AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But during Luisa’s shift—11 p.m. to 7 a.m.—the crowds clear out and the businesses close. The sticky heat cools off to a reasonable temperature. The air becomes quiet and peaceful. As morning approaches, she can hear the muffled traffic of the city and the melody of birdsong.
But Luisa’s shift isn’t a time to relax. She’s vigilant about her job. She keeps an eye out for burglars and vandals. Anyone up to no good. She mixes up her routine, never repeating the same route through the pathways. She prides herself on upholding her motto: when the River Walk area is empty, it’s vulnerable. That’s when she keeps it safe.
Luisa leans over the railing, looking down at the canal. A leaf drifts by on the current. She yawns. She’s got thirty more minutes until her replacements come and she can go home, pull the blackout curtains in her bedroom, and go to sleep as the rest of the city is waking up.
She hears the whine of a motor and looks down the canal to see a motorcycle riding on the paved pathway. He’s not going fast, just creeping along, but day or night no motorized vehicles are allowed. The River Walk is strictly for pedestrians.
The biker stops and parks the bike, putting the kickstand down and dismounting. Helmet on, visor down, he faces a storefront—Gardiner’s Gems and Jewels—standing completely still.
As the crow flies, the biker’s location on the other side of the canal is only about twenty-five feet distant, but to get to him, she’d have to run down the path, cross a bridge a good twenty yards away, then run back.
“Excuse me!” she calls out to him across the water. “You can’t have that motorcycle up here.”
The man turns and looks at her. He’s dressed head to toe in black motorcycle gear. His face is obscured by the visor of his helmet. There’s a duffel bag strap slung across his body, from his waist to the opposite shoulder. The bag hangs with the weight of a compact but heavy object. Could be a tool, like a power drill. Could be a gun—larger than a pistol, smaller than a shotgun or rifle.
She tells herself to be careful.
“Sir, can you acknowledge that I’m speaking to you?” Luisa calls.
He doesn’t.
The bike is some kind of crotch rocket, black and sleek and probably fast as hell once it’s out on the open road. Why anyone would want to drive it on the River Walk is beyond her.
“Wait there,” Luisa says, losing her patience. “I’m coming over.”
The man doesn’t move as Luisa heads down toward the bridge. She keeps turning her head to watch the man as she walks away. Then she notices something else. One of the tour boats is floating down the canal. Only the tours don’t start for at least another hour.
And, besides, this boat is empty.
No passengers.
No pilot.
The motor is idling, just enough to keep the little skiff crawling down the waterway. Luisa climbs up on the bridge. From the vantage point at the top of the arched structure, she looks up and down the canals and along the tributaries she can see other boats drifting.
What the heck is going on?she thinks.
Suddenly, an explosion splits the quiet, as quick and as loud as a clap of thunder. Her body tenses and she whirls around to discover a cloud of smoke drifting up from the next bend in the waterway. She takes off running in the direction of the smoke, which is already dissipating. With one hand, she draws her service weapon. With the other, she shouts into her police radio. Somewhere in the area, an alarm is going off.
As she sprints, she passes by another tour boat floating riderless in the canal. She glances down. Lying on one of the floorboards is a reddish tube, spraying sparks. She thinks for an instant that maybe it’s a flare but there aren’t quite enough sparks. It looks more like a big firecracker.
Or a stick of dynamite.
And the wick has burned down almost to nothing.
CHAPTER 31
LUISA DUCKS AWAY from the edge of the canal just as the dynamite detonates.
She feels a concussive pressure in her chest, like the thump of a bass drum in a rock concert, but the force isn’t enough to knock her over. Chunks of wood and droplets of water rain down around her, and a pillar of smoke pours into the air.
Her ears are ringing, and Luisa can hardly hear her own voice as she shouts into the radio.
She steps back over to the edge, waving her hand through the smoke, and sees water rising through a basketball-sized hole in the floor of the boat. The depth is only a few feet, so it won’t take long for the boat to rest on the bottom. Luckily, it’s not on fire.
Luisa shakes her head, tries to clear her mind. Too much is happening at once. Through the ringing in her ears, she can make out more alarms and the whine of a motorcycle.
She looks down the canal, in the direction of the first explosion, and sees another person identically dressed in black motorcycle gear and helmet. This person stands at the boat launch and holds a stick of dynamite in one hand, a lighter in the other.
