“You need to know something,” Edie said. She wasn’t talking to Scott. She was on the cell phone, talking to someone on the Kearsarge — the chief he guessed. “Scott and I are on the move. I don’t know where Peyton Jones is. I hope you do, but I do know where the other one is. She was just at the hospital.”
Scott was reeling. He assumed it had been Peyton at the hospital. If Peyton got off the ship because they wanted her to, how had the other operative got off? The Kearsarge undoubtedly had been on a full lockdown by then.
Everything seemed so jumbled in his mind like he was waking up from a haze. He was still trying to wrap his head around Peyton’s involvement, why she’d want him dead and what all this had to do with David Blake.
He’d done more than talk to her over the maritime. They’d actually met twice, once when Sea Shepherd and Bardot III were in port together and again in response to an urgent support request. Angel, Kathy and Lian had agreed to go over in the zodiac to bring the needed supplies and he’d jumped in at the last minute to provide security.
Edie continued. “We’re looking at our ride right now. Take down this name: Malta Sky Charters. Can you get us clearance to fly ourselves? Buy the damned thing if you have to.” She paused. “It’s a helicopter… Yes, I know how to fly the damned thing. Just do whatever you have to do.”
The chief was shouting something Scott could almost hear. Movement near the heliport caught his eye.
Edie let out an apologetic sigh. “Our escorts, I don’t know. I’m sorry, truly sorry. We barely got out ourselves. It was chaotic. The shooter took us by surprise.” She cast a worried look at Scott. “There was nothing I could do. Scott and I had to slip out another way or we might be wearing toe tags too.” More shouting and worried looks. “Look, you may need to smooth things over for us with the military and local authorities. Scott had a little — your team?” She paused. “I see… That’s good, I understand. Do you have a position on Jones?” She paused. “What? How is that possible? Do you have a last known?”
Scott gulped at the air, his eyes not believing what he was seeing. Just as Edie was hanging up, he clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her roughly to the ground. Her protestations and kicking didn’t do any good. He felt like a superhero and was as strong as one too, riding high on whatever she’d given him. “Stop it,” he hissed in her ear, his eyes wide from what he was seeing. “Look!”
When she finally saw what he saw, she stopped struggling. “What?!” Her fingers groped and pried his away from her mouth. “It’s her, the mystery woman, isn’t it? But what’s with that getup? It’s like she robbed a Victoria’s Secret.”
Scott nodded, certain it might be, if the mystery woman had put on a black wig. “Looks like we’re not the only ones who want that helicopter.”
“Wied Babu?” Edie said. “Isn’t that near Blue Grotto?”
Scott frowned. “It is. What about it?”
Edie’s brows bunched together. “It’s where Jones was headed.”
He slipped the Beretta out of its hiding place and clicked off the safety. “You ready for this?”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.” Edie readied her pistol. “This bitch is going to get a bullet between the eyes.”
Chapter 13
“The who and the what are everything,” Alexis said to herself as she rolled up the sleeve on her left arm. She’d gotten herself off the navy ship, no thanks to the cleaner the director sent after her.
She was angry with herself and had grown tired of watching and waiting from her vantage point inside Saint Vincent De Paul Residence. Her plan had been to put the director out of the picture by appeasing him. He cared only about the job and its completion. By eliminating the target, she would have bought time. Time for herself. Time for the world. A scant handful of hours perhaps, but it would have been enough. She really only needed until nightfall, for the clock was ticking, counting down to an inevitable tomorrow.
She sensed the surprise in his voice when she spoke to him. Surprise that she would call. Surprise that she lived. Surprise that she wasn’t where he expected her to be.
The calls though were all about pushing his buttons enough to make things personal — or at least more personal than they were. He may have told her that she was like a daughter to him, but she’d known better. She wasn’t a fool. The director was a man who ordered death with a snap of his fingers. His only care now that the task was botched would be to see it done himself and that was something she counted on.
“Eyes everywhere. Don’t forget, don’t forget,” Alexis whispered, flicking the crook of her elbow twice. There was no other way. He knew where she was, but would arrive too late to do anything to stop her plans. She counted on him being the creature of habit he was. She knew exactly where his ship was off the coast of France and exactly how long it would take his yacht to get to her if he tried.
“Going off the reservation,” she said, chuckling to herself as she injected the needle into the vein she’d readied. Pushing down the plunger, she felt the liquid coolant shoot into her arm. Demerol wasn’t her pain medication of choice, but it would do until she needed to start on the liquid Oxycodone.
The air in the tiny space was stifling. Sweat dripped down her face. Her shirt was soaked too, especially under the pits of her arms.
The blade missed her heart but only by millimeters. Alexis pulled up her shirt, bit into the emergency pack with her teeth and ripped it open. Then she pulled off the blood-soaked bandages and put the new gauze in place. Rolls of medical tape were beside her on the floor and she wrapped the tape across her stomach and around her back.
The girl was going to pay for what she’d done. She didn’t care what would be said. It was too late for anyone’s ministrations. Her earlier hesitation almost cost her everything. The only person she trusted now was herself.
What happened afterward though was jarring, primal. The girl picked up the knife after letting it drop to the floor. Then she knelt down beside her and whispered. Not the last words that were her trademark, written in blood beside her kills as often as not, but something else entirely. Something that was almost a kindness. “Your fight is over, struggle no more,” she said. The words were a mercy. A mercy from the beautiful demon looking down on her and seeing perhaps herself in that moment.
Alexis felt a chill. She’d never forget what followed. She expected a finishing blow. Instead, the girl took the blade in both hands and pressed it into her own stomach, grinning while she sliced and jabbed. After, the girl staggered off toward the forward section, leaving her behind to bleed out on the floor.
Wiping her bloody hands on the boxes beside her, she forced herself to stand. A sink at the back of the medical closet helped her wash the rest away. A white hospital coat rested on a hook to the right of the sink. She removed it and slipped it on.
Opening the door a crack, she paused to assess and then slipped out into the hall. She needed a weapon if she was going to see out the day and she knew exactly where to get one.
She went to the stairwell and climbed to the second floor. Evers was in a room at the end of the hall, a pair of security escorts had marked the place for her before. Now though, they were coming down the hall with Evers.
Without hesitation, she opened the door to her left and stepped inside. With the door between her and them, she waited until the sound of the wheelchair and feet faded.
“X'qed taghmel?” an elderly man said, sitting up in his hospital bed.