Minutes later two helicopters grumbled a few hundred feet over the water, perhaps a mile distant, and then disappeared in the direction of the mainland.
Suzanne checked on Bart again. His eyes were open. He groaned. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey. Water. I’m parched.”
“Okay,” she said. She helped him drink some bottled water. He could not lift his head.
“I’m done,” Bart said. He sounded far away. Like he could already see things Suzanne could not.
“You’re gonna make it,” she said. “You’re a fighter. Come on, Ranger.”
“No. Don’t bother lying,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”
“Thank you for what you did,” she said, leaning close to his face, her wet hair brushing against his forehead.
“I’m sorry for everything,” Bart said. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
“I want to be remembered as one of the good guys.”
“You are. You saved us. You did that, Bart. You saved Taylor and me.”
“I should’ve gone after you,” Bart said. “A lifetime ago. Instead of her. Damn. Maybe things would’ve been better. What if I’d run you over instead of Mary? Don’t you ever think about that?”
“Sure,” she lied.
“I’ve always loved you,” Bart said. His eyes lost focus and he smiled and was silent for a time. Gentle waves lapped against the hull. A great blue heron speared a fish in the shallows and took flight, graceful and beautiful. “Maybe I married her just to be close to you,” Bart said. “I don’t know. If only…”
His eyes stayed open, and a last breath escaped his lungs and his chest did not rise again.
Suzanne held him for a few minutes, and she shut his eyelids. Bart died with a wistful smile on his face.
They had nothing to weigh his body down with. Ginnie and Taylor kissed Bart’s cold face, crying. It felt like a crime when they put him overboard. He floated into the shallows on his back under the shade of the mangroves. Soon the crabs would come for him, and the mangrove snapper and sharks.
“We’d better go,” Suzanne said. “I’ll take the helm for a while.”
“All right,” Bobby said. “I could use some sleep.”
They poled the boat back out into deeper water and Suzanne turned the key. The boat surged forward and the sun was warm on her face. Taylor came around the console, and Suzanne held her on her lap and let Taylor help steer.
Taylor’s face was pensive, her natural sunniness diminished and clouded by death. It was a day Suzanne knew her daughter would never forget. She shouldn’t have to see any of this. She doesn’t understand. I’m not protecting her like I should. I can’t shield her from this world, this crazy mean world.
I’m not worthy of this child.
There was the feeling of desolation in her, mingled with soul-wrenching regret.
She could never be the person she wanted to be, for she was not the woman she believed she had been. The lies she told herself had formed their own kind of reality, and she’d built her life upon a kind of delusion, perceiving the world through glasses tinted to filter what she wanted to see, rather than truth. Suzanne had looked at herself in the mirror and liked the person smiling back. Proud, arrogant perhaps, and dishonest. She’d overlooked her flaws, excused her own bad decisions, blamed others, and never recognized the pattern of truth. Her life was marred by betrayal and selfishness. There was good in her she could acknowledge, potential that was real, and she knew she was decent at heart. She was never the heroine she imagined herself to be, though, self-sacrificing, long-suffering and devoted.
The apple didn’t fall from the tree, I guess, after all.
There was a kind of freedom in recognizing the truth, and she inhaled a lung full of fresh, salty air, grateful for her daughter sitting on her lap at the wheel and the idea that perhaps she would get a second chance.
“What’s that, Momma?” Taylor said, pointing.
“That’s a storm, you know that.”
“We’re going toward it,” Taylor said. “Maybe we should turn around. That’s what Daddy does.”
“I wish we could, baby,” Suzanne said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Justice and Redemption
Jack Stryker was livid. Somebody cut the power while he was trying to decide on his endgame. Once he had Martinez and the flash drive, it would be time to vanish. It looked like he’d waited too long.
He activated his ICS system and paused in the dark. The admiral, that weak, sniveling asshole, stood at his elbow.
“We should—”
“Shut up,” Stryker said.
“I can’t see. Let’s be calm and figure out what needs to happen next.”
Stryker hit Admiral Bates, something he’d been wanting to do since he met the man. It was an almost casual blow to the officer’s chest, which made him shut up.
“If you speak again, I’ll kill you,” Stryker said.
The admiral didn’t have much to say. That was the idea.
Stryker examined the world before him in shades of green. He switched to thermal imaging, the heat signatures of running soldiers bright against a field of black, and then to a view from above. He was surprised to find no drones on station, and the best view he could obtain was from a satellite. It was enough.
He assumed his bosses were trying to kill him, and that was the reason for the sudden loss of power and the gunfire in the corridors of the compound. He waited for the telltale hiss of drones about to explode his skull, and he was surprised to find himself still alive while the shots echoed through the halls. He saw the helicopters, the soldiers running around the base.
Stryker was gifted at seeing patterns. He knew he was a liability now. He was trying to figure out why the Directors acted to kill him so quickly, though. He dragged the admiral by his collar and hunkered down behind a desk, sidearm in his hand.
What if it was the last op Alpha Pack went on? Operation Snowshoe. What if that’s what this is about? They want every bit of evidence from Operation Snowshoe erased. Whatever in the hell these idiots saw is recorded. Maybe it was never only about the drive, it’s about what they saw, and there are only a couple of them left, and me. I brought them the Wolves, and now I’m just another loose end. Think, Iceman. How can you beat them?
In the dark, hunted and cornered, Jack Stryker grinned, feeling invigorated in the way of a college kid with wind in the hair and the drop-top down and music blasting, alive in the moment in a way he seldom was.
He was broken and mean and deadly, and for him, this was a good thing. It was oxygen.
Hate is a black hole which consumes life and light, warping reality with ever-increasing ferocity until that which is good is crushed and destroyed.
Hatred begets evil. An evil man does not recognize the truth in the mirror, for his small acts of sin seem insignificant, compared to the crimes committed by others. There is always an excuse, a justification which prevents true conviction and remorse.
With the power of supercomputers connected directly to his cerebral cortex, he culled through files he’d viewed over the last two months.
He reexamined footage of Suzanne Wilkins’ escape from Key West, seeking clues. She must have gotten in contact with her husband, somehow. And he probably got some information to her he shouldn’t have. She could be the key to his survival, a final bargaining chip.
He thought about her means of escape, something tugging at him, and then he remembered. He’d hacked the boat’s GPS system when he’d first set up surveillance. Now he accessed that file again, zipping through waypoints. He knew where he would go, if he were in Suzanne’s position.