The muscles in her arms bulged as she pulled against both ends of the wire, and the slashing of the knife gradually became feebler even as she stayed out of its reach. Maya ignored the blood streaming from the slice in her left hand as she strained to maintain her grip, watching as consciousness faded from the killer.
Aware that he was losing the struggle, he wrenched himself away, tearing the mouse cord from her hands. She rushed towards the cash register, hoping to grab one of the heavy metal pitchers she used for water and juice, but he swung a foot at her legs, bringing her down against the register before he spun, leaning against it for support as he lurched towards her, knife at the ready. She knew he was blinded by the blood streaming down his face, but that wouldn’t do her any good now that she’d lost the momentum and he was on the offensive.
He slashed at her again with the blade, catching her loose shirt but missing her ribs. She twisted and groped for the scissors she kept by the register, but her fingers felt a different, familiar shape. Chest heaving from exertion, she grabbed it and smashed it against his head with all her might.
His eyes widened in puzzled surprise before he dropped to the floor, twitching spasmodically.
She watched his death throes, eyeing the base of the receipt holder she had used, its six-inch steel spike driven through his ear into his brain. When he stopped convulsing, she fell back onto one of the swivel chairs, trembling slightly, and quickly took stock. The hand was messy, but when she flexed her fingers, they moved, so it was superficial. She could tell that the cut on her lower back was trivial, even though it stung a little. Most of the blood on her was from the dead man.
She stood panting for a few moments then, after glancing around, grabbed one of the shop T-shirts she sold to tourists and wrapped it around her hand. Returning to her attacker’s corpse, she leaned down and felt in his clothes for a weapon, but he’d carried nothing other than the garrote, the knife and a wallet with a no-name credit card and a few hundred dollars.
A noise at the back of the shop snapped her back into the moment. Someone was trying to get through the locked back door.
If they were professional, it wouldn’t stop them for long, she knew.
~ ~ ~
A gloved hand pushed the door open, the lock having proved a minor impediment easily overcome with a strategically placed silenced gunshot that shattered the doorjamb with a muffled crack. The cramped hallway was dark, so the intruder moved cautiously through it until he arrived at the small office. Leading with the barrel of his gun, he felt for the light switch on the wall, which he flicked — nothing happened.
The door opposite him burst wide as Maya exploded from the storage closet in a blur. He’d hardly registered her arrival when he dropped the weapon, his life blood pouring down his back from where she had driven the scissors between his shoulder blades, into his heart.
It was over within a few seconds. The intruder’s body slid to the floor and leaked out a dark puddle of crimson. Maya stepped over him, scooped up his pistol and checked it. A Beretta 92, full clip, so fourteen more rounds, allowing for the one used on the door. Custom-machined compact silencer. The gun had been modified to accommodate the suppressor; money and time had been expended — not good.
She crouched by the dead man and performed a quick search but found nothing other than another blank wallet with a few hundred dollars.
The slightest of scrapes sounded from near the back door.
Maya threw herself onto the floor of the hallway and fired close-quarters at the silhouette hulking in the doorframe. A grunt from the shooter, then a silenced slug tore a hole through the wall by her head. She fired two more rounds, and the attacker fell back onto the ground outside.
She waited. One beat. Two. Could be only three of them, or could be a fourth. Or more.
Nothing.
If anyone else was in the mix, they’d be smart to wait for her to come outside and check the body.
She jumped to her feet and ran to the front of the shop. She’d flipped off the breakers before hiding in the closet, so the storefront was now completely dark, the sun having completed its celestial plunge into the sea. Maya stopped at the counter and grabbed another T-shirt from the pile, stripping off her bloody top and replacing it with a clean dark blue one, then grabbed a roll of paper towels from behind the register and made a makeshift dressing for her hand, stuffing another wad into her bag. The gash was already clotting. Even if it felt awful, she’d live.
She paused, ears straining for any sounds. Music from the street and occasional whoops of passing celebrators were the only ones she detected.
Nothing from the back of the shop.
Maya pulled her purse over her shoulder and clutched the gun inside it so it wouldn’t cause panic on the street. Glancing through the windows, she estimated there were easily a couple of hundred people meandering outside, which would make it easy to disappear into the crowd, but would also make it tougher to spot potential attackers. She took one more look at the carnage in the little internet cafe that had been her livelihood for the last two years and inhaled a deep breath. Nothing good would come from stalling the inevitable, and with any luck, she now had an element of surprise in her favor.
She swung open the front door and stepped out into the fray, alert for anything suspicious. Waves of inebriated locals flowed tipsily down the sidewalks, spilling into the streets, which were closed to cars for the duration of the festival. Two jugglers — high on stilts — tossed balls back and forth, their painted faces leering mirth at the throng beneath.
An explosion ripped into the air overhead, jarring, causing her to cringe. Another sounded before she took in the delighted expressions around her — the detonations were fireworks starbursting amid the fervor of festivities.
She shook herself mentally, forcing her pulse back to normal. The old instincts were rusty, yet it was all coming back in a rush. A third boom reverberated across the waterfront street, and a staccato popping of secondary fireworks followed it, the glow from the red and blue blossoms illuminating the night sky.
She reached the far corner and moved without hesitation across the road to the cluster of buildings that comprised the center of the little beach area where her cafe was located. She used the storefront windows to study her surroundings, pausing every fifty yards to scan for threats.
Whoever had come after her was deadly serious. The weapons and the approach were uber-pro. Her carefully-constructed peaceful existence was blown. But why this — why now? And who? It made no sense.
Especially since she’d been dead for three years.
Maya was indistinguishable amid the women moving along the water — a sea of black hair and tanned skin — and she liked her odds more at night. Even if her adversaries had photos, which she assumed they must if they had done their homework, in the gloom it would be hard to pick her out, and with Carnival in full flow, many were wearing masks or costumes, further complicating any possibility of identification.
Her hand throbbed with dulled pain as she considered her options. It would be a matter of hours, at most, before the body outside the back door was found and the police went on full alert, issuing an all-points bulletin to bring her in for questioning. Even in a low-key country like Trinidad and Tobago, three dead bodies would demand an explanation — one that she wasn’t in any hurry to make.
She ducked into a souvenir shop and bought a black baseball hat emblazoned with a logo of the island, and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a poorly drawn sailboat illustration. Looking up, she impulsively grabbed a carnival mask with a feather fringe, which she stuffed into her purse before paying. When she exited, she looked more a punky teenager with the hat on backwards than a twenty-eight-year-old. Hopefully, it would be good enough to throw any watchers.