Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,79
kill Benjamin Collins?”
I looked back and he had a smirk on his face. He shook his head.
I turned back just as a giant wave washed over the front of the boat. Water hit me in the chest and I staggered back. I didn’t know what to be more afraid of. Being murdered by a contract killer. Or being washed overboard and drowning. Same result, different paths.
Did he plan on taking me over by the yacht club? Where he’d left the butchered body of Benjamin Collins? Right now, we were pointing straight out to the middle of the lake.
I heard the man singing behind me. Over the din of the wind and the rain and the crashing waves, this fucker was singing. I recognized the tune. Let It Bleed, from the Rolling Stones. Wonderful.
It pissed me off. Here I was, about to die. My two daughters were about to lose their father, Anna was about to lose her husband, and my killer was singing. Having a grand old time. Well, fuck him, I thought.
I let go of the wheel and faced him. “You’re the scum of the earth – just so you know,” I shouted at him.
He continued his little musical number.
“You can kill me,” I said. “But you’re a coward. A rotten, murdering piece of dogshit.”
The anger choked up inside me and I realized there was no point in waiting. If I was going to die, I was going to die the way I wanted.
He seemed to read my mind.
He brought his gun up, and now held it straight out from his body pointing at me.
“Come on you rotten sonofabitch—” I started to say.
A resounding crash screamed in my ears and the boat’s deck slipped out from underneath me. The splintering of wood shattered the sounds of the storm and I landed on my side, pain slicing up my back and I saw the prow of another boat bisecting the Air Fare. Cut it right in fucking half.
The ship’s prow was white, and I saw the line of blue down the side along with the word POLICE.
I struggled to get to my feet as water rushed all around me. The Air Fare was sagging, nearly broken in half.
A weight pressed on my back and hands grasped the side of my head. My head was wrenched to the side and the pain shot up my neck. He was on top of me, trying to break my neck. Unbelievable. How had he moved that fast? How had he gotten behind me again so soon after we were rammed?
Pain shot through my body and I twisted beneath him. Just as I wondered why he wasn’t shooting me, I realized he must have lost his gun.
I immediately stopped twisting and instead, pulled him in the direction he was trying to make me go.
We both rolled and crashed against the side of the boat as another wave broke over us. It knocked him off me and I thought I heard other voices shouting.
I got to my feet and whirled around just as he came at me. He hit me in the face and then in the stomach. My breath flew out of me in a gush and then he whirled, a karate kick that would’ve finished the job of taking off my head had I not ducked at just the right moment. I slipped as another wave caught me full in the face and my feet flew out from under me. I crashed into the Air Fare’s stern, which had become the receptacle for the damage done in the boat’s middle.
I slumped to the deck, water up to my waist and felt sharp fragments of wood scrape my back. I looked up and saw the impossible.
He was coming at me, full bore, with a steadiness and animal grace that made me look on in awe.
As I watched him come with the inevitability of Death itself, my hands wrapped around something that felt like a wooden bat. Just as he got close enough and I could see him winding up for another killer kick, I lashed out. The blow caught him in the side of the neck at just the right time. Off balance, he fell to the deck as another wave crashed over us. I was knocked down and the pole, which I now saw was the jib’s handle, had broken in half. A nasty, jagged break with a long sliver of wood jutting from the middle.
The Air Fare tilted, the weight of the water