Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (8 page)

16

11:47 p.m.

Sand cushioned Jenna’s fall, but before she could even begin thinking about what to do, she felt a weight settle onto her chest. In the faint glow of the starlight, she could see the silhouetted form of her attacker sitting astride her chest, pinning her body and left arm beneath his straddled legs.

Noah’s voice flashed through her mind, an ancient movie commentary that seemed grossly inappropriate at the time, but came to her now as welcome knowledge.
Three good punches to the kidneys will put a man down and make him piss blood for a week.

Her free hand sprang to action before the memory faded. She struck hard and fast, delivering two solid punches to Raul’s back, just below the ribs, sending a pulse of pressure through the kidneys. Raul shouted in pain. “Bitch!” He caught her arm before the third punch could connect.

She struggled to buck him off, but the effort ended with a blow to the side of her head that nearly knocked her senseless. There was a flash of blue across her vision, like the inside of a lightning bolt. Her ears rang, and the taste of blood filled her mouth.

She knew she could not stop fighting. To give up was to surrender the rest of her life to a fate that seemed like the stuff of bad dreams.

I’d rather die than let them put me on that plane
.

The thought of dying snapped her out of her despair. Maybe she had misjudged the brothers, but they were still just a couple of small-time thugs. Jenna had survived more than one attempt on her life this night, from people a lot tougher and a lot smarter than Carlos and Raul, and she was not about to let these assholes stop her from figuring out who was after her and why.

As the ringing in her ears relented, she realized that Raul was almost face to face with her, shouting threats and obscenities, showering her face with spittle.

“Okay!” she shouted, or rather tried to. Blood and saliva had gathered at the back of her throat, and when she opened her mouth, it triggered her gag reflex. She turned her head, spat and then tried again. “Okay. I give up.”

Like hell I do
.

Raul seemed to hit the pause button on his rage. “I warned you what would happen.”

“I know you did. I’m sorry.” It was another lie, but she didn’t care if he believed it or not. What mattered was his reaction to what came next. “I didn’t tell you the truth about Noah. About my father.”

“You think I care about that?”

“You should,” she said, choking on another mouthful of blood. Her tongue probed the inside of one cheek where Raul’s blow had shredded it against her teeth. “He’s dead.”

All the fight went out of Raul, but he did not move, did not release her. “Dead?”

“Someone killed him. Some very bad, very connected people, and they’re after me now. That’s why I came to you.” Jenna paused, partly to let the words sink in, and partly because she wasn’t sure exactly how to play this wild card.

The pressure at her chest abruptly vanished, but before she could think about trying to turn it to her advantage, Raul knotted his hand in her hair and hauled her erect. A whimper of pain escaped her lips, the motion aggravating all of her injuries all at once. He yanked her forward, striding away. She had no choice but to follow, jogging to keep up, a dog on a leash.

She had run much further than she realized. The Corvette’s headlamps were just pinpricks of light, far down the landing strip, a beacon guiding them onward. The trek was an excruciating ordeal. Raul kept tugging the handful of hair in his fist. But Jenna used the time to concentrate on what she would say next. If she got this wrong, she would have very few options left, and all of them were of a very final nature.

I won’t die without knowing why Noah was killed
, she promised herself.

Carlos met them halfway, and even in the darkness, Jenna could see the laughter in his eyes. “This one’s a tiger. She almost got away from you,
hermanito
.”

“Maybe I need to tame her,” Raul answered. His words were clipped, his breathing rapid, whether from the exertion of the chase or from anticipation, Jenna could not say.

“Better not,” Carlos answered. “She’s worth a lot more if she’s still got her cherry.” He pushed his face close to Jenna. “How ‘bout it, girl? You still a virgin?”

Jenna almost spat in his cold, calculating face, but stopped herself. Angry people were easy to manipulate but only if the anger wasn’t directed at the person trying to do the manipulating.

“She says her old man is dead,” Raul intoned. “Someone offed him.”

“Yeah? Damn, all of a sudden it’s like Christmas. I’ll send a ‘thank you’ card to whoever did it.”

“You don’t want to mess with the people who did it,” Jenna managed to say. She hoped she had judged the brothers correctly. A taunt like that might very well push them away from the thing she planned to use as bait.

“Oh?” Carlos made a clucking noise. “The captain made some very bad friends, did he? I’ll bet he wishes he’d done business with us instead.”

“They’re looking for me now,” Jenna went on. “They think I can lead them to their money.”

Jenna thought it sounded contrived, but maybe that was because she knew it was a falsehood.
Or is it?
Suddenly, she wasn’t sure anymore. What if Mercy had gotten it wrong? Maybe Noah had been involved in something illegal? Maybe the attack on the boat had been some kind of organized crime vendetta? The fact that she could not easily dismiss the notion ate at Jenna’s resolve like a cancer.
I have to know the truth. I have to get to Noah’s fire alarm
.

Carlos had heard only one word, and he repeated it almost breathlessly. “Money?”

She let the seed of the idea germinate in silence as she allowed herself to be drawn closer to the shining headlights. What she needed to do next would work better if she could see their faces, though she was in no hurry to get closer to the waiting airplane. When she could finally look her tormentors in the eyes, she elaborated. “A lot of money. Noah hid it somewhere in the ‘Glades.”

Carlos gestured for Raul to release Jenna, and then he gripped her arms and held her so he could study her face. She realized that he was using the same lie detecting techniques she had—reading eye movements to detect intention and duplicity—and she made a willful effort to control her reactions. The look of fear came easily enough. Then she tapped into the possibilities of what Noah might have concealed in Homestead, making her fabrication feel authentic, even to herself.

“How much?”

Jenna shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot, I guess. Enough to kill for.” She looked up as if hit by a lightning bolt of inspiration. “I’ll take you to it, if you let me go.”

Carlos shook his head. “Why don’t you just tell me where it is? If it’s there, then maybe we can make a deal.”

His eyes did not betray the lie she knew he was telling. He had no intention of letting her go. Nevertheless, she smiled as if she believed him. “I can’t tell you exactly how to get there. I’d have to show you. But it’s all yours if you want it. Just promise to let me go.”

Raul was shaking his head, looking at the screen of his smartphone. He held it up, revealing a news report about shots being fired at the marina. “This is messed up,
hermano
. Her story is legit. Someone killed the old guy because of it. That’s heat we don’t need.”

Carlos ignored his brother. “The Everglades. That’s pretty vague. Narrow it down for me.”

“If you promise to let me go.” Jenna needed him to believe that she was desperate enough to trust his word.

“I don’t make promises like that, little girl. But I promise that if you’re screwing with me, you’re going to wish we’d just stuck to the plan and sold your ass. Now, where in the ‘Glades?”

“Near Homestead.” She let her lip quiver a little, as if she wanted to say more but knew better. Carlos snapped his fingers in a ‘tell me more’ gesture, but she just shook her head.

He stared at her a moment longer, then turned to Raul. “Get your car off the runway.”

It took Jenna a moment to comprehend the significance of this. “We’re flying?”

“We can be at Homestead in less than an hour by air,” Carlos replied. He didn’t seem irritated by the question, but when he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the airplane, his forcefulness silenced her. He shoved her onto the plane’s wing and opened the door that lay just above it. “Get in.”

She complied, squirming through the opening into the claustrophobic confines of the cabin. It was her first time in any kind of aircraft. She had expected it to be more spacious, but then she could not have imagined that her first flight would be under these circumstances. As she settled into a seat just behind the cockpit, she surveyed every detail of her environment like a general studying a battlefield in anticipation of a fight. As a last resort, she was prepared to crash the plane by attacking the pilot—presumably Carlos—on take-off or landing.

She thought she might even survive.

Jenna wondered why the brothers had been looking for charter boats to make smuggling runs for them if they had a plane and knew how to fly it. Maybe they were trying to distribute the risk?

Carlos waited outside until Raul returned, then both brothers climbed inside. Carlos got into the cockpit and fiddled with various instruments. Raul took a seat across from Jenna, his eyes never leaving her.

So much for the kamikaze plan
, she thought. Her chances would probably be better once they reached Homestead. It would be easier for her to create an opportunity to escape in the unfamiliar territory of the Everglades, especially since she would be leading the way.

As the engines roared to life, it occurred to her that, when they did get to Homestead, she would have only one chance to turn the tables on her captors. She had about sixty minutes to figure out just how she was going to do that.

17

Homestead, Florida, USA

Sunday, 1:04 a.m.

The hour passed quickly. When the distant lights of Miami came into view, the small plane descended toward a dimly lit area in the foreground that could only be Homestead. The ride had been rougher than Jenna expected, but none of her expectations were based on any kind of prior experience. She had imagined that flying would feel smooth compared to other forms of travel, but the air, much like the water upon which she had spent most of her life, was full of invisible currents and pockets of turbulence that rocked the small plane. It was enough to fill her with nausea, exacerbating the roiling of her empty stomach and intensifying the headache that had taken root during her long walk to Key West. She wanted to close her eyes and seek refuge in sleep, but even if her body had been able to do so under such conditions, she knew that dozing off could be a fatal mistake.

The shaking grew worse as the plane descended through the layers of the lower atmosphere. Outside the window, Jenna saw the buildings and streets of Homestead grow larger until it seemed that they would set down right in the middle of traffic. Then a ribbon of asphalt appeared beneath them and a moment later, the fuselage shook with the impact of touchdown. Jenna squeezed the armrests, holding on for dear life. All thoughts of how she would escape the Villegas brothers were forgotten as she envisioned the plane coming apart around her, exploding in a fireball.

She sighed with relief as the aircraft settled onto its wheels and slowed, trading the rough chaos of thin air for smooth but unyielding terra firma.

Raul laughed at her. Jenna considered flipping him the bird, but decided that would be a bad idea for several reasons, the first being that she’d have to let go of the armrests.

They taxied for several minutes before pulling to a stop alongside a row of similar aircraft. Jenna looked in vain for ground crew or other personnel that she might be able to call out to if the chance presented itself, but the airport looked deserted.

Carlos extracted himself from the cockpit and threw open the door. After the unexpected cool temperature in the plane’s interior, the hot, humid, tropical air was yet another physical assault on Jenna’s frayed nerves.

Pull it together
, she urged herself.

“I’m hungry,” she said, aware of how pathetic she sounded.

“Tell you what,
chica
,” Raul answered. “After you take us to daddy’s stash, I’ll buy you a great big steak dinner.”

The thought of eating steak—greasy, salty, dripping with bloody juices—nearly made her retch. “Actually, not that hungry after all,” she murmured.

Carlos ignored the exchange and led them down the tarmac, around a building to a nearly empty parking lot. As they approached a generic looking sedan with a rental sticker on the rear bumper, Carlos took out a phone and began tapping the screen. After a few minutes, the sedan’s locks clicked open.

“How did you do that?” Jenna asked, curious in spite of everything else.

“I’ve got the app” he said, waggling the phone in Jenna’s direction. “No more waiting in lines or filling out papers. No business hours.”

She had been wondering how they would proceed once arriving at Homestead. Hiring a taxi or renting a car might have given her yet another opportunity to seek help or slip away, but Carlos had avoided all human contact by ordering the rental car online and having it delivered to the airport, keys inside, to be unlocked remotely when he entered a confirmation code.

Carlos directed his brother to take the wheel, then opened the rear door for Jenna, sliding inside next to her. “Where to now?”

Jenna tried to remember the brief glimpse she’d caught of the map displayed on Mercy’s cell phone. “It’s south of the city.”

“What’s the address?” Carlos’s tone was impatient.

“There’s no address. It’s out in boonies. You know, it would be a lot easier to do this in daylight.”

“I’m sure it would. For your sake, I hope you can show us how to get there in the dark.”

She clamped her mouth shut. Daylight would have been preferable for a very different reason, but if the map was any indicator, the area where they were going was so remote that she doubted they would see anyone else even at high noon.

“I’ll need your phone.”

He laughed. “You think I’m stupid, little girl?”

“I need your phone’s GPS to find the exact spot.”

He considered this. “Just tell me the GPS location. I’ll put it in.”

“If you want the money, we do this my way.” The confidence in her voice wasn’t just an act, and she wondered from where she’d gotten her wellspring of fortitude.
Noah
, she decided. From watching his example and from listening when he spoke.

Probably his genes, too. Is grit an inheritable trait?

Jenna braced herself for the expected reprisal, but Carlos surprised her by holding out his phone. When she reached for it, he whispered, “You try to call someone or send a text, and I will hurt you.”

She nodded and took the phone. Although Noah had never let her own one, she had used Mercy’s phone many times, as well as occasionally borrowing them from her classmates. She brought up the phone’s search program and typed in the coordinates from memory.

25.321304 -80.557173

The search returned a variety of options. She spotted ‘maps,’ but as her finger hovered above the screen, she quickly scanned the other search results.

Interesting
.

The list was replaced by a close-up satellite projection of the area. She saw a road leading to it, but if her suspicions about the place were correct, there would be no vehicle access. With two fingers, she zoomed out until the outskirts of Homestead were visible, a patchwork of neat green and tan rectangles sitting above the featureless brown of the Everglades. She found the airport at the edge of the city, and then she memorized the route they would need to follow to reach their final destination.

She handed the phone back to Carlos without making any effort to erase the search. It didn’t matter if he knew the coordinates now. Her brief look at the search results had revealed something very unique about their destination. There hadn’t been much really, just links to web pages, with only the title and a few words of description for each, but it was enough for her to finally make sense of the bizarre coordinates, and the last set of numbers Noah had written down.

Jenna felt as if there was now a light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time since Raul had revealed his treachery, the advantage was hers.