Chapter Thirteen
Ses Oliveres Restaurant
Port de Sóller, Mallorca, Spain
Sniper!
Caspian, recognizing the moment for what it was before Sofie had even hit the ground, didn’t hesitate. He launched himself toward Liesel, tackling her sideways as the sniper’s next round zipped past.
The world around him exploded into chaos. Screams cut through the air, tables crashed over, and shards of glass skittered across the tile as wineglasses shattered. Someone behind him yelled in pain.
Caspian landed hard on top of Liesel, his body protecting hers as they slid along the floor. Liesel let out a grunt, and for a moment, fear clutched at Caspian.
“You good?” he asked, quickly patting her down, checking for blood.
His hands came back clean. No blood.
Thank God.
“Where’s my sister? Where’s Sofie?” Liesel asked, frantically looking around.
Behind them, an older man was down, clutching his face. Blood was gushing through his fingers, staining his white shirt. To the man’s right, Sofie was sprawled on the floor, the front of her blouse darkened by blood. She moaned as she tried to sit up.
“Stay down!” Caspian ordered. “Don’t move!”
Liesel crawled toward her sister.
Movement toward the front of the restaurant caught Caspian’s eye.
Two men were elbowing their way through the crowd of screaming diners.
One of them had a pistol in his right hand.
The gun was low, his muzzle pointed at the ground, but it was still a threat.
Caspian reacted on instinct. In less than two seconds, his hand had moved to the small of his back and had drawn the pistol he’d stuck inside his waistband.
Aiming at the man’s torso, he didn’t pull the trigger, hesitating for the briefest moment as he studied the man.
Friend or foe? Could the man and his partner be plainclothes police officers running toward danger?
Maybe off-duty cops trying to help? The man with the gun locked his eyes on Caspian, just as a young mother tripped, dragging her crying child into his path.
The man swatted them away with a powerful shove.
Then he raised his gun in Caspian’s direction.
Definitely not a cop.
Caspian waited half a heartbeat longer, just enough for the muzzle of the man’s gun to confirm his intent, then fired.
The round hit center mass, punching into the man’s upper chest and knocking him flat on his back.
The second man, who was two steps behind, dove behind a table and rolled out of sight.
Shit!
Caspian stayed low. Getting up now would be suicide. He and Liesel had studied the map earlier and knew the only clear sniper angle came from across the bay.
Somewhere along the cement dock. Maybe a boat.
If he stayed beneath the railing height of the terrace, he’d be out of view. That was the only explanation as to why the sniper hadn’t fired at him. But staying low also meant he couldn’t maneuver cleanly to get a shot at the second shooter.
The first man wasn’t dead, at least not yet. He was writhing, clutching at his chest, one arm reaching out desperately toward his partner.
“What’s Sofie’s status?” Caspian asked without turning.
No response.
“We need to move, Liesel! Now!” Caspian shouted, his eyes and pistol covering the position where he had last seen the second shooter.
Still no response.
He repositioned, shuffling to his right and angling his body in a way that if the second shooter tried to hit Liesel or Sofie, it would be Caspian in his line of fire, not the two women.
“Talk to me, Liesel,” Caspian barked.
That’s the moment the second shooter chose to reappear, but this time, he had taken a teenage boy as hostage. The teen, who was tall and thin with blond hair, didn’t look a day older than fifteen. The gunman held him tightly, the muzzle of his pistol jammed against his temple.
The moment brought Caspian back to Zermatt, to that evening when Florence Aldrich had nearly been abducted.
She’d been about the same age, and he had been the only one in a position to save her.
He’d acted on instinct that day, not only going against everything he’d been taught at Onyx but also against the direct instructions of his handler.
They’d told him to stay away, that it wasn’t the mission, and that to deviate from the mission would lead to consequences that would follow him for the rest of his life.
And they had been right.
His actions in Zermatt had changed everything and exposed truths he hadn’t been ready to face. But he didn’t regret it. Not for a second. He had saved Florence because it had been the right thing to do.
And now, it was happening all over again.
Caspian briefly looked into the kid’s eyes. The young man was trying to be brave, to hold it together, and to project some illusion of courage, but the trembling in his jaw and knees and the tightly clenched fists betrayed how he was really feeling.
Careful, Caspian. One wrong move, and this boy’s dead.
“I’ll let him go,” the man called out. “But only once I’m out of here.”
Caspian tracked the shooter with his pistol, finger on the trigger, but he didn’t have a clear shot.
The terrace was still in chaos with panicked patrons fleeing in every direction, knocking chairs and glasses over.
Caspian couldn’t afford to miss. One bad shot could mean hitting the young man or a bystander.
Still, he hated the situation he found himself in.
He was exposed, which made him an easy target for any other shooter out there. Every second felt like a lifetime.
But he couldn’t back off. The boy needed his protection, and so did Liesel and Sofie.
Caspian had to cover them the best he could, even if it meant putting himself in the crosshairs. A blur of motion to the side drew Caspian’s eye. A broad-shouldered man in his mid-forties with short-cropped hair charged the shooter, holding a steak knife as if it was a bayonet.
“Let my son go!”
The gunman, surprised, shifted his aim, moving the muzzle toward the charging father.
That was the window Caspian had been waiting for. He fired. The bullet struck just below the kidnapper’s ear. The man dropped instantly, but so did the father.
Fuck! The sniper.
Any doubts Caspian still held that the sniper and the two men might not be working together evaporated. The father stirred, holding his upper left arm. The teenage boy scrambled to his father, dropping beside him. He gripped his dad’s hand and tried to pull him up.
“Stay low!” Caspian shouted. “Keep your heads down!”
The boy and his dad both nodded as they sought cover behind an overturned table.
Caspian scanned the terrace, then turned and sprint-crouched toward Liesel, who was working frantically on Sofie’s wound, her hands covered in her sister’s blood.
“Let me see,” he said, kneeling beside her.
Sofie’s chest rose in shallow, jerky movements. Blood bubbled at her lips. She tried to speak.
“You . . . can’t trust . . . Westcott . . . you . . .”
“Don’t talk,” Caspian said, holding her hand. “Keep your strength. Help is coming.”
Sofie coughed, choking on blood. Then more shots echoed against the nearby building, followed by panicked shouting and police sirens. The terrace was nearly deserted now. Everyone had fled. Only the dead and the three of them remained.
Sofie’s hand clenched his forearm with surprising strength.
“Listen . . . to me . . . they . . . they are . . . everywhere,” she managed to say, her voice strained and broken.
Her words stunned Caspian. He knew they meant something. But what? He’d heard similar words not long ago.
We. Are. Everywhere.
He’d been in Tanzania then, and now he was hearing them in Mallorca. Both times he’d heard them, they’d come out of the mouth of someone who was dying.
“Who’s ‘they,’ Sofie? Who’s ‘they’?”
But Sofie’s eyes had already rolled back. Her hand gently slipped from his, and her face slackened. He checked her pulse. Nothing.
More gunfire. This time even closer. Shit.
He hadn’t known Sofie, not really, but in those brief minutes he’d shared with the two sisters, he’d seen enough to understand how much Sofie mattered to Liesel. Caspian closed Sofie’s eyes.
“No,” Liesel cried out, then pushed Caspian aside and started compressions. “Come on, Sofie! Stay with me!”
After a few seconds, Caspian said, “She’s gone, Liesel.”
Liesel looked at him, panting, her eyes wild. “No. She can’t be.”
“We have to go. We don’t know who else is coming.”
Liesel’s hands were trembling, and her face was pale, spattered with blood.
She’s shell shocked.
Liesel lowered her head. They didn’t have time to mourn, but Caspian gave Liesel the time of one breath, of one second of silence. He owed her that much.
“We can’t stay, Liesel. We need to get moving.”
Liesel nodded. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, then said, “Okay.”
“There’s a sniper. Probably on the dock,” Caspian said. “We can’t exit from the terrace, and we need to stay low. Understood?”
No reply.
“Liesel! I need you to focus.”
“I . . . I can’t think,” she murmured, looking at her dead sister. “My head’s not right, Casp.”
Caspian looked around him, then grabbed a tablecloth from a fallen table and laid it over Sofie.
“I’ve got you, okay?” Caspian said. “Just follow me.”
He dragged Liesel low across the terrace, keeping below the sniper’s line of fire.
He entered the restaurant and headed toward the far side.
Behind the bar, he spotted a service door he assumed led to the kitchen.
His pistol up, he opened the door and cleared the space.
It was indeed the kitchen. It was empty.
He guided Liesel through, past the prep stations, and into a corridor stacked with crates of sparkling water bottles.
There was a delivery door at the end. Caspian, still with his pistol in his hand, opened it a crack and peeked out.
No one.
“Let’s move,” he said.
They stepped into the alley, Caspian leading the way.
At the T-junction, Caspian paused. He checked left.
Two police vehicles were parked less than sixty feet away, their emergency lights casting harsh blue flashes across the facades of the nearby buildings.
Two officers were crouched behind the passenger door of the closest car, weapons drawn.
Another, clearly injured, was seated next to them, his back resting against the front tire as a fourth officer was applying pressure to his leg.
None of the officers were looking his way.
Caspian tucked his pistol inside his waistband, then turned to Liesel. Her expression was steadier now. The raw shock of her sister’s death still lingered in her eyes, but Caspian could see she had pulled herself together and had regained most of her composure.
“Ready?” he asked her.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”