridges. “Where is he?
Where’s Jack?
”

Her words dribbled out between breathless gasps. “I ... killed ... him.”

“You
killed
him?”

“Yes.” She regarded Lovejoy with blank, innocent eyes. “He deserved it.”

Lovejoy shook his head slowly, a smile—his first smile in what seemed like a long time—teasing the edges of his mouth. “I wouldn’t venture to disagree.”

She let him lead her through a narrow gap in the reef to the
Black Caesar
’s dive step. Pice assisted her on board, then winced as he noticed the swollen puncture marks on her arm.

“Cottonmouth, eh? Lord, he nipped you something nasty—”

Kirstie cut him off. “My husband ... you’ve got to help him. He’s in a shack on the island, near the main house. Dying ... or dead.”

Lovejoy took out his walkie-talkie. “I’ll tell the search team.” In a lower voice he asked Pice, “Do you carry antivenin?”

“No, but they’ll have plenty at the hospital. Meantime, there’s a first-aid kit in the aft cabin. It’s already been put to good use.” Moore’s arm, Lovejoy noted, had been bandaged and secured in a makeshift sling. “She’ll need water and painkillers, and a dab of antibiotic on those open sores.”

“I’ll take care of that, Captain,” Moore said. “You just get us to Islamorada.”

“In record time.”

Moore escorted Kirstie into the cabin. Pice hurried up to the bridge, and a moment later the diesels roared as the
Black Caesar
swung toward land.

Alone in the cockpit, Lovejoy radioed the search-team leader. “Dance is dead. Tried to flee the island, and his boat broke up on the reef. There’s more to the story, but it can wait.”

“Congratulations.” The other man’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Sounds like you beat the devil.”

Lovejoy felt no triumph, only exhaustion. “We recovered Mrs. Gardner. She says her husband is in a shack—”

“We already found him. Getting set to fly him out of here. A Code Blue team might pull him through, but I don’t know. He’s in bad shape. I wouldn’t give the wife any false hopes.”

“In my judgment, she’s in no condition to be informed at all.”

As he pocketed the radio, Lovejoy released a wet, noisy sneeze. His sinuses, miraculously unclogged since his arrival in the Keys, were clear no longer. Sea spray and chilly water had done their worst. He’d caught a cold.

He sneezed again, miserably, then turned toward the cabin and saw Kirstie standing in the doorway, Moore at her side.

“I heard,” Kirstie said simply. “He’s alive.”

Lovejoy hesitated. “It’s touch and go.”

“He’ll make it.”

“It would be inadvisable to—”

“Look.”

Head lifted, she pointed toward a distant spark rising slowly from the sooty haze that was Pelican Key.

The helicopter.

It climbed higher, higher, then seemed to hang suspended in the sky, a morning star.

“He’ll make it,” Kirstie said again, dampness in her eyes. “I know he will.”

She watched the point of light until drifting smoke wiped it from view. Then she stepped to the railing and stared at Pelican Key, gliding past.

The Larson house was a roofless shell. Out of the spread of churning vapors, one long tendril of red leaped up to slash the sky like a flaming sword. The sun, swollen on the horizon, flooded the world with a febrile, apocalyptic light.

Lovejoy gave Moore a nod. Together they joined Kirstie at the handrail. She gazed at the distant fire, tears wet on her cheeks.

Moore took her hand. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not.” Kirstie shook her head slowly. “Not anymore. It’s just that Steve always loved that house. He’ll be so sorry it’s gone.” Her voice dropped lower, hushed and contemplative. “Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’s ready to let it go, now that he’s found what he was looking for.”

“What, Mrs. Gardner?” Lovejoy asked. “What did your husband find?”

Kirstie turned to him, and he was startled to see that through her tears she was smiling, a smile clean of grief or pain. Her voice was a whisper.

“Redemption.”

The boat moved on, and Pelican Key receded, melting in a crucible of sun, dissolving like the last wisps of a dream.

Author’s Note

Readers are invited to visit my website at
www.michaelprescott.net
, where you can find info on my other books and upcoming projects.

Deadly Pursuit
was originally published as a Signet edition in 1995. Many people helped me in putting the book together, including Jane Dystel of Jane Dystel Literary Management in New York; Joseph Pittman, Michaela Hamilton, and Elaine Koster, all of Dutton Signet; and Russ Dvonch, who provided me with detailed maps of the Florida Keys.

For the new edition I made a number of line-editing changes, but did not alter the basic story. Diana Ross copy-edited and proofread the revised edition, doing an excellent job. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone.

Ever since I was a kid vacationing with my parents in Florida, it was my ambition to write a thriller set in that state. I enjoyed the opportunity to finally realize my goal, and I hope you enjoyed the result.

—Michael Prescott