Caitlin caught sight of Jones sinking to his knees, bleeding from everywhere at once it seemed, but still with the presence of mind to wave her on, after Hatim Abd al-Aziz.
She lit out in his wake, bettering her angle just in time to cut off his route to Harwood Street, unleashing a torrent of fire. He spun to return it, and his shots went wild as he veered back into the cover of the amusement park and the attraction set off in the very rear, on the grass in front of one of the performance pavilions: the Chamber of Horrors.
*
Guillermo Paz had known men as big as Seyyef, and as strong, but never one who was both, and Seyyef had a litheness and agility that belied his bulk and brutish appearance. Paz could tell from the first blow he landed that the man used pain, probably liked pain, was impervious to strikes powerful enough to shatter bone. He’d heard boxers were like that, so used to being struck that taking the blow becomes second nature.
The modest roller coaster was into its second rise before Paz realized they were moving, adjusting his footing and balance to make that motion work for him. Claiming the high ground that a moment before had been the low ground. The move seemed to confuse Seyyef, who nonetheless absorbed a brutal flurry of strikes that shattered his jaw and right cheek. One eye was closed now, the other bulging with rage and the sense of battling an opponent equal to him.
True to his name, Seyyef was an executioner who knew how to kill.
Paz was a soldier, a killer too, but one who knew combat. The advantage had turned clearly his way, until Seyyef projected all of his vast bulk forward, whether fortune or by design, just as the coaster dropped into a fresh dip, giving the high ground back to him. And before Paz knew it, he was bent over the front of the car, Seyyef jamming his face down toward the track.
*
Caitlin followed al-Aziz through the lingering chaos to the Chamber of Horrors, laggardly at first, forcing the light-headedness from her consciousness and summoning whatever it took to gather herself and beat back the pounding that felt like a knife poking around inside her skull.
She fired when al-Aziz neared the flat-roofed modular building, but her shots flew wildly askew. He spun and returned her fire with his own, just before disappearing into the structure.
Caitlin stayed on his tail, charging toward the same double doors al-Aziz had used, into a black void. Suddenly she was a little girl again, struck by the memory of her father forcing her to board a similar ride with him when she was a kid.
I’m too scared!
That’s why you have to do this, little girl.
Her father had dragged her on and lifted her into the lead car, next to him. She was still crying when the car crashed through a pair of double doors painted to look like the devil’s mouth.
Now Caitlin found herself charging through a set of double doors made up to look like … the devil’s mouth. The warped wood and fading colors made Satan’s teeth seem chipped.
Because this was the very same Chamber of Horrors, the same ride that had terrified her as a child, around thirty years ago. Time circled about, catching up, and Caitlin half expected to see her father in the next car as dangling skeletons dropped down before her.
*
Paz’s face was jammed close enough to the track to smell the grease lubricant. He was helpless to do anything but force his neck and shoulder muscles up against Seyyef’s desperately determined thrust downward. Paz, who had once pushed a man’s face against a churning fan belt, wondered if this was payback for that. His entire life experience was on rewind, seeming to go only as far back as the first time he’d met the gaze of his Texas Ranger, Caitlin Strong. Wanting the glare that looked back at him to be his. To feel what she did, behind those steely eyes that had changed his life even as he was trying to take hers.
Paz felt the heat of the tracks, imagined the sparks generated by the friction flying upward when his skin met steel. And then he saw Caitlin Strong’s eyes in his mind. It was enough to launch him backwards, feeling the sinews tearing in his neck muscles as he twisted around. Facing Seyyef, the brute’s breath blowing a stench like roadkill into him, Paz smashed his ridged knuckles into a neck wrapped in layers of muscle. Felt them crunch into the softer cartilage, and the cartilage giving way in their path.
Coming apart, shattering. The man’s breath bottlenecking in his throat, his face reddening, only forty-five seconds to a minute at most before he lost consciousness. Paz felt his balance waver as the coaster dropped into its final dip, sweeping round the perimeter of Klyde Warren Park, over Olive Street, in the same moment that Seyyef sank his hands into Paz’s throat.