Nemesis (FBI Thriller 19)

“He’s dead now, his evil with him,” Savich said, and thought of how close she’d come to being his next victim. “As to the millions of dollars he’s got stashed in accounts in Switzerland, we’ll find them.

“You know what I can’t get over? Basara would still be alive, still be in business, if he’d used his money and his contacts to disappear when he had the chance. But he couldn’t accept losing. He needed someone to blame, and he picked you, Sherlock—a woman, no less—and made you into his nemesis.” He shook his head, felt the fear for her well up again from deep inside him, tamped it down. He kissed her, held her tightly. “Welcome home, for the twelfth time. You’re exhausted, sweetheart. You ready for bed?”

He was right, she’d been so tired she’d thought she would pass out, but not now. No, not now. She gave him a slow smile, took his hand, and led him to their bedroom. He was big and warm, and she loved him to the ends of the earth.

Savich stripped down to boxers and a T-shirt in under thirty seconds, but when he turned he saw she was lying in the middle of the bed, fully clothed, sound asleep. She never woke up when he undressed her, slipped her nightgown over her head. He looked at her beloved face for a very long time before he turned out the lights and went to sleep.

•   •   •

SAVICH DREAMED he was freezing. Frigid water was pouring over him, drenching his T-shirt and boxers, hitting his face. Powerful waves were slamming him back against something hard and unyielding—a rock. The water receded, only to roar back against him, pounding at him, freezing him to his bones. He tried to get away from the waves, but he couldn’t move. Thick ropes held him tight against a huge rock that jutted out from the sea. What sea?

He was dreaming he was strapped down to a rock? He pulled and jerked with all his strength against the ropes, tried to work his hands free from beneath the thick hemp, but he couldn’t. The ropes were wet from the freezing waves, and growing tighter.

It was no dream. It was Dalco.

Savich heard a loud sweeping noise and looked up to see a huge black eagle with an enormous wingspan circling above him. It swooped low until its black wings covered him, and it dug its beak directly into his side. The pain was so unspeakable he nearly passed out. The eagle pulled out its bloody beak and soared upward, then dove down at him again the next moment. Again it sent its beak into him, digging deeper, pulling and ripping, until he screamed from the horrendous pain. When the eagle pulled its beak out of his body again, Savich looked at its black opaque eyes. The eagle returned his stare, looked back down at him for several seconds. Its eyes weren’t opaque after all. Dalco was behind them.

The eagle sent its beak into his side yet again, burrowing deeper, hollowing him, gashing out parts of him. He nearly passed out. He caught himself. No, it was Dalco, he couldn’t let that madman win. He had to fight the pain, had to figure out what was happening. He was tied to a rock, couldn’t get free. A huge eagle was digging its beak into his side. What was this all about? Who was Dalco playing this time? Was he playing out the Prometheus myth with himself as the eagle? Zeus sent an eagle every day to tear out and eat Prometheus’s liver only to have it grow back again every night, and repeated the cycle endlessly, at least until Hercules saved him, eventually, maybe, depending on who was telling the story. It was Zeus’s punishment because Prometheus had dared to give mankind the gift of fire.

Dalco imagined himself as powerful as Zeus? Savich yelled, “What’s wrong, Dalco? Can’t you come up with anything original?”

The eagle sent a tearing cry into the heavens, but then it hovered above him, apparently in no hurry. Talking to it would do no good; the eagle wouldn’t talk back. And Dalco had seen to it he was physically helpless. He pictured Winkel’s Cave in his mind, focused as hard as he could on sending them both into the large chamber again, but nothing changed. He pictured Dalco standing on a huge alligator, lazily cruising through the green waters of the Everglades, its jaws slowly opening, its black eyes staring up at him. But he was still on the rock, the eagle above him. He pictured a purple sea, a wooden raft riding the waves, and he set Dalco on the raft, alone and in an open sea.

Nothing happened.

The relentless waves were still pounding him, washing into the open wound in his side. Remarkably, the water was so cold it numbed the pain, but for only an instant.

The eagle screamed as it dove at him again, covering Savich’s head with its wings, digging its beak deep into the gaping wound in his side. And again it lazily took flight, hovering over him, flapping its black wings, staring down at him, his blood dripping from its beak.