The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) (20 page)

Someone was shooting at them.

“Get down,” he shouted. “Gunfire.”

Alex and Daniel shielded Clara with their bodies as Aaron rolled to Benjamin. Clara tried to say something, but Daniel shushed her. Alex’s head shot up like a periscope, searching the immediate area.

“You okay?” Aaron asked Benjamin. “Where’re you hit?”

Benjamin’s face was tight with worry, his jaw clenched. Through his clenched teeth, he yelled, “Why am I always the one who gets shot?”

“You’re the ugliest,” Aaron replied, touching Benjamin’s leg where the pants were torn in the shape of a small hole. He ran his hand over the leg wound, finding only one bloody area.

“Gee,” Benjamin gasped. “Thanks, camp counselor. You sure—” He breathed in deep when Aaron touched near the wound. “—know how to make a guy feel special.”

“The bullet went in and made a clean exit. Doesn’t look like it hit anything vital. Assuming you don’t get shot again, you’ll be okay.”

“The camp counselor is a doctor now.”

Gunfire erupted somewhere in the dark to their left. All of them dropped flat on the sidewalk. Daniel stayed over Clara’s back in an attempt to keep her vital organs insulated with his body. Alex had slunk away and was running bent at the waist around a car fifteen feet from them. They had to get off the sidewalk. They were sitting targets in the open like this.

Aaron spun on his stomach at the sound of a heavy engine revving, the wetness on the ground from the rain earlier soaking through to his skin. A Park ’N Fly van turned the corner up ahead.

“Everyone. Stay down,” Aaron ordered. “I’ll have you out of here in less than a minute.”

He got into a crouched position, waited for the Park ’N Fly van to come closer, then jumped up and dodged out in front of it, waving his arms frantically. The instant the driver saw him, he hit the brakes and jerked the vehicle to a stop. Aaron ran around the front of the vehicle to use it as a shield from the shooter.

The airport van’s doors opened.

“You damn fool,” the driver shouted. “I coulda ran you clean over.”

Aaron hopped on. “Someone shot my friend.” He pointed at the group of three still lying flat out on the sidewalk. “We can’t wait for an ambulance. We need you to take us—”

“The hell I won’t.” The driver was looking out his window. He turned back to Aaron. “Get off my truck,” he shouted. “I want nothing to do with the likes—”

The glass to the left of the driver shattered. The driver’s head bobbed once as blood and brain matter splattered onto the inside of the windshield. Aaron jerked back and almost fell off the vehicle. If he hadn’t been holding the railing bar on his right he would’ve landed on his back in the street.

The truck slid forward as the driver’s foot came off the gas pedal. Without time to think, he reacted by grabbing the driver and yanking him down and out of his seat. The dead weight fell to the left. Frantic to stop the Park ’N Fly van from rolling, Aaron hopped into the driver’s seat and slammed his foot on the brake. The truck stopped one foot shy of the curb.

The hole in the glass was right beside his head. Risking a bullet in the face, he lowered his mouth to the opening.

“Get in the van,” he shouted. “Stay low.”

Then he jerked his head back and bent over to make himself less of a target. His wet shirt clung to him, a coldness causing him to shiver once.

Carlingview was dead at this hour. Not a single car passed them as Clara climbed up and around the dead driver on the floor. A small gasp escaped her lips before she jumped around the body.

“Stay on the floor,” Aaron said.

Daniel came on next, holding Benjamin up with an arm around his shoulders. At the second their feet left the pavement, Aaron took his foot off the brake and dropped it on the accelerator.

More glass shattered as another bullet entered the van to Aaron’s left. The bullet exited the van through the windshield where a large hole formed, cracks wending away from the hole.

“Holy shit,” Aaron yelled as the van picked up speed.

Heart racing, covered in a dull sheen of sweat and rain water, Aaron sat up and placed both hands on the wheel when they were more than a block away. Unless there were more than one gunman, or they had a car and were about to give chase, the immediate danger had ended.

Over his shoulder he saw Clara curled up in a ball on the van’s floor. Daniel held Benjamin, his face white in the darkened van, blood oozing out of his pant leg.

Something knocked on the back door.

Aaron checked his mirror, ready to slam on the brake or the accelerator depending on what was needed.

Alex clung to the outside of the van. Aaron turned the corner a block away and slowed to a stop. A moment later Alex hopped on the van.

“Find him?” Aaron asked.

Alex shook his head.

“Fuck.”

He turned back in his seat and performed a U-turn, aiming the van at the hotel, then pulled to the side of the road and stopped.

“Daniel, park at the hospital. Carry Benjamin inside. Explain the shooting in front of the hotel. We had just checked out and someone shot at us. They killed this man. The police will come. That gives me a half hour head start.”

No one replied. Benjamin groaned at the pain in his leg and Clara sobbed.

“I’m going back,” Aaron said. “I can’t let Ansgar get away. We’ll always wonder when he’ll just show up if I don’t deal with him now.”

“That takes me out of this fight,” Daniel said. “Cops’ll keep me for a day or two. You sure about this? Gunshot wounds come with questions.”

“They’ll keep Clara, too. She’ll be safer with the police. Don’t leave her side. And Clara, if the cops let you go, wait for Daniel.”

Clara nodded quickly. With part of the driver’s head missing, his body slumped at her feet, she seemed cowed into doing anything Aaron said without question.

He bounded down the steps and hit the pavement running. Behind him, the Park ’N Fly van did another U-turn and started away in the other direction.

Another set of feet ran close.

He knew it was Alex. Silent Alex. Sneaky Alex.

There was no way Alex would ever let Aaron face an armed hitman on his own. Aaron knew Alex would take a bullet before he ever let Aaron get hurt.

That’s just who Alex was and he loved him for it.

Aaron ran toward the hotel with Alex at his side, prepared to kill a hitman with his bare hands.

Chapter 26

Ansgar Holm watched them as they exited the front of the hotel. They were stupid. Why not use a side door? Why not have a taxi meet them at the front? He’d kill the cab driver and then fill the car with lead, but they had to be smart to avoid him and they weren’t. They were just stupid kids.

They must think he was at the hospital to deal with his nose. Or completely out of commission after what that fucking girl did to him.

He allowed himself a smile as he breathed through his mouth. Their night was about to end abruptly.

Fifteen cars away, near the edge of the grass that lined the perimeter of the parking lot, Ansgar—The Clock—had waited and now the waiting was over. He flexed his legs with slow measured squats, then twisted on the spot to ease his back.

When the group stopped to talk by the street, Ansgar raised his Glock in front of him and watched the group through the reflex sights. The reflex sights allowed him to watch them with both eyes open. All he had to do was superimpose the red-dot reticle over the target and fire. Providing he had proper trigger manipulation and the sight had been adjusted accurately, it would result in a hit on his intended target. Since he’d adjusted the sights himself, there was no doubt of its accuracy.

The group started walking as one, Aaron leading the way.

Ansgar acquired his target. Aaron’s chest would be perfect. Blow the man’s heart out with one bullet. His weapon steady, arms resting on the trunk of a car, Ansgar squeezed the trigger as a vehicle pulled away from the street lights to his right.

Aaron hesitated on the sidewalk. Then he spun around. He didn’t fall though. And his chest was still intact.

Ansgar had missed his target.

“What the fuck?” Ansgar said under his breath, his voice nasally.

Aaron’s friend had dropped out of sight. Another man tended to him.

Ansgar brought the Glock up to bear, aimed the red-dot on Aaron’s face, and fired again.

The entire group dropped out of sight.

“Shit.”

Bent over, he scurried three cars closer. A quick check of the sights showed they needed adjustment. It had to have been knocked in some way when he was fighting with that girl in the hotel room. He remembered landing on the Glock, the weapon digging into his back, but he didn’t think to check it.

Worried the group would scramble back into the hotel and disappear from sight, Ansgar ran five cars closer. He racked a round into the chamber, slammed his arms onto the trunk of a Buick and took aim at whatever was moving.

An airport van was driving by. Aaron ran out in front of it, waving for the driver to stop.

What the hell is he doing?

Ansgar aimed the Glock skyward and watched from seven parking spaces away. When Aaron came back into sight, he would die.

Through the side window of the van, he watched Aaron talk to the driver. The driver looked at something on the ground beside the van—out of Ansgar’s sight line—and looked back at Aaron.

Ansgar knew what Aaron was doing. The driver of the van had glanced at Aaron’s group where they hid from his Glock. Aaron was getting them a ride out of the area.

Without using the red-dot as an aiming reference, The Clock aimed his weapon at the driver’s head with all the experience of an expert sniper in his past and fired with confidence. As expected, the driver slouched in his seat.

Ansgar raised the weapon skyward and waited.

What are you going to do now, Aaron?

From where he hid, it was easy to see Aaron drag the driver out of the seat. Aaron’s group ran around the van before Ansgar even knew they were on the move. There were simply too many cars between them for him to see when they crawled away.

Then the group was in the van and out of sight.

He dropped the Glock into position and fired at Aaron’s head in the driver’s seat. At that second, the van pulled away and the bullet went wild. Only the familiar tinkle of glass shattering let Ansgar know he hit something.

A moment later the van disappeared from view. An odd sound accompanied its departure. The soft rapping of feet pounding the pavement. He tried to see what had made that noise but couldn’t. The flutter of a shadow ran along the far sidewalk, but that was nothing more than his eyes playing tricks on him.

He slipped the Glock away and covered it with his bulky shirt. The night was silent as he stood to his full height. A quick scan of the hotel rooms looming over him revealed dark windows. Only two had their lights on at this early hour, but no one was standing in their windows.

“Hello?” someone called.

Ansgar turned to the voice, his hand reaching for the Glock. The hotel clerk had come out on the front steps and was looking right at him.

“Did you see that?” the clerk shouted.

“Yeah,” Ansgar said, then winced as shouting flared the pain in his nose.

“I’m calling the police,” the clerk said as he turned to reenter the hotel.

“Wait.”

The clerk turned back. Ansgar headed toward him.

“What was that all about?” Ansgar asked. “Did they have guns?”

The clerk’s head bobbed frantically, his eyes wide.

“They were part of the trouble earlier on the tenth floor. They tried to check out in the middle of the night. I saw what they did. I saw the whole thing.”

Ansgar was getting closer. Twenty feet separated them.

“What did you see?” he asked, then took a deep breath, the pain making his eyes water.

“They hid themselves over there.” He pointed. “Then waved that Park ’N Fly van over. That guy went on and shot the driver. He dragged the body out of the seat and then called for his friends to join him. I saw the whole thing. They’re murderers.”

Ansgar removed his hand from the butt of the Glock. “That’s what I saw, too. It scared me so much, I hid behind those cars back there until they drove away.”

Ansgar started up the steps to the lobby. He stopped beside the clerk.

“I don’t blame you,” the clerk said. “I would’ve hid, too. Now I’m going to call the police and tell them the names of the people who were in that room. They’ll find them. Not many people driving an airport van around at this hour.” The clerk stopped talking while he studied Ansgar’s nose and the tiny bandages around it. “Were you the one who was attacked and chased out of his room earlier today?”