Trained by Sansa Rayne

Chapter 7

Molten steel throbs in my leg. Blood leaks from the wound in time with my pulse, but my scream is for Kate. The gunshot echoes in my ears; I barely hear the splash as Anton pushes her into the water.

“You did that to her,” Anton says. “You killed her. Just like you killed my father.”

I half-fall, half-dive in after her. Anton can shoot me as many times as he wants. Kate’s down there.

Seawater stings my wound like a branding iron jammed against the skin. I push the pain away, looking for her. She’s close. Moonlight reflects off her gently swaying hair.

When she sees me, she reaches out for me. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but is she even bleeding? Did Anton miss?

I reach for her, but as I do, an unseen force grabs her and lifts her out of the water. There’s a flash of light and a whirl as a bullet cuts through the darkness. I swim, pumping my arms and legs, acting on pure instinct. My lungs burn, but I swim under the dock as more bullets pierce the sea. As soon as they stop, I surface, rising slowly from beneath so as not to make a sound.

Somehow I manage not to gasp, but breathe slowly.

“Ingram!” Anton shouts.

I press my one hand against the dock and another over the wound, trying to hold it closed.

“Fuck! God-fucking-dammit! Ingram! Do you see him?” Anton asks.

He’s talking to Kate. There’s no one else here. She’s alive. He didn’t shoot her. It was a ruse. Fucking piece of shit.

“Do you see him?”

“No!” she cries.

“Be quiet.”

I have a decision to make, and I don’t have a lot of time. I have to choose: try and stop Anton wounded and unarmed, or flee and hope to fight another day.

“Do you hear swimming?”

My leg throbs. Fatigue pulls a layer of wool over my vision.

I can’t fight him like this. If I run, I have a chance — assuming I don’t bleed out first.

I’m sorry, Kate. I’ll come for you. Stay strong.

Taking a deep breath, I push off the dock, sinking myself deep into the water. I kick off my shoes, level out and swim. To maintain a steady pulse, I don’t go too fast. I make long, slow strokes with my arms.

Focus on swimming. Focus on living.

If I dwell on my fury, my heart will pound. If I could breathe hatred right now, I’d never need to surface. There will be time for anger later. When I do come back up for air, I’m further from the dock but still in sight of it. I inhale again and keep going. I have some time before search teams will be on the scene; I need some distance, but I also need to stop bleeding.

Once my air runs out again, I make for the shore and hide behind a rocky groin. I rip off my shirt and tie it around the wound. It’s a start, but it needs proper medical care. For now, at the very least it needs stitches. I could also use a place to hide, at least for a few minutes.

Only one place comes to mind.

Boats take to the water, their motors low but audible in the quiet night. I’ll have plenty of warning before any get close enough to see me, so I follow the shore. As long as I hear a patrol, I make sure there’s enough cover to avoid being spotted.

It helps that most of these men have been trained by people who were trained by me. I know their methods. They’re going to form a grid of the island and clear it one sector at a time, closing the net with an ever-tightening perimeter. They’ll send special units to my residence and the armory. By now they ought to have found the dead guards in the harem — it’ll be crawling.

Pain in my leg intensifies so much I nearly miss the squawk of a com — a sentry’s close by. There’s a walking path leading to the beach between me and my destination — he’s probably keeping watch, meaning he won’t move on. If I get too close, he’ll hear me. I could try to avoid him, but that could drive me into the path of someone else.

Normally, I would just kill him. I’d wait for a boat to make enough noise that I can sneak up on him and snap his neck. Unfortunately, every step shoots a blinding surge through me. If I make one mistake, I’m done. It’s too risky.

I head inland, cutting through the brush, watching every step.

My skull throbs. I have to stop a few times, so dizzy I nearly fall. When I’m only a hundred yards away, I’m gasping for air.

Maybe coming to Jamison’s house was a mistake, but I had no alternative.

Upon arriving, I barely spot the guards in time. They’re coming out his front door, but they don’t walk away.

I duck down, watching. Are they going to stay? Is Anton locking everything down? There aren’t enough guards on the island to post someone at every residence and conduct a proper search, but he could station a few in key locations. I can’t wait forever. I’ll pass out.

Part of me wants to leave, but I don’t have another option.

When I’m on the verge of collapse, a voice murmurs over their coms. After a minute, they head off, splitting up.

It’s now or never. As soon as the guards are out of earshot, I lurch toward the building. I tap on the door, then slide down to the ground. Blood soaks through my haphazard tourniquette; I can’t even stand up.

Jamison opens the door and flinches.

“Fucking hell,” he mumbles, pulling me inside.

“What is it?” Colette calls out from the next room.

“Get in here and help me!”

Jamison lifts me up, still strong for his age. With Colette’s help, he drags me to the bathroom and dumps me in the tub.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he says. “You look halfway there.”

“Kate,” I grunt.

“Anton has her,” Jamison replies, removing my shirt from my leg to inspect the wound. “Don’t worry about her. Colette, get started. I’ll find the First Aid kit.”

“You can’t… hide me,” I say.

Colette sits on the bathtub’s rim and cleans the wound with the detachable showerhead. When she’s done, Jamison covers the bullethole with butterfly bandages.

“This should keep it from bleeding,” he says. “And it’s waterproof.”

“You’ll need to have the wound properly treated,” Colette adds. “And you’ll probably need some prophylactic antibiotics to ward off infection.”

“What about… blood?” I ask.

“It looks worse than it is,” she says, inspecting my leg. “There’s no exit wound. The bullet’s still inside. Otherwise it would have bled much more. And it missed the major arteries. You’re lucky.”

I shake my head.

“Not luck. Anton… shot to wound. On purpose.”

But he’s going to wish he’d killed me when he had the chance.

“Jamison, I need a… favor.”

“Colette, get him some water,” he says.

She nods and goes.

“Get me off this island. It’s the only shot we have to stop Anton. If he thinks I’m dead, I can operate. I’ll take him down. I’ll need time to prepare, but I’ll do it.”

“Ingram, I want to help, but there’s no way off the island. The boats will be guarded. Your men left with your jet. There’s nowhere you’ll be able to hide for very long.”

He’s mostly correct. Just because the guards left Jamison, doesn’t mean they won’t be back. Stealing a boat isn’t an option. Eyal and the rest are long gone. However, I do have one idea.

“There is a way.”

It probably won’t work. I’ll very likely die anyway, but it’s the only chance I have left.

Jamison takes my hand.

“Name it. Anton has to be stopped.”

“You’ll protect Kate?”

He nods.

“As best I can. But I don’t have any real power anymore. I can’t make any promises.”

There’s no time to argue about it.

“Listen carefully,” I say. “First, I’m going to need a knife and a bottled water…”

—

My second trek across the island goes better than the first. My wound is dressed, and I’ve had time to rest. But, getting where I needed to be was just the easy part.

What comes next… I try not to think about it.

At the edge of the island sits a small shed where seagulls constantly circle and land. It’s perpetually covered in droppings. There’s a simple electronic keypad on the door; it’s not tied to any network or security system, because normally no one would ever break in. The shed has one purpose: temporarily storing corpses.

When I arrive, I find long, black bags on two of the six steel shelves: one for Madeleine and one for Victor Sovereign.

We don’t usually dump dead bodies until the shed’s full. Between Sidney Traves, Edward Lonergan and the other guards Kate killed, it soon will be.

The smell inside the shed turns my stomach; I nearly vomit. Years of death and decay fill the air. However, in my line of work it’s not an unfamiliar scent. After the first whiff, I inhale deeply. It’s vile, but inuring myself will be the difference between survival and death.

I nearly puke again when I open Madeleine’s bag. It’s been weeks since she died, and she’s started to decompose. This is going to be awful.

Rocks had been added to the bag to weigh it down; I take most of them out and stick them under the shelves with the rest. Then I wait, listening to the world outside — mostly birds and patrol boats.

After a few hours, I hear multiple engines — a truck and a pontoon boat — I climb in with Madeleine and my supplies. Fumbling in the dark, I draw the zipper upward. It’s a pain in the ass from the inside, but I get it most of the way.

If only they’d brought Sidney Traves in here last night. His body would have been fresh, and not much bigger than Madeleine’s.

I can’t do much but wait from inside the bag, but I keep my knife at the ready — just in case.

Second: in the morning, tell the guards to dump the bodies. Have them be quick about it,I told Jamison.

I’m not in command anymore,he replied.

Tell them it was Anton’s directive. If he finds out, you can tell him you took care of the bodies so he could focus on the search for me.

A few beeps sound off, and the door to the shed opens.

“Nah, not really. They got killed by a fucking reporter. They were idiots. Don’t feel bad,” says a nasally male voice.

“She’s a reporter, but she can fight. You saw what she did to Lonergan?”

“Dent did most of that.”

“Yeah, true. On three, ready? One… two… three!”

The world lifts up from beneath me; they’re carrying me and Madeleine, grunting and huffing. Every motion triggers a lance of fire through my leg. I try to tune it out; the pain makes me want to inhale, but if I do, the smell could make me cough or retch.

This is a critical point in the plan: if they get suspicious, either because I make a noise or just because the bag is so heavy, they might inspect it more carefully. I’ll have to fight my way out. Even if I succeed, my cover will be blown: Anton will know I escaped.

When they put us down, the rumble of a powerful boat motor vibrates through the bag. After a couple minutes, I hear a thump — most likely Victor.

“Hey, what the fuck?”

“What is it?”

The zipper to my bag jerks upward, sealing the bag completely.

“It wasn’t all the way closed,” says the nasally guard.

My heart thunders. For fuck’s sake, that was close. I keep my hand over my nose, breathing shallowly. I try not to think about being on top of Madeleine’s corpse.

After a few minutes, the boat gets underway. They only drive it a few miles — that’s far enough to ensure the bags will sink so deep they’ll never be found. Before long, the guards shut the engine.

Here goes nothing.

With any luck, they’ll toss Madeleine and me last.

“One… two… three!”

I hear a splash.

“One… two… three!”

Another bag plunges into the water.

“One… two… three!”

That’s half of them…

But my luck runs out there: they lift our bag next.

“One… two… three!”

They toss us overboard. The impact jolts my leg, but that’s the least of my problems. I take a deep breath as water starts filling the body bag. We sink fast.

Thrusting the knife as hard as I can in the confined space, I jam it through the bag. I don’t need much space to saw the knife, but the material is thick and doesn’t cut easily.

A single mistake now and I’m dead. If I drop the knife, I’m dead. If I don’t cut fast enough, I’m dead. If I escape too fast, and I have to surface before the boat leaves, I’m dead.

Lungs burning, I cut through enough to slither out.

Thank you, Madeleine. Even in death, you saved my life.

I already promised to avenge her death — to make Anton suffer for murdering her. Now my debt to her is doubled.

Above me, the boat still lingers. There’s one bag above me, sinking slowly as streams of air bubbles escape it. I start rising in the saltwater, too fast. Thinking quickly, I grab the other body bag and let it carry me back down. Still, I can’t let it drag me too deep — I’m out of air. I’m out of time.

Then the last bag breaks through the surface. Looking up, thinking of Kate, I let go and start swimming. As I do, the boat’s propeller turns on, and the craft pushes away. I could almost cry. I swim out of its wake and surface, gasping and choking.

Keep it together, Ingram!

Once I finish coughing, I lie back in the brine. With my muscle mass, I can’t float — I have to tread water. When I settle down and can breathe normally, I drink my bottled water — there’s no sense in holding onto it. My fate is now out of my hands. Either my plan works, or it doesn’t.

Third: tomorrow morning, make an excuse to search my residence, I told Jamison. Say out loud that my body still hasn’t been found.

Every part of me hurts. I thirst for more water than I could have carried with me. I haven’t eaten. My gunshot wound aches horrifically — I think the bandages may have come loose. If there are sharks in the area, all I’ll have to defend myself with is a knife.

Is there a point at which I should consider swimming back to the island? I don’t know if I’d even make it, but if it’s my only chance to survive… I can’t stay out here for long. At night the temperature will drop; I’ll contract hypothermia. I have a good twelve hours until then. Can I tread water that long, in this state? What if Jamison couldn’t accomplish part three of my plan? If Anton was paying too close attention…

I could ask these questions until the moment I die of exposure, but I’d rather think about Kate and the life we could have had. For a few hours, I live in a world where I never got Joseph Wilson fired from my father’s factory. Anton and I stayed friends, even as our fathers’ personal failures taught us harsh lessons about the world. My father still loses his factory; Joseph Wilson loses his job and turns to alcohol, but Simon and I see them through the hard times.

Eventually, we start a business together. We’re massively successful, and as a result we meet a very talented and blisteringly hot reporter. She’s doing a story about us for LPN.

Kate and I hit it off. There’s nothing to keep us apart — no enemies trying to kill us, or forcing her to destroy her career. We live to old age together, leaving behind a family and a legacy…

Some of that is still possible!

My strength ebbs as the sun descends. Every time I look around at the open water I see shark fins, though they could be delusions. I’m past the point of knowing what’s real. Even the instinct urging me to keep swimming succumbs to fatigue; the call for rest consumes all.

So when a life preserver splashes in the water in front of me, I don’t comprehend at first what’s happening.

“Ingram! Grab it!”

Eyal! Boat!

I was in another world; I didn’t hear the blue speedboat approach. Is it real? Am I hallucinating?

Whatever.

I take hold of the float and let Eyal, Henrik and Stanislaw pull me in.

“He’s in bad shape.”

“Go. Get us out of here.”

“Eyal,” I rasp.

“Quiet, boss. Save your strength.”

“Tell them… to leave in… the bullet,” I mutter.

He nods.

I’m coming, Kate. It won’t be as soon as it should be, but I’m coming.