In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(143)

She broke the surface, choking. Astonished at the air.

Sam popped up, hair slicked back, bobbing in the churning foam.

“Do you want to live?” he yelled.

She nodded. A wave broke over them, but his grip was relentless. He towed her, backstroking. Everything hurt. Death had seemed so soft, gentle. Living hurt. It burned and pinched and kicked and stung.

She tried to kick, to move them through the water, but her legs didn’t even feel like they were hers. Her crowd of angels had gone away.

All except for Sam, but he was enough. Her fierce, angry angel.



Sveti seemed barely alive when Sam finally maneuvered them to a place where the waves crashing onto the jagged rocks wouldn’t batter them to jelly. This devil’s cauldron might have drowned him even if he hadn’t been full of holes, and down to one arm, and struggling to keep Sveti in such a position that she had a hope in hell of an occasional gulp of air.

He dragged her up onto the rocks. Her arms were still bound. He dug his pocketknife from his jeans, surprised that it was still there, and sliced the plastic ties. He turned her over, pounded on her back.

She choked, coughed. Vomited water. All her cuts and slices from the broken glass started to bleed, mixing with the water until there was a pinkish, salty slick over her skin. It was hard to get a grip on her.

He hoisted her up, let her head dangle over his back, and clutched her jeans-clad bottom half. Wet denim was easier to hang on to.

It was slow going. Pink tinted water dripped over his hands. At some point in his climb, he saw Hazlett sprawled on some sharp rocks, the ones he and Sveti had just barely cleared. He was on his back, eyes and mouth wide open, as if he’d gotten an unpleasant surprise. Sam crossed the guy off his list of current problems. No energy for triumph.

The easiest route up the cliffs also happened to be the longest, winding across the steep mountainside, but finally he made it back to the scrubby trees behind the house, nearly crawling with exhaustion.

He peered in the window, saw Misha on his feet. A good sign. Of course, he could be at gunpoint, so Sam approached as cautiously as he could, but he staggered with Sveti’s weight loaded on his shoulder, slight though it was. Too tired for a tiptoe ninja walk.

Misha heard him and gave him a thumbs-up. Thank God. He had no fight left. It was not too cold, but the wind on his wet clothes made him shudder, and Sveti was shaking violently. She needed blankets.

He kicked the door open. Was greeted with the sight of Misha, holding his gun on Renato, who was on the floor, sobbing. His knee was a bloody pulp. “He tried to call himself, to detonate the bomb,” Misha explained. “I shot him. And smashed his phone.”

Sam glanced at the broken pieces of the phone scattered across the floor. “Try not to look so smug about it,” he said.

“I did not shoot him in the face,” Misha pointed out, affronted.

“What do you want, a medal?” Sam looked at the monitors. The image had not changed. A street scene, in Rome. An entrance to a hotel lobby. The white Telecom van that Sveti had told him about was parked there, in clear view, completely intact. Cars drove by. No smoking rubble, no sirens, no bodies.

He turned to Misha. “You have a phone still, right?”

“Yes. I charged it in the car. Why?”

“All the others are trashed, smashed, or drowned. Give it to me.”

Misha dug it out of his pocket. Sam dialed in Val’s number with Sveti still draped over his shoulder.

Val answered. “Pronto? Con chi parlo?”

“Val. It’s Sam.”

“Sam! We have been trying to call! Where is Sveti and—”

“Listen up. There’s a white Telecom van parked outside your hotel that has a dirty bomb in it. Pulverized strontium-90. Rigged to blow with a flip phone. Call a bomb squad and deal with it.”

“Cazzo,” Val muttered. “Sveti?”

“Banged up, sliced up, and half-drowned, but still alive. We’re a couple hundred kilometers from you, on the coast. When I know where the ambulance takes her, I’ll call you again.”

“Sam—”

He hung up and handed the phone to Misha. “You talk to him when he calls back,” he said. “Tell him to get on that bomb. But first call the ambulance. Sveti’s going into shock. I’m looking for blankets.”

There was a bedroom down the hall. The mattress was covered with plastic, but there were down comforters in the standing wardrobe.

He laid Sveti on the bed, jerked out two comforters, and rolled her onto one. His fingers were so stiff, he could barely undo her wet jeans. She shook. Dead white. Lips blue. He tossed the other comforter on top of her and went back to the front room. Renato was curled up, whimpering. Sam ignored him. “Ambulance on the way?”

“I told them there was a beautiful, wet, naked girl going into shock from the cold,” Misha said. “They will be here soon, I promise.”

“If they don’t decide it’s a prank. You’re a manipulative bastard after my own heart, kid.”

He headed back to Sveti and lay down. He’d do skin-to-skin, but he was so cold, he had no warmth to give her. Blood was seeping through the swaddling of white cotton. If only they could just stop. No picking through the wreckage. He just wanted to flip a switch. Go dark.

They’d won. He should be happy, but he just shivered, numb and blank. So alone. She was so far away. Always behind her steel-reinforced walls. Her tower was so f*cking high. She would never let him in.