No Safe Place (Joe Hunter Thrillers Book 11) (28 page)

The muscles in my stomach contracted in waves. I felt nauseous, on the verge of vomiting. But I’d been in worse shape before and fought back. I did then. I backhanded Royce between the legs, forcing him away, and scrambled to my feet, holding the rail tighter this time. It was fortunate I found my feet because suddenly the boat lurched into a turn, then immediately shuddered, and the prow forced a line through the water in a different direction. The boat pitched wildly, and I almost went overboard and had to fight the motion just to retain my wits. It was hardly surprising that the boat rolled and danced as it surged across the lake, with nobody at the helm.

‘You’ve a lot to answer for, you bastard,’ Royce spat at me as he aimed a punch at my head. I dodged and he withdrew his jab.

His accusation was rich, considering everything he’d done. But I guessed he was referring to his cousin Tommy’s death, or maybe he was concerned for the welfare of Lonnie and the others, because my presence didn’t bode well for them. Perhaps that wasn’t what he meant, and it was the fact I’d spoiled his chances of killing Andrew and Cole back in the boathouse, and forcing him to make a break for it. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about his disappointment. I punched at him.

Royce palmed my fist aside, and struck me with a hammering blow of his tattooed right hand. The swine still had hold of his revolver, but I’d no way of knowing if it was armed. He battered my shoulder with the butt of the handle, causing the numbness already in it to buzz with an electric charge: he’d got me sweet on a bundle of nerves. I couldn’t forget that he was once a pro-fighter, and knew exactly where to hit so it hurt. Fair enough, I decided, because I intended hurting him equally.

The cabin cruiser rocked to and fro. We went from one side of the deck to the other, then back again, in what to an observer might have resembled a drunken waltz. All the while we punched, and grabbed at each other. The deck was too unstable to throw a kick, or even a knee to the balls. Royce again used his revolver to hammer me, this time with the barrel that abraded skin down my left pectoral muscle alongside my recently healed bullet wound. Our fight took us into the open cabin. Royce’s back bent over the steering wheel; aided by the fact my left hand was gripping his windpipe. He swayed to the right, forcing my reach to over–extend, and he pulled loose, and again struck at me with the gun butt. It got me down the side of my face, feeling as if it almost ripped off my earlobe. The boat dipped to the right also, and we fell in a tangle of limbs against the cabin wall. There were storage compartments and equipment, electronic components and other stuff I was unfamiliar with. Nothing I could use as a blunt weapon, though.

I chopped at his wrist, and he relinquished his grip on the gun. It fell between our feet. As we struggled I stood on the damn thing, and my right leg skidded out from under me. Royce powered me backwards further off balance, and I spilled onto the deck once more. I half expected Royce to take a second to adjust the steering, giving me an opportunity to rise, but he was too engaged in the fight to bother where the boat was heading. He came after me, and sacrificed his own stability by kicking at my side.

Balling up around his foot, I wrapped my arms and knees around his shin. Royce swore, realising his mistake and tried to wrench free, but I hung on with the tenacity of a tic dug into a bull’s hide. He hopped, trying to dislodge my clinging weight, and it was obvious to me where we’d end up. He toppled, smacking face down on the deck near the aft of the boat. I wrenched him over, climbing his body like a demented ape. Royce punched up at me, and I batted aside his arms. Got a hand round his windpipe and squeezed.

Royce’s hands pushed at my jaw, and he worked his fingertips into my eyes, forcing me to twist away to save my vision. His fingers scrabbled down my face and found purchase on my bottom lip. He was seconds from ripping it off, when I thrust down again and got his fingers between my teeth. I crunched as hard as I could, and he hollered in ignominy more than in pain. What? He expected a fight constrained by rules? He bucked wildly, and I fell sideways, aided into my roll by a wild dip of the boat to starboard. The damn cabin cruiser was still racing forward at top speed, with no hand at the helm. Hitting the hull, I rebounded slightly, and got my feet between us, kicking at Royce with both heels. He scrambled for the port rail, grabbing it, and hauling himself to standing. He took a moment to crane around, and his eyes went wide, and a curse broke from his lips. He began to pull along the rail for the cabin. I launched up, and dove at him. He rammed an elbow between us, but I swept it down, and head-butted him cleanly in the jaw.

He was stunned, and I swung a clubbing right at his face. It might have been the sweet punch, except the boat’s keel suddenly hit something, and it rose a foot or so in the water, and with it me. I was weightless for a second or two, before crashing down on the deck. My punch had barely clipped Royce, but he was also down. The engine roared still, and we were still moving, but more sluggishly than before. The boat was towing something, and whatever it was it acted like an anchor, but not enough to halt all forward volition. Clambering up, I looked, and saw that we were barely fifty yards from shore, on a straight line for impact. Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped Royce gaining control of the steering. I lurched for the cabin.

‘Hold it, mother fucker!” Royce snapped.

A quick glance showed me a sight I’d grown used to lately. A gun was aimed at my face. Royce was bluffing though, because we both knew it was empty. I lunged for the cabin, reaching for the wheel.

The gun cracked, and a bullet smashed a chunk of wood from the cabin a few inches from me.

It wasn’t the empty gun he’d used to club me. Royce had found the gun dropped earlier by Clayton, and this one could have plenty bullets left in the chamber to finish me off.  I’d no idea how many times Clayton fired during the standoff in the boathouse, but even a single remaining bullet was enough to drop me. It was a chance I’d take.

I didn’t go for the wheel. I charged Royce, and he was surprised by my recklessness and it took him a second longer to react. I threw myself at him, but in a way he’d never expect, going sideways, as if rolling over a fence with little regard to where I landed. The gun barked, but by then I was past the barrel and caromed into him, knocking him backwards at the same instant the boat hit the sloping shore and tore a shuddering path through loamy earth.

Entangled we went overboard, striking the aft rail, and spilling away as the boat continued its forward plummet to land. The water was shallow, but deep enough to completely submerge me as I hit. Royce was on top, and his weight bore me down into the silty mud. My vision was filled with gritty darkness, and I’d no way of seeing the fist Royce drove into my face before it battered me further into the muck. My mouth opened in reflex and foul slime flooded in. The darkness in my vision grew deeper.

In desperation I groped for the knife I’d inserted in my boot.

My fingers only found soaked cloth, and in regret I realised the knife had been lost when we’d tumbled overboard. I had no weapon to fight back with, and was rapidly weakening.

Fuck, I thought, as my lungs pulsed agonizingly through lack of oxygen, this was what drowning felt like.

Stunned by his insane leap after the boat, Bryony could only gape at the antics of her friend.
Joe impacted the boat solidly, and judging by the nasty thwack of his body against the keel he could be in trouble. But then he swarmed over the rail, on to the deck. Before he could right himself, a man in coveralls - who could only be Royce Benson - aimed a punishing kick at him. Then the boat was careening away, but it was at a wild curving tangent. She lifted her gun overhead, hollering a command, and let loose a single round. But she was wasting her time. In their fight, neither man aboard the roaring craft would hear let alone obey her command to halt.

From within the boathouse sounded splashing, highly-pitched voices, but no words she could decipher. Edging inside, with her gun extended, she searched for enemies, but the only people present were Andrew Clayton and his son. Clayton was shoulder deep in the water, hugging the boy to his chest, and an arm round Cole’s head, as they slumped against the jetty. Bryony jogged along the boardwalk towards them, still checking for attackers. ‘Everybody OK?’ she demanded.

Cole wept inconsolably, drenched through, but otherwise he seemed fine. Clayton looked up at her, big-eyed. He coughed out words, then without asking handed Cole up to her. Bryony slipped away her gun to help, hauling the boy up on to the jetty. He sat between her knees, still weeping dejectedly, while Clayton hauled himself on to the boardwalk alongside her. He reached for the boy and pulled him into an embrace.

‘Wait here,’ Bryony told Clayton. ‘Help will be here in no time.’

The sirens keened wildly now, and she was certain she could make out dim blue flashes dancing on the lake beyond the aperture.

‘You have to stop that son of a bitch,’ Clayton told her. ‘He won’t stop until we’re all dead.’

‘Don’t worry, sir,’ she said. ‘Everything’s in hand.’

She didn’t believe her own proclamation, so wasn’t surprised at the scowl Clayton shot her. She held out a calming palm, then nodded in some kind of silent promise, and turned to jog along the jetty again. Once outside, she searched the lake for the boat and saw that it wasn’t as far off as she’d expected. It was zigzagging through the shallows near to shore. It was night now, but the hull was almost phosphorescent against the dark waters, and in its radiance she could see two small stick figures engaged in battle.

‘Bryony!’

Hearing her name snapped her attention on the person leaning up against the wall of the boathouse. Rink offered her a grimace, and clutched at the bleeding wound in his side, but evidently his injury wasn’t as debilitating as she’d earlier feared. He’d found the strength to get up and follow her, his need to assist his friends overcoming good sense perhaps.

‘Is that Hunter out there?’ He nodded at the swerving boat.

‘Who else?’ she asked, and raised her eyebrows. For a moment they shared a look, as if they were the long-suffering parents of a misbehaving child.

‘Best you get after him then,’ Rink said. ‘You know he won’t be happy til he hands you Royce’s ass as a trophy.’

What could she do? There wasn’t another boat she could use to give chase.

‘Lookit,’ Rink said, and she followed his gaze.

The cabin cruiser was heading in a curving line back towards land. Unless someone got a grip of the steering, it would make landfall a few hundred yards down shore.

‘Go on, I’ll watch Clayton and the kid til your buddies get here.’

Cops were already on scene up towards the house. The gumball strobe lights flashed intermittently on the boathouse and in the trees surrounding the property.

‘Put away your gun, Rink. We don’t want anyone making any stupid mistakes.’

‘Good call,’ he said, and dropped the gun at his feet. It had been a struggle to hold it, she bet. ‘Being shot once in a day is enough for me.’ Rink slid down the wall, on to his butt. He waved her away. ‘Go on. I’m good. Help Hunter; he’s the one needs you now.’

Bryony edged away, checking on the boat’s trajectory. Then when she was fairly certain where it would beach, she set off at a gallop towards the trees. From behind her she heard the shouted commands of armed officers, and took it they’d discovered Scott Hartman chained to the trestle. She used the edge of the trees as a guide towards shore, and moments later came upon another man sitting on the grass. Both his arms were folded up towards his chin, and he was shivering, abjectly miserable, and in obvious pain if the cold sweat lathering him was any indicator. His arms looked oddly shaped, and it took a second or two before she understood what must have happened: Joe had left this would-be killer in no fit state to continue the fight. She turned and hollered for help, and a flashlight beam danced across the lawn towards her. She waved a cop towards her, identifying herself, holding up both her shield and her sidearm. ‘This asshole needs a medic,’ she told who she now saw was a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputy. ‘But first take him into custody.’

Before the deputy could question her further, she took off at a run for the shore. She trusted that by now the boat had run aground, or it had swerved wildly back to the middle of the lake. When she hit the waterline, she peered to her right. The boat was indeed beached on the shore a few hundred yards away, the engine continuing to roar in defiance as it fought to gain a few more inches up the slope. Behind it was a snarl of branches and reeds, driftwood left over from the recent storm dragged there by the boat as it pushed through the shallows, and outlined by the raggedy canopy a man punched down at another pushed beneath the surface. The edge of the lake was a boggy morass. But she slogged along it, fighting the clinging mud that attempted to stop her in her tracks. At a dash she could cover a hundred yards in no time, but here it felt as if time had slowed, as if it was an age before she took each hard won step.

Who was killing whom up ahead? She couldn’t make out any features, just the movement of the man sitting on top of the other, now forcing down with both straight arms in an attempt at drowning their opponent. She’d prefer that it was Joe on top, but not that he was intent on killing Royce. She wanted the bastard alive. Justice must be served, the multiple murderer tried and convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life.

She was within twenty feet before she got a look at the victor in profile, the longish hair, and knew she faced the worst scenario possible. Royce had bettered Hunter, and was even now only making random shoves at his opponent to ensure the weakened man stayed submerged. Hunter was dying.

She came to a halt, the mud instantly sucking her down to the ankles. Raised her gun in the air, and fired.

Royce Benson snapped a glance at her.

‘Police!’ she yelled. ‘Get up off him now!’

Royce laughed, a sound so heartless it chilled her.

‘Arrest me. Go ahead. You’re too late to save him, anyway,’ he said, his hands still submerged.

‘Get off him now, or I will shoot.’

‘So shoot me. You think that will save him? He’s gone.’

Bryony took a lumbering step forward. Her gun now in both hands, aimed directly at Benson’s chest. ‘Last warning,’ she said.

‘You aren’t going to shoot me. You’re a cop.’ Royce sneered at her.

He was right. She was a cop. But not of the stick-up-the-ass, rule following-type epitomised by Dennis Holker. First and foremost she was a human being, with the same fears and insecurities, or the same hopes and dreams as anyone else. Arresting a felon wasn’t as important to her as saving the life of someone she cared deeply for.

She fired.

The bullet struck Benson high on his left shoulder, and its impact made him slump sideways. He groaned in pain, but began to turn towards her.

‘Next bullet’s in your heart, asshole,’ she promised.

She was an instant too late in seeing his right hand break the surface. From beneath the water he barely raised the barrel of a gun a few inches, and only when it flashed brightly in the gloom, and she sat down heavily in the mud did she understand he’d returned fire. As she dropped, her own gun slipped sideways, and she almost lost a hold of it, and her mind was so bewildered by the turn of events, that she had to grab at it a few times before she had it gripped tightly enough to control. Benson hove up, and she knew she’d made a bad decision in going only for a debilitating shot, rather than a fatal one. He stood, bringing what she now saw was a revolver to bear, and in their hurry to find a target, he found his first.

He fired, and once again the night was split by a sharp crack of thunder and lightning. Bryony’s eyelids flickered in time with the single shot, and she waited for the dull impact of metal tearing through her body. Yet it never came.

A leg had rammed up from under the surface, water surging up around it, so that she didn’t see where it impacted a split-second before Royce fired. Wherever the heel struck him, it lifted Royce off his feet and propelled him backwards, so that the bullet flew high overhead. Before she could make clear sense of what had just happened, or before she could finally put a stop to Royce Benson’s killing spree, Hunter erupted from the water with a furious roar, and she knew now that arrest was no longer an issue.

Then again, who was she to stand in the way of true justice? She lowered her firearm, and instead watched as Hunter plunged after Royce, shooting two pummelling palm heel thrusts into the killer’s chin. Royce made a futile attempt at shooting, but the gun was empty now, and of no use to him. He struck at Hunter with it as a club, but Hunter was undeterred, taking the blow to his shoulder in order to deliver his own. He threw a straight right into the centre of Royce’s face, and even over the distance, the grunting, the stamping, the slosh of mud and water, she heard the impact, and the resulting crack of breaking bones.

As Hunter slumped to one knee sluicing water, gasping to catch his breath, she couldn’t credit her eyes. Royce was still standing. She brought up her weapon, a warning shout dancing on her lips, but it never found voice. She understood now.

She struggled to stand, but got her feet beneath her.

Where had she been shot?

She couldn’t tell, because there was no indication, neither blood or pain, nor any other sign of trauma.

She’d sat down in surprise she realised, but wouldn’t dwell on it. Her shock at being fired at so suddenly had saved her life, so where was the shame?

Forging through the muck, she didn’t lower her gun from Royce. But he was no threat, and she took a few seconds to grip Hunter’s shoulder and give him a squeeze of thanks. He winced at her touch, and hardly surprising after the pounding his body had taken. He glanced up at her, still expelling dirty lake water from his lips and nostrils, and nodded his own thanks. They’d both played a part in saving the others’ ass.

And, the best part of all, Hunter had handed her Royce Benson as a trophy as he’d promised.

The killer was snagged among the branches of the tree towed up from the bottom of the lake by the cabin cruiser, his spine wedged in the V of two thicker limbs. He was barely clinging to consciousness, but while he fought the escape into oblivion, he was barely aware of his surroundings, and no threat. He bled profusely from where Bryony had shot him, and from his mashed nose and split lips. It was only a pity that he hadn’t been impaled on one of the branches, to cause him further torment, Bryony thought in a spike of delicious sadism. It was what he deserved.

Instead she told him he was under arrest, and took delight in her proclamation instead.