David Baldacci - Daylight

“Oh, yeah, I know it. You ever go up in the attic here and look through the boxes, old photo albums?”

“I only come here to drink beer and sit on the beach.”

“You ever heard of a man named Leonard Atkins? Who might have saved your grandfather’s life over there?”

“No.”

Pine was about to ask another question when she heard a noise outside. She hurried to the window overlooking the front of the house and saw a black SUV pull in.

She ran back into the bathroom and grabbed Vincenzo. “I hope you can run as fast as you did when I was chasing you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because your girlfriend’s cleanup team is here. Move!”

Axilrod must have heard the sounds of the car, too, because she started to kick the wall of the closet and scream.

Pine jerked the door open, leaned down, and clocked her in the face with her fist. Axilrod slumped unconscious. Pine looked up at Vincenzo. “Damn, that felt good.”

She and Vincenzo flew down the steps and then out the back door. They ran flat out toward the beach and turned right when they hit the sand. This direction, Pine knew, would carry them toward the police station she had passed on the way in.

As she sprinted along, Pine pulled out her phone, punched in 911, identified herself, gave the address of the beach house and what had happened there and their approximate current location. Then she put the phone back in her pocket, turned, and saw light skipping over the sand and coming toward them. A second later, bullets sailed past her.

“Go, Tony, go,” she screamed at him, and he picked up his pace even more, as Pine slowed just a bit. She was going to keep herself between Vincenzo and the people after them.

To get to him, they’d have to kill her.

And right now, Pine wouldn’t have bet on herself surviving the night.

CHAPTER

60

I AM NOT GOING TO DIE on a beach in freaking New Jersey.

Pine was running as fast as she could in the tightly packed wet sand as the breakers pounded to the left of her and the tide was heading out. And if that wasn’t enough, a storm was starting to rage off the coast.

Sweat was running down her face, though it was chilly. Out over the water a spear of lightning punched out of the dark clouds and headed directly to the Atlantic. Then followed an unholy crack of thunder that seemed to shake her right to her soul. She could see Vincenzo about fifty feet in front of her and running flat out.

“Keep going,” she urged. “As fast as you can.”

As more shots were fired at them she decided to do something. She stopped, pivoted, pulled her Glock and her Beretta, and opened fire, even as more bullets sailed over her. She was aiming at the dots of light coming her way. They stopped shooting and fell to the sand for cover. She turned and ran.

Where the hell is Tony?

He was no longer in front of her. She looked to the ocean and beach side and saw nothing. She sprinted full out. And fell flat onto the beach because she had tripped over something lying on the sand.

Pine felt wetness on her face, and it wasn’t rain or ocean spray. She righted herself and flinched when she saw that what she had tripped over was Vincenzo. He was gasping for breath, and in the spike of another lightning bolt she saw both his contorted features and the bloody wound in his chest. She quickly felt under him and her hand came away all bloodied. He had apparently been shot in the back while running and the bullet had come out the front.

He suddenly focused on her and grabbed Pine’s arm.

He gasped, “D-don’t let me . . . die. P-please.”

Tears streamed down his face and mixed with the raindrops that were starting to fall.

“Okay, Tony, just stay calm. Stay calm.”

She knew this was pretty much impossible under the circumstances.

Pine felt the pulse at his neck and looked down at the ugly, bleeding wound in his torso. She put her hand over the wound to stop the flow of blood, but that wasn’t going to work since he had holes in front and back. And he was no doubt hemorrhaging internally.

She eyed the pursuers behind her. They were still hunkered down apparently. She fired four more shots in their direction to keep them there.

She called 911 again, explained the situation, and put her phone away. As she looked down at Vincenzo, she knew they were never going to make it in time.

He seemed to understand this because he gripped her arm even more tightly and his eyes became even more panicked.

“I’m here, Tony. Help is on the way.”

He shuddered and then shook his head stubbornly, now clearly aware that his death was near. He motioned for her to bend closer. She did so.

“T-tell my mom that I-I love h-her.”

“Just hang in there, okay?”

She didn’t want to give him false hope, but she didn’t know what else to say. And what did any words really matter at this point?

The next sounds Pine heard were sirens cutting through the dark.

She looked back and saw the light dots swiftly moving to the street. They had evidently heard the sounds, too, and were beating a hasty retreat.

When she looked back down at Vincenzo another lightning burst revealed his face clearly.

He was dead.

She closed his eyes, rose, and sprinted toward the street.

Pine arrived there in time to see the men climb into the black SUV farther down the road and speed off in her direction. She ducked down behind a garbage can before it got close. As the vehicle raced past her she saw the person in the back seat.

Lindsey Axilrod was in there, her face heavily bruised where Pine had walloped her, and she was holding up her bloody hand. They had found and rescued her.

The SUV turned off and was gone.

Thirty seconds later she ducked behind the garbage can once more as police cars shot past her and pulled in down the street at Vincenzo’s beach house. Pine jogged in that direction, but then broke off and went to the parking lot next to the beach, climbed into her car, and pulled out. She kept her headlights off and didn’t gun the engine until she was two streets away.

She looked down and saw Vincenzo’s blood on her. Everything had happened so fast. She had gone from searching the boxes in the attic to—

Shit.

She pulled into a convenience store, slid into a parking space, and put the car in park. She put her hand in her pocket and took out the photo. Her hand was trembling.

She clicked on the dome light and slowly turned the Polaroid over.

She first cast her eyes at the bottom, where in the white perimeter of the photo was written: “Len, Wanda, and Becky. July 1999.”

Slowly, a millimeter at a time, Pine lifted her gaze. Her body was trembling like she was in the throes of a terrible chill, her breaths were painful, she felt sick.

Then she stopped. There were three people lined up in front of what looked like a mobile trailer set up on cinder blocks.

The man was of medium height, reedy, and bald. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and held a cigarette. He was smiling at the camera. The older woman was rotund and short, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a sleeveless blouse. She was not smiling. She didn’t look like someone who had ever smiled.

And next to her, and towering over both of them, at what Pine calculated was nearly six feet, was a young woman. She wore an old-fashioned gingham dress that looked to be handmade and that hung limply down past her knees. She was barefoot, and her hair was a mess of tangles and cowlicks. Her exposed skin was dirty and full of scabs. She was not looking at the camera. She was staring straight down at the ground, her shoulders hunched, her entire body looking uncomfortable, contorted—perhaps seized in pain, Pine didn’t know. And even though Pine could not glimpse her face, she knew without a doubt that she was looking at her sister. It was mostly the height and the hair. The once beautiful hair that her mother had religiously brushed and endlessly braided into shapes and configurations that had made the tomboy Atlee giggle. But Mercy had loved it.