At the corner of Ocean Drive and Beacon Avenue stood a house under construction—one of those ginormous butt-ugly McMansions put up by Wall Street arbitrageurs and hedge fund managers who liked to flex their muscles by tearing down a perfectly good old house to put up a kajillion-dollar replacement. The frame was up, but the house was otherwise unfinished and, naturally, unoccupied, which made it a good place for Bonnie to stow her Jeep.
She approached the house with her headlights off, eased past it into the backyard, and parked behind the huge hulking pile in a muddy plot. Parking on the street would be too risky; there was always the chance Pascal would double-cross her by avoiding the boardwalk and simply prowl the neighborhood until he found her ride, then lie in wait until she returned.
For all she knew, he might even have anticipated her choice of a hiding place for the Jeep. The McMansion was the only house under construction in the vicinity of the rendezvous point. He might have expected her to park behind it. He might be scoping her out right now, ready to plug her when she got out of the car.
Damn, she was being super-paranoid about this. She wished she could convince herself she was being unreasonable. But Pascal had her spooked, and she couldn’t shake it. She was on high alert as she stepped out of the Jeep.
Nobody shot at her, which was a nice change of pace.
Around her neck she carried the binoculars from the glove compartment. She found a ladder tilted against the side of the house and climbed to the roof, negotiating the slippery rungs with care. Raindrops struck at her like nails. Despite the poncho, she was quickly soaked to the skin.
On the roofline she crouched low, leaning into the rain, and tipped the binoculars to her eyes. The gusting wind threatened to whip her off her perch. The sky was a spread of blackness crisscrossed intermittently with jagged spears of lightning.
Two blocks south sat the sprawling bulk of what had once been the Victoriana Hotel, now the Victoriana Assisted Living Community, a marble-and-plaster wedding cake. Directly across the street from the Victoriana lay the town pavilion, built on the boardwalk, dating to the 1930s. It was a big old block of brick and concrete adorned with tile murals contributed by WPA artisans, with an Olympic-sized saltwater swimming pool, drained nightly, and a snack shop that served up greasy undersized hamburgers at six bucks a pop. It also offered an observation deck crowned by an ornamental tower that provided a panoramic view of the pool, boardwalk, and beach.
The tower was the perfect place to scope out the territory and spy an approaching figure. If Pascal was up there, he would see her coming a hundred yards away.
She knew he would have had no problem getting into the building. The pavilion’s main door was secured after dark with a pitifully inadequate padlock that wouldn’t stop a bicycle thief.
She zeroed in on the tower, playing with the focus. It took her three passes before she glimpsed a stir of movement.
A solitary figure, shifting his position from the northeast corner to the northwest.
Clever bastard. With a good scope and true aim, he could take her out before she even crossed the street.
She studied him a few minutes longer, until he moved to the southwest corner. Apparently he rotated his position at regular intervals. His walk was stiff, uneven, and he favored his left leg. Maybe he’d been hurt worse than she thought. Nicked in the knee and lamed. She hoped so.
Smiling, she gave him the finger.
She climbed down the ladder, considering her options. She couldn’t approach via the streets, the boardwalk, or the beach. But there was another way.
She left the binoculars in the Jeep, along with her phone and her beret; being stylish wasn’t a top priority now. She held on to the fanny pack containing the Glock and spare mags, but didn’t bother with the Osprey silencer this time. Reluctantly she left her trusty carbine behind also. The way she was going, she couldn’t afford any encumbrances.
A block north of the McMansion was the Brighton Cove Surf & Racquet Club. In common with all the exclusive private clubs in this area, it did not boast Bonnie Parker as a member. That fact didn’t stop her from scaling the low wall and dropping down into the tennis courts with a splash.
She’d played tennis once. Sucked at it. Hit the damn ball so hard she busted a string on the racquet. Her instructor said she had anger issues. Like she didn’t know.
A pedestrian passageway led from the club to the beach, passing underneath Ocean Drive. She made short work of the locked door, then crossed the street below ground, invisible to the watcher in the tower. It was nice to be out of the rain for a minute.
Then she emerged onto the beach, facing clouds of sand flung at her by the stinging wind. Somewhere in the wet darkness, the surf thrashed and moaned like a dying thing. She took cover behind a dune tufted with windblown dune grass, sandwort, and evergreen bushes, then adjusted her fanny pack so it rested against her hip, leaving her belly clear. On elbows and knees she wormed under the boardwalk and began crawling south, toward the pavilion.
The boardwalk straddled a series of concrete trestles ten feet apart, arches of stone mounted on pairs of thick pillars. The trestles curved low, and sand drifted up against the pillars, making for some tight spaces. Once or twice she had to stop and dig out a path, scooping up handfuls of wet sand.
She found herself wishing she’d spent more time at the gym. Or any time, really. Well, she was getting a serious workout tonight.
She kept going, yard after yard. Whenever she raised her head, she bumped into one of the crossbeams. The planks that served as the boardwalk’s surface were fake wood, some plastic compound supposedly strong enough to survive nor’easters and hurricanes, but the crossbeams were real timber, old and weatherworn, and they left splinters in her hair. Rain dripped through cracks between the boards, leaking under her hood and down her shirt collar, raising stripes of gooseflesh on her back.
Staying busy had kept her apprehension at a manageable level, but it flared up now, as she found herself in the dark, damp, claustrophobic space, inching toward a man who had nearly snuffed her a couple of times already. She told herself she had the edge on him. She knew his position, and he had no idea where she was. While he watched the terrain around the pavilion, she would creep up underneath the boardwalk, then enter the pavilion and take him by surprise.
Decent strategy. She ought to be feeling good about her chances. But he had outthought her before. He had anticipated the GPS tracker on his car. He had somehow guessed that she would rig a tripwire on the farmhouse stairs. He had waited for her on Old Road. He was always a step ahead.
That was the thought she couldn’t break free of. Every time she believed she had the advantage, he proved her wrong.
If she was wrong this time, then each yard of painful progress brought her closer to a bullet. Or to something worse. Pascal, after all, was a man who enjoyed inflicting pain.
Kill or be killed. Her motto. Her mantra. Her epitaph, someday.
She shouldn’t live like this. No one should. But she didn’t know any other way.
Des had been mistaken when he said she missed her parents. But he was right that she’d lost something. She’d lost her sense of safety, her trust in the basic decency of the world. She’d lost the luxury of being able to relax and let down her guard, ever.
Since that night fourteen years ago, she had lived like a wild animal—and even now, half-civilized, she could revert to savagery at any time. She knew it. It troubled her. Scared her, even.
Still, there was one saving grace. Last January, in the snowy twilight of the Pine Barrens, she had experienced a moment of vulnerability.
Kurt Land had needed killing, but at the last moment, she’d flinched from the job. Sure, she’d left him to die. She’d been certain he was finished. But she hadn’t pulled the trigger while she looked into his eyes. That was a line she couldn’t cross. She was not entirely devoid of conscience. Not wholly a bloodthirsty predator that killed without compunction.
A small thing, but she had hugged it tight on sleepless nights, and it had warmed her. A little.
And now it turned out that her one concession to human frailty had kept Kurt Land alive. She should have taken care of him when she had the chance. Holding back, surrendering to pity, was a luxury someone in her line couldn’t afford.
Kill or be killed. No middle ground, no gray area. Kill or die. That was all there was.
She had been lying to herself to think it could ever be any other way.