Allison Brennan - Sudden Death

“What the fuck are you doing?” one soldier hissed. “Stay put! You already almost got us all killed, dipshit.”

He nodded, eyes wide, and went back to his hiding spot. They didn’t like Ethan, he had known it from the beginning. Didn’t want him to be here, didn’t want to see the truth in print. Continuing to write, he thought of an opening line.

The first gunfight of the day was right out of a Hollywood movie. Heat, heroes, and panic. Special forces were brave, but fear ate at their resolve like …

Like what? Come on, think!

He stayed hidden, writing, the gunfire moving farther away. Shouts, then silence with the occasional report of a rifle. He liked that phrase; he had to be wary and not use it more than twice in the article.

Pulitzer Prize, baby, it was within his reach …

Silence.

Ethan peered out from the cavity of the rocks. The air reeked of gunpowder. And blood.

The soldier, he couldn’t remember his name, who had been assigned to “babysit” him (as he lamented), was dead. There was too much blood for him to be alive. And his head … half of it was gone.

Ethan swallowed and looked around.

Where were the others?

They’d left him? Left him with a dead body?

He heard a helicopter in the distance, coming closer. He relaxed. They were coming back for him. He stepped out of his hiding place and looked skyward, ready to wave them down.

They came out of the woodwork like termites. Dozens of them, men wearing traditional Taliban headdress, holding guns. Rifles. Handguns. Knives. These were not Americans. They were the enemy.

Ethan thought he was going to die. He put his hands on his head and waited for the bullets to penetrate his body.

Make it fast, God. I don’t like pain.

He didn’t learn until later what pain really was.

They were going to punish General Hackett for sending Ethan on that mission in the first place. For assuring him, and his editor, that he would be safe. Protected. “It’s an easy mission,” Hackett had said. “In and out.”

Where was that woman?

Ethan got out of the truck. The sun burned and he began to sweat as he started toward the bathrooms. A semi with insignia from Arkansas or Alabama-Ethan couldn’t tell from the distance-was parked on the far side. Fear clawed at him, constricting his throat. He went back to the truck and reached under the passenger seat for the gun the woman kept there. It snagged on the metal wires and he pulled hard.

Bartleton’s dog tag fell to the ground.

Dammit, he’d told her not to do it again. He didn’t know she’d grabbed it, but there was the proof, wrapped around her gun. Lying bitch.

He picked up the tag, tossed it into the cab, and slammed the door shut.

Behind the restrooms were half a dozen picnic tables. The woman-Kate? Christina? Carmen? — hadn’t seen him. She was sitting at one of the tables. Was that her? She’d changed; he remembered now. She’d cut her hair in the motel. All of it, off. Put a different color on. Told him it was part of her disguise. But he knew her now from her build, the way she moved, her eyes. She couldn’t change her eyes. Karin. Her name was Karin.

He skirted the building and walked around to the far side where she couldn’t see him approach. He’d scare her. Serve her right.

Then he heard the voices. For a minute he thought they were in his head. They weren’t. It was Karin, and she was talking to a man. The trucker? Ethan peered around the side of the building. Looked like a trucker. Jeans. T-shirt. Skinny kid. Twenty, twenty-two maybe. The building shielded Ethan, but he could hear their conversation.

“Are you okay?” the trucker asked Karin.

She didn’t say anything, just shrugged.

“Are you here alone?”

“Yes.”

She glanced toward the truck and Ethan smirked.

“Are you sure? You’re looking kind of skittish. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Do you want me to call someone?”

“I’m just getting a breath of fresh air.”

“Do you have a name? I’m Thomas. Let’s pray, okay?”

What was this kid doing? Praying for Karin? Did he know how many men she’d killed? Didn’t he know that she wanted to kill him? Ethan could see it. She’d fuck him and kill him. She’d done it before, had told Ethan all about it. Why couldn’t this kid see that? Why was he praying for her, the spawn of Satan?

“Thomas?”

A woman’s voice from behind him startled Ethan. When he whirled around the woman screamed.

Panic spread to every nerve in his body. He pressed the trigger. A reflex. He didn’t plan it.

The woman fell to the ground.

“Loretta! Dear Lord, Loretta!” Ethan heard the shouts from the picnic table, but the noise barely registered.

He stared at the woman. She was dead. It was obvious from her eyes that he had killed her. Her hands were on her stomach. A large, round stomach.

An agony-filled cry bellowed from behind Ethan. He turned and saw the praying Thomas now rageful. He was running toward Ethan. Ethan fired again. Then two more times. Thomas dropped to the ground, his chest a bloody mess.

“What have you done?!?”

Roxanne? Rachel? Regina? Whatever her name was- Ethan couldn’t remember-she panicked. She screamed at him. Her eyes were wild. Maybe she had changed her eyes. He couldn’t remember her name. He should know it. He frowned. It was right there minutes ago.

“Shit! Shit! Oh fuck, Ethan, you’re crazy!”

She snatched the gun from his hand. He let her. Why didn’t he shoot her, too? Why didn’t he just stop it all now? Shoot her, then himself. But now he had no gun.

She pushed Ethan. He stumbled backward. “Dammit, Ethan, why? Why did you kill them?”

“I don’t know.”

She screamed in rage and slapped him, then grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward the truck. “Get in, I’m driving. We have to get out of here right now. You’re ruining everything. You fucked up again, Ethan. How am I going to get out of this?”

He opened the passenger door and clamored in, slammed it shut, and she drove off, yelling at him. Then she stopped and the silence was bliss. Then it was Hell. Total silence, just the purr of the truck and the woman’s sniffles. She was crying. Why was she crying? They didn’t talk about what happened. He didn’t know whether to be worried, scared, or elated.

He didn’t feel guilty.

Thirty minutes later he asked, “How long until Santa Barbara?”

Megan and Hans listened to Jack go over yesterday’s events. The more she listened, the more she realized she would have done almost the exact same things, except she wouldn’t have tackled a known drug smuggler in public, nor would she have broken into a secure crime scene to look around. The former action was all testos-trone; the latter could jeopardize the legal case.

Scout’s missing dog tag was an important bit of information that was not in Perez’s reports, and something that easily could have been overlooked. But that was not the case with the mysterious brunette who may have been at both El Gato and Father Francis’s St. Ignatius. If Perez had been doing his job right, he should have made the connection, and not gone off on the wild theory that some rebels in Guatemala crossed the border for retribution against Jack and his team.

“Are you certain it’s the same woman?” Megan asked.

“Almost certain,” Jack said. “From Padre’s description and two people at the bar, she appears to be the same. There’re not a lot of non-Hispanic women in town. She’d stick out whether she was white, black, or Asian.”