“Take Nicolas out the front,” he said over his shoulder. “Run down to the beach.”
Darting across the room, she took the boy’s hand. He was still rocking, whimpering like a hurt animal. Through the broken window she heard shouting. She glanced at Madrid, and a fresh wave of terror enveloped her. As if in slow motion she saw him raise the pistol and fire. Someone from outside returned fire.
He swung around, his face angry. “Run, damn it! Go!”
Tightening her hold on Nicolas’s hand, she sprinted toward the front door, flung it open. Rain and cold greeted her like a slap, but she barely noticed. All she cared about was getting the little boy to the relative safety of the beach.
“Come on, sweetie,” she said as she took him across the deck and down the steep wooden stairs where the ocean pounded rock and sand.
She could feel the pain in her arm coming to life now, the throb keeping perfect time with the wild beat of her heart. But Jess didn’t slow down.
When they reached the wide stretch of beach, the crash of the surf was deafening and salty spray dampened her clothes. The horizon was gray with the promise of dawn. She looked around, but didn’t know which way to run.
Nicolas tugged her arm to the left. For an instant she debated, then went with him. The sand sucked at her shoes as she ran. The ocean roiled to her right; to her left jagged rocks jutted from the sand, offering the perfect cover for an ambush.
She was midway to a neighbor’s wooden stairs when a man lunged at her from behind a rock. Jess screamed, swung around to run in the opposite direction. The gunshot that hit the sand less than a foot from them stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Stop right there or I swear I’ll kill you both where you stand,” said a guttural voice.
Dizzy with terror, Jess raised her hands to shoulder level and slowly turned to face the man. “What do you want?” she panted.
“I want you dead.” His mouth twisted into an ugly smile as he leveled a deadly looking pistol on Nicolas. “Both of you.”
“Don’t hurt him,” she cried. “He’s just an innocent little boy.”
The man looked about as sympathetic as a snake about to devour a mouse. With the gun never wavering from Nicolas, he tugged out his cell phone. “I got ’em. On the beach just south of the house.” He paused. “Do you want to talk to them or do you want me to do them right here? Okay…” he said, and hung up.
Do them…
He’s going to kill us, Jess thought, and her heart went wild in her chest.
The gunman’s rodentlike eyes sought hers as he raised the pistol to her chest. “This ain’t your lucky day,” he said.
Chapter Four
Jess couldn’t believe her life was going to end this way. The only decision left was whether she was going to make a run for it and take a bullet in the back or put her arms around the frightened child at her side and wait for the killing shot.
“Please don’t,” she said.
Beside her, Nicolas gripped her leg, keening as he rocked back and forth. I’m sorry, Angela, she thought. In the back of her mind she wondered where Madrid was. If he’d been shot or perhaps already killed…
Dropping to her knees, Jess put her arms around the little boy and turned her back to the man. She closed her eyes and held Nicolas tightly against her. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered.
But the lie broke her heart.
A wave crashed off to her right. The wind buffeted her. At some point the rain had soaked clean through to her skin. The precious last moments of her life…
A gunshot shattered her thoughts. Jess opened her eyes to see the man with the gun crumple to the sand. A second man descended the wooden steps at a rapid clip, a gun silhouetted in his hand.
With no time to think, she grabbed Nicolas’s hand, lunged to her feet and pulled him into a dead run down the beach. “Run!” she screamed. “Faster!”
She tried to keep Nicolas close to the rocks for cover. The sand hindered her, but she plowed through.
“Jess!”
Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered that someone had called her name. But she was operating on pure terror and the primal will to survive. A glance over her shoulder told her the man was gaining on them.
Oh, dear God, he’s going to catch us!
“Stop!”
She screamed when a heavy hand came down on her shoulder. Spinning in midstride, she let go of Nicolas’s hand and shoved the boy away. “Run!”
Hoping the little boy understood, she faced her attacker and lashed out with her fists. “Get away from me!” she screamed.
The man took her down into the sand. “Easy! It’s me. Madrid.”
The cloak of terror lifted and Jess stopped fighting. Breathing hard, she looked up at the man on top of her. At some point she had begun to cry, huge choking sobs ripping from her throat. “He was going to—”