The Gift of the Dragon (25 page)

Alice stared hard at the edge of the dock in the moonlight and then nearly cried out as a the dark shape of a man’s head, something long and thin in his teeth, poked up. Swiftly he put an elbow on the dock, rolled a leg up, and in one smooth motion stood, with the thin shape revealed as a long knife gleaming in the moonlight.
 

Alice froze behind the wooden box, holding her breath. The man looked around and then moved toward where the catamaran lay moored on the side of the dock away from Alice’s hiding place. He leaped over the low side of the boat and sliced at the thick nest of wires going into the starboard motor.
 

Without thinking Alice said, “Hey!”

The man whirled and suddenly stood back on the dock facing Alice.

“What’re you doing? That’s my friend’s boat!”

The man stared hard at her. “Alice?… Alice Sangerman?” While talking, he walked slightly to the side.

Turning to face him, Alice said, “Who wants to know?” As she spoke, Alice realized he had put the moon behind him as he moved.
To get a good look at my face?

The man shrugged. “It’s not important. You can call me Sanchez.”
 

Then he lunged at her with the knife.

Alice’s body moved as if of its own accord,
toward
the man! Stepping aside as he thrust his blade through the space she had been in, she turned her back to him, arching her hands over her head, with one end of the rope in each hand. She wrapped the rope around the attacker’s throat and then twisted away from him, pulling hard with her right hand. This move pulled Sanchez backward off his feet, and Alice stepped over him, kicking away the knife.
 

She should have kept the tension on the rope then, until Sanchez passed out, but her left arm chose this time to freeze up in a spasm, and the rope fell from her open hand. She spun away, managing to kick Sanchez in the head. She opened her mouth to scream, but at that moment Sanchez landed on her stomach, driving the wind from her, reaching his hands down to grab her throat. Feeling his iron grip close, Alice panicked and grabbed Sanchez’s wrists. She caught his eye then, seeing cold determination. This one meant to kill her. Quickly.
 

Swim inside,
a voice said in her head.
Let go
. The training her body remembered took over. She pulled her elbows together and let go of Sanchez’s wrists. She put her hands together, holding them straight down, and then raised them up in a swimming motion, and brought them through Sanchez’s arms, pushing apart, breaking his grip.

Simultaneously, she gripped his ankles with her own, spreading her legs apart, putting Sanchez off balance. Falling, Sanchez thrust his brow straight down at her. Alice jerked her head to the side, deflecting his blow some, but he still hit her hard, and stars danced before her as she turned. Pulling his knees beneath him, Sanchez reared back for another head butt.
 

That was a mistake.
Alice got her right hand on his chin, and her left hand grabbed his ear. She twisted Sanchez off her and onto the dock. Now, she rolled on top of him. She rose up and brought her hand back to strike, but then Sanchez exploded up with his hips and rolled to his right, grabbed her love handles, and threw her off. She fell, gasping in pain. She felt something hard under her shoulder.
Sanchez’s knife!
She leaped back to her feet, the blade reaching forward.

She struck at Sanchez overhand. He grabbed her wrist, his eyes focused on the knife. She brought her left hand up, pushing his away, and shoved the knife sideways toward his throat. His eyes wide now, he brought his left hand up to block her strike. He moved too slowly. The blade drew a dark line on his flesh. Now he tried to shout, but only bubbling noises emerged from his lips as he fell down, drowning in his own blood.
 

Breathing hard and suddenly exhausted, Alice sank down to sit on the dock. She watched the life fade from Sanchez’s eyes, his blood black in the moonlight, pouring through the gaps in the dock and dripping into the sea.

Alice drew breath then to shout for Jacob, to warn the others in the house, and then stopped herself. Sanchez probably didn’t work alone.
 

He was trying to disable the boat.
 

That meant there could be more of his kind. If the attack were well timed, they would already be here. Alice looked at the house, the steel roof glowing white in the moonlight and the windows beneath it dark and quiet, like staring eyes watching for movement. She wiped off the combat knife on Sanchez’s bloody shirt and looked over the edge of the dock where he came from. Down there sat a small, narrow, black boat, almost a kayak. Inside it she saw an automatic pistol with the black tube of a silencer attached to it. He must have put it down before climbing up.
 

He had been trying to keep quiet. If there were more of them, they were likely trying to be stealthy also.
 

She dropped into the rubber craft, balancing carefully. Where she had been sleeping on the bench, he probably couldn’t see her even with the night-vision goggles she also found. As she looked up at the dock, almost level with her head, she thought she knew why he left his stuff in the boat. It would have been hard to keep quiet climbing up carrying all that. Alice guessed the dead man thought to get up, clear what seemed to be an empty area quickly, and then bring his equipment up at his leisure.

Alice grabbed the gun, and then the night-vision goggles, and placed them up on the wooden boards. Then she vaulted up next to them, wishing her T-shirt didn’t shine so brightly in the light of the moon.
 

She looked at Sanchez, at his long-sleeved shirt covered with blood. It looked nasty, but it was black. She stripped that off him and put it on, shuddering as she felt the wetness on her skin. She looked at his pants. Her legs shone bone white in the moonshine, even with her tan. She put the pants on too, rolling the cuffs up.

Crouching down, she stared up at the house again. The railing on the shoreward side of the dock should block some of the view of a watcher in the house, but if Sanchez’s friends were up there during her fight, they could have seen enough to be alarmed. She counted to sixty, and still she saw no sign of life in the windows. She breathed out then. They must not have made their move yet. They would see the body, though. She tried, but in the warm air the body had grown stiff already, and she could not bend him enough to hide him behind the dock box.
 

Putting the rope she had strangled him with under his arms, she eased his body back into the water, gently so as not to make a splash.
May the lobsters that are left feast tonight!
She felt a little guilty but reminded herself what he had tried to do.

Alice looked at the long, wooden path to shore. With the moon halfway down the sky, it might as well have been a spotlighted catwalk. Anyone looking out from the house would see her walking up it. Deep shadows lay on the southern side of the dock, opposite the moon. She would have to go in the water along that side to remain hidden. Sighing, she turned back to Sanchez’s boat, crouched low, and moved quickly back to the edge of the dock. She tossed the gun and the goggles down into the boat. With her hands on the dock piles, she released the line holding the boat, and, kneeling in it, she pulled herself from one piling to another around the dock and back toward the shore.
 

Slow but sure,
she thought and then wondered where that saying came from.

Jacob
 

Jacob woke up, holding himself still. Something felt wrong. He smelled sweat, and not his own. His senses flipped to high alert, and he opened his eyes to slits. The moonlight streamed in the window. The shade was up. He hadn’t even noticed when he fell into bed.
Too many Land Sharks
. He saw an arm reaching slowly toward him, something dark in the hand. Jacob thrust his own arms up, throwing the blanket at the stranger and sliding his feet to the floor in one swift move.

“Fuck me dead,” the stranger cursed.
 

Jacob struck out with his left hand. The stranger moved fast, bringing his black stick up and out. Jacob felt a sharp pain in his left arm. He aimed his right hand at the juncture of the stranger’s head and body, leaning his full power into the strike, curving his fingers back. Jacob’s palm connected solidly with the stranger’s throat. Giving a strangled cough, the stranger dropped like a stone.
 

Suddenly, the lights came on, blinding Jacob. He felt a poke in the back and then a paralyzing shock. Falling, he saw a big, blond man with a black metal rod and, strangely, sunglasses covering his eyes just as the rod came crashing down on his head. Jacob sank into a blackness of his own.

Jacob woke up to Nanette’s sobbing. He barely opened his eyes without otherwise moving.
This can’t be good!
Through the blur of his lashes, he saw that he was back in the kitchen. Nanette sat next to him with her head down. Next to her sat Anna, tears running down her cheeks. With a stab of anger, Jacob saw that Anna’s little face was bruised. There men stood on the other side of the kitchen, talking in low tones. Jacob tested his arms. He couldn’t move them. He must be tied to the old wooden chair. He tensed his muscles, making the chair creak.

A thickset man with dark, cropped hair and angry eyes turned toward him. Jacob saw that the thin-faced man next to him held what looked like a large smartphone. The big man said, “So, sleeping beauty’s waking up! Good thing, too. We about wore these two out.”

Jacob glared at him.
 

“You would do well to drop your weapons, let us loose, and walk out of here. I’m a federal agent. So is she.”

“Yeah, we know all about how you are hooked up tight with the fed-er-ales, Jacob Castellan. Except that it seems you were fired a few months ago and have been working as a gun for hire. For a nasty little man, a man you killed. Your sweet sister here is a pencil pusher that resigned to care for her poor little baby. No one is expecting to hear from her, and you are even more naked. See, my buddy Alan over here has one of them Galaxy Pad things, and he is real good at looking stuff up. We know you were burnt, and we know why.”

The man leaned in closer. “And here is something else. You must have noticed I used my friend’s first name. Well, my name is Michel Thorn.”
 

Jacob felt sick. He recognized the name. Thorn would not have said it aloud unless he planned to kill them.
All of them.

“Right, I see you get what my pol-lite-ness means. You can die easy, or you can die hard. You can go before your sister, or you can go after watching her and her little girl expire.”
 

Thorn straightened up and pointed back to his men. “Now, Alan Marsdale there is a Brit and rather civilized. But not as civilized as Almaribe. He’s a freaking poof when it comes to babes getting hurt. So we sent him down the beach to check on our boat. Pigpen, however, is German. KSK. He liked to watch small things suffer when he was a kid, and then they trained him to really enjoy it. What happens next is up to you.”

“What do you want?”
 

Thorn pounded the table, rocking the solid wood. “Satisfaction. You came here with a girl. A skinny thing. She was dark-haired, but she got a dye job. Looks better as a blonde. Hell, most women do.” Thorn leaned over the table, some spittle flying out of his mouth as he roared, “Taking her was a big fucking mistake! Guzman was supposed to deliver her to me!”

He leaned in, glaring into Jacob’s eyes.

The man with the smartphone moved in, saying, “Look, Jacob, you signed your death warrant when you got in Thorn’s way. Now, tell us where she is, and we can get this over with. The Guvnor here, he means it when he says women and children first, you understand?”

At that, Nanette screamed, “Jacob, Anna! Why the hell did you come here! You said you couldn’t be followed!” She dissolved into sobbing. Anna stared at Jacob like a trapped animal giving up, her silence hurting more than Nanette’s screams.

Thorn walked over behind Nanette, grasping her chair and turning it to face Jacob.
 

“Look at her, moron.” Thorn pulled out his black stick. Jacob recognized it now as a form of Taser mashed up with a metal club. Thorn jabbed it into Nanette’s back. Her angry look at Jacob dissolved into fear as she felt it. Thorn leaned over her, staring intently into Jacob’s eyes.
 

“See how she looks now. She’s got an idea what this is going to feel like. Come on, Jacob, this is your big sister. Stop faking jacks, and tell me where little Miss Sangerman is. Have some mercy on your sis, lil bro.”

“Up yours,” Jacob said.

Thorn grinned, and Nanette screamed, went rigid, and then went limp. Jacob noted that Marsdale looked pained while the thin one called Pigpen grinned, looking excited.

“Mom!” Anna jerked in her chair, shrieking.
 

Thorn turned to her.
 

“Ah, the rug rat speaks. Well, now, she hasn’t felt the sweet tase yet. What you say, Jacob? Tell me where Alice is, and the little girl can meet her maker without the joy of feeling fifty thousand volts on her way.”

Seeing the look of fear in Anna’s eyes, Jacob said, “Look, man, we don’t have any idea where Alice is. We all went to bed. She was going to bed too. If Alice isn’t in the goddamn house, then she is outside somewhere.”

Thorn’s dark eyes went black. His hand a blur, he struck Nanette’s hanging head a vicious blow with the black metal zap stick, making a wet, smacking sound. Her chair fell over.

With his other hand, he pulled Anna up almost off the floor by her hair as she screamed in terror.

“Enough bullshit! If you don’t know where she is, you are all dead weight! And I mean fucking dead!”
 

He pulled his silenced gun out of his belt then and fired several shots into Nanette’s motionless body. Blood pooled on the wooden floor.
 

Jacob felt his brain shut down as a red rage burned through him. He strained at his bonds, but they did not give way. Getting his feet under the chair he tried to rise up and charge Thorn, but strong hands were behind him as Marsdale held him down. Anna hung her head, her body trembling with silent sobs.