She did, and he opened the door, pausing for a moment. The crisp windsnapped against his face, the acrid smell of burning plastic overpowering the clean desert air. He leapt down from the RV and advanced slowly, looking left and right and straining his ears but only hearing the crunch of the gravel underfoot and the pop of the flames.
He rounded the end of the burning vehicle and saw the figure feebly moving his arms as if he were trying to pull himself away from the flames. Mosby looked around one more time, saw nothing, and ran to the figure. He crouched down and saw his chest covered in blood, a pistol in the dirt about three feet away.
He shouted, “Liz, Liz! Get out here! He’s bleeding bad!”
He heard Liz coming and the man grabbed his collar, his eyes snapping open. The man said, “Call. Call.”
Mosby pushed his arm away and said, “I will, I will. I’ll call 911 right away. Let me help you.”
The man shook his head and pulled a card out of his upper pocket, waving it and saying, “Call.”
Mosby took the card just as Liz arrived. She immediately began triage and said, “Jesus, he’s been shot. Go get some towels.”
Mosby recognized the command in her voice, her going into ER mode, and he let her take over, jumping up and running back to the RV. He returned with as many washcloths and beach towels as he could rapidly find, and she took them, using them to stanch the bleeding, saying, “Did you call 911?”
He said, “Not yet.”
She continued to work, saying, “Do it, he’s not got long to live.”
Mosby pulled out his cell phone, checked for a signal, and dialed. He gave the dispatcher what he knew and his location, answered a few questions, then hung up, saying, “They’re on the way.”
Liz sagged back and said, “No hurry now. He’s gone.”
Businesslike, she stood up and wiped her hands on her trousers, saying, “I couldn’t stop the bleeding. The bullets hit the femoral.”
Shocked at her lack of emotion, he then remembered where she worked.He said, “I guess we should wait until the cops get here. Tell ’em what we saw and what we did.”
She nodded and said, “At least two gunshot wounds that I saw. One in the chest and one in the thigh. They’re going to want to know what happened here.”
He had nothing to add. She looked at her hands and said, “I need to clean up.”
After she returned to the RV, he remembered the card. He pulled it out of his pocket and held it into the light of the burning truck. He saw a bloody fingerprint over an embossing that read “Blaisdell Consulting.” Beneath it was a number. He figured it was where the man worked, or maybe a contact to a relative. He remembered how adamant the man was, as if he was more concerned about the call than he was about his own life.
Mosby pulled out his phone and dialed, starting a chain of events that would alter much more than just the trajectory of his RV trip.
Chapter 2
Twelve hours earlier
I saw Jennifer appear on the beach side of the Windjammer bar. She glanced around, then started sauntering up the wooden stairs. Dressed in a bikini top and a pair of cutoff jeans, she had a ballcap on her head, her blond hair through the hole in the back, her flip-flops slinging beach sand with each step.
Behind me I heard someone say, “Holy shit, this is going to be funny!”
I turned away from the computer monitor and said, “Creed, one more word and I’m going to slap that smile off your face.”
Creed’s face grew comically serious, and I glanced at Knuckles, my second-in-command. He was grinning too. I winked at him, because honestly, I was working hard to suppress my own smile. I said, “How’s Amena doing?”
“She’s acting like a pro. Born to do this stuff.”
“Commo okay? Glasses working?”
“Yeah, glasses are working fine. So’s the commo, but I wish it wasn’t. She won’t shut up on the net.”
I said, “Yeah, I warned you about that. She thinks she’s Jane Bond.”
I turned back to the monitor, watching Jennifer enter the bar. I switched to our internal camera and immediately saw it was cockeyed, with only half the table in view and the screen crooked. I shook my head and said, “Didn’t you test this view before go time?”
Creed said, “That’s their job, isn’t it? I mean, they emplaced them.”
