Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

will tell me everything you know about my father’s death. I never bought the suicide story.”
    “Danny, I told you …”
    Danny pulled Booker off the tree and slammed him against it again. “You will tell me everything, Booker. Like you said, I killed an FBI agent. What makes you think that I won’t add a senator to that list?”
    -
    Sydney had retreated far enough away from Danny and the senator to be sure she could neither be seen nor heard. She wandered off the jogging path and carefully picked her way through Asian jasmine and ruellia plants that swallowed her feet to the ankles. She ducked from pine tree to pine tree until she had flanked the two men, approximately twenty yards away. She stopped behind one towering pine and stood tall. She edged one eye out to see Danny holding the senator up against a tree. She also saw the shiny blade up against Halsey’s throat.
    Pain suddenly flared in both of Sydney’s ankles. She looked down to see that she was standing in a fire ant bed. Several ants had already made their way up her sneakers and were attacking her bare skin. She took a few steps back to a bald patch of dirt and bent down to swipe away the ants. As she did, she heard a strange sound. She looked up just in time to see the senator’s body spill down the tree trunk and collapse in the dirt.

Chapter 39
    Danny sprinted for cover. He found it behind the root ball of a fallen pine tree. He didn’t know where the shot came from, but he knew it was meant for him. If Booker hadn’t shoved back against him, the bullet would have been in him instead of in Booker right now.
    His mind raced. Was it Booker’s bodyguards? If he had any, they were nowhere to be found at the tennis court. Did Jimmy or one of the others call them? Could it be the police? No way. Cops wouldn’t fire without warning first .
    Danny looked at Booker, who was doubled over on the ground. He wasn’t moving. There was no activity in the woods around him. If the shot had come from a bodyguard then he would have been administering aid to Booker by now.
    It had to be the guards from the monastery .
    Danny squinted through the endless sea of trees around him. Military men are prepared , he thought. Besides using silencers, they would be camouflaged among the trees. They also had another advantage. They knew where Danny was. He had to move.
    He churned through ten yards of thick brush toward the jogging path. He could not only hear the words of his police training officers in his ear, but he could see the absoluteness in their faces as they drilled their commands into his head.
    During flight, do not look around for your opponent’s position. That will only slow you down. Keep your eyes on the prize and haul ass.
    Danny couldn’t help himself. He searched the woods in every direction. But he wasn’t looking for his opponents. Instead, he was searching for Sydney.
    He found her as his feet hit the jogging trail. He ran through it and found cover behind a soaring pine tree. He eased one eye around it and spotted her. She was to his left, a good fifteen yards away, squatting behind another pine tree. She jumped as soon as she saw Danny notice her. He could instantly read her thoughts.
    Why did you kill the senator?
    Danny wanted to scream his innocence to her, but another gunshot did it for him. Slivers of bark flew into his eye, as the bullet bored into the tree he used for cover. As he tried blinking out the shards, the whispered hiss from the gun’s silencer replayed in his head. It was close. Too close.
    He rolled toward Sydney and held up three fingers. “We move on three,” he mouthed. Danny pointed toward the jogging trail and then in the direction of the exit. Sydney nodded.
    Danny looked in the direction of the sound he heard from the gun. He saw nothing. Fuck it , he thought and jabbed each finger in the air.
    One.
    Two.
    Three.
    He rolled off the tree and ran. He kept his injured eye shut as he sped along the jogging trial. By now, Sydney was well out ahead of him, and there was no way that she would know where to stop. Danny’s adrenaline surged. He kicked his legs faster. He tore through the S curves that switched back and forth through the trees. He finally caught up to Sydney just as she reached the wall he remembered from his past visits.
    Danny grabbed her shoulder. “Stop!” Sydney threw on the brakes. “Over the wall!” he yelled as he grabbed her hips and boosted her up. She scaled over it and disappeared on