Her Own Best Enemy (The Remnants, Book 1) (28 page)

Keith waited until Ryker complied then grabbed Grace’s hand, who tread water beside him, and clamped it around his belt. “Hold on and follow me.”

With a deep breath of his own, he let the water swallow him and swam toward the run-off chambers. They operated like valves, spilling into the main tunnel once they were full. Which meant one of them had to be empty.

It had to, or else they were screwed.

The water was dark and cloudy. His lungs burned, he pushed off the bottom with his feet and propelled them all forward like a torpedo.

He reached the first tunnel and swam inside. He caught a quick breath before water rushed down the passageway, obscuring his view. Ryker’s arms tightened around his waist. Grace’s fingers tugged at his belt.

They were still with him. Thank God.

A moment later the tunnel filled completely and he opened his eyes. They stung from the dirty water, but he needed to get his bearing. Up ahead on the left, he spotted a side tunnel. It had a circular steel cover to keep water out.

He pushed at the top of cover. It pivoted horizontal, giving him just enough room to squeeze through. He pulled Ryker then Grace in after him. His lungs ached with the need to breathe. He slammed his foot against the metal cover, flipping it back into place.

Air rushed his lungs and he drank it in greedily, his stomach pressed to the tunnel’s concrete bottom. Beside him, Ryker wheezed.

Keith touched his back. “You okay?”

Ryker coughed, long and harsh.

“We’re fine,” Grace drew Ryker away from Keith and wrapped her arms around him.

Cool air washed over Keith’s skin and racked his soaked body with shivers. He clenched his jaw and snapped off a nod. He dropped his shoulders and touched his forehead to the rough cement so he didn’t have to look at her.

“Why didn’t you want my help? What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking. Is that what you want to hear?”

“For starters.”

No. He wanted to hear the words she’d spoken before she’d found out about his order to destroy the contents of the flash drive.

I trust you, Keith.

He should’ve known that a woman like her wouldn’t put her faith in a scarred, embittered soldier like him.

Victor staggered out of the underground chamber and into the open field, the late afternoon sunshine sending tiny swords into his blurred vision. His head throbbed mercilessly from the bloody gash, courtesy of King, that son of a bitch.

His cell phone rang and he unclipped it from his belt, flipping it open. His stomach heaved at the number displayed on the LCD.
Al-Ak Raman.

He tightened his grip on the phone and waited until the ringing subsided. Eight hours until hell descended on him. If he didn’t deliver the security codes—the clean security codes he didn’t have thanks to King—Raman wouldn’t let him see the next sunrise.

Fortunately, Victor planned to disappear before then.

He grimaced. As much as it pained him to lose out on the other half of Raman’s payment, he preferred to stay alive long enough to enjoy his geriatric years.

He had more money in his offshore accounts than he could possibly spend in this lifetime, a new name and a first-class flight to Rio. All that remained was to take care of a few loose ends.

He dialed up his best killer for hire. Someone he could trust to do the job quietly and efficiently. He put the phone to his ear with a wince, a moment’s remorse for the hit he was about to put on the little kid.

He’d never meant the boy any harm; he’d been leverage, nothing more.

It couldn’t be helped now. The boy had to die. If the Army had taught him one valuable lesson it was that innocent casualties were acceptable for the greater good. The boy and the woman were just innocent casualties. Keith on the other hand, deserved to die a slow, painful death.

The phone rang once. Twice.

Where was Arthur? The helo should’ve been here by now.

“Going somewhere?”

Victor started at the sound of the familiar voice behind him. His cell phone slipped from his shaky hand and fell to the grass.

He whirled. “What are you doing here?” His hands trembled, twitched.
No. It couldn’t be.
His vision wavered. The gash on his head must be scrambling his brain. That had to be it, and, yet, he found himself whispering an agitated, “How did you find me?”

The flat look in Colby’s eyes scared him shitless.

He raised his Beretta and stepped forward. Metal jangled against metal in an unsteady rhythm. “Well. I heard you were planning a trip?”

Victor licked his lips and edged backward. “I was coming to say goodbye.”

His brother laughed, a sound like the crack of a whip, devoid of humor, devoid of anything at all. “I didn’t want to miss your going away party.”

Victor forced himself to adopt a casual stance, but failed, as every part of his body was suddenly drenched in sweat. “Nice of you. But unnecessary, I assure you.”

Colby shot a pitying look at Victor. He fisted his hands and widened the distance between them. His brother shouldn’t even be standing before him. But if he was—it could only mean one thing.

He’d come to kill him.

“I...I did what I thought was best,” Victor blurted. God, he had to make him see reason. “I’ve always taken care of you, haven’t I? Come on, we’ll split the money. Hey, have you ever been to Rio?”

Colby’s lip curled, his eyes narrowed. “No. You saw to it that I couldn’t go anywhere.”

“That’s not...I mean...I tried to—”

“You stole my life!” The slash of his brother’s voice crackled with fury and desperation. “You motherfucking son of a bitch stole my life.”

Victor was screwed. He reached for his Glock and came up empty. Nothing. No weapon. How could he be so stupid?

His gut trembled like an earthquake. He balled his hands—he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

He roared and lunged at Colby, hoping to catch him off guard and take him down. The report of a gun echoed on the air seconds before pain slammed through Victor’s chest.

He stumbled, his breath left his chest. Lungs tight, he glanced down. What? Blood bloomed across his shirt. His chest, his esophagus burned, he couldn’t draw breath.

The son of a bitch had shot him. How could he have shot him? After all Victor had done for him...

He raised his eyes to the Colby’s impassive face.

“You...shot...how could you?”

His lip curled. “Simple. I just thought to myself, what would Victor do?”

Through Victor’s blurred vision, his brother turned his back on him and moved across the field, his awkward gait forcing him to take slow uneven steps.

“No...wait...Don’t leave me here...”

Victor’s knees buckled. Cold seeped through his body, turning him into a shivering idiot that found comfort in the grass.

“It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”

He listened to himself mumble the words over and over again until he found he could no longer speak.

Chapter Seventeen

Ryker’s uneven breathing was the only company Grace had as she trailed him and Keith through the dark tunnel. The concrete walls closed in on her, too close for comfort, causing her own breath to hitch and her chest to tighten. She needed to get out of here. Away from the tension, the fear, her desperation that she’d just made the biggest mistake by distancing herself from Keith.

No, she’d done the right thing. There could be no future for her and Keith. The past would always stand between them, like a big boulder, wedging them further and further apart. She needed to put her family first. Ryker was already glomming onto Keith, looking for that solid, steady presence Mark had always provided. She didn’t want her son having his heart damaged further when Keith disappeared from their lives. And there was Becca to think of…she was part of her family too, and Grace couldn’t ignore the ramifications of bringing Keith home to meet her sister.

She bumped into something solid and blinked, the darkness disorienting her for a moment.

“Mom.” Ryker’s voice held his typical eight-year-old censure. “We’ve stopped.”

“Sorry.”

She swallowed her distress and let her eyes adjust further to the contours of the tunnel. Ahead of her, Keith kicked at a mesh access vent.

It broke free of its frame with a screech. A weak beam of light sucked away some of the darkness, enough for Grace to see Keith give them a “hold” signal before he pushed himself out of the tunnel.

She held her breath until his head dipped down from the opening.

“It’s clear.”

Hearing his voice, all clipped and business-like, made her throat squeeze off any response she could have given.

“Ready?”

She nodded and boosted Ryker through the hole. The muscles in her arms quivered from exhaustion, her body shivered from a sudden draft, and a wave of dizziness swirled dark spots in front of her eyes. Suddenly, Keith’s hand dropped in front of her face.

Grace hesitated far longer than she should’ve but still, Keith’s hand didn’t waver. He didn’t gesture impatiently, or force her out of the tunnel. He just...waited. Steady. Strong. Words she’d never have used to describe Keith a mere week ago.

She locked her grip on his hand and he helped her through the vent. But as soon as she regained her balance, he let go, putting distance between them. Though her eyes had yet to adjust to the flickering fluorescent light in the room, Keith’s presence radiated off to her left side.

He issued a soft curse and drew his gun. A long corridor stretched out in front of them in only one direction. What if it led away from the exit?

Keith motioned for her and Ryker to follow. She didn’t need to be told twice. The eerie shadows against the walls of the deserted hallway, and the thick silence were beginning to freak her out.

Sweat beaded on her forehead and she swiped at it with her clammy hand. Beside her, Ryker shivered, the shakes punctuated by a loud wheeze. Her heart skittered. God, he sounded worse. Much worse. He needed his medication. Soon.

Eventually the hallway split off to another corridor. They navigated passage after passage, Grace’s heart sinking more with every dead-end that forced them to retrace their steps until a metal ladder appeared at the end of one of the corridors, it’s rungs ascending to the ceiling.

“This has got to be it,” Keith said, relief scratching into his voice.

He clambered to the top and shoved open the trapdoor. Blessed light flooded in. She heard Keith’s relieved “yes”, and then he slid back down the ladder.

He touched Ryker’s head. “You first, buddy.”

She followed, hot on Ryker’s heels in case he lost his balance, with Keith right behind her. Ryker gasped and scrambled out of the dark, murky, space. She squinted against the bright sun. The warm breeze rippled through her wet clothing, stirring the tall, yellowed grass beneath her feet.

“We made it!” Ryker grinned, his own clothes plastered to his small body, his hair sticking in every direction, his glasses smeared and askew.

They’d done it. They’d made it out alive. “We sure did.” She drew in a lungful of fresh air and sought out Keith as he joined them. “Thanks.”

He tightened his jaw and nodded sharply. “We need to find a phone.”

A rocky hill rose in front of them, just one more mountain for them to climb, but even though Grace was exhausted, she didn’t mind. She slung her arm around Ryker’s shoulder and navigated the terrain.

“Where are we, mom?”

“I don’t know yet, sweetie.”

At the top of the hill, a gray, three-story brick building cast a long shadow on the grass. She shaded her eyes with her hand and followed the line of the structure to the roof. Along the roofline HÓSPITAL was blocked out in blue letters.

HÓSPITAL? Where they in Mexico?

“Keith?”

He shook his head, his focus intent on something other than the building. Something that blocked the dirt road ahead.

Grace caught up to him, but wished she hadn’t when she realized the dark form was not a pile of debris, but a man.

A dead man.

She staggered back a step and immediately grabbed for Ryker to shield him from the sight. “Don’t look,” she whispered, pressing him behind her.

But, she couldn’t take her own advice. Her gaze froze on the dead man’s face. An uneasy familiarity, stirring bile in her throat. “He looks...do I know—”

“Victor Longenbow,” Keith practically spat the name.

Her blood chilled. “Oh, my God. Colby’s...brother?”

“Younger brother. The son of a bitch was a superior officer. I thought he was a good soldier. Honorable. Instead, he’s been selling the country down the river from the inside.” Frustration emanated from Keith’s taut body. “Now there’s no telling what he’s sold to our enemies over the years. Or if whoever killed him will pick up right where he left off.”

She clutched Ryker to her. “What now?”