Page 45 of So Deadly
You’re panickingagain.
She took another deep breath.It was over.They didn’t even know about Genna.Only Jennifer, and that woman was nowhere close to being a killer.
Still, she needed to finish cleaning.She needed to remove the evidence.
She stepped into the restroom, and another smell assaulted her.This one was only a few hours old, not nearly so pungent as the mold in the kitchen, but it was strong enough to send a shudder through her.Jennifer must have come back a little while she was reminiscing in the bedroom.
The clothing she wore was in the tub.She frowned at the blood caked into her boots and pants.She should have ordered rubber rain boots.Next time.They sold them at the local hardware store.
In the meantime, she stopped the tub’s drain and started the cold water.Her mother—well, Jennifer’s mother—had taught Jennifer that cold water was better for getting blood stains out.While the tub filled, she retrieved a bag of baking soda and a soft-bristled toothbrush from under the sink.
As she scrubbed the bloodstains out of the boots and pants, her mind drifted to the problem of Crawford.He was still alive, and he reallywasout of her reach.She couldn’t go back for him.She’d have to content herself with knowing that his throat had been damaged enough that he would never live a normal life again.It was frustrating, but there was nothing that could be done about it.
There was another, though, one more who needed to be punished for his part to play.He didn’t have a dog, so she didn’t need to worry about being interrupted.She could kill him and make up for losing Robert.
And if she killed this one, she would make up for being unable to protect Princess.
As she worked the stains out, her anxiety eased.Crawford was only a little bump in the road.She was still in control.She could still enact her vengeance.She could still make things right.
She finished with the baking soda, rinsed it with cold water, then drained the tub.She gathered the sopping clothes and put them in a basket among a load of towels.The pants were clean enough now that they could run through an ordinary wash load.The boots she would wash in hot water, then work on with the blow dryer.It would take her the rest of the night to finish, but she wasn’t going to sleep anyway.
She had work to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
David’s heart thudded so loudly he half expected the guards at the CIA facility to hear it and discover him and Jayce before their infiltration could begin.He couldn’t recall ever being so nervous, not even when Lillian Martin was in his house pointing a gun at him and Faith.When a loud whirring noise cut through the air, he flinched and nearly cried out.The thick leather padding of the motorcycle jacket he wore held in heat and he could feel sweat running down the middle of his back.
“It’s the drone,” Jayce said.“It’s okay.”
“That’s thedrone?”David whispered.He looked at the drone, an alien-looking contraption with five rotors and a pill shaped body with odd bulges from the makeshift EMP device Jayce had constructed out of six-volt batteries and copper wire.“I thought it was supposed to be quiet.”
“Yeah, well, it’ll have to do.I’ll just fly it in a wide loop around the facility so they only hear it when it’s coming from the front.”
The plan was simple.Normally, simple was good.It meant fewer things to go wrong.In this case, however, David feared that the plan’s simplicity left a huge margin for error that could be easily exploited.And they had no other way in.If this didn’t work, they were screwed.
The plan was for Jayce to fly the drone with its makeshift electrical bomb into the fence near the front gate.The resulting impact would short out the electric fence and deactivate the gate.It would open, and the guards would immediately rush to the area, believing the place to be under attack.Ideally, when they discovered it was a drone, they would believe that their attackers were somewhere in the woods beyond and focus on the exterior defense of the facility.Meanwhile, Jayce and David would sneak inside on the opposite end of the property.
It wasn’t so much a good plan as the only one available to them.They had weapons, but if they had to use those weapons, it meant a lot of things had gone wrong, and they were probably about to die.Besides, neither of them wanted to kill people, even if those people were evil like the testers of the 93rdTesting Brigade.
David thought of the soldier Michael had killed protecting him, and his stomach lurched.For the thousandth time, he wished he could have left this alone and not obsessed over things he couldn’t change.
What if it was Turk?
True, but that did little to soften his nausea.If they died in this attempt, then he would have accomplished nothing,andhe would never see Faith or Turk again.
But he had to try.As afraid as he was, he would see this through.
“Okay,” Jayce said.“Wait for my signal.We’re going to give it a few seconds after the pop before we make for the fence.If we jump too early, they’ll catch us.”
David nodded.
The whine of the drone’s motors intensified, and the small craft rose into the air and accelerated north.David focused on his breathing: four seconds in, four seconds hold, eight seconds out.Wind rustled through the leaves, caressing his face with a gentle but unpleasant chill.He suppressed a shiver, irrationally certain that the movement would immediately draw attention to them.
The whine of the drone softened, then disappeared.Jayce manipulated the controls, turning it west, parallel to the gate.David glanced at the small screen on the drone’s controller.It returned a night-vision image of the ground, gray prairie grasses shimmering in the starlight.Once, a small creature peered up through those grasses, its eyes two pinpricks of white.As the drone approached, it turned and fled with a flicker of a short, fluffy tail.Probably a rabbit.
Jayce manipulated the joystick again, and the facility loomed ahead, the same negative-image gray as the rest of the screen but immense and imposing, like an ancient walled city.David stiffened when the outlines of the four guards at the gate came into view.One of them pointed up at the drone, and another lifted his rifle.
“Shit,” Jayce called, dropping the drone to just above ground level.
