David ed. - Face Off (2014) Anthology

He could be pretty cool about things.

She glanced back through the window, saw the police car still there. Waved at her dad again as the truck lurched from left to right.

Then she heard the familiar sound of gravel under the tires. She whirled around, saw that they were veering off the pavement onto the shoulder. Kristoff had his foot on the brake. He hung his head low, moved it languidly back and forth, trying to deal with the pain.

When the truck was nearly stopped, Kelly pulled on the door handle, let the door swing wide, and jumped.

“KELLY!”

Glen Garber screamed when he saw his daughter leap from the passenger’s door of the nearly stopped truck. He bolted from the police cruiser before Reilly had thrown it into park.

Kelly landed in the tall grasses just beyond the shoulder. Her knees buckled, forcing her into a roll, her body tumbling out of view.

Glen ran. “Kelly! Kelly!”

Before he could get to her, her head popped up above the grass. An arm went into the air. “Here!”

Behind him, Garber heard Reilly shout at the top of his lungs: “Run!”

IT WASN’T THAT REILLY DIDN’T care about Garber and his kid, but he had a more pressing matter to deal with.

Like the man he knew as Faustus, who had thrown open the driver’s door of the pickup and was stumbling out. But not before reaching for something on the floor ahead of the seat. He emerged, standing there a couple of steps in front of the open door, clutching the cylinder. Raising it above his head.

Whoa.

Reilly didn’t know what the hell had happened in that truck, but half of the man’s face was red and blotchy and blistered and some of the skin looked like it was ready to fall off. His right eye was shut.

Reilly told Garber and his daughter to run.

“I’ll do it!” the man yelled. “I’ll smash it right into the road! I’ll crack this thing wide open. You want that?”

Reilly raised an unthreatening palm.

“Come on,” the FBI agent said. “You’ll take yourself out, too. You’ll never have the fun of seeing your handiwork.”

“Doesn’t much matter now,” he said.

Behind them, other motorists on the highway slowed. A couple honked their horns.

Reilly ignored them, instead staying focused on Faustus. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What the hell happened to your face?”

“Hot coffee,” Faustus said. “Maybe I’ll sue.”

Reilly noticed that the truck was moving, ever so gradually. They’d all stopped on a very slight, uphill grade, and the Ford was starting to roll back. Faustus had bailed out of it so quickly he must not have put the shift solidly into park.

By the time Faustus noticed, it was too late to react.

The open driver’s door caught him on the back and threw him down onto the highway like he’d been tackled. The bottom edge of the door hit the back of his head hard enough that he did a face-plant on the pavement, arms outstretched.

He wasn’t moving. Only his fingers, twitching, releasing their grip on the cylinder, which started to roll along the asphalt toward Reilly, bumping over small stones and irregularities in the surface.

Please don’t have opened, please don’t have opened.

Reilly bolted forward, threw his body over the cylinder, trapped it below his torso, smothering it like it was a grenade. Even though it was not going to explode, it had the potential to do more damage than a thousand grenades. The truck rolled past him to his right, the front wheels turning slightly, angling the truck’s back end toward the ditch.

As it rolled by, Reilly saw Garber and his daughter a good fifty yards away, heading for a wooded area beyond the highway’s edge. Garber glanced back, saw Reilly on the ground, grabbed Kelly by the elbow to stop her.

Reilly could just barely hear him tell her, “Stay here.”

And then he came running.

“Are you hit?” Garber shouted.

“No!”

“What about him?”

“I’m guessing dead. That door hit him hard, and then his head hit the pavement. He hasn’t moved.”

“Why are you lying on—?”

“Have you got a bag in your truck? A plastic bag? A couple of them? Anything airtight?” A thought hit him. “Evidence bags in the cruiser!”

Garber stopped, ran for the police car, grabbed the keys and ran around back to pop the trunk. It took him about fifteen seconds to find what he was looking for. Clear plastic, sealable bags, like oversized sandwich bags. He grabbed a handful and ran back to Reilly as his truck slowly backed into the ditch, the engine still running.

The agent, still keeping his body pressed to the pavement, reached up for a bag. “Give it to me.”

Garber had some sense of how serious the situation was.

“Should I start running again?” he asked.

Reilly grimaced. “Probably not much point. We’re either safe, or we’re not. You couldn’t run fast enough to save yourself.”

He worked the bag under his torso, then, in one swift motion, got up on his knees, shoved the cylinder into it, and sealed the top.

Garber realized he was holding his breath.

“You’ve got the end of the world in that bag, don’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Reilly replied. “Hand me another. I’m going to double bag it. Maybe even triple.”

“Did anything leak out?”

“If we’re still standing a minute from now, I’d say no.”

He reached out a hand to Garber, and he took it. He helped the agent to his feet, and they regarded each other for a moment. Garber kept glancing at his watch.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Give it a little longer,” Reilly said.

“If it happens, what, exactly, will happen?”

“You don’t want to know. The good news is, it’ll be quick.”

Garber kept his eye on his watch. “That’s a minute and a half now.”

“I’d say we’re going to live.” Reilly smiled. “Your kid threw hot coffee in his face?”

Garber nodded.

The smile turned into a grin. “Get her over here.”

Garber waved Kelly in. She arrived, nearly breathless, several seconds later. Shaken, but relieved, too.

Reilly rested his hands on her shoulders. “You are something else.”

Kelly smiled weakly.

“Really, you are,” Sean Reilly said. “You ever need anything, you just name it.”

Kelly thought a moment. She said, “I never did get my chicken nuggets.”

JOHN LESCROART

VS. T. JEFFERSON PARKER

The genesis of this story goes all the way back to 2009 when John and Jeff discovered a shared love of fishing, while contributing a short story to an anthology called Hook, Line & Sinister . Then, in 2011, the two hung out together on a deepwater fly-fishing trip to East Cape and Cerralvo Island in Baja California. Every day for a week the anglers set out at dawn in pangas (Mexican fishing boats) seeking tuna, dorado, roosterfish, amberjack, pompano, or whatever else might be biting. Their guides were a fantastic and personable collection of skilled pilots and fishermen, mostly from one extended family who lived in the nearby village of Agua Amarga.

When they were approached with the concept for FaceOff, both immediately glommed on to the idea of John’s Wyatt Hunt ( The Hunt Club, Treasure Hunt, and The Hunter ) and Jeff’s Joe Trona ( Silent Joe ) teaming together. Both characters were close to the same age, athletic, and were more or less involved with law enforcement, so putting them together on a fishing trip to Baja was a no-brainer. As soon as the two characters showed up on the page together, the chemistry was clear and palpable. John and Jeff quickly discovered that if those two characters actually existed in real life, they would probably be buds. Friendship aside, though, this is a thriller anthology, so the story needed an adventure that would place the heroes in danger.