Sharks, Matt Rogers [shoe dog free ebook TXT] 📗

They’re too close together.

You have no choice.

She adjusted her aim, exhaled, and fired.

His head snapped back and he fell off Alexis, slumping to the floor.

She lay gasping on her back, chin pressed to her chest from the angle of the cushions. Her face went from red to white.

She stared into space like her soul had been ripped out of her.

Violetta said, ‘Get up.’

Alexis didn’t budge. ‘W-what?’

‘Get up now.’

‘I knew him,’ Alexis croaked, her eyes contorted in pain and horror. ‘He was … one of the guys from last night. The workers who came after me.’

‘Get up,’ Violetta hissed.

Blood trickled down Alexis’ throat where his fingernails had scraped her skin away. She was deep in shock. Deep.

But she managed to look over at Violetta. ‘Why?’

‘Because they sent him in first.’

There was the tiniest iota of sound from the side porch, just beyond the front door. A footstep, softly placed, creaking wood underneath.

Violetta’s veins hardened to steel.

She was done shooting to wound.

And that was the only thing these people hadn’t banked on.

The fact that a close call only heightened her senses, zoned her in, gave her tunnel vision where nothing else existed in the world but her and the gun and the—

Enemy.

A guy who looked like a stereotypical billionaire from some erotic romance film surged through the door. He had an automatic rifle in his gloved hands and a tactical vest wrapped around his torso, and his features were granite — grey hair, grey eyes, and a handsome face. But the eyes were cold and empty and fully present, ready for anything.

Ready for almost anything.

What he most certainly wasn’t ready for was the bullet that smacked him dead in the nose and snuffed the life out of him before he’d even had the chance to fire a shot of his own.

He crumpled in the entranceway, and Violetta heard muffled grunts from the porch.

It was the sound of barely suppressed panic.

That wasn’t how they’d expected it to go.

Right now they were recalibrating, figuring out a new angle in real time. They’d probably all been halfway to various breach points when the grey man had gone down.

Good, she thought.

She ran to the sofa and hauled Alexis off the cushions. The movement seemed to kickstart Alexis’ awareness, because she reached down and snatched up her Glock and pushed stress out with a mighty exhale. There was no chance it brought her down to a baseline level of calm, but it showed she was at least trying. Not lying there catatonic, waiting for the kill shot to come.

Violetta said, ‘Follow me.’

Alexis nodded, a hint of colour returning to her face.

Violetta snatched up a nylon belt of magazines as she ran for the cover of the kitchen island. She circled around the big slab, took a knee, and fixed her gun in a two-handed grip so only a sliver of her forehead was visible over the surface. From here she could cover the sliding doors leading to the beach, as well as the side door hanging open and the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

She’d put her back to the wall instead of running for her life.

A firm decision.

No chance of escape now.

Alexis mirrored her actions as best she could, but Violetta could see she was terrified, and she understood. You can simulate the real thing all you want, but calm in life-or-death situations comes from actual exposure, from putting yourself in those situations until your hands stop shaking and you gain previously untapped control over your stress responses. King and Slater could attest to that.

Violetta was halfway there.

It’d have to do.

A silhouette inched into view to the very side of the sliding doors, and she fired at it without hesitation.

Starting the war.

55

The jeep’s suspension screamed. Dirt and grass churned under the tyres, and the only reason the vehicle held together was because it was built for off-roading.

Not this kind of off-roading.

King kept the tree line less than ten feet to his left as he jolted and bounced over the uneven ground. He had to clench his teeth so the upper and lower rows didn’t smash together and break. But he held course, and mounted the Coral Road exit seconds after coming off the bitumen, managing to avoid the roundabout altogether.

The manoeuvre gained them ground.

They screeched back onto the road only a dozen feet behind the Crown Vic.

King gave the jeep a boost and managed to clip Vince’s back end. The Ford slid out, fishtailed again, nearly went into the trees, but corrected course at the last second and kept screaming toward Grand Bahama Highway.

In the distance, the north shore gleamed a brilliant blue.

Slater said, ‘Has this guy sold his soul to the devil or something?’

King was thinking the same thing, but didn’t vocalise it. ‘We’ll get him.’

A game of chicken commenced, sporting the highest stakes imaginable.

The turn-off to the highway was only a pinpoint in the distance, but at the speed both vehicles were travelling they’d reach it within thirty seconds. If Vince slowed too hard as he came into the turn, King would simply crush the back half of his Crown Vic to a cube of compacted metal. Sensing a potential impact, Slater reached over his bad shoulder and ripped his seatbelt into place. King went to do the same, then stopped himself.

He saw it all laid out before him.

He said, ‘There’s passing traffic each way. You see it?’

‘Yeah,’ Slater said, unsure where King was going with it.

‘He has to slow down,’ King said. ‘There’s no choice. He’ll get sideswiped at a hundred miles an hour if he doesn’t.’

Asphalt blurred underneath them.

The turn-off loomed.

A median strip of dead grass separated the highway lanes. The lane heading west was first up. If Vince wanted to go east, where he had a better chance of losing them in the greater swathe of island, he had to cross the westbound lane first, which meant slowing. If he went west, there were fewer places to run, just the narrow finger of Queen’s Highway that Alexis had taken