Run: An Emma Caldridge Novella: The Final Episode Page 4

  “They going to just let me fly this guy to Canada and let him go?”

  Sumner shook his head. “I don’t think so. Earlier, Consalvo said that he wouldn’t get approval to let Shaw off the hook. I’ve got to think they have a team on the Canadian side ready to track him as he leaves.”

  VANDERLOCK GAZED DOWN at the compound. “You think she’s alive?”

  Sumner inhaled and let it out, slowly. Vanderlock had said what he’d been afraid to say out loud.

  “I hope so.” He shook his head. “I think so, absolutely. I would know if she were dead. I’d feel it.”

  Vanderlock returned his attention to Sumner. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  A rustling in the bushes behind them made Sumner swing around and aim his gun. Two men on horses rode out from the trail. The first was older, about fifty, with a weather-beaten face and a rifle in a holster attached to the saddle pommel. The second was younger, in his twenties, and he had a young girl, about twelve, riding behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist. A third horse emerged, this one ridden by a young woman, also in her twenties, with a clean scrubbed face and long hair tied in a braid down her back.

  “Mr. Sumner?” the older man said. “Banner sent us. I’m Leon and this is Brink and his little sister Carrie. That young lady over there is Samantha Yoder. We came down to get close to the FBI. We think we need their protection. Sheriff Tarnell paid us a visit.”

  “That the guy who has my gun?” Sumner said.

  Leon shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but I can tell you he’s no good. I encouraged him to leave and he hightailed it back to Sunrise.”

  “Mr. Vanderlock? Showtime,” Consalvo’s voice blared over the bullhorn.

  Vanderlock waved his consent. He turned to Sumner.

  “Once I get that loser on the chopper, you going down to get her?”

  Sumner nodded. “You bet I am.”

  Vanderlock put out a hand. “Good luck.” He nodded to the three assembled on horseback and jogged toward the Bell.

  “Why don’t you head to the FBI van,” Sumner said to Leon. “There’s an agent named Steinberg who’ll take care of you.”

  Sumner watched the four head down to the clustered vehicles before moving into position on a high rock overlooking the compound. He stretched onto the dirt, opened up the tripod legs on his sniper rifle, pressed his eye to the telescopic lens and waited for Shaw to appear.

  EMMA LET SHAW push her out of the mudroom and into the daylight. The morning sun was bright, but there remained a snap to the air. While she wasn’t thrilled at being on the receiving end of Shaw’s rifle, she was glad about one thing: he hadn’t seen Ryan hovering in the stairwell.

  “Stop here and wait,” Shaw said.

  “Wait for what?” Emma replied. Above her head she saw the black form of an approaching helicopter. The chop-chop sound increased as it flew toward them.

  “That’s my ride,” Shaw said. Emma heard satisfaction in his voice. To their left she saw a boy, not more than ten, with what looked like a bomb strapped to his chest. Her heart constricted as she saw his terrified face streaked with tears and dirt.

  She watched as the helicopter lowered into the yard, and squinted when it got so low that it began kicking up dust. It settled onto the grass, the engine quieted, and she saw Vanderlock jump out and stroll toward them. He wore battered jeans and black cowboy boots, and his tee shirt was clean but faded. She almost sagged in relief out of overwhelming gratitude, because if Vanderlock was flying the chopper, that left Sumner free and somewhere above them with a rifle in his hand. There was no one better with a rifle in his hand than Sumner.

  “Stop!” Shaw said.

  Vanderlock stopped.

  “Turn around and get back in that chopper. Why’d you turn it off? We’re leaving.” Shaw’s voice was harsh.

  Vanderlock flicked a glance at Emma and then the boy. “I turned off the engine because I have a message to deliver that you need to hear. Hard to hold a conversation with a helicopter roaring.”

  “The only message I want to hear is that we’re leaving.”

  Vanderlock gave a quick nod. “We are, but my orders are that you free the boy first.”

  “No. He’s my insurance policy,” Shaw said.

  “My orders were clear. And as Caldridge there knows, I always obey orders.”

  Emma knew that Vanderlock had never met an order that he would obey. She started analyzing the risk of pushing Shaw off balance. He would likely fire and kill Lock, or worse, perhaps trigger the boy’s IED. He was so close to the three of them that perhaps they would also be injured in the blast, but she had no doubt that Shaw would take the risk, because he was the farthest away and the most desperate. She looked back toward the house and saw Ryan standing in the mudroom entrance. Johnson was behind him, holding a gun to his head. No help there, she thought.

  “You need to disarm the boy,” Vanderlock said. He looked at Emma. “You have the usual, beautiful?”

  Her usual was a gun in a holster and a knife in her boot. She didn’t have either, having given the knife to Carrie before heading out from the cabin.

  “Nothing usual about this,” Emma said. “Other than Sumner up there ready to blow Shaw’s head off.”

  Shaw kept near her. “Tarnell told me about your buddy calling the governor. You tell him he shoots me, the boy explodes into a million little pieces.” He handed her a cell phone. “Go ahead, call him.” Shaw’s voice was filled with confidence.

  Emma took the thin device. It was cool in her hand and weighed next to nothing. The screen was dark

  She knew a lot about land mines and IEDs because she’d dealt with them when making her way through the paramilitary controlled Colombian jungle. Homemade bomb builders employed various triggers for their explosives; mousetraps that sprung when you stepped on them, wires that pulled on the trap when you walked into it, pressure set bombs that exploded when a weight—usually an innocuous soda can or other bit of trash—was moved, and cell phones that ignited a spark when they were activated.

  She stood in the morning sun and started sweating. She didn’t doubt that Shaw had rigged the phone to trigger the bomb if it was turned on. He was using her to kill the boy. It would make his point and he’d still have her as a hostage.

  “I said call your buddy,” Shaw said. His voice was oily.

  “She can’t,” Vanderlock said. “The cell phone towers are inactivated. None of our phones are working.”

  Shaw put the gun against Emma’s temple. “I said call him, and I want you to do it now. Turn on the phone.”

  Putting the gun to her head and insisting she turn on the device removed all the risk for her. Now, she was certain the phone would trigger the bomb, and also certain that he would have to kill her first to get his hands on the phone because she wasn’t going to release it. She had no doubt that Sumner would shoot Shaw once he realized that the cell phone was in her hand and safe. The odds were that the boy would live. She thought about Ryan, the risk analyst, and wished she could have asked him what the odds were that they would all survive the standoff, but knew in her heart they were long.

  Holding the phone up into the air so the light glinted off of it, she and turned to Shaw.

  “No,” she said.

  Rage filled his eyes, and he took a step and straight-armed the gun at her.

  Then his head exploded, bits of brain matter and blood spewing in haphazard patterns as the bullet tumbled through his skull.

  “Take care of the boy,” Emma yelled at Vanderlock, who reached behind him and pulled a gun out of his waistband. He tossed it to her before taking three long steps to the child. Emma caught it and ran toward where Johnson had been holding Ryan hostage. The two of them had disappeared.

  Emma plunged through the mudroom and into the kitchen, looking for them, and stopped. The women were there, several drying and wringing their hands, and in the center of that group she saw the one Shaw had punched. Her cheekbone had an ugly, mot
tled bruise and her hair was disheveled and hung down around her face. She held a shotgun pointed at Johnson, who was facedown on the floor. Ryan stood next to her, looking grim. The woman glanced up. Emma was sure she’d never seen such a look of determination on someone’s face.

  “Is my son alive?” she said.

  Emma nodded. “He’s okay. Shaw’s dead.”

  The woman’s eyes closed and Emma saw the rifle in her hands start to shake. She stepped up and gently took it from her.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  SUMNER STOOD NEXT to Emma in Sheriff Tarnell’s offices. They both stared through the glass of a gun cabinet, where Sumner’s Dragunov and Emma’s pistol had been put.

  “You got the key?” Sumner asked.

  Emma shook her head. “It’s on Tarnell. What happened to him, and where’s Vanderlock?”

  “He got a call and took off,” Sumner replied. “Said to tell you he’d be in touch. Tarnell’s in custody along with the other men in the cult.”

  “So I guess extreme measures are called for,” Emma said. She lifted the rifle that she’d taken from the woman and hammered the butt against the glass. After two hits, the glass shattered and fell to the floor. She reached inside, took her pistol and his gun back, and handed the Dragunov to him. “Thanks for lending it to me,” she said.

  Sumner smiled. “Any time. The Jeep’s outside. Let’s get out of here.”

  He leaned over then and gave her a kiss on the lips. “I’ll follow you anywhere,” he said, his eyes dancing with humor.

  Emma placed the woman’s rifle on the desk and left.

  And if you enjoyed Run, keep reading for a peek at

  Dead Asleep

  Jamie Freveletti’s latest thriller featuring Emma Caldridge.

  Available Now

  1

  EMMA CALDRIDGE FOUND the bloody offering on her credenza just before midnight. She had been working late preparing samples and organizing slides in the makeshift lab set up in the rented villa’s spacious garage, and returned to the main house for another cup of coffee.

  A small votive candle flickered next to the pile of feathers and hacked-off rooster foot, all arranged in a triangle on top of a pentagram drawn in a red substance that looked like blood. Emma’s lab, Pure Chemistry, was located in Miami, and she had seen Santeria altars before, with their animal sacrifice and elaborate rituals, but this was nothing like that. This was voodoo.

  She stayed still and listened for any sound that might indicate that someone was still in the house. The room was dark, the world asleep. She heard the rush of waves in the distance, the sound of a breeze moving through the trees outside, but nothing that indicated intruders. Her heart thudded in her chest, but she remained motionless, silent. If the intruders were in the house and expected to hear her scream or otherwise react, they would be disappointed.

  Emma was used to facing danger. While she hadn’t been tested in quite a while, her instincts had come back quickly when needed. Now, she remained quiet. The dark arts were a frightening thing, but she knew that the danger in the message wasn’t from the mass of feathers, the dead animal, or the pentagram. In her experience, the danger came from the humans who created the mess and would be part of the corporeal world.

  That she remained still came from a more practical consideration as well. She knew that if the intruders weren’t in the house, it was entirely possible they were outside waiting for her to burst out of the front door and run to her car. Again, they would be disappointed. She rarely acted out of panic.

  Emma pulled a pencil out of a cup next to the phone and used the eraser to lift the mass of feathers. Underneath, she found the doll. Its body was fashioned of hastily stitched burlap that sported brown yarn for hair and two black felt dots for eyes. A toothpick jutted from the center of the doll’s forehead.

  Emma snorted at the crude scare tactic. She was unafraid of ghosts or demons and things that went bump in the night. If it made noise, then a human, animal, or physical element created it. She heard the sound of breaking glass in the distance. The intruder was in the garage.

  She dropped the pencil and ran through the darkened house, out the French doors at the back of the kitchen and onto the lawn. The garage held her work. Work that she needed to keep Pure Chemistry functioning as a going concern. Her heart thudded when she thought of someone destroying it. As she neared the garage she saw the shape of something that may have been a man, standing in front of her carefully prepared slides. He swept something across the table and she watched in disbelief as bottles, jars, and the containers holding a week’s worth of work went crashing to the cement floor. She ran toward him, barely noticing the sharp gravel of the drive on the soles of her bare feet.

  The garage’s overhead light cast a yellow glow over the tables that Emma had set up to form the work space. The man upended the nearest table, sending another set of Petri dishes, test tubes, and even a microscope tumbling to the floor.

  “Stop it!” Her voice was harsh. He froze. As she neared she could see the machete in his hand. It was what he’d used to sweep the bottles off the table. “That’s my work. You have no right to be here.” The man stayed still, saying nothing and keeping his face turned away. Emma heard the gravel crunch behind her.

  “He responds only to me.”

  A woman stood at the corner of the drive. The weak moonlight lit her dark skin. She wore a scarf wrapped around her head and a pareo was knotted at her hip. She smiled, and her teeth, straight and white, glowed in the night, giving her a feral appearance. Emma leveled a stare at her. The woman’s hard eyes were what bothered her most. They revealed a person without a soul, like the witch women in the Sudan who rode with marauding armies, wore black robes, and beat on drums while soldiers killed everyone in the village. The woman at the corner of the drive reeked of depravity. It was all Emma could do not to take a step back, away from the force of ill will that flowed from her in waves.

  “He’s my slave,” the woman said. “A zombie.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma replied, her voice sharp. She knew better than to show fear or acquiesce to the woman’s bizarre claim, but found it difficult to maintain her ground. She hadn’t expected to meet with evil in the middle of the night on a beautiful Caribbean island. Yet she managed to remain in place. “He’s a trespasser. And so are you.” Her anger fizzed at the deliberate destruction of her work. The woman moved closer, walking in an exaggerated, swaying motion.

  “You are the outsider on this island. We belong here. Leave. And take your bottles and experiments with you.”

  Emma glanced at the man, but he remained still, not moving a muscle. His stillness was strange, and a frisson of a chill ran through her. She wished that she had thought to bring her cell phone. She was loath to leave these two even for the time it would take to retrieve it. If she did, she was afraid they would destroy even more.

  “I saw the mess you made in the entrance hall,” she said. “I’m going to call Island Security about your breaking and entering.”

  The woman chuckled, but the noise sounded wicked. “Island Security knows better than to interfere with a bokor priestess.”

  Emma was glad that the man stayed frozen during this exchange. She didn’t want to grapple with both the woman and him. She took a step toward the woman.

  “But I don’t know better, and I’m telling you one more time to leave. Now. And take your companion and absurd talk of zombies with you.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “Ahh, the scientist in you doesn’t believe? Be warned. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. With one word from me he’ll cut you to ribbons. There’s no negotiating with him.”

  “I don’t recall offering any negotiation. I said leave. Both of you.” Emma kept the man in her peripheral vision. With the machete in his hand, he didn’t need to be a zombie to hurt her. Flesh and blood human would be enough.

  The woman flicked her hand. “Kill her,” she said.

  The man burst into
motion. He raised the machete and sprinted to her, closing the distance between them in seconds. His hair hung in thick Rasta braids down his back, and his face was contorted in a strange spasm. His eyes pointed straight to the sky even as he ran toward her, swinging the machete. It was as if he was not in control and that his body was responding to a force outside of his mind. His tongue whipped right and left, adding to the horrific sight. He started screaming in a high-pitched wail.

  Emma spun and ran toward the villa. She heard the priestess’s harsh laugh and the man’s feet on the gravel driveway behind her. She had the fleeting thought that the man was insane and if he were to catch her would show no mercy.

  She made it to the French doors and wrenched them open, tumbling through the entrance and slamming them behind her. She turned and flipped the dead bolt just as he crashed into the glass with his hands. The machete’s blade made a clanging sound on the pane.

  He stood there, breathing heavily, his weirdly canted eyes still staring upward. She crossed to the phone on the kitchen counter, dialed the emergency number and glanced back.

  He was gone.

  About the Author

  JAMIE FREVELETTI is a former trial lawyer, martial artist, and runner. She is the author of four books in her own Emma Caldridge series as well as Robert Ludlum’s Covert One novel, The Janus Reprisal. She lives in Chicago.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by Jamie Freveletti

  Emma Caldridge Series

  Dead Asleep

  The Ninth Day

  Running Dark

  Running from the Devil

  Robert Ludlum’s Covert One Series

  Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.