“You said the cops might start to figure it out before long. That was fifteen minutes ago.”
“Schedule’s tight, but we can get it done. Robinson and the girl-then Barbara. Come on. We’ll take the van.”
He hustled her out the door, toward the open gate. She pulled off her mask, and he saw her lower lip jutting ominously, a prelude to a tantrum.
“I wanted Mrs. Kent.” She pouted, hands balled into fists. “I was all set.”
“Look on the bright side. Maybe you’ll nail Robinson personally.”
A blink, a sudden smile, everything all right again. “Think so”
Cain shrugged, breaking into a run. “Somebody’s got to.”
Trish checked the Glock’s magazine.
Eleven rounds, plus one in the chamber.
In her gun belt’s dump pouch were two spare mags, one fully loaded, the other partially expended by the sentry she’d subdued.
The chase boat sped closer. She made out two men aboard.
“How far to shore” she asked Ally.
“Another couple miles. Maybe four minutes.”
Trish shook her head. Four minutes was too long. The FireStar would overtake them much sooner than that.
“Keep driving,” she said. “And stay low.”
Blair pushed the boat to its limit, watching the tachometer register five thousand rpm.
He glanced at Gage and caught his kid brother’s infectious smile.
“I’ll steer,” Blair shouted through a mist of spray. “You shoot.”
Swinging out of her seat, Trish crawled over the stem and knelt on the port swim platform. The jet drive throbbed through the fiberglass like a straining heart.
With one hand she clutched the grab handle on her left. With the other she aimed the Glock.
She tried using the laser sight.
No good. The choppy ride made it impossible to direct the beam.
The FireStar loomed nearer, drums and guitars keeping up a steady beat. She could see the passenger leaning over the port side, a pistol shiny in his hand.
Steadying her gun, she fired.
Muzzle flash from the Sea Rayder.
“Bitch is shooting!” Dimly Blair perceived a kneeling figure. “In the stern. The stern!”
Gage leaned farther out, reckless with exhilaration, and returned fire.
From the FireStar, a volley of gunshots.
Bullets slapped the water. Trish threw herself onto the stern’s fiberglass cover, sprawling flat on her belly, legs twisted awkwardly.
Couldn’t be intimidated. Had to keep the chase boat at a distance.
Leaning on her elbows, bracing the gun in both hands, she squeezed off another three rounds.
Blair was closing fast on the Sea Rayder, wild laughter riding on his lips, laughter born of speed and danger and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” pounding like a movie soundtrack all around him.
He wished he still had his gun or, better yet, an automatic weapon, a machine pistol or an AK-47. Then he could be a real Hollywood hero, ripping bodies with bullets to the wail of a synthesizer in a hectic, garish dance.
Jump cut: Trish Robinson’s throat opening like a second mouth.
Jump cut: Ally Kent screaming, cut down by another spray of bullets.
Jump cut: the Sea Rayder plowing into a sandbar and igniting in a Technicolor whoosh.
Jump cut: Gage twisting backward, then dropping heavily into the companion seat, his Glock cradled loosely in his lap.
Drunk on adrenaline, Blair almost didn’t realize that this last image was no film-clip fantasy.
It was real.
Gage had been shot.
“Jesus,” Blair hissed, the truth clamping hold.
The bitch cop had hit him. Gotten him bad.
The right side of his face was peeled open to red bone. His ear dangled on a flap of skin.
Blair throttled back and leaned over his brother.
“Stay with me. Gage. Stay with me.”
Trish saw the chase boat drop back.
The guy riding shotgun was no longer firing at her. Reloading, maybe.
She glanced over her shoulder, past Ally. A dark land mass approached. The lake’s north shore No, not yet. Only the weedy hump of a small island.
Shore was still far away.
Too far.
Gage blinked, focusing blearily on Blair. His lips moved, but the feeble noises he produced were swallowed by Manfred Mann.
Blair looked ahead. The jet boat had widened the gap.
There was no time for him to minister to Gage-not if he still wanted Robinson.
He rammed the throttle forward and snatched the gun from his brother’s hand.
Facing aft, Trish saw the FireStar surge ahead with frightening speed.
Muzzle flash. The pilot was the one shooting now.
The bullet struck the stern inches away. She averted her face from a shower of fiberglass splinters.
Close.
A second shot slammed into the underside of the boat. The pitch of the engine abruptly lowered as the Sea Rayder bucked.
Hit the motor. He must have hit the motor—
Her left leg jumped.
For a dazed instant she was baffled, wondering why it would jerk that way, like a dead frog’s leg in a science experiment.
Then she felt a sudden curious numbness below her knee, numbness overtaken a heartbeat later by the worst pain she had known in her life.
It was a hot poker lancing her leg.
It was a thousand cigarettes branding her.
It was needles and electrified wires and steel claws.
Shot. Shot. Shot.
That one word caromed off the corners of her mind with dizzying velocity.
Her stomach twisted. She spat up something hot and wet.
Blood Was she hemorrhaging Had the bullet caught her higher than she realized In the gut, the lungs
No, it wasn’t blood. Wasn’t even vomit. Just saliva unspooling from her mouth in a thick, ropy strand.
The boat bounced, jarring her leg, and the pain leaped up, so strong she could hear its screaming whine in both ears, and see it too, a brilliant white glare that fogged her vision, erasing the night.
“We’re losing speed!” Ally’s shout. “I think-“
