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

out of existence, or worse, prisoners of Dylan Walcott, who seemed ready to do just about anything to them to make them beg for their lives.

The male voice yelled, ‘Did you bitches hear me?! I’m calling a time out.’

It was all so surreal.

Alexis felt she was hovering above her own body, detached from reality.

Now the fear struck her, a colossal pressure on her throat and chest.

Violetta opened her mouth to respond.

Alexis clamped a hand over it. ‘Shut up.’

Violetta’s blue eyes seared, then she reconsidered, looked over and nodded her approval.

Alexis took her hand away.

The voice yelled, ‘You mamacitas are going to walk out here with your hands over your heads in the next fifteen seconds. If I count to fifteen and I don’t see you unarmed, on your knees, begging for my fucking mercy, you’ll be getting a flashbang grenade. If you run into the bedrooms, you’ll be getting a flashbang grenade in there. We have a whole lot of grenades! It’ll be like fireworks. Pop-pop-pop. Except these fireworks will make ya puke ya guts out, and you’ll be blind, and you’ll be deaf, and you won’t be able to do a thing to stop me strolling in there and kicking your guns away and bending you over the table. How’s that sound?’

Toxic silence.

Alexis thought she might puke before the flashbang came in.

More than anything she wanted to go straight out there and plead for them not to do those awful things to her. She knew it was the weakness inside her, she knew she shouldn’t listen to it, but there’s a big difference between knowing what you should do and actually doing it.

She managed to croak, ‘What do we do?’

Violetta adopted genuine concern. She’d never heard Alexis’ voice so small and timid.

Violetta said, ‘This is all mental. People cower when they’re backed into a corner because they’re weak. Their minds give up long before their bodies do.’

Alexis had no idea what to say. ‘What?’

Violetta said, ‘We’re on offence. We’re attacking them. Not the other way round. Got it?’

Alexis looked at her. ‘I don’t know—’

Violetta lurched to her feet, her eyes ablaze. She grabbed Alexis by the shoulders and threw her toward the side door. ‘If they throw it through that door, you throw it straight back out.’

Alexis understood the reason for the pep talk now.

She needed firing up.

Because if she timed it wrong, and the flashbang went off in her hand, the blindness and deafness wouldn’t be temporary. In fact it’d probably shred all the skin off her face and take her arm apart if she had it tight in her palm.

But if they didn’t act, they’d wind up in the same place regardless.

An early grave.

So Alexis screamed We’re attacking them in her own head as she ran to the side entrance and pressed herself to one side of the door frame. She’d only managed a millisecond’s glimpse of the outside porch, and she didn’t think there was anyone there, but she couldn’t be sure.

Deep down, she hoped it came through the sliding doors.

Then there’d be no responsibility.

No pressure.

It’d all be on Violetta.

Her Glock nearly slipped out of her hands as she clutched it in sweaty palms.

She waited with bated breath.

‘Alright!’ the outside voice bellowed. ‘Warned you bitches!’

He was screaming from the front of the bungalow, and Alexis reflexively braced for an explosion of light and sound in Violetta’s jurisdiction zone.

But a footstep sounded, right on the opposite side of the wall she was pressed to, and the grenade came skittering in through her door.

57

Absolute pandemonium.

King cut himself all over as he landed on the back seat and ripped his gun out of its holster. Vince spun and came up with his Ruger and fired blind into the rear seats. He got two shots off before King, lying prone across the seats, jerked a boot up and smashed the sole into the side of the man’s skull. Vince crumpled, and now it was time for King to discern whether he’d been shot.

He patted himself all over.

Blood everywhere, but none of it from a gunshot wound.

He breathed out.

Vince had bounced his head off the window, and now he lurched back into place, reeling in his seat, groggy.

King sat up and pressed the Glock to the side of his head.

‘There we go,’ he said. ‘That was simple enough.’

Vince didn’t answer.

He kept his foot squashed to the pedal.

They were doing a hundred now, nearly a hundred and ten, and the Crown Vic’s engine was screaming in protest. But although the Ford was old, it was reliable, and it worked in overdrive to meet its owner’s demands.

Vince took an exit off Grand Bahama Highway at the same speed, the Ford like a rocket ship, barely keeping contact with the ground.

King shouted, ‘Hit the brakes, Vince!’

Vince stared dead ahead.

Didn’t move a muscle.

Blood poured down the back of his head, matting his hair to his scalp.

He didn’t seem to notice.

They were barrelling all the way north, down a gentle incline surrounded by a never-ending sea of dry grass plains. Vince had his eyes locked on some kind of construction yard at the very tip of the island, its lot framed by a ring of brilliant white sand. At the rate they were moving, the Crown Vic would reach the site in less than half a minute. Before the colossal cranes and shiploaders there was a perimeter of outbuildings, set up as if they were guarding the inner circle. A big double gate usually would prevent anyone from accessing the property, but it was the middle of the day in the middle of nowhere. The gates hung open, allowing workers to filter in and out of the yard at will.

Vince’s unblinking eyes bored into the gates like heaven lay beyond them.

Or hell.

King hit the man in the side of the head with an open palm, hard enough to rattle him, not hard enough to knock him unconscious.

Vince grinned, exposing bloody teeth. At some point in the melee he’d bitten down on his tongue.

‘Not gonna help