Monsters by Matt Rogers (bill gates books to read TXT) 📕

‘She’s not answering?’

‘I’ve rung five times.’

‘Bunker down until we can get there, then we’ll deal with the SUVs together and sort out the Mary situation. Did you say Boronda Lake?’

An engine roared on the other end of the line, the speaker distorting the noise.

Alexis accelerating.

When she replied, the pace of her voice had doubled. ‘Too late. They’re moving on me now. I must’ve spooked Heidi. Go find Mary, make sure she’s okay. She’s at Azure Waters Motel in the Mission District. Some shithole where I was sure she wouldn’t attract attention. Maybe she was followed…’

She trailed off and a second later she hung up.

Slater thought he’d heard something very similar to distant gunfire before the line went dead.

He stabbed at his phone screen, switching to Maps. ‘Where’s Boronda Lake?’

King reached over and grabbed his wrist, stopped him from typing it in. ‘You heard her. “Azure Waters.”’

Slater said, ‘She said two SUVs. That could be ten men at worst.’

‘We’re not going to get there in time, whether it’s one man or a hundred. Either Alexis deals with it or she doesn’t. Mary could be getting taken as we speak. We’re four miles from the Mission District and forty miles from the Palo Alto Hills. We can only do something about one of these situations. If you think otherwise you’re kidding yourself. Whatever Alexis is wrapped up in, it’s not going to last forty minutes. No one’s putting a gunfight on pause so we can get there in time.’

Eyes fixed on the road ahead, Slater forced himself to accept reality and begrudgingly ripped a right turn at the end of the street, heading toward the Mission. ‘Didn’t know you were a walking fucking GPS.’

King let the barb roll off him. ‘Don’t take it out on me. You let her come here.’

‘What was I supposed to do?’

‘Nothing. But right now you can try to accept the fact she might’ve dug her own grave.’

Slater clammed up like a shell.

There’d be a time for dealing with emotions, the potential loss of the woman he loved. Now was not the time.

There was no telling what’d be waiting for them at Azure Waters.

33

In the humid aftermath of the summer storm, Boronda Lake and its docks were quiet.

Literally any other day would be better for walking the trails around its perimeter, so they sat largely empty in the cloudy late morning. Alexis thought she caught a glimpse of a solitary hiker on the other side of the lake, but there was no use worrying about witnesses.

The SUVs bore down on her, surging up the forest track. Seconds earlier, someone had fired a solitary round out one of the windows, hoping to hit her rental car. She’d caught the muzzle flare in the rear view mirror. The gun had then disappeared and the window had buzzed up as the SUV roared forward, another occupant clearly concerned about drawing unnecessary attention.

Saving the gunshots for when they were closer.

Something had tipped Heidi over the edge. Alexis had allowed herself to be tailed for the first twenty minutes of her winding drive out of Palo Alto and up into the hills. She’d even welcomed it. Why not get a better look at a future adversary?

Then the vehicles had morphed from a mobile surveillance unit to a hit team, all in a sudden surge of acceleration, both drivers no longer concerned about keeping out of sight (or what they’d thought was out of sight.)

Alexis barrelled along the trail paralleling the north side of the lake. She tore past the docks to her left and a row of empty parking spaces to her right. When she was past the pier, she looked left. Between the driver’s side of her rental car and the lake itself was a gentle bank coated in thick undergrowth. The vegetation wasn’t exactly unkempt, but it was tall and grassy enough to deter access to the lake on this side. She only managed a glance but she couldn’t see thorns or wire fencing.

She had an idea.

It’d have to be done fast and with zero tell or she’d give herself away. The only alternative was speeding away from the lake in hopes of losing her pursuers, because it didn’t take a genius to understand she’d be hopelessly outgunned. Heidi had access to the best criminals money could buy, and the best criminals don’t fuck around with low-tier weaponry. There’d be submachine guns and assault rifles in the backs of those SUVs, she was sure of it.

She, on the other hand, had an MP-443 Grach pistol and two extra magazines.

Not exactly equal, and when the balance is unfair, drastic action’s needed to level the playing field.

Slater taught her that.

She didn’t think about the risks or the pain or the fact it might not even work. She just wrenched the wheel to the left, veering off the trail, then forced the driver’s door open a crack and tumbled out in the foetal position, curled up in a ball. If she timed it wrong she’d land on her back on the hard trail, paralysing herself if not snapping her neck, but she got it right and the vegetation swallowed her with an all-encompassing whoomph.

Her vision went dark and the undergrowth decelerated her fall enough to prevent catastrophic injury, but she still hit the dirt underneath hard enough to jar every bone in her body. Agony creased through her but she could barely pay attention to it above the boom of the rental car hitting the surface of the lake, only a couple of dozen feet to her left.

She hoped the water’s impact on the driver’s side of the car had slammed the door shut again.

She hoped no one had seen her throw herself out, the bulk of her car having blocked her pursuers’ line of sight.

She hoped, and stayed curled up in a ball, and waited.

Tyres screeched as the SUVs caught up to the crash site. All she could see was the grass