She brought the revolver up in a two-handed grip and stepped around the boat. The shooter was nowhere to be seen. She crouched beside the transom.
Off to her right, she could see Taylor’s face through the mangrove roots.
A burst of fire tore the water a few feet in front of her child. Taylor shrieked.
“Come on out,” said a male voice. “Hands on your head.”
Suzanne shook with fear and rage. Her fear was not for herself. How could she stop this man?
Another shot. “Last chance,” he said. He sounded neither angry nor sad.
She stuck the gun into the waistband of her cutoffs and put her hands on her head. She stepped around the boat and waded through the water, waiting to die.
“Momma!” Taylor cried.
“It’s going to be all right,” Suzanne said, choking back a sob.
A man with dark hair stepped out onto the porch of the shack with an AK trained at Suzanne’s head.
Suzanne kept walking. At least he was pointing the weapon at her now. The water was only up to her knees when she got to the dock. She thrust her chest out and put a swivel into her hips when she stepped onto the faded wooden dock.
But for the weapon pointed at her chest, this man was unremarkable. He was maybe five ten with a lean build and businessman haircut. In his thirties, she guessed. She caught him staring at her breasts. Her white shirt clung to her, and she was cold. Good.
“Turn around,” he said. “Nice and slow.”
“Let my baby live,” Suzanne said.
“Maybe,” the man replied. “Turn around.”
She clenched her jaw and turned. He lifted the revolver from her shorts, then patted her down, hands lingering on her chest.
“Tell Taylor to get into the boat,” he said.
How does he know her name? Oh, Lord.
“Honey, can you swim to the boat? Can you get in for Momma?”
She stood dripping on the dock, racking her brains for a way out, feeling the heat of a muzzle centimeters from her lower back.
Taylor climbed into the boat, which was drifting toward the dock on the gentle current.
“Tell her to wait there,” the man said. Suzanne did.
He took a step backwards and told her to turn around. She faced him. His eyes were hungry and he smiled at her, a chilling, grotesque gesture. He stepped to the side, the assault rifle unwavering. “Walk inside,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“Oh, we’ll have time for that later,” he said. He sounded pleased with himself.
The interior of the shack was dim. She saw the weapons on the walls, a filet knife on the table. She was going to have to act.
The blow to the back of her head sent her facedown on the floor. He’d cracked her over the head with the butt of his weapon.
Her vision blurred. He kicked her in the ribs. She tried to crawl under the table. Wood dug under her fingernails as she clawed ahead.
“If you behave yourself, I might think about letting the kid live. Maybe. Just to be sure, though, I’m going to have to tie you up. I hope you understand.” He kicked her again and the air left her lungs.
She rolled over onto her back as he turned to the corner of the room. She had nothing left in her. She was no match for him physically. She could try to bite him in the throat, maybe.
He leaned the assault rifle against a wall.
Taylor deserved better.
The man rummaged around and came up with some heavy fishing line in his hands, grinning at her, leering and predatory, walking with casual indifference, taking his time.
She pushed herself farther under the table with her legs, gasping for air.
Directly over her head, under the far edge of the table, was a sawed-off shotgun, mounted there, no doubt by a paranoid Coyote McCloud. The weapon faced the door. God bless him.
Suzanne reached up and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening and her ears rang. Over the whine in her head, she heard the man screaming as he fell backwards. Suzanne crawled out from beneath the table, adrenaline surging, heart thudding with wild abandon, and newfound hope in her.
The man was trying to kick himself backwards toward the assault rifle. The floor was slick with his blood.
Suzanne got to her feet, almost slipping, and caught herself on the wall. She picked up the Kalashnikov.
“Bitch,” the man growled.
The blast had caught him in the crotch. Suzanne cracked him in the jaw with the wooden butt of the weapon. She stepped to the door. The boat, with Taylor perched at the bow, had drifted next to the dock.
“Taylor, can you come up here?”
“Okay.”
Suzanne hugged Taylor tight, still holding the assault rifle.
“You sit in one of those chairs. Dry off. I’ll be right back.”
Taylor was crying silently, and she nodded her head.
Suzanne stepped back into the shack and stood over the man who lay bleeding on the wooden floor his feet splayed, and hands on his crotch over a spreading stain on his trousers.
His eyes were closed.
She put her foot on his groin and put her weight on it. The man opened his eyes, screaming. She took two steps back.
She pointed the weapon at his face.
“Talk,” she said. “Who are you? Why are you hunting us?”
“You know damn well,” he snarled. “Whatever Henry told you. Whatever your dead father told you. They…” He groaned, eyes rolling in his head.
Suzanne heard the whine of an engine.
“They what?”
“They couldn’t let you live. The Directors. You’ll never be safe.”
“How did you know we were here?”
“Water,” he gasped.
She stepped on his mangled balls.
“How?”
After he finished screaming, he said, “Bart’s GPS system.”
“We didn’t bring that boat. How did you track us?”
“Waypoints.”
“Where is my husband?”
“The Directors eliminated him in Tennessee.” The man smiled at her again.
Suzanne heard shouts outside. Someone hollering “McCloud? Suzanne?”
“Daddy!” Taylor said.
Suzanne smashed the killer in the face again and rushed outside to greet her husband.
Henry strode to his wife and child while his friends dealt with an unconscious Jack Stryker.
Henry held his family tight in his arms, shaking from gratitude and relief. For a time they did not speak. Taylor put her head on his shoulder, one arm around her father and the other around her mother, and they stood on the dock that way.
They were safe, and they were together, and that was the only thing mattered in the world.
“I’m so sorry,” Suzanne said to him, her blue eyes filled with hurt. Her hair was matted to her cheeks and streaked with mud and blood.
Henry put a finger to her lips and then kissed her.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she said.
“I’m just glad you’re both okay.”
“The papers I sent you,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Good,” Henry said.
“Can we start over again? Someplace far away?”
“Whatever you like,” Henry said. “Anything.”
There was a splash as the men tossed Stryker into the water.
“I need to talk with this jackass,” Henry said. “And we need to get the hell out of here.”
Death isn’t so bad, after all, Stryker thought. He was floating. That was nice. Everything was dark and he felt disembodied.
Then pain began to permeate his calm. Just the edges of it at first, a diffuse thing, until it became sharp and jagged, centered in his groin and sending howling, rolling waves throughout his body. He opened his eyes.
He was floating. He was on his back. Henry Wilkins peered down at him from the dock. There were other soldiers behind Wilkins.