“Barry, do you hear that?”
Holding her breath, Ali turned back onto her belly. Raising herself into a half crouch, she waited for Molly to turn toward her once more. When it happened, Ali was ready. Throwing all her weight behind a karate chop, Ali caught Molly in the side of the neck. Ali had hoped to catch her full in the throat, but the blow had enough force to send the other woman sprawling.
The moment Molly fell, Ali leaped out of the trunk. She had been right to worry about her legs. She hit the ground hard, landing on a bed of sharp rocks that bit into the soles of her bare feet. She paused in midflight, looking left and right. The car was parked in a rough clearing that fell sharply downhill, where the ground appeared to end in utter blackness that Ali took to be water. To the right, the same clearing ran uphill until it gave way to scattered brush and what looked like a series of low-lying hills.
Stripped of shoes in that rugged terrain, outgunned and alone, Ali could have given up, but she didn’t. Instead, realizing she needed to give her legs some time before they would work, she dove for cover, scrambling under the car and wriggling forward under it commando-style.
“Barry!” Molly screamed. “Come quick. She’s getting away.”
“My God, woman,” he demanded. “What’s the matter with you?”
Ali thought she might get away clean, but when she shot out from under the front end of the car, Barry was waiting for her, holding a weapon Ali suspected was her own Glock.
“Not so fast, bitch!” he growled. “You’re not going anywhere.”
With the weapon in one hand, he grabbed the collar of Ali’s jacket with the other and began hauling her to her feet. Ali realized she might have one more chance. She waited until both of her feet were firmly on the ground, then she straightened up, butting him under the chin so hard that she saw stars. She heard his teeth slam together as she knocked him off balance. When he let go of her and staggered backward, Ali darted away, running uphill, away from the water and toward the desert.
Her feet screamed in agony as she raced through the rock-strewn, eerily starlit landscape. Dreading the sound of bullets whistling past, Ali spotted a low-lying ridge of rock and dirt that looked to have been bladed away to clear a space that was evidently some kind of boat launch. She dove for that, throwing herself over the ridge and rolling down the other side. She was airborne when she saw her mistake.
The ditch on the other side of the ridge glittered with the debris of a thousand broken beer bottles. As she rolled, pieces of jagged glass sliced into her body. When she came to rest, she could hear someone running toward her on the other side of the ridge. Desperate for a weapon, she looked for a suitable rock. She found something far better. Inches from her hand lay the remains of a broken beer bottle. The neck was intact. The body was a ring of jagged glass.
She lay waiting, and Molly didn’t disappoint. She topped the ridge of dirt, drawn weapon in hand. Convinced that Ali was still running, Molly made the mistake of looking off into the distance. Misjudging her footing, she tumbled into the ditch. As she landed, the gun flew out of her hands while she came to rest just beyond Ali.
This was hand-to-hand combat, and Ali didn’t hesitate. Closing her fingers around the glass, she jammed the bottle with everything she had into the top of Molly’s thigh, then grabbed up the fallen gun and took off into the desert while Molly writhed on the ground and shrieked in pain.
A bullet that was far too close ricocheted off a rock three feet away from Ali as she dove for cover again, this time behind a scraggly bush. Once she was behind it, she slithered away on the ground until she settled behind a nearby boulder, coming to rest a good ten yards to the right from where Barry would have seen her last. Crouching there, bruised and bleeding, she was grateful to have Molly’s weapon in her hand. It was a lightweight Kahr PM9. The nine-millimeter semi-automatic wasn’t a handgun Ali had ever used, but it would do, and she was a good marksman.
She could see Barry coming toward her, easing his way up over the ridge. Ali held her fire. Ali judged him to be too far away to risk a shot. She’d have to wait. Breathing deeply, she concentrated on stilling her mind and calming herself.
He came up on the far side of the ridge, crossing it at almost the same place where Molly lay in the ditch. She had given up screaming in favor of whimpering. “Help me,” she begged. “Please. You’ve got to, or I’ll end up bleeding to death.”
He paused and looked down at her. What happened next shocked Ali Reynolds beyond anything she had ever seen in her life. He simply aimed his weapon full at his wife’s face and pulled the trigger.
Ali had already known this was life or death, but she hadn’t understood the depth of Barry Handraker’s cold- blooded ruthlessness. Now she did, and she realized with a chill that he was coming after her next. She felt a momentary temptation to flee again, to try to put some distance between herself and the murderous thug, but she knew that running offered only the illusion of safety. She was barefoot. He was not. If she ran, he would pursue her to the bitter end. With this boulder as her protection, Ali knew she was far better off standing her ground.
Barry walked forward, leaving Molly dead in the ditch without so much as a backward glance. He came after Ali with the same kind of single-minded concentration. In the end, it was that total focus that did him in, along with the sound of that fatal gunshot reverberating in his ears.
When Ali saw the ghostly figure rise up out of the ditch behind him, she was puzzled at first. Who was this person? Where had he come from? Or was it Molly? Had she somehow survived and followed him?
Gradually, the second figure closed the distance, moving with a careful stealth that allowed him to go both unnoticed and unheard. His right hand held an upraised weapon, a club of some kind. The pursuer was only a few feet away when something must have warned Barry. He half turned. As he did so, the club in the other man’s hand swung around and caught him in the back of the head. Barry stumbled forward half a step and then crumpled to the ground.
Without knowing the identity of her rescuer, Ali stayed where she was. Perhaps it wasn’t a rescuer at all but another member of a gang of crooks, bad guys who were busy turning on one another. Far in the background, Ali heard another sound or, rather, two other sounds-the distant wail of an approaching siren, and again the heavy thwack of a helicopter rotor. With those sounds filling up her ears, it took her a moment to recognize the familiar voice calling to her.
“Madame Reynolds, where are you?” There was no mistaking Leland Brooks’s distinctive voice. Leaning down, he appeared to pick up Barry’s weapon and pocket it; then he called to her again. “Please show yourself, Madame, and let me know you’re all right.”
Dumbfounded, Ali rose up from behind her boulder and stumbled toward him. This time, if rocks cut into her feet as she sprinted across the clearing, she didn’t notice. Moments later, she had her arms wrapped around the old man, hugging him close and weeping unashamedly into his shoulder.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, no,” she blubbered. “Well, maybe a little, but how did you find us? How did you get here? And how did you do that? Is he dead?”
Leland held her at arm’s length as if not trusting her words and needing the reassurance of seeing for himself that she wasn’t injured. “He’s not dead,” Leland said at last, “but I fear he’s going to wish he were.”
“Did you see what he did? He killed her,” Ali said. “He shot her right in the face!”
Leland nodded. “I know,” he said, “and I did see it.”
By then, he was reaching into the pocket of his pants. Pulling something out, he handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “Wipe this down to remove my prints, then turn it on and put it somewhere on your person.”
Ali looked down. She was holding an iPhone. Even in the starlight, she could make out the bright red nail- polish E she had written in the upper corner of the glass face. It was the phone she had given her mother to use during the campaign. She had designated it EXTRA.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because we need a way of having found you that won’t reflect badly on Mr. Ramey and Mr. Simpson. I’m afraid some of their methods may have been slightly beyond the pale.”
Without further argument, Ali did as she’d been told. Once the phone was wiped clean and turned on, she stuck it safely in her bra.
Leland nodded in satisfaction. “Good,” he said.
“You still haven’t told me how you managed to take him down like that,” Ali said.
