Loreth White - The Heart of a Renegade

“I don’t know. It’s probably what got Giles killed and, until we find that leak, we’re sitting ducks, too.”

She stood dumbfounded as he grabbed his leather jacket.

“Now, Jess, move! They could be here any second.”

They shot out the door and fled into the darkness, Luke guiding Jessica over the thick snow that now covered the boardwalk.

Halyards chinked against frozen masts as they raced down the dock. But just as they reached the stairs that would take them from sea level up to the parking lot, headlights cut round a building, illuminating falling snow. Luke jerked Jessica down into shadow behind a set of pilings.

A black SUV cruised slowly into the parking lot and cut the engine. Luke could hear a second vehicle approaching.

“Quick,” he whispered, “back that way.”

They ran back along the boardwalk, ducking below a wall just as the beams of a second vehicle swung over their position. They held dead still as the tires of the second vehicle scrunched through snow and came to a stop.

Silence grew deafening as tension pressed down on them and snow began to accumulate on their clothes.

What in hell were they waiting for?

Luke peered cautiously up over the wall, his snow-covered woolen hat providing camouflage. His vehicle was at the far end of the parking lot, behind the two black SUVs. He and Jessica would have to get past them somehow.

The passenger window in the first SUV was suddenly lowered. A match flashed, glowing orange. The scent of cigarette smoke reached him, pungent in the crisp air.

Then the driver’s door opened and boots squeaked onto snow. Luke heard snatches of what sounded like Chinese.

“It’s a dialect from the south,” Jessica whispered against his ear as she tried to peer over the edge and see what he was looking at.

He pushed her back down. “Stay low,” he hissed.

He reached into his pack, found his night scopes and trained them on the vehicles. He could make out six Asian men getting out of the cars, all packing serious automatic firepower.

Definitely triad. Somehow they’d gotten an ID on him. This bothered Luke. He rented the boathouse under a false name, paid for everything with credit cards backed by funds from FDS front companies and offshore numbered accounts.

Someone with inside information had to have fingered him directly.

And if the Dragon Heads knew exactly who he was, they had to know he’d taken Jessica and killed two of their men. A contract would be put out on him. Luke knew how these men worked.

Anger welled inside him. This pretty much ended his intellience-gathering gig in this city. Jesus, this was beginning to feel personal.

Jessica edged closer to him, and he could smell his shampoo on her wet hair. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Don’t know. Stay down,” he growled, suddenly—irrationally—angry with her.

He watched through his scopes as a third vehicle pulled into the parking lot and drew to a stop alongside the others. Four more men climbed out, assault rifles in hand, black coats fluttering in the cold wind.

Luke felt for his weapon. He had eight rounds in the magazine, one in the firing chamber, spare magazines in his pocket. Still, a 9-mm was no match against the kind of firepower those guys were packing. His best move was evasion, not engagement.

His muscles burned with tension as he watched the posse cross the parking lot and descend the stairs toward the boardwalk. One man remained guard at the base of the stairs and the other nine moved like black ghosts along the snowy boardwalk, making directly for Luke’s boathouse.

They would find his house empty within seconds and track their prints through the snow.

“Jess,” he whispered urgently. “We need to make a run for it. Now.”

She nodded.

He hauled her over the wall and they raced across the parking lot in a crouch, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by snow.

Gunshots suddenly peppered the air.

Luke lunged sideways, forcing Jessica down hard behind his SUV. He dragged her behind the wheel hub, covering her body with his own until he could identify the source of the shots. Another barrage of automatic fire rent the winter air. Luke winced. They were shooting up his place. They had to get out of here.

He reached up, quietly opened the passenger door to his SUV, motioned for her to get in. “The snow cover will shield you once you’re in,” he whispered.

He crept round to the driver’s side, dusted a small hole in the snow that had accumulated on the window, climbed into snow-covered cocoon, and eased the door closed. He watched through the small gap, aggression simmering inside him.

Luke didn’t like feeling this way. Taking a job personally was always a bad thing, it threatened the state of numbness he’d perfected over the last four years.

The booze had taken care of the first year after his wife’s death.

Then he’d quit drinking, clawing his way back out of moribund self-loathing, and beaten himself back into peak mental and physical shape with such sustained and brutal workouts that sleep had finally returned—the kind of sleep that came without booze. The kind of sleep that didn’t allow for thoughts or guilt. Or recurring nightmares.

Maybe in reaching this level of cold command over himself Luke had simply traded one coping mechanism for another, but what the hell—he was doing fine with it. It had saved his life. It had gotten him work with the FDS.

It had gotten him here, to Vancouver.

It had been a way to dull the pain that did not involve the bottom of a whiskey bottle and self-disgust. So why was he feeling things now?

He glanced at Jessica. It was her fault. She’d opened some damn Pandora’s box inside him.

She was shivering again, her frightened eyes fixed on him. She saw him as her last hope. He clenched his teeth and turned away. But before he could dwell on it, all nine men suddenly swarmed out of his boathouse and raced along the boardwalk toward the parking lot.

He tensed. “What the—”

An explosion whumped through air, then another, orange flames bursting out from his boathouse, spreading fast, fueled by some kind of accelerant. It took Luke a nanosecond to process what had just happened. His belongings, his photographs, his yacht, his home—every goddamn thing he owned—had just gone up in a giant ball of fire.

Rage erupted in his belly.

This was more than personal. These men had just declared war on him.

“Luke! What’s happening?” Jessica leaned over him, trying to see through his peephole. He shoved her away, opening his window wide. “Give me your camera.”

“What?”

“Just give it to me!”

He aimed the old Minolta out the window, focused on the fleeing men, clicked, zoomed in closer, clicked again and again, capturing their faces. He switched position and snapped the vehicles, zoomed closer, captured the plates.

He kept clicking as the three SUV’s fishtailed wildly out of the snowy parking lot and sped away. Fire alarms began to clang as flames crackled and popped. Another gut-hollowing whoosh sent shock waves through the air as the diesel fuel containers of his boat caught fire and blew.

Sirens began to scream. People raced out of the other boathouses, black silhouettes against white snow and hot raw flames, some diving into the frigid water to escape the blaze.

Staff and guests flocked from the nearby Granville Island Hotel. More alarms sounded as the fire spread quickly to the adjacent art school and another row of boats. More yachts exploded in balls of fire. Bedlam engulfed the island as Luke silently handed Jessica her camera and started the engine.

“Are you strapped in?” His voice was tight.