Omega (Alpha #3) (24 page)

“Got it.”
 

“All right. See you soon.”
 

“Promise?” I hated how vulnerable I managed to sound in those two little stupid syllables.

“I promise, Layla.”

Click
. I hung up on him, to save him the difficulty of saying goodbye. And because if I didn’t hang up right then, my thin façade of strength would come crumbling down. I’m a tough bitch, but everyone’s got a breaking point, and I was nearing mine.

I managed to find the road north, totally by accident. I was checking my rear-view mirror regularly, watching for any more black SUVs, but so far I’d seen nothing. They’d managed to find me when I’d been absolutely positive I’d gotten away clean. Had they planted a tracker in me, like some kind of Tom Cruise spy movie? I mean, how else could you explain them just showing up like that? Only sheer luck and a big pink umbrella had prevented them from seeing me.
 

When I was out of the city proper I called Harris back, told him I was on the 160 heading north, and hung up before he could say anything.
 

With two broken windows, the ride was noisy and windy. My leg ached from where the door had crumpled, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to look down there to assess the damage. My neck was sore and stiff too, from the whiplash. Also, the climb up the hill had exhausted me.

But at least I wasn’t hungry, right?

Always look on the bright side of life.
 

If you’re humming the Monty Python song, then I love you forever.

Thirty minutes of driving lulled me into complacence; my phone rang, startling me enough that I shrieked and jerked the wheel, nearly sideswiping the car next to me.
 

“Hello?”
 

“It’s me,” Harris said. “We should be getting close to each other. Have you reached the point where the north and southbound lanes merge, yet?”

Leaving Guarujá, the north- and southbound traffic lanes were often far apart, taking totally different routes through the mountainous terrain, only joining a good thirty miles or so north and west.
 

“No,” I said, “not yet.”

“Okay, good. When the lanes start merging, I want you to pull over and hide in the woods in the median. Get as far north as you can, so you’re at the very edge of the woods, looking north. I’ll find you. You see anyone else but me coming for you…well, do what have to.”
 

“Okay. Got it.”

“Any questions?” he asked, his voice firm and brusque and calm.

“Just one.”

“What is it?”
 

“Does knowing you’ve killed someone ever get easier?”

He didn’t answer right away. “Yes and no. Like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. But that comes with a price.” Another pause. “We’ll talk more when we’re together.”

“It was ugly, Harris.” Why the hell was I saying any of this? I didn’t want to think about it. I’d been trying not to.

“Death
is
ugly, Layla. No two ways about it.”
 

“I’ll see you soon.”
 

“Yes, you will.” He was the one to hang up, this time.
 

I tossed the phone on the passenger seat and focused on driving, focused on watching the terrain and watching for pursuit. After another ten minutes, I saw the southbound traffic lane in the distance, off to my left, just a strip of gray in the green of the forest, sunlight glinting occasionally on windshields. When the lanes were a hundred yards or so apart, a thin screen of trees appeared in the ever-decreasing space between lanes. I moved into the left-hand lane and slowed down, earning horn honks and angry shouts as the faster-moving traffic swerved around me.

Another three minutes, and the median narrowed yet further and the trees thinned to a point. There wasn’t a shoulder, so I had to pull off the highway and directly onto the grass, thudding and bouncing as I braked to a halt. I shut the engine off, left the keys in the ignition, palmed my phone in one hand and my knife in the other, glancing in both directions. I was earning a lot of looks, but no one was stopping, yet.
 

I took off running for the trees.
 

As I made the tree line, I heard a car door close somewhere behind me.
 

Shit. Of course.
 

It was a big black SUV, parked directly behind mine. Five men were moving toward me, and each one was blatantly carrying a machine gun. They strode toward me calmly, unhurried, making directly for my position.
 

Now what the actual fuck? I’d been watching behind me every step of the way, and I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that I hadn’t been followed. Yet here they were, coming right for me.
 

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!” I shouted it the last time, and one of the men laughed.
 

It wasn’t a pleasant sound.
 

I ducked behind a tree, unfolded my knife, and dialed Harris.
 

He answered before it had rung twice. “Layla?”
 

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m where you told me to go, in the trees on the median. They’re right behind me, Harris, they’re coming for me. Five of them, and they have big fuck-off machine guns. How did they find me, Harris? What do I do?”
 

“I’m almost there. Run south, okay? Stay just inside the trees, but run south, closer to the southbound lanes. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I sounded shrill, but I had reason, I’d say.
 

“Trust me, babe. Run south. Watch for me.”
 

Click
.

Super.
 

I twisted and glanced around the trunk of the tree. They were approaching the trees, now. Shitshitshit. I took off running south, bouncing off tree trunks and ducking branches.
 

Crack! Crackcrackcrackcrack!
Bark exploded to my left, spraying my face with splinters. I ducked and cut right, then left, not daring to look behind me. The machine gun cracked again, and then another one, off to my left. They weren’t playing around, obviously. No more orders to bring me back alive, clearly.

Kill the bitch, I was sure they’d been told.

I poured on speed, running as fast as I could, as hard as I could, arms in front of my face to knock aside branches. I felt something cut my right arm, followed a split second later by a snapping sound, and then the report of the machine gun. An angry buzz sounded on my left. I wasn’t sure quite why, but the
snap
scared me more than the buzz.
 

To my right, off in the distance, an engine roared; I glanced that way and saw a green SUV with a white roof bouncing at full speed across the grass. It’s strange the details you notice in high-adrenaline situations: I couldn’t have told you what kind of car the SUV I’d stolen was, nor the model of the jalopy I’d stolen in São Paulo. But somehow, in a split-second glance from over a hundred yards away, I knew the vehicle Harris was driving was a Land Rover Defender, the older kind you see used for African safaris in documentaries narrated by the late, great Richard Attenborough.
 

I left the cover of the trees, machine guns still barking behind me and to my left. I ran out in the open now, risking glances every couple seconds at Harris. He didn’t slow down, and as he approached behind me, I saw that his window was open and he was driving with one hand, a small black pistol in the other. I heard the bark of his pistol, saw the muzzle flash—silver dents appeared in the rear driver’s side door, two, three, four, evidence that they were shooting back. Harris jerked the huge SUV to cut behind me and braked to a sudden halt, the rear end of the truck sliding and ripping up chunks of grass and spraying mud. He leaned over and threw open the door, and I leaped into the opening, landing hard on the bench. Harris didn’t wait for me to get the door closed, just gunned the engine, slewing around in an arc, his right hand jerking the manual gear shifter down into second as his feet moved like lightning, popping the clutch and flooring the gas. The door swung open, bounced at the apex of its hinge-range, and then swayed toward me as the truck darted forward, hitting a hillock in the grass and going airborne. I got a handhold on the seatback and leaned out, hooked the door handle with three fingers, and jerked the door closed with a slam.
 

Somehow, Harris was driving with one hand, firing his pistol out the window with the other, and still finding time to shove the shifter through third and into fourth as we picked up speed, still jouncing violently across the grass heading south.

“I’m going to swing us around,” Harris said, without looking at me. “I want you to get down under the window as we pass them.” He accompanied his words with actions, downshifting to second and slamming on the brakes, hauling the wheel around so the truck juddered around in an arc, swaying and tipping precariously.

All five of the bad guys were lined up abreast, guns lifted to shoulders, pointing at us.

“Layla, get
down
!” Harris snapped.

Gunfire erupted from all five of them, and I heard several metallic
thunks
as rounds hit the body of the Range Rover.

“Fuck you,” I growled. “Give me that.”
 

I snatched the pistol from him, held it in both hands and pointed the barrel at one of the bad guys. I squeezed the trigger, expecting the roar and the kick but still shocked by it. We passed by them so fast I wasn’t sure if I’d hit anything, but it was the thought that counted.
 

“You know how to shoot?” Harris seemed surprised.
 

“I used to hook up with a guy who was a manager at a firing range. He showed me how.”

“Well it was a good shot,” he said. “I think you winged one of ’em.” He grabbed the gun back as we bounced along parallel to the northbound traffic.

Holding the wheel and the pistol in the same hand, he shifted up into fourth and we went briefly airborne as we merged onto the blacktop, causing a pile-up when a little blue sedan had to brake and swerve to avoid us. I heard the crash behind us, but didn’t spare it a look.

“Just like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie,” I said, hearing further metal-on-metal impacts.

“You should have ducked. I fucking told you to duck, goddamn it.” Oooooh shit. Harris was pissed.

“Yeah, well…I never do what I’m told. Get used to it, buddy.”

“You want to live? You’d better learn to listen.”
 

“Are you really going to argue with me about this right now?” I asked, glaring at him. “You haven’t even said hello.”
 

He stared at me, incredulous. “Hello, Miss Campari. How are you? Having a nice day? Would you care for some tea?”
 

I flipped him the bird. “Don’t be a dick,
Nicholas
.”
 

“I swear to fuck I’ll throw you out of this car,” he snarled. “Do
not
call me Nicholas. Not even my mother calls me that.”
 

“I’m having trouble reconciling the idea of you sitting in a tasteful Midwestern bungalow, drinking sun tea with your sweet little mother.”
 

This earned me a chuckle. “Everyone has a mother, Layla. Even me. But no, they don’t live in a
bungalow
in the Midwest, they live in a condo in Florida. And my mother is not sweet, nor particularly little.” A pause, and then he grinned at me. “Although, she does drink sun tea, funny enough.”
 

“What does she call you, then?”

He didn’t respond right away. “Not Nicholas,” he said, eventually. He gestured behind us. “See if they’re back there. Look back several car lengths.”
 

I twisted on the bench seat, peering into the dense traffic behind us. “Shit. Yeah, they’re back there. Quite a ways back, like maybe half a mile or so, but they’re there.”

“Vitaly’s men don’t give up. They’ll keep coming until we kill them or they catch us.”

“No shit. They don’t dare go back to Vitaly without results to show him,” I said.

Harris glanced at me, his gaze sharp, and his voice soft. “No?”

I shook my head as I returned to my seat and buckled up. “No. They don’t dare. He doesn’t accept failure or excuses. You do what he tells you to do, or you die trying. If you show up and you haven’t carried out his orders to the letter, he’ll kill you. And you’ll never even see it coming.”
 

“How does he kill them?”
 

I blinked hard. “Knife to the ribs.” I tapped two fingers over my heart. “He’s got this switchblade, keeps it in his pocket. He’ll just be talking, calm as anything. One second he’s smiling, hands in his pockets, casual, the picture of understanding and congeniality. The next? That blade is between their ribs, and they’re dead. He does it so fast, so easily. Doesn’t even blink. I saw him do it at least six times in the four days I was his prisoner. He must pay those guys really well if they’re willing to risk death any time they’re in the room with him.”
 

“Recruit from the poor and desperate, pay them well, and they’ll put up with just about anything,” Harris remarked. A few minutes of silence, and then he glanced at me again. “Layla, when you were with Vitaly—”

I shook my head, cut him off. “Not now, Harris. I can’t go there right now.” I focused on breathing slowly and evenly, staring straight ahead, refusing to blink, refusing to unclench my teeth. “Get me somewhere relatively safe first, and maybe I’ll tell you what happened.”

Harris nodded. “I can do that.” He checked his rear-view mirror. “So I just gotta figure out how to lose these guys.”
 

“Do what you’d do if you were alone. Don’t worry about me.”
 

“I just rescued you, Layla. I’m not about to put you in harm’s way again.”

“Meaning you’d stop and shoot it out with them, if it were just you, right?”

He bobbled his head side to side. “I’d ambush them.”

“So let’s ambush them.”