Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (10 page)

20

2:24 a.m.

Jenna exploded out of the silo like a missile, leaping toward the stunned figure of Raul. He was too far away to be pulled in. She knew that trick wouldn’t work twice, but she had something different planned for the younger Villegas brother.

She landed on the iron-clad floor, coiling like a rattler getting ready to strike, and then she unleashed all her energy in a kick aimed at Raul’s head. Even as she moved, she saw him struggling to draw his gun, just as she thought he would. She corrected her aim at the last moment, striking his right shoulder. Raul spun around, unbalanced. The pistol flew from his hand.

Jenna did not stop. She had committed to this course of action the moment she had started climbing out of the silo. She would not stop. Not to catch her breath. Not to assess the results of her attack. Not until Raul was…

Dead?

Yeah, dead
.

She felt no guilt about that. She had already sent Carlos to Hell, and that didn’t bother her at all. She felt about as much remorse for Carlos as she would for a roach ground beneath her heel. Truth be told, it was a rush. It was like she’d been given an invitation to a secret and very exclusive club. Noah had been in that club. Something told her that Ken was not the first man he had killed. Noah might not have wanted her to join the ranks of killers, but he’d prepared her for it, perhaps knowing this initiation might be unavoidable.

I’m a killer now. I passed the test, and I’m ready to do it again
.
Raul, your brother’s holding the door for you.

She advanced, throwing a pair of mid-body punches that rocked Raul back again. With each strike she shouted her
kiai
, using the sound to focus her energy and intimidate the man. Despite the attack, he stayed on his feet. She might have been able to punch through boards and bricks, but Raul was probably twice her weight, and flesh yielded whereas planks and cinder blocks cracked. Punches, she realized, weren’t going to do the trick. She took another step forward and with another shout, spun into a roundhouse kick, aimed low to sweep him off his feet.

Her foot struck his calf, a few inches below where she had aimed, and she rebounded away, struggling to recover her balance and irritated with herself for missing. It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, but it did erase any advantage her surprise attack had given her.

Raul snarled at her. She could see in his eyes that he was now little more than an enraged animal. His fury would allow him to tap into reserves of near-superhuman strength. If he got close enough to grab hold of her, she might not be able to break free. She took a step back, forcing herself to stay calm and focused.

He charged but she stepped aside, whirling around to deliver a powerful blow to his already pummeled kidney. It was enough to knock him off his feet. He went sprawling on the metal plates that covered the silo. A few feet to the left and he would have plunged into the hole.

Jenna didn’t think he would be fooled into such a reckless advance a second time. She backed away, glancing around for a weapon. She didn’t know where the gun had gone but the tire iron lay just a couple steps away. As she reached for it, Raul scrambled back to his feet and charged again.

A math problem flashed through her head:
R is moving toward J at 15 m.p.h. J is trying to reach a tire iron 5 feet away. Will J reach the tire iron before R kills her?

It was a chance she couldn’t take, and at the last instant, she veered off. Raul had indeed learned his lesson, and he pulled up short, facing her, taunting her with curses and threats, reverting to some kind of primal threat display.
“Me cago en la madre que te parió!
Think
you’re
tough
, chica?”
He motioned to his body. “Think you can take this?” He spat at her. “You’re nothing but a puta. A scared little puta.”

She ignored his empty words and paid attention to what his eyes were saying. He took a step toward her, and she matched him, backing up as she settled into a ready stance. He took another step, and then his eyes darted to the side. She knew what would come next. When he lunged, she shouted a
kiai
and aimed her fist at an imaginary spot six inches behind his chin.

The punch connected solidly. Raul’s jaw broke with an audible crack. Yet, even as his head snapped back, his flailing hands caught her T-shirt. When he staggered away, she was pulled off balance.

Then his arms were around her, pinning her own arms against her body, crushing her in a bear hug. For a moment, they were locked in a crazy dance, Jenna trying to squirm free and stay on her feet, Raul simply trying to stop her from doing either. Then, they crashed down to the concrete floor.

The collision sent a flare of pain through Jenna’s body, but she ignored it and focused on the much more immediate peril. Her
sensei
had taught her some grappling, just enough to know that strength and size were not always the deciding factor in a wrestling match. But if Raul squeezed the breath out of her, she would not be able to put up much of a fight. She twisted, squirming to get her hands free of his embrace. He doubled his efforts, squeezing tighter.

In a flash of inspiration, she drove her forehead into Raul’s chin. There was a bright flash in her field of vision, but the sound of grinding bones filled her head. The broken pieces of Raul’s lower jaw smashed together, followed by a howl of pain. His hold loosened, just enough. She ripped her arms free of his grasp and wrapped them around his skull.

She felt him pounding his fists against her back. The blows were painful but not precise enough to do any real damage. She answered his fury with her own, wrenching her body back and forth, as if trying to rip his head off. In a way, that was exactly what she was trying to do. She remembered how Noah had broken Ken’s neck. Could she do that?

After just a few moments, she knew that she couldn’t. Maybe there was some special technique, but what she was doing wasn’t it. She felt Raul moving beneath her, rolling over and struggling to rise. If he succeeded, she would have almost no leverage against him. He was too strong, and she was too light. She squeezed and shook him again, but to no avail. She just wasn’t strong enough…

Maybe my arms aren’t strong enough, but I’ve got other muscles
.

The same intuitive guidance that had prompted her to head butt him now gave her a different set of instructions. She dropped her grip onto his shoulders and then pushed down, launching herself straight up like a child playing leapfrog. The move got her high enough to swing one leg over Raul’s shoulder, and a moment later, she had his neck caught in a scissors hold between her thighs. With a shout that was like the mother of all
kiais
, she twisted her entire body—and Raul’s head with it—completely around.

The sound of snapping vertebrae vibrated through her body. When his body went rag-doll slack beneath her, she knew it was over.

The fight ended somewhat anticlimactically, with Raul collapsing beneath her, his death throes slamming her onto the hard floor. She disentangled herself quickly, scrambling away from him like he was on fire.

She lay there for a moment, panting. The fight had taxed her, but her breathlessness owed more to a sense of victory. She had won.

Her moment of triumph ended when she felt a hand close over her arm. She jerked in surprise and found herself staring into the bloody visage of Carlos Villegas.

Impossible. It was an eighty foot fall. He couldn’t have survived.

She jerked free. He made no effort to hold on to her, and as she crabbed backward, she saw why.

He had somehow survived and crawled back up out of the silo. But survival was a relative term. The fall had broken him, literally. Although she had recognized him, his face was misshapen, stretched over a skull that was no longer in one piece. Blood streamed from his ears and eyes. His limbs were also deformed. The hand that had grasped her appeared to be the only one of his extremities still functioning. She still could not fathom how he had pulled himself back up, but he had no strength left with which to menace her.

He didn’t need strength, though.

As she backed away, he reached his good hand down to his shattered body, and when she saw it again, he was holding his gun.

Jenna felt herself go numb. Carlos had been in no condition to fight her, not like Raul had, but she had instinctively retreated from him, creating the standoff distance that would allow him to shoot her before she could reverse course.

I have to try
, she thought.
Maybe he’ll
—

The report made her jump, but there was no pain, no sensation at all. It didn’t seem possible that he could have missed. When he slumped forward and didn’t move again, she realized that Carlos had not fired his gun.

The shot had come from behind her.

She turned slowly and saw a tall figure silhouetted in the still blazing headlights of the rental car, one arm outstretched, holding a gun. Jenna’s rescuer lowered the gun and took a step forward, then gestured at the two bodies on the floor. “You’ve been busy.”

Though the face was still obscured by shadow, Jenna instantly recognized the voice and bolted forward, shouting, “Mercy!”

21

2:34 a.m.

Unlike Jenna, Mercedes Reyes had been wearing her seatbelt when her pickup lost control and started corkscrewing down the Overseas Highway. Aside from being shaken up like the marble in a can of spray paint, Mercy had come away from the accident with nothing more serious than a few aches and bruises.

“I think they almost crashed, too,” Mercy said. “When my head stopped spinning, they were gone. I looked for you for a while, but then the police showed up.”

“I’m surprised they let you go. Aren’t you like a material witness or something?”

“I may not have actually hung around to answer their questions.” Mercy ducked her head guiltily. “You said that the bad guys might be connected with the police. I couldn’t take the chance. Someone gave me a ride as far as Marathon, and from there I was able to get some wheels and come here.”

“Because you knew this is where I would go.”

Mercy’s expression became grave. “No, honey. I came here because I thought you were dead. If I had known you were out there, I wouldn’t have left. I came here because it was what Noah told us to do.”

Jenna felt chastened. She had done exactly the same thing, albeit by a much more dangerous route. “Good thing you got here when you did.”

Mercy nodded. She explained how she had walked into the building just in time to see Carlos aim his pistol at Jenna. Her own gun had been lost during the wreck, but she had found Raul’s discarded weapon on the floor and had not hesitated. Jenna had a lot more questions, and she suspected that Mercy did, too, but those could wait. There was only one thing that really mattered now. “So, did you find it? What Noah left?”

Jenna felt for the journal tucked into her pants, but it was gone. She looked around, panic building, but quickly found it on the floor, still safe inside the Ziploc bag. She picked it up and moved forward until she was bathed in the glow of the car’s headlights. She opened the Ziploc, pulled out the journal and let the bag fall to the ground.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait?” Mercy nodded toward the pair of corpses. “Maybe go somewhere that’s a little more…I don’t know…
not
here?”

Jenna shook her head. “After everything I’ve been through to get here, I just want to know the truth.” She opened to the first page.

If you’re reading this, then you’d better put it back where you found it, right now. Seriously.

She could almost hear Noah’s slightly gruff voice as she read the words. It triggered an unexpected surge of emotion.

Or I suppose it could mean that something very bad has happened. It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I came to terms with my mortality a long time ago, and now I’m off to find the answer to life’s greatest mystery.

But that bad thing I mentioned? Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it? Mercy? If it’s you reading this, and I hope to hell it is, there’s just one thing I want you to do. Get Jenna and take her to Miami. When you get there, look up a guy named Bill Cort. I wish I could say he’s an old friend, but that wouldn’t quite be the truth. If you get the time to read the rest of this book, you’ll understand what that means. And you’ll probably have a better idea of why this is all happening.

Below that was an address, but it had been crossed out and an arrow pointed to the margin where a different address had been written in.

Mercy read over her shoulder. “Next stop: Miami?”

Jenna blinked back tears and swallowed. “I want to read the rest of it. I have to know what was so important that it got him killed.”

She turned the page and read aloud. “November sixteenth, nineteen ninety-nine…”