The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) Read online

  “Fuck it. If I’m going out this way, I might as well have it rain bullets.”

  Confident the gun was taped well enough with the handle in the best position to grab with his right hand, he stepped from the washroom and walked over to the metal table to grab the butcher knife.

  The knife was gone.

  “What the …?”

  His body was breaking down. At least that’s what it felt like. After years of sitting and eating chocolate bars and drinking Cokes, knowing he was dying anyway, hadn’t helped with his respiratory system. He couldn’t breathe right. His heart seemed to be skipping a beat as it raced in his chest.

  Where could the knife have gone? The police had not stormed the building. It had to be Ansgar. But where was he? Ben put the counter to his back to make sure he was alone in the kitchen. Was he trapped here? Was his final plan to be shot down in a hail of bullets being thwarted as well?

  “Nothing’s going to stop me now,” he said as he clenched his hands and took a couple of deep breaths.

  He grabbed two small steak knives off the counter beside him then let a short laugh escape his lips.

  Steak knives in a vegan establishment. In another life he would hack their computer systems and show the world how idiotic vegans really were.

  He took a brief second to wipe his palms as the small knives slipped in the moisture from his hands. The phone rang again. The loudspeaker announced he was out of time.

  Ben stepped from the kitchen.

  He didn’t get one foot through the doorway before Ansgar smashed into his bulk and knocked the two steak knives out of his hands. Ben hit the side of the counter hard. The edge dug in above his hip, shooting pain through his abdomen. He grunted and dropped to the tile floor.

  Something clunked into his exposed arm. He screamed and tried desperately to inch away from his attacker. Whatever had hit his arm, jerked out and away, freeing him.

  The butcher knife!

  Ansgar stood over him, blood dripping from the knife, a wild madness in his eyes.

  “Because of you.” Ansgar hacked at Ben, made contact, then ripped the blade out again. Ben screamed. “Because of you I’m all fucked up. I was a good sniper. An even better merc. A little boy with a computer bested me.”

  Ansgar raised his hands to show his fingers. The blade was painted in blood. Some had squirted along Ansgar’s hand, too. But the pain hadn’t come yet. Just a mild tingle telling him something wasn’t quite right.

  Ansgar’s smile was lopsided.

  “I know. Pretty, ain’t I?” Ansgar clutched the butcher knife with his palm curled around the handle. His fingers barely curled at all as they probably couldn’t bend in their current state.

  Ben screamed, breathed rapidly like he’d dropped after running a hundred-meter dash, then moaned as the pain started in.

  Ansgar laughed, the butcher knife poised, ready to strike Ben. In a last ditch attempt to stop the attack, Ben kicked his feet out. He connected with Ansgar’s ankle which slipped on blood smeared on the floor. Ansgar’s knee buckled, smacked the drawer beside him, and down he went.

  Ben was already spinning sideways as Ansgar fell. He plucked one of the dropped steak knives off the floor, twisted back and brought the knife down into Ansgar’s lower back at the same time the butcher knife entered Ben’s thigh.

  This time they yelled together.

  Their combined voices drowned out the loudspeaker as Detective Bryant said something about entering the café.

  Ben had to get up. He needed to leave. He needed his denouement. There was no way he would be thwarted again.

  The pain came in waves. Blinded by it momentarily, he pushed off the floor and found that only one arm still worked. The other had a gash in it. Tendons were severed, ligaments.

  Ansgar writhed on the floor beside him, trying to reach around and pull the knife out of his back but his broken fingers wouldn’t cooperate.

  Ben got into a sitting position leaning against the counter. Blood pooled around him like he sat in a circle of spilled ketchup. How much time did he have left?

  Time? The Clock?

  “Time’s up for The Clock,” he said.

  The other steak knife was two feet from him. He leaned over, slipped in the blood, and sprawled out on the floor. He was able to reach the knife now. Back up on his buttocks, more blood oozing out of his wounds, Ben inched toward Ansgar. The man had been able to clutch the knife in his back, but was unable to pull it free.

  “Here, take this, Sniper.”

  Ben brought the second knife down and forced it into Ansgar’s abdominal flesh. The man went rigid under Ben’s hand. He lifted the knife out as blood squirted up and stabbed Ansgar again in a different spot. Ben did this seven times before loss of blood and exhaustion stopped him.

  Ansgar vibrated under his hand. Ben blinked and stared down at Ansgar’s face. His eyes blinked erratically as his body went into seizures.

  The threat of Ansgar was over. Ben pushed off the man’s back but his legs wouldn’t support him. On his buttocks, he slid sideways until he was leaning against the counter by the cashier’s till. Only five feet separated him from the table where he was having lunch with his ex-girlfriend only ten minutes ago.

  “That escalated quickly,” he mumbled.

  Someone was at the side door. Boots pounded down on the café’s floor. They were coming in. The pain would stop very soon. He thought of his mother and the pain she went through in the end. He asked himself how much pain was coming in his future had he stayed alive? For the minute or two he had left, it wasn’t such a raw deal.

  “Ben Wilson,” a man shouted. “Hands on your head.”

  Ben raised his good hand over his head and wrapped his fingers on the butt of the toy gun taped to the back of his neck.

  Men in battle gear, like they were fresh out of a video game, surrounded him. He thought he recognized Detective Bryant in the middle.

  “On the floor,” came the command again. “Lie down.”

  Ben waited two more breaths. He wanted as many weapons trained on him as possible. When the dozen or so men formed a semi-circle around him and he felt it was the right time to die, he yanked the gun off his neck. The tape ripped like he tore off a bandage, but it was nothing to the mounting pain in his limbs where the butcher knife had done its work.

  Over his head, the gun came up. Men shouted something. One final warning. He aimed the weapon at them and closed his eyes.

  When the bullets came, he felt a thousand small punches. Like he had laid out on the grass in a hail storm as he’d done as a child.

  Then his hand snapped back violently.

  Someone had taken the gun.

  The hail stopped.

  He felt himself slipping down, the floor lubricated with his crimson soul. Boots pounded around him. A chaotic orchestra of noises assaulted him as he tried to blink the blood away. Light faded, noises swam in and out, pain throbbed and he knew his heart beat its last few measly rhythms.

  Someone touched his throat.

  “I feel a pulse,” a woman said.

  Someone else leaned close. He could feel their presence.

  Ben used up the last of his strength to open his eyes one final time.

  Detective Bryant bent over Ben’s face holding the toy gun.

  “Why?” Bryant asked, shaking the gun. He looked at it, then back to Ben. “Jessica cared about you. I liked you. Sarah told me why you did this. The teasing was harmless. It’s what guys do to each other.”

  Ben gasped. Liquid spit out of his mouth.

  “I remember you, Ben,” Bryant said. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But you should’ve called me out. I would’ve done right by you. I’m a good man now, Ben.” The noise around them drowned Bryant out. Then his voice came back in. “You didn’t have to do this but we saved your computers. We stopped the shutdown. We got everything, Ben.”

  Ben’s eyes widened as he gasped his last breath. That meant his game wouldn’t launch because the c
omputers would send the signal that they were still up and running. No one would know how to launch LEGACY: PAIN PACT after that.

  He tried to say, thwarted again, but his body wouldn’t respond, or take another breath.

  Then he floated away and all his pain ceased.

  Chapter 58

  “Did you know it was a toy gun?” Bryant asked.

  Sarah stared out through the window of the Starbucks on Yonge Street. Without taking her eyes off a distant minivan, she brought the cup to her mouth and sipped the dark roast. They had chosen this Starbucks for its location just off Highway 401. Aaron was scouting out new locations for another dojo. The insurance money was coming through soon and he needed a new location. Benjamin would heal and wanted back. His physio was performing katas in the dojo. Daniel had two youth classes he wanted to continue and Alex was teaching black belts an advanced form of some kind of gymnastic Shotokan karate.

  It would be good for everyone to get back to work. Especially Aaron. The wounds on his forearms were healing well. Other than mild skin damage, nothing was hurt too badly. He wasn’t upset when he heard a detailed explanation of what Alex had done to Ansgar while Alex extracted information from the hardened Navy Seal.

  Sarah let a smile crease her lips when she thought of Alex. What an amazing fighter. And he did that entire disappearing act for Aaron. To work on Ansgar where no one could interrupt him. To figure a way out of the mess they seemed to be sinking into. He had complained that Aaron and Sarah always had all the fun. Alex wanted a small piece of the renegade life and got what he asked for.

  She drank more of her coffee.

  “Sarah?” Bryant prodded.

  She faced him. “Sorry?”

  “I asked if you knew about the toy gun.”

  Sarah glanced at Aaron, then back to Bryant. “Would it have mattered? What Ansgar did to him … there was no coming back from that.”

  Bryant clapped his hands. “I guess that’s it then.”

  “Guess so.”

  She was willing to be professional with Bryant. There was no particular beef with him. Just that, at the core, he was the bully who pushed Ben Wilson to do what he did to so many people. Ben had been prepared to kill Bryant’s sister to get back at him. Sometimes the consequences for people’s actions are far greater than expected and often unfair. But sometimes people don’t realize just how much they hurt others.

  Sarah might not have a personal beef with the man, but she also had no love for him. Had he changed since high school? Was he different? Did he say those things to Ben as Ben died just to get the final jab in?

  Sarah would never know. That was the thing with Vivian’s new pact. If Sarah needed to know something, Vivian offered it freely. But if she didn’t need to know, information was withheld. Sarah couldn’t be given anything she wanted at any time, otherwise she would be all knowing and no one could play God on earth—even though hundreds of thousands of people tried that every single day.

  Bryant pushed his chair back. “I’ll leave you two alone then.”

  Sarah returned her gaze to the minivan across the street. Yonge Street was busy. It was a Saturday in Toronto and they were just north of the 401. People went about their business oblivious to what Aaron and Sarah had to talk about. Once Bryant left, she would break the news that she had to leave yet again.

  “Sarah?” Bryant turned back when he was a few feet away. “I got that no-fly list shit taken care of. Your name has been removed.”

  She smiled up at him. “Thanks.”

  “Found everything we needed on Ben’s computer. I personally called the authorities in Denmark to let them know there was a mistake. Told the Americans, too, as you hold an American passport. Thought they’d want to make sure it was out of their system.”

  “Good.”

  “You know, it’s funny.” He chortled.

  “What is?”

  She offered him a deadpan face. A week ago she was dead. Days before that, she thought Aaron was dead. It had been a rough week dealing with Vivian. Overall, she just wanted a night alone with Aaron. No more statements. No more police interviews. And no more questions how she knew what she knew about Ben Wilson. Telling them about Vivian didn’t fly with most of the cops she dealt with. To his credit Bryant listened because he got a call from a retired Toronto Detective named Waller, someone Sarah worked with years ago in Toronto when a group called the Rapturites were after her.

  Bryant moved a few steps closer to the table. “The Danes were flummoxed as to how you got away from them. They scoured the airport for days after. Watched camera footage. Did everything short of bringing the military in. Asked me how you did it.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know so I couldn’t tell them.” He stepped closer to the small table. “How did you do it?”

  “Does it matter now?” she asked.

  Bryant didn’t like that answer. “There is one more thing I have to ask, though.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We all know about your abilities. How you know stuff.” He brought his hands to his temples and shook them. “Something in there tells you things about people, places and the future.”

  “You’re moving toward a question. I can feel it.”

  He placed his hands back at his sides. “You told us who Ben was. Where he lived. His plans for my sister. We wired her and sent her in. Everything was exactly like you said. Since you’ve never met the man before, I’d call that psychic.”

  Sarah stared at him, her face expressionless.

  “Since you’re psychic, I have to ask. Did you know beforehand that Ben Wilson and Ansgar Holm would die in that vegan café?”

  Sarah didn’t flinch. She waited two breaths, then lied. “No.”

  Bryant waited three breaths, his eyes not leaving hers. This was a contest of wills she would not lose.

  He blinked.

  “It’s just,” Bryant said, “knowing beforehand would make you somewhat complicit in their deaths. We could’ve stopped Ben before he entered that café. We could’ve been told his weapon was a toy. If you knew any of that, then by withholding the information, you caused him to die.”

  He would’ve been dead inside six months anyway.

  “Understood,” was all she said, thinking of Darwin’s man Bruno in Billund.

  “Hey,” Aaron interrupted. “Is that really fair? Sarah doesn’t know everything. Only what her sister tells her.”

  “That’s fine. That’s what I told my superiors.”

  This was a lesson in what to tell the authorities and what to hold back. Or what to outright lie about. Sometimes it was for the greater good.

  Ben’s pain was over. He was in a better place now. Back with his mother. Ansgar was gone and wouldn’t be available for hire anymore. There were a lot of people in the world who were going to be left alone now that Ansgar and Ben were gone.

  Bryant glanced at Aaron and then walked away.

  “Bryant,” Sarah called after him.

  He stopped at the door and looked back.

  “I used Clara’s passport to get out of Denmark. Wore her clothes. Just walked by airport security and got on the plane.”

  Sarah lifted her cup and sipped from her coffee to signal that she was done talking.

  Bryant hesitated at the door, nodded, then stepped outside. He passed the window in front of her, placing sunglasses on his face, then disappeared where the window stopped.

  She would see him again very shortly. Once she was done in Kelowna, she had to come back to Toronto. Something was stirring on the horizon, but she couldn’t see the details yet. She only hoped he wasn’t such a prick the next time.

  “Were you being hard on him on purpose?” Aaron asked.

  Sarah turned to face Aaron. “Do I need to go easy on him? He’s a decent cop. Case solved. His sister’s life was spared. He’ll go his way, we’ll go ours.”

  “Fair enough. But why so serious? You okay?”

  She reached across the table and touched his hand. “I just want this time
with you. We’re both alive. We’re still young. Let’s go to our hotel room and enjoy our time together before I have to leave.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He frowned. “Why so soon?”