The Heart of a Renegade

He watched through his scopes as a third vehicle pulled into the parking lot and drew to a stop alongside the others. Four more men climbed out, assault rifles in hand, black coats fluttering in the cold wind.

Luke felt for his weapon. He had eight rounds in the magazine, one in the firing chamber, spare magazines in his pocket. Still, a 9-mm was no match against the kind of firepower those guys were packing. His best move was evasion, not engagement.

His muscles burned with tension as he watched the posse cross the parking lot and descend the stairs toward the boardwalk. One man remained guard at the base of the stairs and the other nine moved like black ghosts along the snowy boardwalk, making directly for Luke’s boathouse.

They would find his house empty within seconds and track their prints through the snow.

“Jess,” he whispered urgently. “We need to make a run for it. Now.”

She nodded.

He hauled her over the wall and they raced across the parking lot in a crouch, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by snow.

Gunshots suddenly peppered the air.

Luke lunged sideways, forcing Jessica down hard behind his SUV. He dragged her behind the wheel hub, covering her body with his own until he could identify the source of the shots. Another barrage of automatic fire rent the winter air. Luke winced. They were shooting up his place. They had to get out of here.

He reached up, quietly opened the passenger door to his SUV, motioned for her to get in. “The snow cover will shield you once you’re in,” he whispered.

He crept round to the driver’s side, dusted a small hole in the snow that had accumulated on the window, climbed into snow-covered cocoon, and eased the door closed. He watched through the small gap, aggression simmering inside him.

Luke didn’t like feeling this way. Taking a job personally was always a bad thing, it threatened the state of numbness he’d perfected over the last four years.

The booze had taken care of the first year after his wife’s death.

Then he’d quit drinking, clawing his way back out of moribund self-loathing, and beaten himself back into peak mental and physical shape with such sustained and brutal workouts that sleep had finally returned—the kind of sleep that came without booze. The kind of sleep that didn’t allow for thoughts or guilt. Or recurring nightmares.

Maybe in reaching this level of cold command over himself Luke had simply traded one coping mechanism for another, but what the hell—he was doing fine with it. It had saved his life. It had gotten him work with the FDS.

It had gotten him here, to Vancouver.

It had been a way to dull the pain that did not involve the bottom of a whiskey bottle and self-disgust. So why was he feeling things now?

He glanced at Jessica. It was her fault. She’d opened some damn Pandora’s box inside him.

She was shivering again, her frightened eyes fixed on him. She saw him as her last hope. He clenched his teeth and turned away. But before he could dwell on it, all nine men suddenly swarmed out of his boathouse and raced along the boardwalk toward the parking lot.

He tensed. “What the—”

An explosion whumped through air, then another, orange flames bursting out from his boathouse, spreading fast, fueled by some kind of accelerant. It took Luke a nanosecond to process what had just happened. His belongings, his photographs, his yacht, his home—every goddamn thing he owned—had just gone up in a giant ball of fire.

Rage erupted in his belly.

This was more than personal. These men had just declared war on him.

“Luke! What’s happening?” Jessica leaned over him, trying to see through his peephole. He shoved her away, opening his window wide. “Give me your camera.”

“What?”

“Just give it to me!”

He aimed the old Minolta out the window, focused on the fleeing men, clicked, zoomed in closer, clicked again and again, capturing their faces. He switched position and snapped the vehicles, zoomed closer, captured the plates.

He kept clicking as the three SUV’s fishtailed wildly out of the snowy parking lot and sped away. Fire alarms began to clang as flames crackled and popped. Another gut-hollowing whoosh sent shock waves through the air as the diesel fuel containers of his boat caught fire and blew.

Sirens began to scream. People raced out of the other boathouses, black silhouettes against white snow and hot raw flames, some diving into the frigid water to escape the blaze.

Staff and guests flocked from the nearby Granville Island Hotel. More alarms sounded as the fire spread quickly to the adjacent art school and another row of boats. More yachts exploded in balls of fire. Bedlam engulfed the island as Luke silently handed Jessica her camera and started the engine.

“Are you strapped in?” His voice was tight.

She fumbled with the buckle and once he saw she was secure, he flipped on the windshield wipers and hit the gas. He swerved out of the parking lot, racing away from the scene as an army of fire engines, ambulances and police vehicles converged on the pandemonium behind them.

Luke slowed his vehicle as they approached the bridge onramp. Snow was turning to slush and it would be light in a few hours. They needed to get out of the city before that happened.

“What now?” she asked in a thin voice.

He inhaled deeply, wishing he’d never met her. “Now,” he said flatly, “we really are in the same boat, Jess.”

“Where are we going?” He could hear despair in her voice and guilt stirred in him.

“Someplace out of the city,” he said. “Somewhere I can hand you over to the CIA before—” he cut it. Fell silent.

“Before I do any more damage. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“The damage is done, Jess. There’s no going back. Now we deal with the road ahead. Together.” Unfortunately.

And he was going to make sure he got it over with as quickly as possible, he thought as he cranked up the heater to warm her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

His eyes cut sharply to hers and he saw the telltale glisten of tears. He looked away quickly. He really needed to get away from her soon. Before he let her down. Before he let himself down.

“Dry your hair,” he said curtly in an effort to distract her. “Turn up the fan on your side.”

He pulled off the road about twenty minutes later, just before they hit the notorious Sea to Sky Highway, and changed the license plates.

Jessica studied Luke’s profile as he fiddled with the car radio. The meteorologist was warning of three back-to-back storm fronts, the first of which would hit within the hour. It was almost seven in the morning, yet the sky was still an ominous black. Already a mounting wind was buffeting their vehicle as they negotiated the twisting road that hugged cliffs above a sheer drop to the ocean.

Luke hadn’t said a word since they’d hit this dangerous stretch of road, but Jessica could sense the anger rolling off him in waves. She felt absolutely terrible that he’d lost his house. She was especially torn by the destruction of those haunting black-and-white images that had graced his walls.

“Luke, I really am sorry for the loss of your home,” she said, unable to stop herself.

His hands tightened on the wheel. “Don’t be,” he said. “Not your fault.”

“It is my fault. If it wasn’t for me, Stephanie and Giles would be alive, you’d still have your—”

“You’re thinking like a victim, Jess.” His voice was clipped. “You did nothing to deserve this.”