Chapter 10
CHAPTER
She walked slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible on the gravel path. Before she even reached the door, she was hit by an overpowering odor, one she had smelled several times before.
The smell of death.
Oh, God.
There was something else. A buzzing sound.
Flies, she realized. Hundreds, maybe thousands of flies.
The noise and awful odor only grew more intense as she moved through the open doorway. The sensory assault roiled her stomach. She was in a large room that she could tell had once been a storage area. Racks that once held motor oil cans and tires were empty, and there was no other furniture.
But there was blood. Blood everywhere.
Lynch . . .
She moved through to the front office, stopping to look inside the single small bathroom. Empty. The entire building was deserted, except for the thousands of flies buzzing over the blood pooled on the cement floors.
The insects were especially thick at half a dozen spots around the room. Kendra stepped toward one of the groupings and bent over. There was something there . . . a chunk of meat?
It was human flesh.
She backed away. God, no . . . This couldn’t be happening. If only she’d—
Two strong hands grabbed her from behind. “Kendra!”
The hands spun her around. It was Jessie.
Kendra’s stomach churned even harder. She felt as if she was going to throw up. “We’re too late. Lynch . . .”
Jessie was guiding her to the back door. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. Move!”
Kendra felt herself being pushed outside, where she practically gulped the fresh air. Her nausea subsided as the cool air struck her face.
Jessie finally let go of her. “You okay?”
Kendra nodded. “I thought you were going to wait for my all-clear signal.”
“That was the plan, but you were taking too long. I was worried.”
“I thought I was prepared for anything, but I wasn’t.” She was shivering. “You saw it, didn’t you? All that blood . . .”
“Of course. But it didn’t mean anything. Lynch could still be okay.”
Kendra felt the nausea returning. “His footprints went in but never came out. There were human remains inside. And all that blood . . .”
Jessie’s grip tightened on Kendra. “Stop it.”
CLICK-CLACK!
The metallic sound came from behind them, and Kendra had heard it before. She and Jessie spun around to see three men standing at the gravel lot’s edge with assault rifles leveled in their direction.
One of the men stepped forward. “Don’t move. Not a muscle. Understand?” He spoke with an Eastern European accent.
Kendra looked down at their boots. They seemed to match the prints she’d seen at the front of the station.
Were these the same men who may have killed Lynch?
If so, she wanted nothing more than to make them suffer.
She could feel the hatred burning hot and bright within her, and her hand reached out to close on the gun in her pocket.
“Weapons?” the man asked.
No way would she give these animals her weapon. Kendra shook her head. “No.”
Jessie didn’t respond.
The man stepped toward Jessie. “Weapons,” he repeated. “Put them on the ground in front of you. I believe you two might be the women we’re looking for. Give us your weapons. Or we will kill your friend here.”
Jessie slowly reached under her jacket and pulled out the gun she’d taken from Lynch’s safe house. The men laughed and yelled their approval.
“Such a big gun for a little lady,” the lead man said, still smiling.
“I’ve handled bigger.” Jessie leaned forward and placed the gun on the ground.
He hefted his assault rifle. “Guns like this one?”
“Much bigger than the toy you’re holding.”
“A toy that can end your life in seconds.”
There was suddenly rustling in the tall grass behind the gunmen! The two men confronting Jessie and Kendra turned warily to see that one of the members of their team was gone.
The team leader shouted. “Yuri? Yuri! Where the hell are you?” He turned toward his other man standing beside him. “Where is he? Did you see him?”
The other man shook his head.
Both men whirled around with their guns extended in front of them. “Yuri!” The team leader was now shouting, sounding panicked.
He motioned for his teammate to be still. “Hush!” They listened for a long moment, but there was only silence. He turned to the women. “You had to see what happened. Who else was with you?”
Kendra shrugged. “If you can’t keep track of your own men, how can you expect us to?”
He glared at her. “Bitch!”
More rustling in the tall grass. The two gunmen turned again, but the rustling stopped as soon as it had begun.
Kendra was trying to grasp the situation.
The truth was that she hadn’t seen what happened to Yuri.
She’d been too focused on the tense exchange between Jessie and the leader.
She could see that Jessie was just as mystified.
But these thugs were now definitely on edge and ready to attack.
She’d better make certain she was prepared if that happened. Her hand closed on her pistol.
A shot rang out from the tall grass!
All hell broke loose! The two men ducked and started shooting, emptying their magazines in the direction of the gunshot.
Silence.
More rustling, then the third gunman—who must have been this Yuri—staggered toward them from the grass, covered in blood and bullet wounds. He collapsed at their feet. Dead.
BLAM! A single gunshot rang out from the opposite direction and killed the leader. Before the final gunman beside him could react, a bullet ripped through the back of his head. He fell next to his teammate.
Jessie instantly hit the ground and came up with Lynch’s handgun that she’d had to surrender to the head gunman. She yelled to Kendra, “Get back in the building. I’ll cover you!”
“The hell you will.” Kendra took off running for the woods.
“We don’t know how many more of those guys are out there.
If it’s a bunch of snipers Cambry brought here, there’s no telling how outnumbered we’ll be.
The last thing we need is a gunfight. Our best chance is for you to take your cycle back to camp and get Dunne and anyone else there to give us a little help.
You’re a wizard on that bike. You’ll make it.
I’ll try to either hide or distract them. ”
“Kendra! No!”
“Don’t just stand there,” Kendra said over her shoulder. “Do what I said! Or you’ll get us both killed. I have my gun and I can take care of myself.” She dashed deeper into the woods. A minute later she heard the roar of the motorcycle.
Good. She couldn’t hear any more gunshots from the area where the motorcycle had been hidden. Now all she had to worry about was getting through the woods to the road.
And staying away from the tall grass and the snipers who had been hiding and picking off the killers one by one.
They’d probably think she was an easy target.
“Get down, dammit! Cambry isn’t playing games. He has too much at stake.” Kendra was jerked to the ground with a man’s crushing weight on top of her!
Shit! She instinctively reached up and plowed into the man’s nose with her knotted fist. Then she went for the gun in her pocket. She was vaguely aware of him cursing as he tried to keep her from struggling.
“Kendra, be still or I’ll have to knock you out.”
The hell he would. She had her gun out now and she—
She suddenly froze. Because she had recognized that voice.
And, dear God, she knew with the greatest intimacy every muscle and response of that body on top of her own. “Lynch?”
“Hush,” he whispered. He wasn’t looking at her but at the far side of the woods.
“Cambry isn’t alone, and he’s mad as hell at what I did to him.
He has more men in these woods. We’ve got to get out of here.
” He jumped up and pulled her to her feet.
“Follow me.” But he didn’t give her a chance to follow, just grabbed her by the arm and half led, half pulled her through the brush.
“I laid a false trail to the west, but even if Cambry doesn’t manage to track us, one of his men might.
Korkil has evidently given all his thugs permission to start the fireworks. ”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Where are you taking me?”
He gestured to his lips for silence. “Later. I’ll tell you everything later.
It’s just around the next bend.” He was striding swiftly, looking in every direction.
Kendra could only do the same. Then they rounded the bend and she stopped short as she saw the helicopter.
She recognized it immediately. “That’s the helicopter Cambry leased. What’s it doing here?”
“I stole it.”
“Stole it?”
He shrugged. “Evidently Korkil summoned Cambry to meet with him and a few other influential buddies at his yacht. And he just left it sitting there at the seaport. I figured the least I could do was to make use of it . . . and maybe find a way to lure him away from you. So after I followed him to the yacht, I doubled back and nabbed the helicopter.” He opened the passenger door for her.
“I’d captured Cambry’s cell phone frequency when I first met him a week ago, so I was able to tap his phone from the copter and found out that there might be problems that involved you being down at that gas station that had once been my home away from home.
So I headed back here to change the odds.
Everything was going pretty well until you decided to spoil all my plans by making a run for it. ”