Better Off Dead. Meryl Sawyer

far end. She spotted the wrought-iron lantern shining at his front door. Like a beacon the light sent a burst of adrenaline through her. Somehow she broke into a sprint.

      She charged through the arched adobe gateway and up the steps of the hacienda built almost two hundred years earlier. Cringing with pain, a wild story for Romero forming in her brain, her world suddenly pitched from side to side, then halted with a mind-numbing jolt.

      The front door was wide-open.

      “Romero,” she cried out before she could stop herself.

      What if the woman was inside? It had been a man with the flashlight. He couldn’t have beaten her here. More important, how did they know about Romero?

      Zachary bounded out of the house. The soft lantern light revealed fresh red blood on the retriever’s paws. A suffocating wave of terror enveloped her like a vision of hell.

      “Please, please,” she whispered, “don’t let them have hurt Romero.”

      Common sense said to run, but she refused to desert her friend. She tiptoed into the house and was met with dead silence. A single lamp was on in the living room Romero had so meticulously decorated with furnishings from the Spanish Colonial period.

      The only sound was the click-click of Zachary’s nails against the tile floor. The aroma of blue corn enchiladas filled the air. She inched forward. Each ragged breath brought white-hot pain from her ribs.

      In the dining room, she called out, “Romero, are you there?”

      No answer.

      She rounded the corner into the kitchen. Sprawled on the floor in a puddle of blood and bloody pawprints, Romero’s dark eyes stared up at the ceiling.

      “Oh, God, no!”

      She staggered forward and fell to her knees, scraping them on the tile. Someone—it had to be the woman—had slit Romero’s throat. Anger like invisible lightning arced through her.

      Why? Why? Why?

      Why kill an innocent man? It was incomprehensible. She knew Rutherford and Ames were responsible. Corporate piranhas, they let nothing and no one get in their way.

      In a heartbeat the anger drained from her. They had more money, more resources than she did. They were able to get around WITSEC. What could she possibly do?

      “Come and get me,” she called out. “I’m ready to die.”

      It was true. She’d been living in hell for over a year. Tyler had married another woman. She couldn’t see her sister or niece, her only family. The way things were going her purgatory seemed endless.

      Now this.

      A kind, wonderful man had befriended her. He’d paid for his trouble with his life. She hoped the woman hadn’t tortured him somehow before she put the blade to his throat.

      Tears sparkled on her lashes, and then blurred her vision as she waited to die. Seconds passed. The house was eerily still except for the low hum of the refrigerator. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. With a broad swipe of his tongue, Zach licked her face.

      This could mean only one thing. The woman was searching for her elsewhere. They may have thought she had car keys in her pocket or had gotten a ride or that she had gone to the police station.

      Hang on, she thought. Those bastards had money and would kill anyone who got in their way, but she had something more important. Truth was on her side. She had to get away and live to testify.

      She reached over to close Romero’s eyes. To his left, hidden by the shadow from the kitchen table was a message scrawled on the cabinet in blood.

      Lindsey

      Kill

      me

      “What?”

      The woman must have dipped Romero’s finger in his own blood. The bile rose up in the back of her throat. She prayed the poor man had been dead by then.

      There was a purpose to his death, she decided. They’d slit his throat to frame her for his murder. Why, when they wanted to kill her? It took a second for her to realize the killers hadn’t a clue where she was, and they wanted more manpower in finding her. What better way than to have the police after her, as well?

      “I’m sorry,” she told Romero’s lifeless body. “I knew better than to make a friend. Forgive me.”

      With her fingertip she gently closed Romero’s eyes. She kneeled beside him and said the Irish Blessing just as she had when each of her parents had been lowered into their graves.

      May the road rise up to meet you,

      May the wind always be at your back

      May the sun shine upon your face

      The rains fall soft upon your fields

      And, until we meet again,

      May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Provo, Turks and Caicos Islands

      THE THATCHED ROOF BAR sloped downward, supported at the four corners by bamboo poles. The open-air bar had no walls and overlooked the beach a few feet away.

      Chad wished he were with a babe. There were plenty of them around, wearing skimpy suits that would have given a statue an erection, but there you go. He was spending his time with a nerd and the sophisticated piece of equipment Danson wanted him to test.

      Chad accessed the Department of Defense satellite, inputting his SAP/SAR code into a device that reminded him of a handheld GPS.

      Scan Retina appeared on the screen.

      “What in hell am I supposed to do?” he asked Danson.

      “Hold it up to your eye,” Danson replied. “The satellite will receive an image of your retina and relay it to the scanner in the DOD database.”

      “Won’t work. I had my iris scanned when I was testing for you guys but not my retina.”

      Danson chuckled, obviously pleased with himself. “A scan of your iris photographs your retina, as well.”

      Chad held up the device to his right eye. He knew only too well that biometric sensors like fingerprint scans, voice recognition, and iris scans were popular at high-security facilities.

      “What was wrong with an iris scan?” he asked.

      “Too many guys work with saws or welding equipment. One tiny piece of sawdust you don’t even feel gets embedded in the iris. Next thing you know that guy’s scan comes up invalid. You’ll only have to do this iris thing once to put yourself into the system to do the testing. In the field, it’s too tricky.”

      “Gotcha.” Too-sensitive equipment was a nuisance, especially in the field. The device now read Access Granted.

      “Zoom down on us.”

      Chad punched in their lat/long coordinates. The satellite camera rotated, moving from central Africa to Turks and Caicos. He pressed the zoom button and two small splashes of infrared appeared on the blue screen. It was impossible to tell what the blotches were but the screen read Humans.

      “I’ll be damned. Seems to work.” He tapped in new coordinates so the satellite’s camera focused on the dog sleeping near a beach cabana.

      A second later the screen read Canine.

      “This will revolutionize satellite surveillance,” Danson whispered.

      “If it doesn’t have any bugs.”

      “True, true. We thought the iris scan was the answer until we discovered that one tiny flaw. Test this in every situation. Let’s make sure it’s perfect before we go into production.”

      The