Part 71 (1/2)

Chapter 36.

Annja wiped the grit from her face. Her hand came away moist with the tears that had been trying to flush her eyes. And then her vision finally cleared and she could see at last.

Tom's body lay in a crumpled heap about fifteen feet away, a pool of blood staining the ground beneath him. Annja's sword jutted out of the tree trunk nearby.

”I missed,” she said, confused.

”I didn't,” a voice said from behind her.

She turned and saw Jenny standing there with David's gun in her hands.

Annja smiled weakly. ”Great timing.”

Jenny nodded. ”Well, life has always been about timing, hasn't it? You just have to know when to do the things you need to do.”

Annja got to her feet. ”The b.a.s.t.a.r.d threw sand into my face. It got into my eyes and I couldn't see a thing.”

”You okay now?”

Annja wiped her face on her sleeve some more. ”I think so.”

”He might have killed you,” Jenny said.

Annja looked at Tom. There was a neat hole in the center of his forehead. ”You made an incredible shot for someone who's never used a gun before.”

”What makes you think I've never used a gun?” Jenny asked.

Annja shrugged. ”I just thought you hadn't. You never seemed comfortable around them.”

”Well, not when Tom was aiming that huge cannon at us from the front seat of his truck. I don't think anyone would be cool in that situation. Except maybe for the great Annja Creed.”

Annja shook her head. ”I'm not great.” She checked Tom's pulse but he was already dead. ”What did you do with Sheila?”

Jenny pointed over her shoulder. ”Back at the cave. I broke her neck.”

”How'd you manage that?”

Jenny grinned. ”Just a little trick I picked up along the road of life. A single woman needs to know how to take care of herself. Nothing to it, really. You just step up, elbow them in the face and then loop your arm and-”

Annja held up her hand. ”I get it.”

Jenny smiled. ”So they're both out of the way now. At last.”

”That means we can get the h.e.l.l out of here,” Annja said. ”I'm buying the first drink at the airport.”

But Jenny wasn't smiling anymore. ”What about the bodies?”

Annja glanced back. The thought of cleaning up two more corpses was appalling. But she couldn't just leave them where they were. They'd get ravaged by the forest animals. And if they didn't explain themselves to the police-the real police-there was a chance they'd be implicated in some type of murder charge.

Jenny was right. They had to clean things up.