Vacation to Die For (29 page)

She takes our guns. “Here, let me load them for you.”

She walks down the counter until she finds the right bullet drawers. In no time at all she’s loaded both guns.  She hands them to us, along with two hunting vests. “Safety first,” she purrs.

Her next task is to choose a gun for herself—a Marlin 338MX. “Ah, here’s my baby!”  She kisses each bullet before loading them into her gun.

Jack and I exchange glances. “Then you’ll be joining us, I take it?”

She nods. “I wouldn’t be much of a guide if I didn’t have your backs, now would I?”

I won’t let her get anywhere near my back. Or Jack’s for that matter.

She better watch her own.

“Ah, there’s your prey!” Julie points through the thicket. 

She’s right. George kneels, gasping. He’s put on a good show. We’ve finally cornered him in a marsh just a few hundred yards from the beach. 

He’s been running for the past half hour, but we’re never more than one hundred yards behind him. This may have something to do with the fact that the medallion on his shirt is really a tracker, plus his tunic and pants are dyed with something that glows so that it can be seen, with or without our night goggles.

Not to mention that if the pygmies find him first, their darts, tainted with a sedative, will slow him down, Julie explained so matter-of-factly. To top it off, George hasn’t been fed all day. “We find that a hungry prey is less challenging to track.” She patted Jack’s arm. “We aim to please.”

 In other words, this isn’t a safari. It’s a shooting gallery.

Like me, Jack has had enough of this. Neither of us is planning on shooting George.

Not that Julie knows this.

In truth, she should worry about herself.

Jack lifts his hand, indicating that he’ll go in first, and that we’re to stay back here, behind the brush.

I nod, but Julie starts after him. I grab her arm. “The kill is supposed to be his, remember?”

“The hunter has to be in view of his guide at all times. It’s Hunt Club protocol.”

The shot from Jack’s gun is loud. Birds screech and scatter in the skies.

Julie looks at George’s GPS signal on her cell phone screen. It isn’t moving. “Well, well, well! Your husband should be congratulated. He’s had his first kill.”

I look down at the screen, too. Suddenly I hear Arnie’s voice in my earbud. “We’re in…sort of!” 

“What does that mean?” I say under my breath.

Julie looks up and smirks. “What do you think it means? The prey is dead.” 

Suddenly I realize she thought I was talking to her. “Oh!...Well, of course, it would be. He loves to hunt—deer, bison, elk, big game—”

The dot on her cell screen is moving again.

She sees it, too.

Her reaction is faster than mine.  She breaks the grip on my rifle by slamming the butt of her gun into my gut. 

As I double over, she prods me upright with her rifle.

 “But he won’t shoot an innocent man.” She laughs. “It’s all the proof we needed that neither of you are who you pretend to be. Congratulations on finding Dr. Mandrake, Mrs. Stone. We certainly appreciate you leading us to your daughter’s imaginary pirate. But what stupidity, leaving the bacteria samples in Mr. Chiffray’s foyer!”

Her jibe hits its mark. When I wince, she laughs. “Let’s see, how can I earn back your husband’s sympathy after I kill you?” She fakes a look of innocent shock. “Oops, I tripped and fell, and my gun went off! Too bad it shot poor old Donna in the back.”

How dare she call me old! I’ve got four years on her, at the most.

Okay, maybe six.

She takes a step back, raises her gun, and puts me in her sights.

The bang is even more deafening than Jack’s shot.

I wait for the bullet—

But I don’t go down.

When I turn around, she’s staring at me. She may be stunned, but she’s knows an angry woman when she sees one. She shoots again—

The bang is deafening.

I flinch again—

And yet, I’m still standing.

Abu’s voice comes in over my earbud. “Hey, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but this afternoon I changed out all the bullets in the gun room with ones that are blanks. Got to love FedEx when it absolutely, positively has to be there on time. Even here on Fantasy Island, they got those blanks here in a twenty-four hour turnaround.”

Now he tells me.

With a flick of my wrist, my knife is out of my boot. 

It finds its mark in her thigh.

But only because I want to take her alive. We’ve got a few questions about the Quorum that need answered.

Julie screams and clutches the knife. She tugs gingerly, but it is buried too deeply in muscle.

She stumbles backward, into a murky pond. With only one leg to stand on, she falls backward. 

The marsh seems to suck her down. She tries to raise her arms over her head, but she can’t. It’s as if they are stuck in the muck.

She must be in quicksand.

And she’s sinking fast. The more she struggles, the quicker she sinks. In no time at all it is over her chest, then up to her neck. “I…I can’t get out! I can’t move! I—”

She gulps and gasps as the guck fills her mouth.

By the time Jack and George reach me, she’s in over her head.

“Where did she go?” George wonders.

I point to the quicksand pit.

When Jack sees me, he grabs me in a hug, as if he’ll never let me go. 

But he has to, and we both know it. We still have a lot of work to do.

We’ve got to get to the prisoners before it’s too late. 

“I never gave you a proper thank you,” I say to George as I give him a hug.

Then I strip him out of his tunic. His broad shoulders glimmer with the sweat that comes from running for your life.

Jack looks from me to George and back again. “Um…what the hell are you doing?” 

 “The emblem on his tunic has a built in tracking device,” I explain. “Abu and Dominic, are you listening? Just in case all the prisoners are being tracked, please make sure to cut the emblems off their tunics. Have the prisoners leave them in their cages.” 

“We’re already aware of this, milady,” Dominic’s voice can be heard on our earbuds. “Battoo warned us. In fact, he’s one of those being released. Julie caught him neutralizing the sedative used in the pygmy darts.”

I’m glad to hear he’s getting off this cursed rock as well. 

I turn to George. “You were one of the Fantasy Air pilots, weren’t you?”

He nods. “Jack told me you deduced I’d flown Mandrake to the island, on one of Fantasy Air’s smaller jets. The Quorum didn’t realize I had the guest compartment’s surveillance system engaged, and was listening in on their pitch to Mandrake. Laura, the attendant on the flight, heard it, too. When Mandrake never made any of the flights off the island, I got suspicious. My mistake was asking too many questions. I was summoned to Julie’s office. She must have drugged me, because I woke up in a cage. My hunt took place two days later. I grew up hiking and fishing. I learned a few tricks about survival along the way.” He pounds one hand with the other’s fist. “Laura never had a chance. She must have asked Julie about it, too.”

I nod. “We found Laura’s body in a mass grave.”

He tears up. “Thank God you’ve decided to do the right thing about the other prisoners.”

“Oh yeah, about that,” Arnie begins. “As I started to say, we’ve hit a little glitch in our game plan.”

“It’s almost ten o’clock. Don’t leave us in suspense, Arnie.” I nudge Jack and George back on the path toward our jeep. I pray that Julie left the keys in it. Otherwise, we’re going to have to hotwire it. 

“The great news is that Emma tracked down the satellite feed for the livestock room’s security cameras. We were able to put it on a loop. The guards in the control booth aren’t any wiser to what’s happening right under their noses. Neither are the guards in the hallway.” 

“Sounds great so far.” I know that Arnie is stalling on the bad news, a frequent habit for him.

“Also, Abu and Dominic immobilized the men guarding the tunnel to the tarmac. Already your family is on the plane, as are most of the prisoners.”

We’re in luck. The keys are in the jeep. When we jump in, I take the wheel. 

The Hunt Club is ten minutes down the road and the airstrip another five beyond it. The road is bumpy, so my voice shakes as I say, “I like what I’m hearing. Can you cut to the chase?”

“Unfortunately, Dominic broke the key in one of the locks. If we can’t find the master switch that opens all the cages simultaneously, we’ll be leaving twelve of the prisoners behind.”

“Unacceptable,” Jack, George and I say at the same time.

 “Is there any way around it?” I ask. 

“Electronically, I’m trying as many combinations as possible. But as you know, we’ve only got another twenty-six—make that 
twenty-five
—minutes before the gas is released.”

“We’ll be there in ten,” Jack says firmly.

We’re now doing over sixty miles an hour. I’m hugging every curve. 

I know what the guys are thinking, even if they don’t say it: 
woman driver
.

At this point, just getting there alive will be a miracle.

Make that two. Even if we get there in time, the odds of saving them are still slim and none.

When we reach the tunnel, it’s already ten-fourteen.

Here comes the hard part. “Okay, both of you—get on the plane and secure it for take-off.”

Jack does a double-take. “What? Are you crazy? If you don’t get on that plane, then I don’t either!”

“You’ll get on it, and that’s an order from your faux wife 
and
 your mission leader.” If one doesn’t convince him, the other should.

“I don’t care.” He crosses his arms. He’s just as stubborn as ever.

“I do, Jack. About my children. About you. About my team members.” 

I kiss him. It’s long, and deep and hard, and makes all kinds of promises—

That I’ll be back in time, because I don’t plan on dying. 

That when the plane is wheels up, I’ll be on it.

That we’ll enjoy a long and happy life together.

He must have gotten the message, because he doesn’t stop me. 

I don’t look back. Otherwise I can’t look forward to all I’ve just promised him.