Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

Karin applied a contemplative expression. “We-ell,” she said, drawing out the word until she gave a decisive shake of her head. She let him wait a moment longer, and said, “Nope. You can’t have him.”

His surprise was beauteous. It left him open to her attack, and she held nothing back as she shoved her handful of glass shards and splinters into his face, grinding her cast against his skin and crying out from the pain of her wrist, pushing until her hand skidded up over his eye and brow and then she wasn’t the only one bellowing.

Longsford’s hands clapped to his face as he whirled away from her, and Karin didn’t linger, didn’t cradle her wrist to her chest or bend over it to curse her own pain. She dove for the stairs, reaching between the plain wooden steps to snag her gun-Dave’s gun-already knowing she’d have to choose between Diffie above her in the doorway and the guy at the freezer. Both were armed; neither would hesitate to shoot. Stretching, she fumbled her grip on the pistol, tugged it out by a fingerhold and scrambled for the wall beside the stairs to make herself an awkward target for Diffie. Damn fool woman. What made you think you could handle a gun?

Braced against the wall, she flinched at the impact of a bullet into the drywall beside her head. But she took a breath, held the Ruger out and sighted it as though it were a rifle, and reminded herself about that long trigger pull. Something plucked at her sleeve; she ignored that, too. She aimed low and took the shot.

The Ruger discharged with a strange double explosion, and her target flinched. The gun rose with the kickback and the second time she pulled the trigger, the sights rested on the man’s breastbone.

The second time she pulled the trigger, the man went down.

She whirled to take aim at the doorway, but only in time for her target to tumble down beside her, yet another body taking a fall on those stairs. A startled glance showed her Dave propped on his side and already sagging, eyes rolling back in his head. She leaped for him, catching him before he could clonk his head on that concrete. “Some guys are so predictable,” she told him tenderly, but there was none of it on her face as she looked up at Longsford. She cradled Dave to her with her forearm while holding her gun steady. “Changed my mind, Longsford,” she said, her voice loud enough to reach him over the sound of his own unending stream of curses. “Price was too high.”

One hand still pressed to his bleeding face, Longsford finally groped for his own gun. Only belatedly did he realize she had him covered, and even then he hesitated, hand still halfway to his weapon.

“Nope. Sorry. You lose,” she told him. “And let me tell you…you’re just gonna love prison. Total loss of control.” The guards would control every tiny little part of his life, and he would control…

Nothing.

Not even himself.

Most especially not himself.

She watched the realization cross his face. She watched as he took the full impact of the press, the courts…all before he even got to prison. He looked at her with his one working eye and he said, just as coldly as ever, “You’re wrong. I can control it all.”

She’d never seen that look before, but she knew it. Utterly calm, totally defiant…and totally in control. Ready to win by losing.

She knew, even as he snatched for the gun at his side, what he intended. But she couldn’t take the chance he wouldn’t change his mind-and change his aim. She pulled the trigger on a body shot even as he jammed the barrel of his little semiautomatic against his chin and blew off the top of his head.

The building stayed silent for a long moment, or maybe it was just the ringing of Karin’s head, providing silence for her. She lowered the gun, then deliberately set it down on the floor. No one else moved. Longsford, most certainly dead…the two errand boys not likely to survive. Dave, pale and sweaty and his eyelids fluttering as he tried and failed to pull himself out of unconsciousness. Damned hard blow he’d taken, and she needed to get him help. She patted her jacket, hunting the cell phone, and discovered she’d ground a good deal of glass into her hand at the edge of the cast. “Crap,” she muttered, but she found the phone and pulled it free. The call to 911 was short and sweet, and she ignored the operator’s request that she stay on the line. She folded the phone up and tucked it into Dave’s front jeans pocket, hooking a finger into his car keys while she was at it.

By then Atilio had crept out from hiding, and she gestured him over. She hated to leave him…but then, she hated to leave Dave, too.

It wasn’t like she could stay. If she hadn’t been a killer before, she could quite rightly carry that label now. She sat Atilio beside Dave and folded the kid’s small hand over Dave’s fingers. “Ayuda viene,” she told him. “Espera.” And then, a little frantic, “Don’t tell anyone I was here!”

She bent to kiss Dave again, willing him to remember the imprint of her lips.

And then she ran.

Karin took the Maxima. She hit a drugstore in the Freddie end of the city and picked up tweezers, a magnifying glass, a wrist brace, ibuprofen and first-aid supplies. Back at the hotel she cleaned herself up, popped four ibu, took a wistful sniff of Dave’s Cardhu flask and gingerly lowered herself onto the bed to ponder her totally questionable future.

She fell asleep.

When she woke, she drove to the shore in early-evening darkness and pulled out the phone Dave had left in the Maxima. She’d turned it off as soon as she found it, figuring it would be the latest thing…figuring it would have a GPS. Its directory put her straight through to Owen Hunter, who answered the phone with startling directness. “This must be Ellen.”

It gave Karin a pretty clear picture of just how much Dave hadn’t told his brother. “More or less,” she said, tired of games, not ready for explanations. “How’s Dave?”

“Why don’t you come and see?” Owen’s voice had a dark edge to it.

She caught the implications immediately. The invitation to come forward, the threat of it-and the fact that he was here with Dave. “You came,” she breathed. “God, is he okay?”

“I’ve got a lot of questions.”

Karin took a deep breath, biting her lip on hasty words. She managed to say evenly, “Dave never mentioned that you were a cruel man.”

Owen gave a short laugh. No humor there at all. “Hairline-skull fracture. His CAT scan was normal, but his neuro exam isn’t and he sure as hell isn’t all there. He’ll be hospitalized for a few days at best.”

Karin found she wasn’t breathing; she struggled with herself. When she finally drew air it was in a hiccup of a gasp, and she moved the phone away from her mouth, tucking it against her neck. That’s not fair. It’s not right. He was only ever trying to do his best to save those kids. She heard Owen’s voice only vaguely, but knew he wouldn’t wait forever. She held the phone up and said, “I’ll call back tomorrow.”

And the next day, and the next day. However long it took.

Owen drove his all-too-sensible rented sedan down the dead-end street to the safe house, letting Dave sit in grateful silence. Owen had finally acknowledged that Dave wouldn’t discuss Karin’s role in the Longsford case. Not the newly gathered evidence; not the man’s death. None of it mattered so much anyway, given the small skeletons recovered from the graveyard beneath the broken concrete. And the second Ruger at the scene had been wiped clean; as skeptical as the feebs were about Dave’s claim to have had two guns, they couldn’t prove he hadn’t fired the weapon-not at the dead errand boy and not at Longsford.