by Cindy Dees
“Ready to blow this Popsicle stand?” Gunner asked gently.
“Is it safe to go outside?”
“Probably, but we’re going to assume otherwise for now and be ultra cautious.”
Chas stepped back out of Gunner’s hug, startled at how bereft he felt. Good golly Miss Molly, he was a mess.
“How did you unlock that office door?” he demanded as he shifted the baby in his arms and followed Gunner out into the main storeroom.
Gunner shrugged. “It was a simple interior lock. Used the tip of my knife to turn the lock mechanism from the outside.”
Belatedly, he realized Gunner was holding a bigass knife in his right hand. The blade was squarish and black and looked positively lethal. He watched as Gunner slipped the blade into an ankle sheath and pulled his pant leg down over it. He was shocked at how comforting the mere presence of another human being was. Particularly a big, capable, armed one.
“Any black SUVs with blacked-out windows cruising around?” Chas asked.
“Nope. Is that what the hostiles were driving?”
“Yep.”
“My guess is they skipped town a while ago. Probably when the police started rolling in from surrounding towns.”
“Are there lots of police?”
“Oh yeah. I must’ve seen thirty squad cars. They’ve come in from all over this part of the state.” Gunner reached for the same door Chas had come in through before asking, “Who’s the kid?”
“No idea. But I think she may be involved somehow.”
“A baby? How?”
“I’m not sure. But my neighbor carried her to my front porch for a reason.”
“Good point. What do you think about taking the kid to the cops who are milling around?”
Chas’s gut tightened with anxiety at the idea. “What if they don’t believe me? What if they don’t think she’s in danger, but she is? What if the bad guys come back for her—?”
“Slow down, there. We don’t have to hand her over right away. I happen to agree with you. The presence of this kid in the middle of a mass shooting is a little too weird to be pure coincidence.”
Thank God.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gunner continued. “Put a little distance between us and whatever went down here. Lemme make a few calls and see if I can find out what happened and how the kid fits in.”
Chas was massively relieved that Gunner didn’t want to just hand the child over without figuring out what her role in this mess might be. She’d been thoroughly traumatized tonight but seemed to have latched on to him as a safe human. He hated to turn her over to strangers again, particularly cops who might handle her like a piece of evidence.
“I never thought I’d find myself sneaking out of this one-horse town with you,” Gunner muttered.
Chas snorted. “I never thought I’d see you again after the way you left the first time.”
Gunner paused in the doorway, scanning up and down the alley before waving for him to follow. Chas had to hustle to keep up as they swept outside and rushed to a nondescript sedan.
Gunner slid into the driver’s seat, grimacing, and Chas slipped into the passenger’s seat.
“Get down,” Gunner ordered.
“How down?”
“Totally out of sight.”
Frowning, Chas tried slouching, but it wasn’t enough. He ended up lifting the armrest and lying on his side across the center console, the baby cradled protectively against his middle—kind of how Leah had been holding her.
What had Leah been doing with this kid? To his knowledge, she had been divorced for years and had only one grown son, who was both single and a bad egg, in and out of trouble with the law and in and out of jail. Did this baby have anything to do with him?
Chas was surprised at how conservatively Gunner drove, passing through town at exactly the speed limit. But he did notice from his contorted position that Gunner’s posture was tense, very much on alert the whole time. Good to know he wasn’t the only one freaking out a little, here.
“Is it weird being back?” he asked from the vicinity of Gunner’s right thigh, trying to distract himself from thinking about being hunched on the seat of a car, driving through a war zone with Gunner Vance.
“You have no idea.”
“Tell me. I need to think about something else.”
“Everywhere I look, I see memories.”
“Good or bad?”
“Some of each.”
Chas said reflectively, “My early childhood memories are mostly good. You and I had fun as kids. Before all the adult stuff caught up with us.”
“Yeah. Good times,” Gunner said quietly.
A world of pain was packed in those simple words. So Gunner hadn’t escaped Misty Falls unscathed after all. Chas had assumed Gunner had left town and never looked back. Apparently he still carried around some baggage from those last difficult teen years. Chas fell silent. He’d no doubt been part of what had made them difficult.
They drove for perhaps a half hour in silence. The toddler finally relaxed against him and might even have dozed off. She, too, seemed to sense that the worst of the crisis had passed.
“You can sit up now,” Gunner finally murmured.
Chas pushed himself upright, his body stiff from being all crunched over. His yoga instructor would be disappointed in him. “Where are we?”
“The old reservoir road, north of town.”
“Why here?”
Gunner shrugged. “It’s a deserted road. I’ll be able to see anybody approaching from either direction from at least a mile away. And it has decent cell phone reception. Besides, if I were a bad guy, I’d likely be heading south after the fact, toward a major city where I can blend in anonymously.”
“Or maybe they’d head for the Canadian border, which would take them right through here,” Chas disagreed.
“Maybe. But if that’s the case, they’d have passed through here a couple of hours ago.”
“God, I hope so.”
Gunner smiled briefly as he pulled out his cell phone, and Chas was struck by how wolflike that smile was on Gunner’s face. The guy’s cheeks had leaned down over the years and at the moment were covered in a dark three-day stubble that was sexy as hell. His skin was deeply tanned, even at this time of year when the sun was low and winter was on the horizon. He still had that killer jaw, but his once perfectly straight nose had a slight crook in it now. Must’ve broken it at some point.
It was his eyes that had totally changed, though. Sure, they were still as blue as a summer sky, but they were hard now. Like steel. And they had an edge that warned off a guy from messing with him.
“Hey, Spence. Gunner Vance here. You said to call if I ever needed help.”
Chas didn’t hear Spence’s response, but Gunner continued, “I may have a bit of a situation on my hands. An old acquaintance called me tonight. Got caught in the middle of some kind of gunfight in my old hometown. Multiple armed assailants with assault weapons shot up a bunch of folks. My friend has ended up with custody of a baby who was caught in the middle of the incident, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.” A pause. “Local cops got killed. Yeah. All of them, apparently.”
Another, longer pause.
Gunner continued, “I’m on scene. I’ve evaced the guy and the kid. He thinks the baby may be part of the incident.” And then he surprised Chas by saying, “Yeah. Of course I’ve got a clean credit card. We can grab a motel and hunker down.”
Chas had just assumed they would head for the nearest police department, or maybe an FBI field office. Gunner disconnected the call, and Chas demanded immediately, “Who was that? And why does he not want us to go to law enforcement to turn over the kid?”
“That’s an old friend. Smart guy. Used to be my commander on my SEAL team. I trust him with my life. He and I both are… concerned… about what you’ve gotten tangled up in.”
“Concerned how?”
Gunner shrugged as he put the car in gear and pul
led back out onto the road. “Call it an intuition.”
“I need you to be more specific.”
In the glow of the dashboard lights, he saw Gunner frown. “In my line of work, a guy learns to listen to his gut. And mine’s telling me there’s more to this shooting spree, and that kid, than meets the eye. I called Spencer to see what his gut reaction was. And his gut agreed with mine.”
“Now what?”
“Now we’re gonna drive for a few hours, find ourselves a nice anonymous little motel, and grab a room. How’s the kid doing, by the way? You two are covered in blood.”
“I had noticed that,” Chas replied dryly. “It’s my next-door neighbor’s blood. She died on my front porch. She had the baby with her.”
“Is the kid hers?
“No. She was in her midfifties.”
“Grandkid?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Besides, this child looks Asian to me.”
“Asian?” Gunner exclaimed. “From where?”
“Best guess, I’d go with Japanese.”
“Interesting.”
“You used to be more talkative. What do you mean by ‘interesting’?”
“Nothing. I just mean it’s interesting. Spencer’s gonna ask around. Find out if anyone’s heard anything over the grapevine.”
Chas huffed. “What grapevine?” The guy could quit being an asshole now and give him a straight answer.
“Just… the grapevine. Intel guys, operational guys, maybe some guys in the alphabet agencies.”
“Alphabet agencies?”
“FBI, CIA, NSA…. Alphabet agencies.”
“Ahh. What guys?”
“I don’t know exactly who all Spencer’s contacts are. But he’ll work his little black book and see what he can find out. In the meantime, we’re going to sit tight and lay low.”
“This kid’s parents are gonna be frantic.”
“Spencer will tap his law enforcement contacts. If there’s a missing child report floating around, he’ll find it for us. A few hours from now is soon enough for the worried parents to get their kid back. She’s safe, and I want to keep her that way until we know who she is.” Then he added, “And I don’t want to hand her over to anyone until I have some idea of what the hell happened in Misty Falls.”
Chas snorted. “An invasion. That’s what happened. That SUV drove all over town, and the gunman inside shot anyone who crossed his path.”
“I need to know more. How many SUVs were there? How many shooters? Who were they and what did they want? Why kill your neighbor? What’s her connection to them? Why, with her dying breaths, did she bring you that kid? Why not call for help for herself?”
Chas looked down curiously at the little girl, finally asleep in his arms. Poor tyke looked exhausted. He knew the feeling. “It’s been a hell of a night, hasn’t it, kid?” he murmured.
He glanced over at Gunner, and in the glow of the dashboard, he noticed the guy looked like he’d gone a few rounds with a heavyweight boxer and lost. “Why’s your face all cut up? Did you get into a fight?”
“Yeah. With a tree,” Gunner mumbled.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.”
“How about the tree?” he asked dryly. “Did you kill it?”
Gunner glanced over, one corner of his mouth turning up wryly.
Chas sighed, then said, “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
“No prob.”
“Are you always this talkative? You used to have more than two words to say at a time.”
That only earned him a noncommittal lift of a shoulder—a shoulder that was heavily muscled without being overly bulky. Gunner looked like he worked out a lot and was insanely strong, but not as if he’d bulked up just for the sake of looking like a bodybuilder. Sure, he’d been an athlete in high school, but this level of fitness was new.
Chas worked out as well, but he doubted that bicycling, lifting a few weights, and the occasional boxing lesson compared to what a military commando did. He exercised to be healthy and blow off stress, not to prepare himself to kill enemy soldiers.
They drove in silence for a while. It was hard to believe it was only a little after midnight. Eventually, Gunner pulled in at a cheap chain motel and went inside to get a room. Chas stayed in the car, slumped down low in his seat again.
Gunner returned, drove around back, and parked the car. Chas climbed out carefully, trying not to jostle the baby… although the way she was currently sleeping, he suspected a marching band could play full blast beside them and she wouldn’t wake up.
He followed Gunner to a basic hotel room with two beds and watched with a combination of dismay and amusement as Gunner peered in the closet, looked under both beds, and checked the bathtub. “Looking for the boogeyman?” Chas asked.
Gunner scowled. “OPSEC 101.”
“OPSEC?” Chas echoed.
“Operational security. Never stay in any room you haven’t thoroughly cleared and don’t know for a fact to be empty.”
“Jeez. Paranoid much?”
Gunner didn’t bother to answer as he moved to the window and quickly pulled the curtains shut. He asked over his shoulder, “What are you gonna do with the kid?”
“Me?” Chas squawked. “Do I look like Mary Poppins to you? I’m no nanny.”
“She was a governess, not a nanny.”
“You’ve watched Mary Poppins?” Chas asked skeptically. “I challenge you to hum a few bars of any song from it.”
Gunner ignored the challenge. “I heard from my mom that you’re a schoolteacher. Little kids, right? Which means you’ll have a better idea of what to do with a kid than I will.”
He’d gotten updates from his mom on what Chas was up to? Color him shocked. Chas frowned and looked around the room. “Can we ask for a crib from the motel?”
“We could, but it would draw attention to us. Make us memorable. Better to, I don’t know, put pillows around her to keep her from rolling out of bed?” Gunner suggested.
“Sounds good to me.”
They had to borrow the cushions from the crappy sofa, but they made a cage of pillows around the sleeping toddler.
“How old is she?” Gunner asked quietly as they stood side by side, staring down at her.
“I’d guess a year and a half.”
Gunner reached for her, and Chas restrained him, grabbing his biceps quickly. Sweet baby Jesus, Gunner’s arm might as well be carved from granite, it was so hard. “Don’t wake her up. She’s traumatized as heck.”
“Gotta check her clothes for labels. Might be a name written in them.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that.
It turned out the baby didn’t give a flying fig if someone was poking or pulling at her clothes. She slept through Gunner’s whole label inspection. He took pictures of her and the clothing labels with his phone, and the flashes didn’t even make her stir.
“Labels are Japanese. No name in her clothes.” Gunner quickly sent the pictures over his phone, presumably to Spencer. “Should we clean her up?” he asked doubtfully.
“Grab a hand towel, and I’ll make a makeshift diaper for her. There’s a sewing kit here in the bathroom, and it has a couple of safety pins in it. They’re small, but they’ll have to do for now. As for getting the dried blood off her, let her sleep. Tomorrow morning is soon enough to give her a bath. Assuming the police won’t want to collect samples of the blood on her.”
Gunner snorted as he handed over the towel. “They can pull all the samples they need from you. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently? You look like an extra from a Friday the 13th movie.”
He flipped Gunner off and headed for the bathroom, where he tossed the toddler’s diaper in the trash. He gave himself a nasty start when he glanced up at the mirror. He was caked in dried blood. It was in his hair, under his fingernails, and had stiffened to kidney brown in his clothes. Even his face was liberally smudged with the stuff.
He stripped off his clothe
s and took a shower, scrubbing both himself and his shirt until they were more or less blood-free. The shirt was trashed, but at least he didn’t look like an axe murderer now.
As the blood washed away, so did some of his earlier tension, and the reality of the situation finally started to sink in. He was alone in a motel room with his first and only true love. The same guy who’d immediately left town and never come back when he’d found out how Chas felt about him.
He dried off and reluctantly donned his jeans, which were only brown with dried blood from the knees down. Shirtless, he stepped out into the bedroom.
The baby was awake and Gunner was sitting on the floor with her. She had something in her mouth, long and metal. “What is that?”
“Ammo magazine.”
“You gave a baby bullets?” he exclaimed.
“Of course not. I took the ammo out of the mag first. And it’s not like I gave her the pistol too.”
Chas raced over and snatched the gun part out of her mouth. “You’ve never been in the same room with a child under the age of five in your life, have you?” he accused.
“Not since I was under the age of five.”
Chas bent down to scoop up the baby and deposit her back on the bed. Glaring at Gunner, he gave her a clean washcloth to play with. She promptly commenced sucking it, and her eyes closed.
Gunner rose smoothly to his feet, and their gazes met. And it was all there again, hanging between them. The desperation. The attraction. And the betrayal. Oh God. The betrayal.
Chapter Three
WHAT THE hell was he doing here with Chas? He knew the guy was his personal kryptonite. He shouldn’t have picked up that call. No, he should have stayed far, far away from Misty Falls. Even briefly driving through town had been painful. So many damned memories flooding back. Memories he emphatically did not care to stir up.
The parking lot outside was perfectly still, but he watched it cautiously nonetheless. Chas had disappeared into the bathroom a little while ago, mumbling that he needed to wash off the blood. The bathroom door opened behind Gunner, and he glanced over his shoulder at—
No shirt. He wasn’t wearing a fucking shirt. And that perfect torso was still fucking perfect. Chas ran to the lean side, but that didn’t stop him from having sharply cut muscles. He obviously still lifted weights. Looked like he did something aerobic too. Maybe running. The guy could’ve posed for the great sculptors. He would look like a god captured forever in marble as smooth and sleek and alabaster as his skin.