Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (18 page)

37

6:46 a.m.

As she sprinted through the safe house, Jenna heard more shots in quick succession, too many to just be from Mercy’s gun. In the brief time they had to make a plan before Cort’s arrival, they had discussed this possibility. It was their worst case scenario. While she and Mercy had hoped for a positive outcome, the last twelve hours had taught Jenna the importance of making her own luck.

She reached the front door and threw it open. There was a distinctive mechanical click as the remote-controlled deadbolt lock sprang out of the door. She had anticipated that the same mechanism which had allowed her access in the first place might be used to imprison her once inside, so before Cort’s arrival, she had stuffed the bolt hole with a wad of toilet paper to prevent the lock from seating. She had done the same with the screen door, but before she attempted to open it, she took a moment to scan the front yard.

In the brief time that she had been inside, the sky had lightened. The sun was climbing into the sky. While much of the world was still shrouded in shadow, she had no trouble distinguishing three cars that had not been there before, lined up on the street in front of the house. Four men were crouched behind the cars, peering across the street into the semi-darkness between two houses, where Mercy had hid.

Jenna glanced at the key ring in her left hand. The car key was recognizable by its shape and the plastic sheath that contained the alarm remote control. The logo on the fob—a circle with sprouting wings—told her which car it would operate.

Cort rode in style.

A blue Mini Cooper S sat just ahead of two generic-looking sedans that were probably from a government motor pool or a rental fleet. Jenna was reminded of a song she had learned in her early childhood—
one of these things is not like the other
.

The men at the cars had their backs to her and appeared to be unaware of what had transpired in the house. To reach the Mini, Jenna would first have to get past the fence.
Or over it
.

Her left arm was pulsing with pain, the sleeve of her shirt dotted red with blood that had oozed through the bandage beneath. A few hours ago, she had barely been able to lift the limb, but now, despite aggravating the wound in the struggle with Cort, she felt certain that the muscles would do whatever she demanded of them.

She wondered if she owed her fast healing abilities to some long-dead Russian scientist.

She darted out into the open, keeping her body bent forward as she crossed the short distance to the fence. Her approach went unnoticed by the gunmen who had their attention fully occupied, but she knew that would change the moment she vaulted the fence. They would see her. They would try to shoot her. She would have only a second or two to get into the Mini. Maybe less. They would probably start shooting as soon as they saw her, but if she could get into the car, lock the doors and stay down long enough to start the engine...

The doors!

Before attempting the fence, she spared another glance at the key fob. There were three buttons, each marked with a different symbol. Her finger hovered above the one that looked like an unlocked padlock, but she didn’t press it until just before she was ready to clamber over the fence. She was afraid the car’s alarm might give her away with a chirp when she hit the button. It did not. Instead something remarkable happened. As she hit the sidewalk, she heard the Mini’s motor begin purring. Cort’s car was equipped with a remote starter.

Whether deafened by the din of their weapons or simply hyper-focused on the threat across the street, none of the gunmen took note of her presence behind them. But Mercy must have, for at that moment, four shots rang out in quick succession, the rounds rapping against the fender of the rear-most car. Jenna made it to the Mini’s passenger door and got it open before any of the men realized she was there.

As she slid inside, Jenna stabbed down on the lock button. A loud crack resounded through the interior, and the passenger window disintegrated, revealing a hard face and reaching hands, but Jenna had already made it over the center column and slid behind the wheel. She thrust the pistol she’d taken from Cort at the would-be intruder and fired point blank. The man vanished. Jenna didn’t know if he’d been hit or simply ducked back at the sight of the gun. She didn’t particularly care. Her focus was on the unfamiliar control console in front of her. She knew the motor was already running. There were just two pedals on the floor—an automatic transmission.
Thank goodness for that
, she thought. She found the gear lever, shifted it into drive, and stomped on the gas.

The take-off would have earned her a lecture—or worse—from her Driver’s Ed teacher, but under the circumstances, it was perfect. The Mini shot forward like a startled rabbit, and it was halfway down the block before Jenna could even think about what to do next.

She touched the brakes and steered into a tight U-turn. The nimble little car easily negotiated the about-face, despite the narrow confines of the street. In a matter of seconds, Jenna was facing back toward the site of the gun battle. The gunmen and their vehicles were lined up on her left. Mercy was concealed somewhere to the right.

The gunmen shifted forward, the muzzles of their pistols flashing as they hurled lead down the street at the Mini. A bullet smacked into the windshield and plowed through the air right above her head. A jagged crack split the glass but it did not shatter.

Jenna ducked down behind the steering wheel, and moved her foot off the brake, preparing to charge headlong into the fray. Like a chess player working through the moves and counter-moves of a gambit, she rehearsed what would happen next.

Mercy waited across the street from the safe house and the shooters. Jenna would have to stop to pick her up, and when she did, they would both be exposed for as long as it took for Mercy to make the dash to the Mini. She groped for a better plan, but without being able to communicate her intentions to Mercy, there was no better alternative.

Except…there was.

They will find you
, Cort had said, and Jenna knew he was right. The killers would never give up. They would not stop until she was dead—she and anyone with her.

Earlier, she had balked at the thought of dragging Mercy into the mess in which she now found herself. Despite the fact that Mercy had saved her from Carlos and had hauled her out the Everglades, despite the fact that the idea of facing the uncertain future alone terrified her, Jenna now saw with startling clarity that there was really only one way to ensure Mercy’s safety.

She stomped on the accelerator and the Mini shot down the street.

One of the gunmen leaped in front of her, striking a defiant pose, as if daring her to run him down, and he started firing. Jenna took the dare. The man realized his mistake a fraction of a second too late. There was a crunch, followed by a thumping sound as the man rolled across the hood, up onto the fractured windshield, and then fell away. Without raising her head or easing off the accelerator, Jenna sped past the cars, past the place where Mercy was hiding, and kept going.

Mercy wouldn’t understand her decision. She had not been privy to Cort’s revelation about Jenna’s origins or the reasons why the government hunted her so relentlessly. She would only know that Jenna had abandoned her.

But she would live.

The killers had no interest in Mercy. They probably wouldn’t even look for her, not with Jenna slipping away. Mercy would be safer without her.

It was cold comfort. As the Mini reached the intersection with the main thoroughfare, the reality of her situation sank in. There was no longer anyone she could ask for help or advice. She would have to face the rest of her life—however short that span would prove to be—completely alone.

But as she coasted through the stop and turned right onto Seventh Avenue, something else Cort had said echoed in her memory.

There are others
.

38

6:51 a.m.

The question of how to track down—

My brothers and sisters?

—her fellow clones, and the thornier moral problem of their evident involvement in a worldwide terror plot designed to ignite World War III, occupied Jenna’s thoughts for less than a minute. That was how long it took for the first signs of pursuit to appear.

She realized now that her inner conflict about leaving Mercy behind had hidden flaws in her getaway plan that were now apparent. The Mini Cooper was not the most inconspicuous vehicle, and there was every reason to believe that the men hunting her would have other assets at their disposal—more surveillance drones, traffic cameras, who knew what else?

I need to ditch this car
.

Easier said than done.

She had seen the two cars pull out from the cross street, fifteen seconds after she passed. Traffic was light, giving her a clear line of sight to the sedans, which meant that they could see her as well. In the time it would take her to pull over and get out, they would close the gap.

On the plus side of the equation, the Mini was fast and seemed eager to prove it. Despite its compact design and bulldog appearance, it had the heart of a race car and the ground-hugging handling of a go-cart. The only thing holding Jenna back was her own caution, and with each passing second, confidence replaced fear. She was, as she had told Mercy, a quick learner.

Of course
, she realized.
That’s how
I
was designed
.

Cut it out
, a second inner-voice said.
Save the pity party for later
.

A traffic light two blocks away turned yellow. Jenna pushed harder, knowing that there was no way she would make the light. It turned red when she was still a hundred yards from the cross street, but she had no intention of stopping.

As cars rolled into the intersection, her eyes darted back and forth, fixing each vehicle in her mind’s eye, estimating speeds and rates of acceleration, plotting the course that would carry her through with the least amount of maneuvering. It reminded her of that old arcade game where the goal was to get the frog across a busy street without getting him turned into a green blob of roadkill. If she didn’t get it right—or if one of the other drivers saw her and got spooked—it would be her going splat. As she closed on the intersection, the connections solidified in her mind. Eye, hand and foot, were perfectly synchronized with past, present and future.

It didn’t go quite as smoothly as she had anticipated. The one thing that she could not have accounted for was the reaction of the other drivers. The intersection erupted in a cacophony of screeching tires and honking horns. Jenna had planned her route with the expectation that none of the drivers would stop for her, but some of them tried anyway, slamming on their brakes or swerving out of their lane even though these late reflex actions were unnecessary. It took less than two seconds for the Mini to traverse the intersection, but that was long enough to transform the crossing into total chaos.

With the intersection snarled, Jenna seized the opportunity to put some distance between herself and the chase cars. She stomped on the gas pedal, and pushed the little car faster. The speedometer registered fifty…sixty…seventy miles per hour. Pedestrians on the sidewalk flashed by so fast that she couldn’t make out their features. Cars in the oncoming lanes were a blur. In the rapidly diminishing distance, she saw a traffic light—green—marking the next intersection. This time, there was no need to plot a safe route through. She passed beneath the light before it could so much as flicker yellow.

The road shrank to five lanes, two on either side and an escape lane in the middle. While Sunday traffic remained light, the cars traveling in the same direction loomed closer. Despite the Mini’s superior handling, she was going much too fast to weave between them. She was about to ease her foot off the accelerator when she spied something new in the rearview: the distinctive flashing red and blue lights of a police car.

She mentally kicked herself. She had been so focused on escaping the killers, it had not occurred to her that her escape was not happening in a vacuum. The most probable explanation was that one of the irate drivers from the intersection had taken a moment to call 911 on a cell phone, reporting a blue Mini Cooper driving recklessly.

Surrendering to the police wasn’t an option. Even if she found someone to believe her crazy story, the killers wouldn’t be intimidated by legitimate law enforcement officers any more than the bogus FBI agents that had shot Noah and the two deputies. They wouldn’t even need to use force. They would simply flash their government credentials, claim jurisdiction and take her away. And if any well-intentioned policemen got in their way, there would be more blood on her hands.

The realization that she was now being pursued by government hitmen
and
the police underscored the urgency of ditching the Mini. She needed to find a place where she could quickly blend in with a crowd—a mall, or maybe the beach if she could find it.

She swerved into the center lane and blasted past a cluster of cars moving at half her speed. In her mirror, she saw the vehicles pulling to the side, making room for the police cruisers. There were two sets of police lights now and they were closing fast. The Mini’s turbo engine might have outclassed the motor pool cars driven by her pursuers, but the police cruisers had a lot more horsepower under the hood. If she kept going in a straight line, they would catch her, and the killers wouldn’t be far behind.

Another intersection loomed. The light was red, and cars streamed across her path at normal commuting speeds. Gripping the steering wheel, she began murmuring, “Green light, green light,” and as if by a miracle, the light changed when she was just fifty yards away.

It was almost enough to make her believe that her mad scientist creator had imbued her with telekinetic powers…but no, it was probably just a lucky coincidence.

The idle speculation was shattered as something flashed into view on her left, a beat-up muscle car blowing through the light, blissfully unaware of the blue rocket hurtling into the intersection.

Jenna’s reflexes took over. She pushed the accelerator harder, feeling the turbo charger respond almost instantly. Her subconscious mind grasped that going left, trying to slip behind the red-light violator, would end disastrously, so she angled to the right, trying to cut in front of him.

It almost worked.

The man at the wheel of the beater must have caught a glimpse of the onrushing Mini. Instead of trying to stop, he accelerated, trying to get out of her way. He succeeded only in changing what would have been a near miss into a glancing impact.

Jenna barely felt the front corner of the muscle car kiss the back bumper of the Mini, but the transfer of energy spun the little car around like a top. The Mini’s low center of gravity kept it on the road, but for uncountable seconds, it pirouetted out of control, its smoking tires laying down a lotus-shaped spiral of rubber in the middle of the intersection.

Jenna’s head continued to spin for a few more seconds after the car came to rest, but a bright light shining in her eyes and the too-loud wail of approaching police sirens brought her back to the moment. She blinked, vaguely aware that she was unhurt and only mildly disoriented. Then she realized that the light still shining in her eyes was the rising sun. The Mini’s wild dance had left her facing east.

East it is
.

She pushed the gas pedal to the floor, but nothing happened.

Jenna felt a wave of panic start to build. Her instincts had guided her through this long ordeal, but now her inexperience had caught up with her.

Get out. Run
.

No. It just stalled. The spin reversed engine compression, just like the pin maneuver Noah told me about. I just need to restart.

There’s no time.

She ignored the frantic urgings of her fearful brain and heeded the calm inner voice of reason. The police would arrive at any moment. Even if it took a few seconds to get the car started, she would get a lot farther than if she attempted to escape on foot.

As if being graded by her driving instructor, she put a foot on the brake, shifted into park, and reached for the key.

The keyhole was empty.

She remembered the remoter start button on the fob. The keys lay forgotten on the passenger seat, partially buried under a scattering of what looked like tiny diamonds—the shattered remains of the tempered glass window. She found the key, squeezed the button several times, and felt panic replaced by elation as the engine turned over and began purring once more.

Shift. Gas pedal. Go
.

The Mini jumped forward like a sprinter at the sound of the starter’s gun, as two police cars screeched into the intersection. The twin vehicles, normally a symbol of help and safety, took on the monstrous appearances of hungry ancient demons racing to devour her. The roar of their engines helped complete the impression, but only served to motivate Jenna further. She crushed the gas pedal down, increasing the distance between herself and the monsters behind her, but rushing headlong into a third.