and wealthy constituents, sipping champagne and talking idly about a bright future while Zero searched the coast of Jacksonville for his estranged daughter who, last time he’d seen her, had called the police on him and shouted that she never wanted to see him again.
“Come on, Sara,” he muttered to the ether as he flicked the headlights on. “Give me something. Help me find you. There must be a…”
He trailed off as he realized his mistake. He’d been searching public beaches. Popular beaches. But Kate’s beach had been small and sparsely visited. And Sara had a thousand dollars’ worth of drugs. She wouldn’t want to be where people were.
He pulled over to the side of the road and opened the browser on his phone. He frantically searched for less popular beaches, rocky beaches, places that people didn’t often go. It was a hard search, and it didn’t feel like he was making progress until he touched the “images” tab and then he saw it—
A beach that looked remarkably like Kate’s beach. As if it had been molded from his own memory.
Zero headed there at about eighty miles an hour, not caring about police or traffic laws or even other drivers as he swerved around cars going far too slow, people casually heading home for the night and not concerned that their daughter might be dead in the surf somewhere.
He skidded into the tiny gravel parking lot and slammed his brakes when he saw it. A blue sedan, the only car in the lot, parked at the farthest end. Night had fallen, so he left the headlights on and put the Escalade in park right there in the middle of the lot, and he jumped out and ran over to the sedan.
He threw the back door open.
And there she was, looking like both heaven and hell: his baby girl, his youngest daughter, pale-skinned and beautiful, lying prostrate in the backseat of a car with her eyes glazed and half-opened, pills scattered around the floor below her.
Zero immediately checked for a pulse. It was there, though slow. Then he tilted her head back and made sure her airway was clear. He knew that most overdose deaths were the result of blocked airways that resulted in respiratory failure and eventually cardiac arrest.
But she was breathing, albeit shallowly.
“Sara?” he said hoarsely in her face. “Sara?”
She didn’t answer. He hefted her out of the car and held her upright. She was unable to stand on her own two feet.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her. And then he stuck two fingers down her throat.
She retched involuntarily, then again, and vomited into the parking lot. She coughed and sputtered while he held her and told her, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
He put her in the Escalade, leaving the doors of the sedan still open with pills all over the seats, and drove two miles until he found a convenience store. He bought two liters of water with a twenty and didn’t stick around for his change.
There in the parking lot of a Florida gas station, he sat with her in the back seat, her head in his lap as he stroked her hair, feeding her small amounts of water and watching for any signs that he should bring her to an emergency room. Her pupils were dilated, but her airways were open and her pulse was slowly returning to normal. Her fingers were twitching slightly, but when he slipped his hand into them they closed around his. Zero held back tears, remembering when she was just a baby, when he’d hold her in his lap and her tiny fingers would clench his.
He lost track of time sitting there with her. The next time he glanced up at the clock he saw that more than two hours had gone by.
And then she blinked, and moaned slightly, and said: “Daddy?”
“Yeah.” His voice came out a whisper. “It’s me.”
“Is this real?” she asked, her voice floating to him dreamily.
“It’s real,” he told her. “I’m here, and I’m going to take you home. I’m going to take you away from here. I’m going to take care of you… even if you hate me for it.”
“Okay,” she agreed softly.
And eventually he relaxed enough to realize that the danger had passed. Sara fell asleep and Zero slid into the front seat of the SUV. He couldn’t put her on a plane in this state, but he could drive back, through the night if he had to. Maria would get rid of the vehicle for him, no questions asked. And the local authorities would be paying a visit to the dealer, Ike.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, curled in the backseat with her knees drawn up and her cheek on the soft leather, looking peaceful but vulnerable.
She needs you.
And he needed to be needed.
CHAPTER ONE
“You ready for this?” Alan Reidigger asked, his voice low as he checked the magazine on the black Glock in his meaty fist. He and Zero had their backs to a plywood structure, keeping hidden and obscured by the darkness. It was almost too dark to see, but Zero knew that in moments the whole place would be lit up like the Fourth of July.
“Always ready,” Zero whispered back. He held a Ruger LC9 in his left hand, a small silver pistol with a nine-round mag, as he flexed the fingers of his right. He had to stay cognizant of the injury he’d sustained almost two years earlier, when a steel anchor had crushed his hand to the point of uselessness. Three surgeries and several months of physical therapy later, he had regained most of its operation, despite permanent nerve damage. He could fire a gun but his aim tended to track to the left, a minor annoyance that he’d been working to overcome.
“I’ll go left,” Reidigger laid out, “and clear the causeway. You go right. Keep your eyes up and watch your six. I bet there’s a surprise or two waiting for us.”
Zero grinned. “Oh, are you calling the shots now, part-timer?”
“Just try to keep up, old man.” Reidigger returned the grin, his lips curling behind the thick beard that obscured the lower half of his face. “Ready? Let’s go.”
With the simple, whispered command they both shoved off from the plywood façade behind them and split off. Zero brought the Ruger up, its barrel following his line of sight as he slipped around the dark corner and stole down a narrow alley.
At first it was just silence and darkness, barely a sound in the cavernous space. Zero had to remind his muscles to keep from tensing, to stay loose and not slow down his reaction speed.
This is just like all the other times, he told himself. You’ve done this before.
Then—lights exploded to his right, a severe and jarring series of flashes. A muzzle flare, accompanied by the deafening report of gunfire. Zero threw himself forward and tucked into a roll, coming up on one knee. The figure was barely more than a silhouette, but he could see enough to squeeze off two shots that connected with the silhouette at center mass.
Still got it. He climbed to his feet but stayed low, moving forward in a crouch. Eyes up. Watch your six… He whirled around just in time to see another dark figure sliding into view, cutting off the path behind him. Zero dropped himself backward, landing on his rear even as he popped off two more shots. He heard projectiles whistle right over his head, practically felt them ruffle his hair. Both his shots found home, one in the figure’s torso and the second to
