Pascal was pleased with the conversation. He had let the girl believe he was reluctant to do battle. Naturally it had not occurred to her that he had kept the cell phone turned on solely in the hope that she would call with just such a proposition.
Kurt the rat was in position, as was Pascal himself. Together they would give the girl quite a welcome—and quite a good-bye.
Ordinarily he would have wanted to keep Parker alive in order to find out where the Kirbys were. But he had learned to take no chances with her. He would deal with her quickly and decisively, then locate the Kirbys on his own.
Beneath the black leather gloves his hands tingled, but not with cold.
With anticipation.
***
Bonnie was well along the boardwalk now, having groped and struggled through three blocks of wet, clinging sand. There was a cut on her left hand where she’d scraped a broken bottle, and a tatter of newspaper pasted to her shoe, trailing her like a ribbon of toilet paper from a restroom. All in all, she’d had better nights.
But she was almost there.
The pavilion’s observation deck flared out over the boardwalk, which meant she could emerge from hiding with no risk of being seen. Unless, of course, he had abandoned his post and taken up a position by the door. She didn’t exactly relish the prospect of emerging from cover only to meet Pascal face to face. At the very least she needed her firearm at the ready.
Rolling onto her side, she fumbled at the fanny pack lying hard against her hip. She unzipped the pouch and peeled away the Velcro strap that held the gun in place. In the stillness and close confinement, the soft tearing sound seemed terrifyingly loud, a sure giveaway of her position.
Then the gun was in her hand, and she felt a little better. She crawled to the edge of the boardwalk, sat up, and raised her head, scanning the boards in both directions.
Empty. The flat expanse stretched into darkness, a dim line of streetlights fading away in a mist of rain and sea spray.
He wasn’t down here. Must still be in the tower.
The pavilion door, she noted without surprise, hung ajar.
She gripped the boardwalk’s railing and hoisted herself up, then stood, distantly aware of the ache in her joints from the long, hard crawl. Silently she crossed to the open door and went inside.
She found herself in a small lobby adjacent to the snack shop. Directly ahead she recognized the staircase leading to the basement locker rooms. To her right was another stairway, which rose to a landing where a steel ladder offered access to a trapdoor in the tower. Lightning flickered through the trapdoor, propped open as if in invitation.
As long as she made no noise to betray herself, she could climb the stairs and the ladder, pop up through the opening, and take out Pascal before he could react.
Stealth—then speed. It ought to work.
Hell, it pretty much had to.
***
She was here.
Pascal saw her clearly as she stepped into the lobby, clad in a shapeless raincoat that dripped on the floor. For the past quarter of an hour he had crouched on the stairs to the cellarage, smelling saltwater and mildew and rot, and watching the door.
He had known she would reconnoiter the area and spy the sentry in the tower. And he had known she would find a way to reach the sentry without being seen. She was resourceful, this Bonnie Parker, and reckless enough to tread where a more sensible adversary would not go.
She climbed the other staircase and began to scale the ladder in the dark. Her gun was in her hand. She thought he was up there, and she expected to take him by surprise.
Soundlessly he crept up the basement stairs into the lobby. He would wait until she was at the top of the ladder, reaching for the trapdoor, in a position of maximum vulnerability. Then—one silenced shot, and she would tumble down the shaft, dead before she hit the landing, the vinyl poncho covering her like a body bag.
She would never know what happened. He felt a bit sorry about that. He would have liked her to know.
***
Bonnie had nearly reached the top rung of the ladder when she heard the heavy tread of a footstep overhead. He was shifting his position again.
She paused, listening to the clack-clack-clack of his uneven stride.
Something about that stride bothered her. He’d been wounded, obviously. Shot in the leg ...
But the bloodstain on the farmhouse door had been at shoulder height. And the trail of blood in the parlor had been consistent with evenly spaced footfalls.
Pascal hadn’t been wounded in the leg. Which meant ...
He wasn’t the man in the tower.
She spun on the ladder. Below her, movement in the lobby. She fired down. The unsilenced Glock roared in the darkness, spitting purple muzzle flashes. In the flicker a dark figure dived for cover, rolling onto the basement stairs.
The guy above her was probably armed, too. Bracing her feet against the steel rails, she slid down the ladder firepole-style. As she descended the staircase to the lobby, she aimed two shots at the trapdoor and two more toward the basement. Another two shots—one high, one low—provided cover as she sprinted out the door. From the basement stairs came an answering shot, carefully aimed, striking the door frame inches from her head.
Then she was outside, on the apron of the boardwalk fronting the pavilion. The only available cover was the colonnade of brick pillars holding up the observation deck. She ducked behind the nearest one, the poncho flapping at her hips.
Someone shot at her from the pavilion doorway. The bullet struck the pillar, chipping flecks of brick. She fired back blindly and retreated to the next pillar, closer to the beach.
Couldn’t stay here long. If both men were armed, one of them could pin her down while the other worked his way around to the side and picked her off.
Staying topside was no good. She needed to go below the boardwalk again.
She snapped off two more rounds, then swung under the railing and dropped to the beach. She burrowed beneath the boards and crawled north, away from the pavilion, putting distance between herself and her pursuers.
Pursuers, plural. Who the hell was the second man, and where had he come from? She’d pegged Pascal as a loner. He’d been alone in his motel room, alone at the Kirbys’ house. How’d he find himself a playmate in the middle of the night?
At least under the boardwalk she should be safe. They might come after her, but as long as she watched for any intrusion, she would have the edge. The western side of the boardwalk lay flush against the dunes, affording no access to the crawlspace. If they came, they would come from the eastern side—the beach. She only needed to stay alert.
She had elbowed her way pretty far along now, far enough that she was no longer screened from the rain by the observation deck. Silvery threads of rainwater streamed like tinsel through cracks between the boards. The top layer of sand was wet and cold, like a thick crust of mud over the dryer, looser sediment beneath. She dragged herself forward a little farther, then stopped.
By her count she’d expended nine rounds, emptying more than half the magazine. She removed it and stuck it in her pocket, then pressed in a fresh one. If she had to fire, she wanted as many shots as possible.
She lay there, straining to hear any sounds besides the smash of thunder, the wet lash of rain, and the groan of the surf.
There was nothing. They might not be after her, not yet.
But they would come.
***
Pascal—on the hunt and feeling fine.
He was unconcerned about the failure of his original strategy. Something had alerted Parker to the deception at the critical moment. It was unimportant. One must always be prepared to improvise. Was it Napoleon who said that no plan of battle ever survived one’s first encounter with the enemy?
His new friend Kurt seemed less philosophical about this turn of events. Stationed in the lobby, trading shots with Parker outside, Pascal had glanced behind him and seen the rat clearly—his eyes swimming in his blanched face, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the mat of tangled beard, his shoulders hunched and stiff. Everything about him spoke of blind panic. He had expected to witness a quick and easy kill. Instead he was caught in a firefight.
Well, let him tremble. Parker was all that mattered. She was still nearby, hiding below the boardwalk, imagining that she was safe. But he had an advantage over her, one she did not suspect.
He only had to find her and put an end to things.