Pamela Clare - Striking Distance

“Corbray, listen to me. You’re taking a big risk. It’s March, and this isn’t San Diego. The water in that lake won’t be much over forty degrees, if that, and it looks to me like you’ll have a least a half mile to cross.”

“Hey, this is my job, remember?”

It was risky. The water temperature would begin to affect him immediately. Swimming underwater meant going for several respiration cycles at a time without fresh oxygen. The combination wasn’t a good one. It wasn’t unheard of for a SEAL to suffer shallow water blackout and drown even under better circumstances.

But Javier had more experience than most SEALs, and he had powerful motivation. If he failed, the woman he loved would die.

“I’m telling you to wait, Corbray. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

But Javier’s gut told him Laura didn’t have ten minutes.

He disconnected the call, stripped off his coat, clipped the AR to a harness on the Kevlar—and set off for the concrete pipe at a run.

EGO.

That was the key to buying herself time. Kimball was a true narcissist. Some part of him wanted her to appreciate how hard he’d worked to kill her. Some part of him wanted her to be impressed.

Laura fought to hold herself together, fought to see beyond the loathing in Kimball’s eyes, the joy he so obviously felt to know she’d suffered. “I’m supposed to believe you were behind my abduction just because you say so?”

He told her the story. How he’d bolted in the middle of the ambush that had pinned down his platoon in Fallujah, angry and humiliated by the sentence he’d received. How he’d gone into hiding, made his way to Pakistan. How he’d seen her one night as she entered her hotel. And how the idea had come to him.

“I realized I could get back at you. I was going to be a Green Beret, and you ruined that for me.”

“You ruined that for yourself. You broke U.S. law, shamed your uniform, stole from innocent people. I did my job. I expose the truth.”

He struck her again, the blow leaving her dizzy.

“You should have sided with us—with your own countrymen. Instead, you stood up for the enemy. You are the traitor.”

Don’t argue with him.

She didn’t want him angry. She wanted him to talk about himself.

She struggled to clear her head. “H-how did you know where I was going to be?”

“I followed you every day for weeks. I ate in the same dining room, stayed in the same hotel, drank at the same bar. You even said hello to me once when you bumped into me getting out of the elevator. But finding out your plans—that was the real trick.” He leaned down and grinned at her. “I did a favor for someone, who hacked your phone and turned it into a roving bug.”

Laura had heard about that kind of technology, knew federal law enforcement sometimes used it, transforming the mic in someone’s cell phone into a listening device that operated even when the phone was off. “You heard every word we said.”

He stood upright, still smiling. “I picked the time and place and made contact with some of Al-Nassar’s men. They took it from there.”

So Derek Tower had been right—in a manner of speaking. She had been betrayed to Al-Nassar by a fellow American who’d gotten her location straight from her. But it hadn’t been her fault. Not that there was any comfort in knowing that now.

“I thought you were dead. He’d claimed he’d killed you.” Kimball reached out and slid his fingers into Laura’s hair. “But I guess he wanted to keep you for himself.”

Laura shuddered. “It must have been a shock to find out I was alive.”

“You were alive, but you weren’t the same, were you, Laura?” He knelt down beside her, speaking in that same sad, sympathetic voice he’d used in her phone interviews with him. “I enjoyed hearing about all the things that had happened to you. Then you came back to the U.S. and started living a normal life again, while I was working my ass off doing black ops for hire.”

“You decided you had to kill me.”

“Exactly. Took me a while to get here. I had to sneak into the country, get a fake ID, pull some cash together. Sean remembered me, helped me out, gave me a place to stay, a place to work.”

“He helped you.”

Kimball laughed and got to his feet. “He barely knows his own name. I drove him from place to place, gave him money, sent him in to buy supplies for me. He thought we were making fireworks. We talked about old times, but he couldn’t remember much. I got him some replica firearms that fire pellets. We played with those indoors. Then his damned social worker came around, and I knew I had to get rid of him.”

Understanding hit Laura, making her sick. “You set him up. You sent him after Javier knowing Javier would kill him.”

“I painted the tip of my handgun orange, loaded it. I knew your SEAL boyfriend went for a run every morning. I watched, and when he set out, I went after Sean. We meant to catch him on his way back but he went a different route. I followed, dropped Sean off at the store. Sean thought we were still playing. ‘See him?’ I said. ‘He wants to play, too. Just walk up to him and shoot. Score one for the team.’”

Laura felt sick for both Edwards and Javier. “You used Javier to kill Sean.”

“Your boyfriend is good at killing. He got rid of a loose end for me. Oh, don’t look so horrified. That’s what a good Special Forces operative does. We work behind enemy lines, move in the shadows, turn one person against another, kill when we must. I would have made a great Green Beret.”

She glared up at him, her stomach churning, rage, disgust, and terror coiled so tightly inside her she couldn’t tell them apart. “A real Green Beret wouldn’t screw up making ANFO. Or murder an innocent teenager to hide his own tracks. Or use a wounded friend the way you used Edwards. You’re nothing but a loser, a psychopath who blames everyone around him for his own mistakes!”

This time when he struck her, she saw stars.

JAVIER SURFACED, EXHALED, inhaled, his lungs aching, his body chilled to the core. He had about sixty meters to go. He took another breath, then propelled himself beneath the surface once more, willing his body to relax, his mind focused on swimming swiftly and smoothly through the murky water. He couldn’t be sure how deep the lake would be on the other side. It wasn’t much deeper than five feet here. At some point it would be too shallow to conceal him. He would have to be ready to bring it from that point on.

He’d gone maybe thirty or forty seconds when his fingers and feet brushed the bottom. Carefully holding his position, he lifted his head above the water and took a breath, watching, listening. He heard a man’s voice coming from the house slightly to his left. The structure had plywood walls on the ground-floor level, but no windows and no doors, just openings that stared out at the lake. If he’d had some overhead support, he might have known where Kimball had her, what kind of weapons Kimball had, which direction Kimball was facing, but he didn’t. He’d have to take his chances and be prepared for anything.

Realizing there was no background noise to mask the sounds of his movements, he army-crawled quickly and quietly to the shore, dragging his body through cold mud, his bones aching, his muscles stiff and sluggish. The water had been colder than he’d expected it would be. But then water was always colder than he expected.

A woman’s voice.

“You set your bogus interview to coincide with the explosion.”

Laura.

She was still alive.

Thank God!

“I wanted to hear you die. I listened to you scream when the bomb went off, just as I listened to you scream when Al-Nassar’s men dragged you away.”

¡Me cago en su madre! Motherfucker!

Javier locked down his anger, tried to channel it toward action. He unclipped and dewatered the AR-15, his gaze fixed on the house as he watched for movement, for shadows, for any sign of Kimball’s location. It sounded to him like they were just on the other side of this thin plywood wall—which meant they would hear him unless he was very careful.

“You managed to startle me, but that was all. You killed that poor kid for nothing. Know what that makes you? A murderer and a coward.” Laura was doing her best to act calm, but Javier could hear the fear in her voice.

There came the sharp sound of a hand hitting flesh.

Hang on, bella. You’re not alone.

Javier set the AR carefully aside, then soundlessly drew the Walther PPS from his holster and made certain it, too, was drained.

“You’d better watch it, bitch. I have your life in my hands!” Kimball was shouting now. “Why do you even give a shit about that kid?”

Javier took advantage of the increased noise level to click off the safety on the AR-15 and move, positioning himself against the wooden wall near what would have been a doorway. His response times were slower than they should be, and he knew he must be hypothermic. He’d have to plan for that.

“The whole country is going to care about him when the truth comes out. How do you sleep at night? Do you see the faces of the people you’ve murdered?” She was trying to keep him off guard, trying to keep him talking.

“You think you’re so brave, but I know you’re not. I’m going to prove it to you. See what I brought?” The bastard laughed. “I knew you’d appreciate it. You’re afraid now, aren’t you?”

“Y-yes, I’m afraid. I’m afraid you’ve made a very big mistake.”