Not that anything she’d learned was helping her now. She was growing weaker by the second and could barely move. She wanted to scream for help, but didn’t, afraid someone might hear, afraid someone might not.
Long minutes ticked by and it felt like she made no progress at all until she looked up and saw that the lights looked larger. Brighter.
With rain and pure exhaustion blurring her vision, she didn’t think she could make one more stroke toward shore. But then she hit the breakers and huge waves suddenly propelled her forward and she was flying, riding on water, floating, faster and faster and then, thank God, she felt the sandy bottom beneath her hands and knees. With her last ounce of strength, she crawled on all fours, dragging herself forward, and collapsed face first onto the sand.
“I made it, Ellie,” she whispered. “Mommy made it.”
She drew in one last ragged breath before darkness closed in and claimed her.
CHAPTER SIX
Matt Jackson’s soul burned with hatred.
So this was it. The end of the road, the final hour, the gate to hell. After years of working undercover to bring down the SBC, he was going to wind up dying like a fucking insect on a pin.
Fire. Heat. Pain.
Darth Vader jabbed him again with his neon red lightsaber.
Jab. Stick. Thrust
. Ribs, groin, neck, feet.
Fifty thousand volts of lightning, blazing, burning, convulsing his muscles until his body sagged in painful exhaustion.
He shook his head.
The room swirled.
Not Vader, Sanchez.
Sanchez wielding a nasty electro-shock baton.
Damn, he’d been injected with some weird-ass hallucinogenic drug and he couldn’t quite separate fantasy from reality.
Push past the drug.
Stretched above his head, his wrists burned where a rope secured him to some sort of pulley hanging from the ceiling of what appeared to be an old, abandoned shoe factory. For the last hour he’d been working one hand against the rope, but so far he had no progress to show other than raw and bloody skin.
Stripped naked, sweat mixed with blood and trickled down his back and chest, stinging as it seeped into the cuts Rafael Sanchez had made with a Sith Star. Six cuts so far on his back. Six on his chest. His torso was covered in blood, and he wondered if his eyes were going to be next.
Juan Garcia, his brother in arms, his
compadrè
, the man who’d led him to Sara after Sanchez had found her, was tied up in the same fashion, hanging from his wrists, about five feet away. He’d been beaten, shocked, burned and cut, and only his hatred of Sanchez was keeping him alive.
Juan slowly raised his head to look at Matt, a world of pain in his eyes, before once again letting his head loll against his chest. Tears, blood, and snot covered Juan’s swollen face and a ragged sob broke from his chest.
“Lo siento no le dije más pronto.”
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.
A lone light bulb hung between them, dim, casting just enough light to shadow all but Rafael’s eerie black eyes. Tears wet Matt’s cheeks and he wiped his runny nose against his bare arm.
Fight the drug.
“Juan, listen. Don’t tell him anything. He’s going to kill us anyway--”
“Shut up!” Sanchez thrust the lightsaber into Matt’s ribs. As his body convulsed he sucked air in through his teeth.
Sanchez paced between them, then stopped inches from Juan. “I’m going to keep frying your friend until his brain is stewed. Now, you are going tell me where the drive is, or your amigo is going to roast to death. Slowly.”
Juan’s head rolled from side to side, and Matt wondered how much more the guy could take before he passed out or died.
“Manny? You remember that time when you were twelve and papa took us to the beach? I think near Cabo?”
Vader grabbed Matt’s hair and yanked his head back. “What the hell’s he talking about?”
“Fuck you!” The Sith Star. Another rib, another slow, agonizing cut. Matt stifled the urge to scream as pain seared hatred along his side.
Fight the drug.
He glanced back at Juan who was babbling in his snot and drool. The poor guy had gone off the deep end. They weren’t brothers and he’d never been to the beach with Juan in his life.
“...and we had a treasure map. I thought a pirate took it but you gave it to mama for safekeeping. Then you made friends with Maggie and …I had to watch out for Maggie’s brother. He would have destroyed you.” Juan was talking in a soothing, almost sing-song voice, not making any sense. “You remember, don’t you, Manny?”
Did he? Hell no. Juan was rambling, hallucinating, and Matt knew they were both going to die soon. “Yeah, Juan, I remember.”
“That’s good, amigo. Cause papa can do anything. Anything at all.” He laughed, but then his laughter turned into one huge sob and he lapsed into Spanish,
“I’m sorry, my friend.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Sanchez went wild eyed, looking more insane than he already was. But then he lowered his voice to a whisper more menacing than his Sith Star. “I want to know where you stashed the flash drive. I want to know now.”
Juan raised his head, looked Sanchez in the eye, and with what could very possibly be his last defiant gesture, spit.
Furious, Sanchez pulled his gun.
“Stop! If you kill him, you’ll never find the drive!” Desperate, Matt kept working his hand. Another minute maybe, and he could do something.
Do
something? He almost laughed. Pain and irony bubbled through his veins, throbbed at his temples. No matter what he did, what he said, someone was going to die.
No.
Try not. Do.
Shut up.
Fight the drug.
Think.
Sanchez, the smug bastard, strolled up behind Juan, gun raised. He paused to look at Matt with flat black eyes, and Matt’s stomach rolled then seized with adrenaline.
Screw it, time to die.
“You crazy bastard, that dumb SOB doesn’t know shit! You wanna spend a bullet, then shoot me! Come on! You’ll never find your precious drive!”
“Yes, Señor Jackson, I will.” Sanchez moved to stand between them and leveled his gun at Juan’s head. “I will find the drive on my own. You are both dead.” And with those fateful words, his finger tightened on the trigger.
At the same instant, Juan grabbed the rope holding him, lifted himself up, and kicked Sanchez in the chest with both feet, sending him flying into Matt.
The gun fired.
And as Vader crashed into him, his world went black.
<><><>
It had been a long, sad day and it was now past time to go home. Dillon was packing up his briefcase when someone rapped on his office door. With a weary sigh he answered, “Enter.”
Lito poked a troubled face inside the room. “Sir, I think you’d better come quick.”
Dillon closed his briefcase with a hard snap. “This isn’t a good time. Get Chase or Wolf or Shane to--”
“No, sir. I mean, I understand, sir. But someone’s washed up on the beach. I think--it almost looks like--” He pointed to the picture on Dillon’s desk.
“Me?” Dillon straightened, swung his briefcase off the desk, and sighed. “Lito, you been drinking?”
“Sara, sir. On the beach. There’s a woman, she looks just like Sara.”
Comprehension didn’t kick in at first. Once in a great while some boater would lose his bearing and wind up landing on the Navy SEAL’s isolated strip of beach just down from the Hotel Del. No big deal. Security was probably already handling it. “So you’ve got a pretty blonde, face down in the sand. She’s probably martini’d out. Get a medic and--”
“Sir?”
Lito cut him off mid sentence and Dillon raised his eyebrows. “Something we’re not clear about, Lito?”
“Yes, sir. This. Chase told me to give you this.” He held out his hand, and in his palm was a gold Royal Claddagh wedding band with an emerald and diamond inset.
The ring was unusual enough for Dillon to know it was the same ring he’d had commissioned a year before he’d married Sara.
His briefcase dropped to the ground. He took the ring and turned it to the light. Inscribed inside the band were the words:
Camelot lives.
Sara’s ring.
In one long stride he snatched Lito from the doorway and shoved him,
drove
him, into the wall. Something in his brain buzzed and crackled and he jammed his arm against Lito’s throat. “You son of a bloody bitch, I’m going to break both your knees. And your arms. Then each finger. And then…then I’m going to bury you up to your neck at low tide and watch you fucking drown.”
Lito didn’t move. Didn’t fight back or even try to get Dillon off him.
Maybe that’s what calmed the swarming in Dillon’s head. Lito had twenty pounds on him, arms the size of Utah, yet he stood there, eyes calm, body slack, while Dillon slowly squeezed off his air.
Dillon stepped back. His muscles were still bunched, jaw still tight, but dammit Lito wasn’t cruel. Neither was Chase. And they sure as hell weren’t suicidal. “Where’d you get the ring?”
Lito coughed and rubbed his throat. “Over in the general area where you’d like to bury me. Sir. The woman had it on, Chase recognized it. Slipped it off before the medics arrived--”
“So this isn’t a joke, or some kind of insane idea to get me to--?” Dillon looked from the ring to Lito, not quite past being completely and utterly stupefied. “Where?”
Lito pointed. “The beach. Go left out of the building, she’s--”
Dillon hit the deck running and was gone.
<><><>
Dillon flew down the sidewalk between concrete buildings, hit the asphalt grinder, but the second his shoes hit the sand, fear snatched the back of his collar and stopped him cold.
One of the things that happens when you survive a psychologically traumatic event is that after a while, random memories sort of appear out of nowhere. Maybe it’s a good memory, like a first date, a birthday or holiday, or just some ordinary day that made you happy. Or maybe the memory’s not so good, but it’s there and even though you thought you’d buried it, it surfaces out of nowhere with sharp ugly teeth and bites into your heart.
Like now. With the sand and the dark and the uncertainty whether life or death was just yards away. And what it would mean either way.
What it had meant all those years ago.
Born of an Irish father and American mother, Dillon had grown up in a fairly normal family environment. His dad was the manager of a high-end hotel in La Jolla and his mom taught English Lit to high school kids, most of whom, at that age, unfortunately couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Poe or Twain. He’d grown up in Ocean Beach, which back then was a cool place to live, not as cool as Pacific Beach or La Jolla, but a solid, decent, middle-class neighborhood with the ocean close enough to walk to.
He’d had one sister to share it all with.
Some days this was good, other days, having a sister was just a huge pain in the butt.
One of those pain-in-the-butt days came on a Wednesday night in late spring. Lisa, age nine, had been determined to run away from home over something he couldn’t even remember, and Dillon, as her older brother, had been obligated to go with her.
At twelve, he’d figured he could handle just about anything. He sure as heck could handle his nine-year-old sister. So he’d left a note saying Lisa was sleeping in the treehouse with him, they’d be down for breakfast, and then he’d taken her to their favorite spot on the beach which was only two blocks away from their house.
No big deal.
Except…
They’d fallen asleep too close to the tide line, and when Dillon woke up, Lisa was gone. At first he figured she’d woken up way early, had gotten hungry and gone home. But as he was picking up the blanket they’d slept on, he saw her. Face down in the sand with the massive blue ocean lapping across her face.
Panicked, he glanced around through the still gray morning light. Tried to holler for help, but nothing came out.
No one was even there. It was too early for lifeguards. No one was out walking a dog or jogging. The entire beach was empty.
He hadn’t known squat about CPR back then, so he grabbed her thin, unconscious body, ran all the way home with her in his arms, bawling, crying tears and snot and crazy fear.
She’d wound up in the hospital for five days. Nearly died.
Somehow he’d forgotten that fear.
Until now.
“Commander?” Chase pushed away from the side of the building, melting out of the shadows, and walked over to where Dillon stood frozen in memory. Chase stood there too, not saying anything, just standing, staring off at the flashing lights of the ambulance. Waiting maybe for Dillon to get a friggin’ grip and
move
.
“Rain’s stopped,” Chase said, sounding strained, uneasy.
“I never saw Sara’s body. They said…they told me there was nothing left. Nothing. I’m her husband. I should have gotten some kind of closure, something.”
“You did what you could. That should be enough.”
“Maybe. But then they started talking and dammit, Chase, they never shut up. ‘Did she have a will? Did you check into death benefits? Make sure you take grief classes. What about meds? Do you need meds to cope? Can you balance the checkbook, do the laundry, cook a meal? It’s important, Commander Caldwell, to join clubs that cater to singles. For the purpose, you know, of making friends. If you play golf or tennis, search out singles who have the same interests. Go to the movies with them, have a luncheon, start a book club.’”
Chase huffed out a snicker. “A book club? You’re shittin’ me.”
“Nope.”
“Man. Look, I am really…shit I am so damn sorry. I can’t even imagine.”
“No,” Dillon sighed. “I suppose not. Until death do us part…then what? I mean,” he shook his head, “hell, I don’t know what I mean anymore.”
Chase still stared straight ahead. “I guess you lose all faith in the order and decency of the world.”