White Ginger (30 page)

“What happened?” she gasped.

He stared at her. Rain dripped off the end of his nose “Bang, bang . . . bang, bang . . . BOOM!” He cocked his head and seemed to gather his thoughts. “I couldn't see anything in this ditch. Bullets were flying, and shit was blowing up. The explosion knocked me on my ass. Something plowed into my arm.”

She looked at his arm, which hung at his side.

“The last thing I saw was Race stepping out from behind a tree to shoot at me.” Her words felt disembodied, as if she were observing someone else speak.

He looked startled and turned to lean against the hood of the car. “Well, I guess that answers the question as to whether or not we can trust him.” He raised the gun in his hand. “I hate killing pretty men. It seems such a waste.”

Bai's hand reached out toward Lee. “How bad is the arm?”

He shifted around to put the injury out of her reach. “It's broken.” He caught himself and turned back to her. “Sorry. I'm a little out of sorts. Intense pain does that to me.”

“Maybe I can help,” she offered. “Do you want me to strap it to your side?”

He took a step back to look at her warily. “I'd rather you found some other small animal to torture. I'll have it set when we get out of here. Speaking of which, now seems like a good time to leave—before somebody figures out we're still alive and finishes the job.”

She shook her head. “I can't leave yet. I need to find Race. I need to find out what's going on.” She pointed at the driver's side tire that rested against the side of the ditch. “That looks like a bullet hole. I don't think Race was trying to kill me.”

Annoyed by her stubborn refusal, he glared at her. “‘Of all the stratagems, to know when to quit is the best.'”

“Yeah, well, you know me. I never know when to quit.”

She turned away to look for a way out of the ditch.

“I think sticking around here is a really, really bad idea,” he argued. “We have a pretty good idea that Benny's dead. That was his hand, wasn't it?”

She turned around to look at him. “The hand was wearing his class ring. I think we can safely assume Benny is dead.”

She realized he was making sense. They were obviously out-gunned and out-maneuvered. Lee was wounded, and Elizabeth's car was history.

“Don't you think maybe we should quit while we're behind?” he said.

“Your objection is noted, but I have to find out if Race is still alive. And I have to find out what the hell happened here. I can't leave without answers. It isn't in my nature.”

She regarded the tightness of his jaw and decided to temper her answer. “As soon as I get some answers we'll scurry back down this ditch like the scared, drowned rats we are. I promise. In the meantime, let's find a way out of this slimy hole.”

The car was slippery with water and mud. The chassis tilted into the ditch. She managed to scramble up the hood of the car and use the side of the sedan as a platform while hanging on to some scrubby plants that grew along the gully. Using the plants as a screen, she inched up to survey the road. Lee climbed gingerly up beside her to see for himself what the terrain looked like.

The area outside the ditch looked like a war zone. Small fires burned here and there on the wet ground. Rain helped dampen flames that sputtered and sizzled. Tree sap popped like firecrackers. Branches burned brightly in a twenty-foot radius around the spot where Benny's car had been sitting.

The old Mercedes was a charred mass of crumpled metal, a twisted pretzel. Nearby oaks had been stripped naked. Pale trunks stood stark against the backdrop of a gray sky.

The area of devastation extended well past where Bai leaned against the side of the trench. The ditch had protected her from the brunt of the blast. Even so, the back windshield of the Beamer had been blown into the backseat, while the trunk looked as if it had been peppered with shotgun blasts from debris thrown against the thin metal panels.

Her eyes tracked to the last place she'd seen Race. She couldn't find him. Then she saw something stirring. A mound of dirt with branches and leaves shifted to reveal a person.

She pointed to where he was lying next to a large oak. “It's Race, and he's hurt.”

Lee turned to stare at her. “What do you want to do?”

They were soaked to the skin and splattered with mud. Lee had only one good arm. She looked back at Race lying on the wet ground and came to a decision. “I'm not leaving him like that.”

The look on Lee's face was incredulous. “Are you sure he wasn't trying to kill you?”

“Look around,” she insisted, gesturing with her arm. “Where would I be if I'd been caught by the blast when Benny's car exploded?”

He looked around with a conflicted expression on his face.

“He shot my tire out, Lee. If he'd wanted to kill me he would have shot me in the head. But he didn't. He shot my tire. He wanted me in the ditch. He saved my life.”

Lee looked at the devastation on the road and the relative safety of the trench. “Shit!” he swore. “I was just getting used to hating the guy.”

She nodded her head toward the other side of the road. “Cover me while I see how badly he's hurt.”

Lee didn't look happy with her plan but nodded in agreement. “All right, but if somebody starts shooting, you find a tree to hide behind and forget about him. You can't help him if you're dead.”

She shoved her gun back into its holster and scrambled up the side of the muddy ditch by grabbing hold of burnt manzanita bushes. Using the blackened scrub for cover, she crawled toward the road on all fours before crouching to sprint across the dirt track and into the trees on the other side.

Nobody shot at her—a good sign. Playing it safe, she scrambled from tree to tree to maintain cover as she worked her way toward Race. When she finally got to him, she slid down into the mud next to him. She stayed low as she brushed branches, dirt, and leaves away.

He lay face-down. His cap was missing, and there was a cut on his temple where something had sliced him. The gash looked deep. Blood ran from the wound. She rolled him over slowly to look for other injuries. He moaned. His eyes blinked open to look at her.

“Shooter . . . on the ridge,” he said haltingly. “Think I got him . . . not sure.” He blinked some more. His eyes were dilated. She feared he had a concussion or possibly something worse.

She got on her knees to unsnap his vest. She pulled open his shirt to examine his chest and felt his back for injuries. There wasn't any blood. When she checked his legs she found more reason for concern. He had a laceration on his inner thigh that bled profusely.

“You're bleeding,” she said to him as she pulled off her belt to use as a tourniquet. A snapping branch startled her. She jerked around reflexively. Lee stood over her with his gun in his good hand as he watched the surrounding woods.

“I got tired of waiting for you,” he said, as if she were somehow to blame. “How bad is he?”

“I can't tell.” She pulled the belt tight around Race's thigh. “Do you have any signal here with that super phone you carry?”

He put his gun in his waistband and pulled the phone out of his pocket to look at it. “We'll never know.” His voice was dismal. “It seems this particular model isn't waterproof. It must have drowned in the ditch when the explosion flattened me.”

Race raised a hand, and then seemed to forget what he was going to say. Bai looked down at him. He smiled.

“You're so pretty,” he said, his eyes closing.

“Head wound must have caused brain damage,” Lee observed dryly.

“Men pick the strangest times to get romantic,” she observed as she fished her phone out of her pocket.

The phone was dry but had no signal. She started looking through Race's vest, hoping he had a phone that worked. She found pain medication in a first-aid kit—codeine and an ampule of morphine.

She handed the codeine to Lee. “For the arm.”

He looked at the drugs, nodded in appreciation, and downed the pills without water.

“I like him better already,” he said grudgingly.

She finally found a phone tucked into a pocket on the inside of Race's vest. It was an odd-looking phone—old-fashioned and bigger than the one she carried. She opened it up to look at it.

“Can I see that?”

Lee took possession of the phone. He looked at it for several seconds. His face scrunched up as he looked down at Race then back at the phone.

“Does it have a signal?” she asked.

“Yes, I have no doubt it has a signal. It's a government-issue satellite phone. The only problem with this phone is that once you push this button, this place will be crawling with cops. It's your call, both literally and figuratively.”

He handed the phone back to her with a look of disappointment. It took her a moment to register what he was saying. Race had lied to her. He was a federal agent. She didn't know whether to hit him for lying to her or kiss him for saving her life. At the moment, she wanted to do both.

She momentarily debated whether or not to make the call. In the end, she didn't really see any choice in the matter. Race needed medical attention. He might die if she procrastinated.

She took a deep breath and pushed the first speed-dial button.

The answering voice was male and spoke in a clipped tone. “Special Agent Jim McKay.”

She hesitated. As a triad affiliate, she had ample experience with being questioned by federal agents. She'd made a habit of avoiding them whenever possible. Old habits were hard to break.

“Who is this? Identify yourself.”

“You don't know me,” she said haltingly. “You have a man down with serious injuries. Send help.”

“Who is this?” the agent repeated.

“My name is Bai Jiang. I'm about three miles south of the town of Folsom on a dirt track that's supposed to be the Golden Heights subdivision, but strangely enough isn't. The man with the injuries is known to me as John Race. I'm not sure whether or not that's his real name.”

She looked down at Race. He was still unconscious. There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“Hello, is anybody still there?” she asked, fearing the connection might have been lost.

Agent McKay came back on the line. “Just hold on. Keep the line open and don't hang up. I'm sending help. How bad are his injuries?”

“I'm not a doctor,” she said sharply, losing patience, “but his wounds look serious to me. He got caught in a blast from a car bomb. I have a tourniquet on his leg, and he has another wound to his scalp.”

“It's all right. Don't panic. We have help on the way. Just stay put until we get there, and please keep this line open. We're using it to GPS your location to the medevac helicopter. We also have ground units in transit to your location. What else can you tell me?”

“I'm not panicking,” she replied in a surly voice. “This is me being angry. Somebody was shooting at us. Then they tried to blow us up with a car bomb. It's been a really bad day.”

She was dangerously close to telling Special Agent Jim McKay to stuff it.

“Are you under fire?” he asked, his voice harried.

“Nobody's shooting at us at the moment. Maybe the explosion scared them off, or maybe your agent took care of them. He said a shooter was on the ridge.”

There wasn't any response, so she guessed Agent McKay was tired of talking to her. She lowered the phone but kept it gripped in her hand. A few minutes later, she could hear sirens in the distance. It was another ten minutes before a fire truck came lumbering down the muddy road with a half dozen police cars trailing behind.

While she watched the procession slowly make its way toward her, she became distracted by the sound of beating helicopter blades. Dropping down from the rain-drenched sky was a red and white Life Flight copter. It hovered as the pilot looked for the best place to land before setting down in the middle of the road about a hundred feet away. Three people jumped from the cockpit of the medevac unit to run toward them.

The fire engine came alongside and stopped. Firemen were the first to reach Race, but they stood back when they saw the medical personnel from the helicopter approaching. Everyone was asking questions at once. She ignored them as she watched the medical team working on Race.

The medics strapped him on a board, then lifted him onto a gurney before racing him toward the waiting helicopter. Within moments, he was airborne.

Lee and Bai were left surrounded by curious police officers and solicitous firemen. The police asked for identification and demanded an explanation as to exactly what had taken place while arguing among themselves as to who had jurisdiction. Firemen wrapped them in blankets and offered hot coffee.

She had forgotten she still held Race's phone until she heard it squawking. She put the phone to her ear. “Is anybody there? What's happening?”