Ashen Rayne (Shadowlands Book 1) (9 page)

Detective Murphy answered the door after Smoak’s third persistent ring of the doorbell. He was messy-haired and stood bleary eyed in his boxers, the fly hanging open.

“What do you want?” he growled. “I work nights!”

Smoak lowered her glasses. “Hey, Murphy, long time no see. I’d hoped Mr. Higgins had buried you under a bigger rock, but here we are, just like old times. Do you have a minute for a friend?”

“You…” Murphy breathed.

“Me,” Smoak confirmed.

Murphy stared for a moment then pushed the door shut in Smoak’s face. She could hear him moving around inside and knew he was getting ready to run. She leaned back and kicked the door, popping the cheap lock with the heel of her boot. She followed through and glanced around the wide entryway. Murphy had knocked over two dining chairs in his haste. He’d also broken a glass coffee table in the next room and now stood amidst the glass, trying to put on a pair of pants and not cut his feet at the same time.

“What’s the problem, Murph?” Smoak asked. “I just want to ask you a couple questions. You act like I’m trying to sell you Amway.”

Murphy buckled his belt and backed away, reaching for the sliding door. “I’ve seen your military record, MacKenna. You aren’t here to ask any questions, they sent you to kill me!”

Smoak spread her hands to show they were empty. “What are you talking about? No one sent me. I’m looking for Rayne Nightingale, and I think you might have been one of the last people to see her. I just want to talk. Gaia, what has you so spooked?”

“You’re not here to kill me?” Murphy asked.

“Of course not! What kind of idiot kills a cop in his own place?” Smoak asked. “I’d wait till you were getting donuts…”

A shotgun blast ripped through the apartment door, breaking the hinges and knocking Smoak off her feet to fall in a heap among the dining chairs.

“Detective Murphy,” a man said in a Russian accent. “Gregor has decided it is time for you to retire.”

“The Russians!” Murphy yelled.

Smoak heard the sliding door open and the breaking of more glass, combined with the report of another shotgun blast. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her back and stood, drawing her knives as she rose. A large man, his broad chest and muscular arms covered in tattoos, stood in the doorway, a tactical shotgun clutched in his beefy hands.

“Go away, bub,” she said. “I need him alive.”

The man leveled his shotgun at her and sneered. “Too bad, girl. You brought knives to a gunfight. Move out of the way, and you won’t get hurt.”

“Not the first time,” Smoak replied. “Drop the shotgun and lay down on the floor with your hands on your head.”

The Russian laughed, a loud sound that rumbled as if it was having trouble crawling out of his chest. “You’re a funny girl!”

Smoak shrugged and threw one of her knives. The fourteen-inch long blade sunk into the Russian’s chest with a thud and cut off his laughter. He stared at her for a heartbeat, then sank to his knees, reflexively shooting a hole in the floor. He then fell on his face and lay still.

Damn, he couldn’t fall on his side?
Smoak thought
.

It took some effort to roll the man’s dead weight aside, but with a grunt, she rolled him over and pulled her blade from his chest. That was all the time she could spare. She ran for the door, hoping Murphy hadn’t made it out of sight.

She needn’t have worried. He was laying in the street in front of a school bus with the driver, a middle-aged man in shorts, sunglasses and a baseball cap, standing over him with a cell phone to his ear. Murphy wasn’t hurt too badly, he was moving, and Smoak could hear him whining even from where she stood on his porch. She wiped her knife on his curtains and sheathed her weapons before crossing the yard, stopping when she reached the bus driver.

“What happened?” she asked.

“This idiot just ran out in front of me!” the man replied. “I hit the brakes or he would be a pancake instead of bleeding out on the pavement. I think he broke his skull, I heard it hit the front of the bus before he fell.”

“Are the kids okay?” Smoak asked, seeing tiny faces peering out through the windows.

“Huh?” the driver asked. “Oh, yeah. They seem fine. I wasn’t going all that fast.”

He looked Smoak up and down. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m a friend of the idiot,” Smoak replied. “Can you move the bus away? Those kids shouldn’t see this.”

“The hell you say!” Murphy groaned.

She squatted next to Murphy and looked him over. “You don’t look so good, Murph, and right now, I’m the only friend you’ve got. Where’s Rayne?”

“Why would I tell you, even if I knew?” Murphy asked.

“Because people want you dead. I’m one of them, but right now, I’m willing to protect you, if you help me find her while she’s still alive. The clock is ticking.”

“Fine, you’re worse than they are. Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Smoak nodded and straightened, looking around for a likely vehicle she could borrow to get Murphy to safety. He for sure wasn’t going on the back of the bike.

“The cops and an ambulance are on the way,” the driver said behind her.

“We’ll be gone before they get here,” Smoak replied.

“What? You can’t leave the scene of an accident! Well, you can, but he can’t.” the driver yelled. “This is all his fault!

Smoak turned to glare at the driver and glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye. Instincts and training cut in, pushing her into overdrive. She grabbed the driver and shoved him into the bus’ grill, covering his body with her own. A split second later, she heard Murphy grunt, followed by the report of a high caliber rifle. She looked over her shoulder to see crimson spreading over Murphy’s chest.

“Dammit, Murphy don’t you dare die!” she yelled.

Another shot ricocheted off the side of the bus, not far from Smoak’s head, and she ducked, taking the driver with her. He hit the ground like an old sack of potatoes and pulled his legs into the fetal position beneath the bus.

“Somebody’s shooting at us!”

“You noticed, huh?” Smoak asked, trying to spot the shooter in the maze of buildings and boats. “Just keep your head down. When I move, you move and get this bus out of here.”

“I’m not going out there,” the driver said. “That’s how people get shot.”

Smoak turned her purple gaze on him. “Yes. You are. You’re responsible for these kids. You are going to go be a hero and get them out of here. Don’t worry, the shooter is going to have something else to worry about besides you.”

“What?”

“Me,” Smoak replied, putting her glasses back on.

She looked back toward the ocean and finally spotted the glint of the shooter’s scope on one of the boats in the harbor. He’d chosen a moored power boat not too far from shore, which meant he’d probably just walked down the dock and climbed aboard, waiting for a shot through Murphy’s bedroom window.

“I see him,” she said. “Uncurl your legs and get ready to run.”

The driver straightened and rolled over on his stomach. “What are you going to do?”

“Charge.”

Smoak pushed herself up and ran, dodging through palm trees and vaulting over cars, never giving the shooter a clear shot. Twice the sniper’s bullets blew holes in vehicles she passed before she dove behind an old Ford to catch her breath. She rolled over to look back the way she’d come and was relieved to see that the bus was pulling away, taking its precious cargo to safety.

Smoak rolled over again and looked under the car toward where she’d last seen the sniper. He was still there, crouching in the bow of the boat with his rifle aimed in her general direction.

Bastard probably thinks Murphy told me something useful
, Smoak thought.
Too bad he didn’t.

She rose into a crouch and scanned the harbor. The beach ended in a ten-foot seawall that dropped to the ocean below. It would be perfect cover. She was preparing for another dash toward the wall when she heard a voice nearby. She looked under the car again and saw a woman leaving her apartment, phone held to her head. She was waving her free hand around and talking, oblivious to what was unfolding only a few yards away.

“Hey, you! Get back inside!” Smoak called.

The woman kept walking, never even looking up.

“Lady! Come on, there’s a nut on the loose, get back inside!” Smoak tried.

That time, the woman looked at the car Smoak was hiding behind, a quizzical look on her face. The sniper’s bullet passed through her head and phone, and she fell to the ground, the look on her face unchanged by the impact.

“You son of a bitch!” Smoak yelled. “She wasn’t a threat!”

Smoak rose to her feet and ran, her heart pounding in her chest with a mixture of anger and excitement. She skidded across the hood of a parked car near the docks and leapt, turning the drop beyond the sea wall into a dive that carried her beneath the warm water and to relative safety, out of reach of the sniper’s bullets.

She swam along the ocean floor, using rocks and chunks of old concrete to pull herself toward the powerboat. When she reached the boat’s anchor, she looked up and could see the long, narrow vessel bobbing in the afternoon sun. She could also see the sniper. He was pacing back and forth on the boat, the rifle aimed toward the shore and the handful of onlookers that had started to peek out of their condominiums. It was only a matter of time before he either ran or started shooting. If he started pulling the trigger, it would become a slaughterhouse on the six o’clock news.

Smoak swam beneath the boat and rose on the far side without a sound, one knife clutched in her right hand. She stretched her left hand along the side of the boat until she could reach the gunwale and she pulled, sliding up the boat’s hull until she could see inside. The sniper knelt on the starboard side, his rifle balanced on the hull. He was watching through his scope and sucking on a can of cheap beer.

Smoak put her blade in her teeth and pulled with both arms until she was crouched on the port side of the boat just a few feet behind the sniper. She took the knife out of her teeth, drew her second one and cleared her throat.

The sniper spun around in surprise, almost dropping his rifle. “I thought I shot you when you hit the water,” he said. “Why aren’t you dead?” He eyed Smoak as if weighing his odds against the slightly smaller woman.

“Because you’re a terrible shot,” Smoak replied. “You have five seconds to raise your hands and surrender to the authorities.”

“If I’m caught, it’s the death penalty. I killed a cop,” the sniper said.

Smoak watched his right hand slide towards the pistol at his hip. “Three seconds.”

“If they don’t kill me, Gregor will,” the man tried.

“Two seconds.”

“I’m not going down like that,” he said.

“Zero.”

He reached for his pistol, a smooth draw with a practiced hand. The Glock may as well have been a mile away. Smoak’s blades hissed through the air and passed through his neck as if it was paper, almost removing his head from his spine. Arterial red sprayed across the boat, and he slumped, falling into unconsciousness in a handful of seconds.

“Nobody ever listens,” Smoak muttered. “Death isn’t actually preferable to prison. Hell is forever.”

She cleaned her knives on a towel she found in the boat then climbed out and made her way down the dock. When she reached the car-park, half a dozen police cars were arriving along with the Miami-Dade SWAT unit. Smoak sighed and pulled her Military ID from her pocket, not looking forward to the questions that would follow and possibly even involve Chandler. If she wound up owing him another favor, she might slit her own wrists.

The noon sun faded into a stormy afternoon while Smoak waited for the police to finish their investigation. She was sitting on the hood of a Ford cruiser, ignoring the third detective who’d come over to review her statement, when she spotted fiery red hair in the crowd beyond the police tape. She stood up to get a better look and spotted Blaze, standing near the tape, arguing with a patrolman who was refusing to let past. She was wearing jeans and a tank top instead of a mini dress, but she was unmistakable in the crowd of tourists and rubberneckers.