He wasn’t good at waiting. He was barely able to hold off the panic, the overwhelming sense to flee, that had gotten him captured in Afghanistan in the first place.
It was their fault! They left you!
They were coming back. Thornton had said they were coming back to get them. Thornton had kept whispering, “Shut up. Shut up.”
Ethan whimpered as if he was still trapped in the rocks. Something crawled over his foot. He looked down, saw the scorpion as if he were right back in the rocks. He shook his foot violently.
“You’re going to get us killed!”
He looked around the room, expecting to see Thornton. His heart raced. Where was he?
Voices. Oh, God no, he was going to be killed.
A woman’s laugh. Odd. What woman traveled with the Taliban? Waves crashed across the desert … Ocean waves. He wasn’t in Afghanistan.
Santa Barbara.
Ethan looked at the knife in his hand. He remembered what he had to do.
“Whoops!” A female voice said outside the cabin door. She giggled. “I dropped my key.”
“I got it,” a man said.
Ethan frowned, clutched the knife. What was she doing? Too much noise.
Shut up! Shut up! You’re going to get us killed.
He stayed flat against the wall, silent.
He had to trust her like he hadn’t trusted Thornton. Had he just listened, not panicking, not screwing up in the first place, he’d never have been held hostage. Thornton would never have died. Ethan couldn’t have done any of this without Karin. She was the brains. He knew it. It was all her plan, to help him get better. But he didn’t feel better. Instead he felt cold. He was so cold.
“Rose, God woman, you’re driving me crazy.”
Rose? Who was Rose? Was Ethan in the wrong room? No, this was his room. He’d taken it using his fake I.D. Ethan Rose. Rose. Rose.
The door opened.
“Lyle,” the woman said. “You’ve made my whole week worth it.”
“And we haven’t gotten to the good part.”
Lyle Hackett. It was him. Ethan’s target.
The door swung shut. In the dim light, Ethan saw her eyes staring at him over Hackett’s shoulder. She nodded as Hackett kissed her neck. Her head tilted back. She mouthed “now,” then wrapped her arms around the general’s neck.
Smooth and swift, with more confidence than anything else he had done in the last five years, Ethan brought the blade down hard across the back of General Lyle Hackett’s hamstrings.
Hackett screamed, but it was stifled when he fell to the floor.
“Gag him!” Ethan exclaimed. “You were supposed to drug him so he couldn’t make any noise!”
Hackett was dragging his body toward the sliding door that led to the beach. He was howling, a fierce, pain-filled bellow that could summon the devil himself.
Ethan grabbed a gag from his black bag and stepped toward Hackett. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. And something …
She had her gun out. The gun she’d told him she got rid of. That’s when he saw the shine of the plastic gloves as her hands gripped the weapon. And finally Ethan figured out what had seemed so wrong and out of place earlier.
She’d been wearing gloves the last time she was in the room.
She aimed the gun at Hackett.
“No,” Ethan said. “Not yet-”
She fired the gun twice, in Hackett’s back and his skull. Bang bang. His body convulsed, then was still. Blood seeped from under his body and spread wide, a dark burgundy as the thick beige carpet absorbed what seemed like a huge amount of blood. She must have hit his aorta. Ethan hadn’t ever seen that much blood, even when Thornton’s body had been riddled with bullets.
“What are you doing?” he cried. “Someone will hear.”
She pointed the gun at Ethan.
He stared at her. Her eyes looked different. Darker. Her disguise-she didn’t look like the woman he’d met two years ago, or the one he’d left Texas with two nights ago.
“You fucked up yesterday, Ethan. You killed without a plan.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t about yesterday.” The gloves. The gun. In a clear and terrifying flash of sanity, he knew. He’d been set up.
“Thanks for the lessons. I’ll put them to good use.”
He stepped toward her at the same time the fire alarms went off. Someone must have heard the gunshots and pulled the alarm. Ethan made a move for the gun, knife in hand. She dropped to her knees and now he was over her, knife raised in a stabbing motion.
“You fucking traitor!” The pain and rage and hurt overwhelmed him. He saw clearly, and in the brief moment before he sliced her he realized this had been her plan all along.
She pivoted at the last second and the knife went into her arm.
She grunted and scrambled away. Ethan went after her. She had to die. He wailed, a foreign and forlorn sound. He kicked her and she stumbled, then rolled onto her back, right next to the dead general. He brought the knife down again, ready to plunge it deep into her black heart.
“You. Set. Me. Up.”
He felt the searing pain before he heard the gunshot. His body jerked again. Again. He saw Thornton in front of him, his body full of holes, his brain a bloody pulp.
I’m sorry.
Ethan fell to his knees. Reached for his savior, his executioner. She crawled away. Then everything went black.
Finally.
The scent of death permeated the room, the blood cloying, the warm fragrance of gunpowder tickling her nose. She tossed the gun toward Ethan’s body and picked up the knife. Her arm stung, and she was furious that he’d gotten a jab at her. She shoved it into her bag.
She ran out the back door, a quick glance at the digital clock on the desk of the cabin. She’d killed two men in two minutes. There had to be a record in that.
But she wasn’t free yet.
She slipped off her spiked heels as soon as she hit the sand and ran down the beach, away from the cabin, toward the pier in the distance. She paused half a minute to pull her red dress off and stuff it into the side pocket of her oversized purse. She wore a one-piece red swim-suit underneath. It was dark and moonless and no one was this far down the beach, though she heard a group of people in the distance. The tide was coming in, wetting her bare feet.
She bent down and scooped up the ocean water with her arms, splashing it over her body, wetting her hair, washing the blood off her hands and face. She rubbed the saltwater all over her. A larger wave crashed right in front of her, drenching her, and she laughed at the night.
Sirens whirled in the distance. She looked back at the resort hotel, the entire place ablaze with light as the floodlights snapped on. She’d run farther than she’d first thought. A distant whirl of police lights caught her eye as they stopped near the row of cabins.
Her heart raced, her mind awhirl. It had worked out even better than she’d planned. She’d been able to seduce Lyle Hackett instead of drugging him. The thrill of seducing a man to his death exhilarated her.
When she’d first conceived of this plan, she’d felt a bit guilty that the trained psycho had to die, but after Ethan had killed those people at the rest stop, she lost that guilt. He should have been dead years ago. His botched suicide attempts were pathetic. If he’d really wanted to be dead he could have done it.
She pulled a sealed gallon-sized plastic bag from her purse and removed a black-and-red-flowered sarong. The plastic had kept blood and evidence off her clothing. She tied the skirt around her waist, draped the bag over her shoulder, and walked casually toward the pier. Toward freedom, toward revenge and final justice.
It was time to start the endgame. This was the part of the plan she’d never told Ethan about. She had known he’d be dead before it started.