Gone Black (32 page)

Holliday said, “We can wait until dark and then go up and fight it out or try to get across that sand. There can't be that many of them.”

“There's enough of them to put us all down.”

Everybody was quiet after that, but they found out that they didn't have to make any more decisions. Jaxy was stupid and impatient enough to start sending men down the trail after them. They were approaching the spot halfway down, using the jutting rocks and ledges for cover.

Black said, “Okay, get ready. They're not stopping. They're rushing us.”

Claire pushed Rico up against the rocks, thinking how horrible it would be if Jaxy got the poor child back under her control again. Then she inched over to a spot where she could peek around the rocks and see the trail above them. Novak was already lying on the ground, his wound forgotten, his AR beaded on the place where the first man would appear. It didn't take long. He shot him down, three quick taps in the chest. The man fell and tumbled down toward them, sending a skittering shower of rocks behind him, hard enough to take him over the nearest ledge. He fell to the beach below, his scream ending abruptly when he hit the rocks and bounced down onto the sand just below.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Shots rained down on them, from all directions, up above, from the path, shells hitting the rocks and ricocheting and whizzing all over the ledge where they were concealed. Claire felt the buzz of a bullet strike the stone near her ear and then a white jag of pain crease down the side of her head. She fell to her knees, holding her head, and then Black was beside her, covering her and Rico with his body.

“I'm hit,” she muttered, putting her hand to her head and feeling the warm blood running through her fingers.

When the barrage of fire stopped for a second, Black pushed her hair back and fingered the wound. “It's only a graze. Keep pressure on it. You'll be all right.”

Above them, Jaxy and her men started shooting again, farther down the path now and closer to them.

Holliday darted a look out from behind the rocks. “They're moving into position on either side of us. They're playing with us. It's just a matter of time. We're gonna have to make a run for it. We don't have a choice anymore.”

He ducked back as more shots rang out from every direction, the bullets zinging off the rocks all around them, whizzing around at all kinds of crazy angles that were impossible to avoid. Holliday groaned when he got hit in the foot.

Black kept Claire and Rico under him as more shots rang out. “They're trying to pick us off one at a time. We've got to storm them up the path. Go in firing. It's the only chance we've got. We've got to go up to them, and hope to God we can pin them down somehow.”

Nobody said anything, all of them pretty much knowing that plan was suicidal.

“Okay,” said Booker. “Let's do it.”

“Claire, you and Rico stay down here. We'll come back for you.”

“No way, Black. I'm goin' in with you. Rico can stay here. I want in this fight.”

“No way are you going up there. You're injured. You're staying down here. You can't help us.”

“Like hell I can't. You're injured, too. So is Novak. And Holliday. We're all injured. You need as many guns as you can get. They outnumber us.”

Black didn't say anything else, because he knew she was right.

“Then you stay down here and give us covering fire. We go up first, and then you go last. Rico, you stay right here and don't move out from the rocks. If we don't come back, you run down to the beach and hide. Understand me?”

The little boy nodded, but the look of terror had returned to his big, dark eyes. Claire felt that way, too. Any one of them who didn't was a fool. And none of them were fools. Storming back up to the top was a death sentence, and they all knew it. None of them would survive. After all they'd been through, all the pain and terror and within yards of escape, they were going to die, after all, and on some stupid Sicilian cliff.

Black was in total charge now, making all the decisions. It was obvious that the other men expected him to get them out alive. So he made up a really terrible plan that didn't have a chance in hell of working, as shots continued to ring down all around them. But it was the best one under some very hairy conditions. They had to hurry and execute it, too, before somebody got killed where they stood. But they set it up for two to go at a time, one putting down cover fire, while the first one tried to make it up to the next spot of cover along the trail. Then the third would cover the first two, and keep up that leapfrogging until they crested the peak, taking out as many of the enemy as they could along the way. Claire would go last.

Claire looked into Black's face, and he stared back at her. Their eyes met and said things, because they both knew. This was it. Their luck had run out. He pulled her close against him for a second, for the final good-bye, and Claire struggled to remain calm.

“I wish we could've gotten married first,” he breathed into her ear. “I really would've liked that.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Then it was back to business. “Okay, you ready? Let's do this.”

Black edged his way up to the front with Booker right behind him. They made it out without getting shot, Novak covering them by letting loose at the top with his rifle. Novak went next, Holliday covering him. Halfway up to a spot about six feet up the trail, all hell broke loose again, but this time it was happening far above them. They all went down for cover, flattened against the rocks, but no shots peppered the rocks around them this time. Claire darted a quick look up at the cliff top, but she couldn't see anybody. The firing went on for perhaps ten minutes. They all just waited, staying down, not moving, not sure what was going on. Then it became very quiet again. Gulls screeched and dove, the waves roared and crashed below them, and Rico started crying softly behind Claire, finally giving in to the fear he'd fought down all day long.

Spread out up along the sandy path now, all securely hidden behind rock ledges, they waited tensely for something to happen. Then a voice rang out from up very high. Heavily accented English. “Nicholas Black? You down there?”

Black waited, frowning, and then he called back. “Yeah.”

“Come up. It is safe now.”

“Don't think so.”

“Your brother sent me. Jacques Montenegro.”

Claire's heart shivered with hope.

Black looked down the trail at her and then squinted up at the rocks again. The sun was behind the enemy, making it hard to see anything. He was quiet for a few moments, thinking things through, apparently afraid it was another trick. Then he yelled again. “How do I know this isn't a trap? How do I know that you're not with Jaxy Soquet?”

Silence prevailed for several minutes, making Claire think it very well could be a trick. But then a shadow suddenly formed in the sky above them, coming closer, and then the body hit down on the rocks not a yard in front of Black's position and bounced up high. It was her. Jaxy Soquet. There was a black bullet hole blasted into her at mid-forehead, and the back of her head was pretty much gone. She came to a stop, upside down, blood flowing out of the back of her head, coating the sharp rocks with red and dripping slowly down onto the next ledge where Booker was hunched down.

Stunned, they all just stared at the woman's body for the first few seconds. Then more bodies came spiraling down from the top, cartwheeling in the air until they landed with awful crunching sounds on the rocks all around them. At least ten more bodies rained down before it stopped, and Claire recognized some of them as Jaxy's men.

“Those men answered to Jaxy,” Claire called up the trail to Black.

“Okay, okay,” Black said, but he still didn't look convinced. He was still wary. Not sure what to think.

“It's Potenza, Nicky,” cried another deeper voice. “It's Giuseppe Potenza.”

At that, Claire saw Black's face relax. He stood up and grinned down at Claire. “That's him. I recognize his voice.”

Claire just held her breath, not sure what to think anymore. Every time she thought they were gonna make it, something terrible happened. Then she saw a man appear at the top, dressed in dark pants and a white shirt, carrying a rifle that was pointed down at the ground.

“Who the hell is Potenza?” demanded Novak. “I'm not standing up until I know who the hell these guys are.”

“He's a good friend of Jacques's. They grew up together in Marsala before my father brought our family to America. He runs things there now. We can trust him.”

Black started up the path, all good with the situation apparently. The rest of them waited, not so sure yet. They watched as Black met the older man halfway up the trail and they embraced warmly, slapping each other's backs. Claire watched them for a moment, thinking she was beginning to love Black's criminal kin. All of them, each and every one. Hell, maybe she'd join their ranks, be a female mafioso and move to Sicily. Then she just lay back flat on the ledge and allowed all her tension-ridden muscles to relax.

Right there, for the first time in over a week, her body went slack and she felt halfway secure from imminent and bloody murder. Rico snuggled up next to her. They lay there like that for a long time while the men all climbed up to welcome their reinforcements. She lay there, in fact, until Black came down and made her get up. Then he picked up Rico, and she just followed him in another difficult climb up the cliff face, as if she were in a dream. Maybe she was. Maybe she'd wake up in a minute, and none of it would be real. Maybe she'd still be in her wedding gown, waiting for Black to show up at her cabin that wasn't blown to smithereens. Maybe it had all been some horrendous, horrible nightmare, and she was going to laugh about it later.

It wasn't a nightmare. Well, actually, it was, but it was over. Finally. Maybe. Claire found that out when she reached the top of the cliff and the man called Potenza hugged her as if she were his long lost daughter. As if she hadn't been pinned down by gunfire only moments before. As if he hadn't ordered Jaxy and her men killed and then thrown off a cliff as proof of his friendship to Black. Claire wasn't really computing any of it very well any more. It had all become just a little too much for her. Rico clutched her legs, held tight and wouldn't let go, and she patted his back and watched Black shake hands all around with his Sicilian best friend and his large band of savior Sicilians, thanking them for their help in perfect Italian. Wow. Just wow. Weakly, though.

Apparently they had been alerted by Jacques Montenegro after Black called him. Jacques traced the call and they had come in by boat and then up through the hills on horseback, of all things. They had brought saddled steeds for Black and his friends. Claire let one of the small, smiling Sicilian saviors hoist her up into the saddle, and then Rico was swung up behind her. He was holding on to her so tightly around the waist that she could barely breathe. Black swung up on a big white steed and handled it like he was Lawrence of Arabia. Claire just wanted it all to be over. Now. Please. Please, God, just let it stop. She just wanted to go home and lay in her bed. Unconscious. She was having a major delayed reaction to being down inside the deepest dregs of hell for so long. That had to be it.

Instead, they were taken by boat back to Marsala and then to a nice big modern hospital so they all could be patched up with no questions asked or the bother of Sicilian police being called. Then they were driven to a big, beautifully lit-up mansion high in the hills overlooking the city. It was a nice place with lots of men around, all toting guns, and high stucco walls, and all the trappings of one powerful godfather's home sweet home. Or maybe, he was a real live Sicilian don. And that's exactly what Potenza was, as it turned out. He was head honcho of all Sicily, and he and Jacques were like brothers. Surprise, surprise. But Claire did like them a helluva lot better now.

In time, Jacques arrived in Sicily, too, and he hugged her tightly like the best brother-in-law in the world and told her that he loved her, that she had saved his little brother's life, and that he'd never forget that, and he would do anything for her, anything she wanted and forever and forever. She sort of smiled dazedly and tried to look grateful and thought it was really great to have hardened criminals around who'd go to so much trouble to save your life at the very last minute possible.

She stood around after that, just listening to the men talk with much macho animation, and she decided that she might be experiencing a postbattle, mild PTSD dazed and crazed episode of sorts. Black must've noticed that, too, because he took her upstairs to one big luxurious yellow bedroom with tall windows that opened up to lovely sea breezes and a beautiful view of a lovely garden and the city below and the vast ocean beyond that. He waited while she showered and washed her hair and slipped into a filmy nightgown provided by Potenza's daughter, Rosalinda. Rico had already been bathed and fed by said motherly daughter and was now sound asleep and safe in an adjoining bedroom. Maybe mafiosi weren't so bad, after all, she thought again. Maybe she loved them now. Maybe she really would become one, too.

“You just need to rest now, babe. What you need is a good night's sleep,” Black was whispering to her, right after he gave her a very potent sedative. “I've got this now. I'll go down and make sure everybody's settled and okay. I've got to get hold of some people in D.C. then I'll be back up. We think Marcel got away clean, but we've got to locate him. You just relax, and I'll be back in just a little while.”

Black leaned down and smoothed back her hair and kissed her cheek, looking like a Sicilian mafioso himself at the moment, with his dark beard and white cotton shirt, all he needed was his rifle slung over his shoulder and he could be the lead in
The Godfather, Part IV
. But she just murmured okay to all that, and then she shut her eyes and didn't know when Black left or when he came back upstairs and showered and got into bed with her, didn't know anything, didn't hear anything, didn't want to hear anything, for at least the next twenty-four hours. She lost herself in deep, dreamless, lovely, uninterrupted sleep, with no firing of guns or hitting with saps, or no hysterically stabbing anybody in the jugular with a jagged piece of glass. Maybe she'd never wake up again. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.