Pursuit (23 page)

The gun resting in the foam compartments in the briefcase under his seat was one of the most powerful weapons on Earth. At a distance of two miles, it carried more firing power than Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum at point-blank range. On this gig, Barrett didn’t think he’d need the incendiary .50-caliber bullets, but he packed them all the same. You never knew. But even the standard .50-caliber bullets could pierce the armor on a tank. They could puncture the hull of an aircraft or a helicopter and bring it down. With incendiary bullets, he could penetrate a rail tank car or an LPG facility and take out an entire port. Or, the biggie, penetrate the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant.

It was a good thing all Barrett was after was one lone woman. And it was a damned good thing he was a true-blue, red-blooded American patriot.

The light, sleek plane lifted cleanly into the clear sunny morning and veered westward. The landing was as smooth as the takeoff. The pilot’s soothing voice with its hint of a Southern twang had made announcements all across the continent about the progress of their flight, geographical landmarks they were passing over, and weather conditions. Fifteen minutes ago, he’d come back personally to advise Barrett that the plane would land in a quarter of an hour and it did, to the second.

When the small plane wheeled to a stop, the pilot and copilot emerged from the cockpit to escort him out. Robb carried his suitcase down the stairs, but Barrett kept the briefcase in his own hands. At the bottom of the steps, the pilot shook his hand, a good tight, dry grip.

“It was a pleasure to have you, Mr. Donaldson.”

Barrett smiled. “The pleasure was all mine.” He meant every word.

The jet charter company had sent a limo to pick him up on the tarmac. The driver stowed his suitcase in the trunk, made sure Barrett was comfortably settled, and drove off. Barrett had told the company his destination—the Coronado.

Forty minutes after landing, Barrett was being shown into his suite, the most expensive room in San Diego. He tipped the bellboy, had a lavish late lunch sent up and ate leisurely, then showered, pulled the heavy drapes closed, and fell into the comfortable bed. He’d been up for forty-eight hours straight and needed sleep.

Barrett could go—and had gone—for days without sleep. In an endgame, in the thick of battle, the body is flooded with adrenaline and doesn’t need sleep. But a man would be crazy to forgo sleep when it wasn’t necessary. It was the kind of mistake a businessman paid for in lost sales. A soldier paid with his life. It was a lesson Barrett had learned well. He was closing in on Charlotte Court, he could feel it in his bones. The urge to press forward was strong. But he was also a highly disciplined man and knew that he needed to recoup the hours of sleep he’d lost when inspecting Charlotte Court’s home and dealing with Moira Fitzgerald.

He set the alarm in his head for seven the next morning, and fell into a deep sleep. The next morning, refreshed, Frank Donaldson shed his expensive outer layers and disappeared.

San Luis

April 28

Charlotte finally gave up trying to log on, in the small, brightly colored Café Flora, one of San Luis’s many Internet cafés. The connection was down. It surprised her that Matt let her spend time there without dogging her every footstep, maybe sitting right next to her as she surfed, but he did. Maybe he had things of his own to see to. He had, however, told her very sternly that she was to stay put until he could pick her up at noon. He’d be here at noon, or he’d be dead. The one thing she was absolutely certain about was that Matt was a man who would do what he said he’d do. He said he’d pick her up at noon at the Café Flora and when she walked out at noon from the pleasant, airconditioned café, he’d be there. He seemed to have appointed himself her bodyguard, and, soldier that he was, he took his duties seriously. Not only that, he’d somehow got it into his head to turn her into this . . . this warrior. Warrioress? Somehow, in one day, he’d managed to drum enough gun information into her head for her to get off a couple of accurate shots. If you’d said to her six months ago that she’d have started learning how to shoot a gun, she’d have called the nearest psychiatrist. Even more astonishing, Matt had managed to inspire her. How had he done it? He’d somehow reached inside her head and pulled out exactly the image she needed to motivate her. It was an image burned into her soul. She saw it nightly. One of Haine’s minions, a member of the little personal army he’d assembled right under their noses, lifting a pillow from her father’s face. Charlotte hadn’t needed the steady whine of the EKG to tell her that her father was dead. One look at his white, still face was enough.

She revisited the next five seconds endlessly—Conklin turning, mouth gaping with surprise when he saw her, hand reaching into his sheepskin jacket and coming out with a big black gun, taking aim and firing as she instinctively ran toward him, grabbing the IV tree, the pain blooming in her left shoulder just as she swung.

Every time she thought of that scene, rage filled her at the thought of Conklin, who’d snuffed out her father’s life like that of a molesting insect. She’d seen the truth in his eyes—he’d killed Philip because he could. Because Philip somehow stood between him and what he—or rather Haine—wanted. And she would never, ever forget the smirk on his face as he pulled a gun on her.

Philip Court had been a wonderful man, a fabulous father, and a loyal friend. The whole city of Warrenton was a better place because of Philip. He’d donated heavily to the local library, the Historical Society, to the Warrenton Philharmonic, to summer camps for underprivileged kids.

Her father had been dying, yes, but he might have had another couple of months left, and Charlotte had meant to spend every second she could with him. He’d been a remarkable man, and she’d loved him with all her heart. And Robert Haine had snuffed his life out as if it had been worthless.

Somehow Matt had tapped into that rage, into the feelings of helplessness and raw injustice that had swamped her, and channeled it into . . . guns.

Charlotte Court, warrior princess. Talk about surprises.

She was shaking her head ruefully as she walked out of the dim café into the bright light of a Mexican morning.

“What?” Matt came away from the low wall where he’d been waiting for her. She almost laughed out loud at his wary expression, as if he expected her to explode at any moment. Her reaction to Matt was another huge surprise. Charlotte prized her freedom, hated feeling controlled or told what to do. By all rights, having someone like him stuck to her side, checking her every movement, should have driven her insane. Instead, she felt . . . safe.

Last night he’d insisted on rolling out a sleeping bag on the floor of her living room and it had been—been like having a loyal knight guarding her sleep. And she’d slept deeply and well.

“I was thinking that maybe I’d been a warrior princess in another life.”

“Maybe you were.” He smiled. “I’ve got something for you. I ordered it yesterday, and Lenny said that a friend dropped it off this morning.”

“Something.” Charlotte frowned up at him as they walked down the Calle Cinco de Mayo.

“Something like a . . . present?”

“Mm,” was all he said until they got to Lenny’s dive shop. Lenny was out with two Frenchmen who’d hired him as a skipper. Matt unlocked the bright blue front door and walked around behind the cash register, pulling out a large box wrapped in plain brown wrapping paper and tucking it under his arm. “Let’s open it at your place.”

“Okay,” she agreed, puzzled. What on earth had he got her that was large and bulky? It might even be heavy, but with Matt carrying it, who could tell?

San Luis was changing daily, she reflected on the walk back. Each day, it seemed, there were more people about. Most were tourists, easy to spot because of their garish holiday clothes and beet red complexions. The Mexicans were always perfectly dressed for the weather and had the sense to stay out of the sun. There seemed to be more of them, too, more of everyone. Several shops that had been closed when she’d arrived were open now, most of them catering to the tourist trade.

She wasn’t unhappy about this. It was easier to hide with more people to hide around, sort of like a human purloined letter. Instinctively, she knew that fate had handed her a good bolt-hole.

And then, of course, there was Matt, walking along beside her, matching his long stride to hers. He often held her by the elbow, like now, but he rarely looked at her when they were outside. Sure that he knew where she was because he was touching her, he dedicated the rest of his attention to the dangers of the outside world. He was intensely aware of everything, dark eyes checking every corner, scanning every person they passed for possible danger.

It didn’t make for good conversation while they were outdoors, but it did have the astonishing effect of making her feel remarkably safe.

That and the gun in her purse.

Amazing.

She, Charlotte Court,
Ms. I-hate-guns
in person, felt safer because she had a pound of machined metal in her purse. With
bullets
yet. And she knew how to use it. Sort of. If Conklin or Haine had been a beer bottle, she’d have nailed him right between the eyes. That was another amazing surprise about herself—these primitive feelings of rage, this thirst for revenge. Not only was she now capable of defending herself—well, in theory anyway—but she also harbored deep, raw, primitive feelings of hatred for the men who’d killed her father and shot her. She was a fugitive, her life in smoking ruins, and she hated the men who’d done this to her.

Charlotte had never hated another human being before in her life, had never even thought she was capable of such barbaric feelings, but there it was. She shook with rage every time she thought of Haine or his minions.

“You’ve got some complicated thoughts running around in that beautiful head of yours,”

Matt said idly. He’d barely glanced at her since they’d left the dive shop, yet here he was, more perceptive than a dinner date. He looked down at her. “Care to share?”

“Um . . .” To her surprise, she did. She took a deep breath. “It’s really hard for me to say this, because it goes against everything I’ve always believed in my whole life.”

“Go on,” he said softly.

“When I said I hated guns, I—I really meant it. I always thought that was an integral part of my being. And yet . . .” she blinked and looked down toward her purse, feeling like a traitor to everything she’d ever believed in. “And yet—I feel safer because of what’s in my purse.”

She glanced up at him. He was listening intently. “And I hate that. I
hate
it that I feel better because I’ve got the means to kill someone close to hand.”

It was like taking a step into a new world. A dark and fierce one, violent and full of traps.

“It’s all new to me, these feelings. I don’t know how to deal with them.”

His voice softened. “I know, honey. It’s hard. And probably I’m doing humanity a disservice teaching you how to shoot, because you’re naturally good at it. You’ll become a menace. Who knows whether you’ll turn into some female gangster, like Bonnie, or a killer like Nikita.”

Charlotte elbowed him, encountering rock-hard muscle. He probably barely felt it, though he did grimace and say ouch, just to salvage her pride.

When they reached her house, Matt took the keys out of her hand, opened her door, and went in before her. “Wait here.” A massive arm like iron barred her entry. She stared up at him, and he smiled briefly. “Please.”

Well, maybe he was learning. She stepped back and let him do his thing. His thing was quick and thorough. In a few moments, he was back at the front door, holding it open for her. When she stepped into her own apartment, she could be certain that there was nothing there that could harm her.

The big brown package was on the dining table, mysterious and large. Charlotte looked up into Matt’s impassive face then back at the package. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Let me guess.” She circled the table, inspecting it without touching it. It was about fourteen by twelve inches, about six inches high, wrapped in the plainest brown paper imaginable. Not trendy, elegant uncut stock but normal kraft wrapping paper.

Finally, she picked it up. It wasn’t heavy, wasn’t light. She shook it. Silence. Matt was watching her, no expression on his face.

“Okay, I give up,” Charlotte said and started carefully picking at the Scotch Tape at one end. She’d always done this, even as a child. She’d been able to unwrap her gifts so neatly that the wrapping paper could be used again. And was used again—for years she made collages out of wrapping paper.

Inside was a box. A black plastic box. Not empty, but not filled with something loose. She shook it, holding it up to her ear. Nothing rattled.

It looked expensive, well and carefully made, whatever it was. An expensive, black plastic box.

“Okay,” she said, putting it down on the dining table. It sat there, dark and gleaming, with little steel . . . doodads running around the sides. “I give up.”

Matt lifted a layer of Styrofoam and lifted out a thick instruction booklet, a series of cables, some black plastic . . . thingies and—what looked very much like a series of guns. No, not guns, plastic replicas of guns.

Without reading the instructions booklet, he hooked up the cables to the small TV set on the sideboard, snapped the black plastic cubes onto the box, then attached one of the plastic guns. He didn’t fumble, and he didn’t hesitate. The whole process took less than five minutes.