by Cassia Leo
“Absolutely.”
She shrugs. “Okay.”
“Wait!” I grab her hand before she can exit the vehicle. “You need to know one more thing. This is a restricted firearms location, so we’re not allowed to have centerfire ammunition here. That means we’re supposed to use rimfire ammunition, which is more difficult to reload. I don’t own any rimfire ammunition, so you’ll have to promise you don’t rat me out to the cops.”
She glances at my hand on hers and smiles. “I highly doubt you’ll be worrying about that after we leave this place, but okay.”
I laugh at this cryptic remark. “Just one more thing,” I say, and before she can ask me what, I grab her face and kiss her.
Her lips taste like lemon tea, and her tongue feels cool as it slides against mine. The soft moan that issues from her throat awakens my dick, and I echo the sound back at her.
We stay like this for a while, our mouths exploring each other as if it’s our first kiss. I resist the urge to slide my hand inside her jeans or under her bra. And she keeps her hands gripped tightly around the front of my gray camo-print T-shirt.
As I pull away slowly, placing a parting kiss on her chin, I feel as if I’ve been kicked in the chest. “I don’t want to stop kissing you,” I murmur.
She smiles as her fists remain clenched around the fabric of my shirt. “Then don’t,” she says, biting her lip as she flashes me a look that gets my dick painfully hard.
I shake my head as I let out a deep sigh. “Let me see you shoot that gun first,” I say, nodding toward the weapons in the backseat of the pickup. “Come on.”
She lets out a soft sigh as she reaches for the door handle. “I really hope neither of us dies.”
I try to ignore this comment as she hops out of the passenger seat onto the dirt. I study her face as I pass her the .380 she wielded in Smoky’s Bar. She tucks that in the crossbody holster I let her borrow, then I hand her a Ruger LCR9 revolver. After all, she needs to learn to shoot a man, not a deer.
“That one doesn’t have a safety, so be very careful with it,” I say as she reaches for the passenger door to close it.
She shrugs. “Yes, sir.”
I shake my head at her seemingly nonchalant approach to this exercise. She’s either bored by all this because she’s already taken plenty of gun safety lessons and spent lots of time at a shooting range, or she’s resigned to a decision she’s neglected to share with me. Please, Lord, let it be that she’s bored.
I don’t want to have to shoot Izzy.
I load up my usual weapons, and we head out into the wilderness.
At barely half-past eleven a.m., the summer sun is almost right above us. The light sparkles in Izzy’s brown hair as she’s welcomed into the woods by a grove of young oak trees. The sparse green canopy of leaves above us soaks the woods in full summer sunshine.
There’s nowhere to hide in this forest.
As I watch her walking farther away from our starting point, seemingly without a single misgiving about possibly leading me in the wrong direction, I begin to understand I may have been right about her. I think she may actually find this entire outing to be an exercise in futility.
I smile as I realize this is the girl I’ve been waiting for my entire life. A girl with the guts to singlehandedly steal $1.4 million from a criminal organization and abandon her whole life in the blink of an eye. This girl who can build a dozen boobytraps and learn to scuba dive in a couple weeks, but couldn’t fake a country accent if her life depended on it.
She’s a goddamn wizard, through and through. More than that, she’s my queen.
In chess, it’s the queen’s job to protect the king. And she may have the opportunity to do that soon. For now, it’s my job to protect her. I’ll sacrifice myself if it means keeping her safe.
I’m about to ask Izzy how far she plans to hike into the forest when she reaches into her pocket. Before I can get a look at whatever is in her hand, she spins around and points the revolver at me.
“Is this what you want?” she shouts, tossing something at me. “Drop your weapon, or I swear to fucking God I will shoot you right now!”
I glance at the forest floor to see what she threw at me, but I can’t find it before she barks another order at me.
“Drop it now!”
I maintain eye contact with her as I bend over slowly and place my .500 Magnum on the ground, noticing a black and yellow USB flash drive about five feet away. “I’m not here to hurt you, Izzy.”
“Oh, I already know you know my name,” she shouts, but I can see the revolver trembling. “So what’s your next move if I let you leave? Are you going to keep following me until you find me again? Are you going to make me dig my own grave? Huh? What’s the plan?”
My heart is racing as I watch her trembling hands holding the revolver that’s pointed at me. “Izzy, I was serious when I said that Ruger doesn’t have a safety. Can you please point it somewhere else?”
“Fuck you!” she shouts, and the gun goes off.
She’s momentarily dazed by the gunshot, and I use this to my advantage, rushing her before she can get off another round. I tackle her face-first onto the dry ground and easily overpower her. I wrest the revolver from her grip, quickly tossing it aside. Then I hold her arms behind her back as I grab her .380 out of the holster.
“You have any other weapons?” I ask, my mouth pressed against her ear.
“No,” she says, the power in her voice completely absent now. “And you’re hurting my arms. Please stop.”
I’m not falling for that.
“Don’t you lie to me,” I mutter. “I don’t want to shoot you, Iz. I fucking swear to God. I did not come here to hurt you. Do you believe me?” I wait for her to respond, but all I hear is soft sobs. “I’m going to let you go, but I won’t hesitate to shoot you if you try that again. Understood?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, then I slowly loosen my grip on her arms as I take my weight off her back. “Easy. Don’t get up too fast.”
I keep my .500 Magnum pointed at her chest, my eyes trained on her hands as she pushes herself up from the ground. She slowly turns around, and the tears spilling down her cheeks make my stomach tense up.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Iz,” I reiterate. “My name is Kingston Jameson, but I go by King,” I begin. “I work for Congressman Richard Hunt, and that guy who OD’d in your room at the Area 69 Brothel — the one you stole the suitcase from — was Hunt’s son and my former best friend.”
She reaches up to wipe the tears from her face. “You’re here to avenge your friend?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m here to make sure you know how to shoot because Congressman Hunt has ordered me to kill you, but I want you to help me kill him instead.”
She looks skeptical of my assertion. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
I stare at her for a while, then I begin the process of disarming. I start by laying my .500 Mag on the forest floor, followed by my .44, my .38, and my hunting knife.
“I’m done lying to you,” I say, holding my hands out palm-up in front of me. “I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this, but I’m in love with you Izzy Lake. I love your laugh. I love your smile. I love your badass nature. I love your awful country accent.”
She laughs through her tears now, and the sound is music to my ears.
“But most of all,” I continue as I slowly walk toward her. “I love your good heart and the fact that you trusted me with it when you told me about what your mom’s boyfriend did to you… I will never let anyone hurt you, myself included.”
She lets out an audible sigh as I wrap my arms around her and pull her close. “I’m sorry I almost killed you.”
I laugh as I kiss the top of her head. “You’re forgiven.”
She sniffs loudly. “That would have been really awful if I’d killed you, since… I’m in love with you, too.”
I grab her face and tilt her head back so I can look her in the eye. “
Glad we cleared that up,” I say, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Now let’s figure out how we’re going to give Hunt a dose of his own medicine.”
She shakes her head. “I’d rather do to him what he does to the girls in those videos.”
I blink. “What?”
Her lip curls with disgust. “Whoever put the files on the flash drive didn’t even encrypt them. It’s dozens of videos with him doing disgusting things to a bunch of women and girls. Some of them look like teenagers. It’s disgusting and infuriating and…so fucking sad.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I didn’t know that was on there. He told me it was political research on the flash drive. What a fucking creep. Now I know why his son hated him.”
“I’m starting to hate him, too,” she remarks.
I chuckle. “Is that why you almost shot me? Because you thought I had something to do with what you saw on that flash drive?”
She straightens her spine. “It’s one of the reasons I had to tell you about what my mom’s boyfriend did to me,” she says, looking me in the eye. “I had to see how you’d react.”
I look her in the eye as my heart aches for her again. “Did I pass the test?”
Her face is stoic as she stares back at me for a long while, then she breaks into a soft smile. “With flying colors.”
22. Izzy
August 10th
The angled view-hole King built into the new crawl space access door he installed in my living room has a perfect view of Congressman Richard Hunt as he takes a seat on my old couch. From down here, just eight feet away from the sofa and the predator above me, I’m surprised to find I’m not filled with all-consuming rage. My mind is focused on one thing today, and that’s protecting King. To do that, I have to keep my thoughts centered on one subject: love.
As my fingers hug the curves of the .38 Special and the angles of the .44 Magnum in my hands, I keep my gaze focused on the view-hole. But I allow my heart to dwell on the love King has showered me with since the moment we met at The Junk Drawer. That love is what will keep us alive today.
“How do you know she didn’t send the files to anyone?” Hunt asks as he crosses his spindly legs.
“Eddie checked all her devices, and it never left her network,” King replies. “And Santos has been keeping an eye on her outside the house. She hasn’t visited any internet cafés or libraries or anything like that. The files didn’t leave her computer.”
Hunt nods in approval. “And you got rid of the girl?” he asks, referring to me.
“Yeah, this morning. And she’s not supposed to go into work until Monday so no one will suspect anything until then.”
I smile at the evenness in King’s voice as he relays this information. My baby is so cool.
“But that doesn’t mean I haven’t kept a copy for myself,” King continues.
I wish I could see his face.
Hunt’s eyes narrow at him. “You what?”
“You heard me. I forced Eddie to set up a dead man’s switch for me,” he says, still cool as a cucumber. “If my sister and I don’t enter a password on a specific website every day, all the videos on that flash drive will be sent to multiple news outlets.”
Hunt’s nostrils flare. “You fucking traitorous… I knew you were too much of a loser for this mission. I knew you’d fuck it up!”
I slide my fingers closer to the triggers on each of my handguns. I can’t see King, but I can hear the smile in his voice as he speaks.
“You thought I’d let you get away with threatening my family?” he says with a chuckle. “You’re going to promise to leave my family and me alone — forever — or you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your pathetic life.”
Hunt’s eyes flit to the left, where I assume one of his bodyguards must be standing, and I slide my fingers directly over the triggers now. As I watch him consider King’s threat, I push down any anger I have for Hunt and force myself to focus on the love. Nothing good ever came from hate.
Hate is what brought the world Richard “Creep-meister” Hunt. It’s probably what made his son a soldier and an addict as he tried to physically and mentally escape the monster his father had become. Hate for Gene is what caused my hands to tremble and almost shoot King yesterday.
Today, my hands are steady.
Hunt forces his thin lips into a smile. “You and your sister are safe,” he says, but he’s shaking his head. Subconscious or not, it’s a clear signal that he’s lying.
I want to scream at King not to believe him, but I have to trust him to see what I saw.
Please see what I saw.
As these words repeat in my mind, Hunt rises from the sofa and begins moving toward the front door.
He’s lying! Don’t let him go!
I want to shout this warning at the top of my voice, but I’m not supposed to even be here. I’m only supposed to come out of the crawl space if King and Santos need me for extra firepower.
Something isn’t right. I can feel it.
“Good luck in your endeavors, son,” Hunt says, his voice faint as he’s now at least twelve feet away from me.
“I’m not your son,” King replies fiercely. “Your son is dead, as you’ll be if you—.”
Something happens out of my line of sight that sets off a storm of chaos.
First, someone tackles someone, and less than a second passes before multiple shots ring out.
Using the back of my head and shoulders, I push the access door open as I stand up straight. With the top third of my body projecting out of a hole in the floor, it takes about two seconds for me to assess the situation and determine where to point my weapons.
I blast off a .44 round in the direction of Hunt’s surprised face, but I miss, hitting the front door instead. I quickly fire off another bullet from my revolver at the bodyguard who’s standing about six feet behind Hunt, my adrenaline soaring as I hit him in the side of the neck. His body goes stiff as a board, then he hits the floor like a ton of bricks.
Holy shit. I killed a man.
I’m roused from this dark thought as I see the front door open and Hunt races outside into the darkness.
Fuck!
I climb out of the crawl space and take a moment to look around. King and Santos are near the hallway wrestling with the other bodyguard, who appears to be even larger than Santos. I want to help them, but I have to go after Hunt.
“Don’t go after him!” King grunts at me as I head toward the front door. “Izzy, don’t!”
But I can’t let Hunt get away. The moment I step outside, I’m startled by the crack of a gunshot. He’s fucking shooting at me.
I race after him as he runs across my side yard toward the woods. As I come around the corner of the house, he lets off another round, and I’m knocked back a couple feet as it hits me in my bicep, very near my elbow.
I’m surprised at the lack of pain. Aside from a sharp burning sensation, the adrenaline coursing through my veins seems to be working as a painkiller. I continue after Hunt, holding my arm close to my side in an attempt to apply pressure to the wound without stopping. But the pain begins to kick in, and I can no longer hold both weapons.
Tossing the .38 special onto the ground, my breathing is ragged as I follow Hunt, staying mindful of the many boobytraps I’ve lain throughout these woods. I step over tripwire and avoid the disguised ditches, but as I try to keep Hunt in my sights, my vision begins to blur, and my throat begins to ache with thirst.
Am I losing that much blood?
“Izzy!” King’s voice calls out.
I look over my shoulder as I continue to stumble forward. Another shot is fired, but it sounds so distant I can’t tell where it’s coming from.
“Get down!” King shouts at me.
But before I can heed his advice, I find myself falling against my will. Falling into my own trap. Descending into darkness.
23. King
Present Day
“You’
re a good guy, King,” Detective Sooner says, shaking his head. “You were in the service. You took care of your mom and your older sister. You’ve taken care of Izzy these past few weeks. You’re a man who takes care of the women in his life. And I know you want to help us find Izzy.”
I shrug. “I’ve told you everything I know.” Except for everything that happened after I went hunting with Izzy.
“Well, we’ve told you all you need to know,” Agent Stanley replies. “In fact, I think we’ve told you enough to know just how fucking serious this is. You know that blood matching Izzy’s blood type was found at the crime scene. And DNA analysis will come back soon, most likely confirming what we already suspect, that Izzy was hurt in that house, and now she’s been moved to another location.”
Sooner shakes his head. “Without proper medical care, most people can’t live long with a gunshot wound. And I know you wouldn’t want to risk Izzy dying. I know you wouldn’t do that, King, because you’re a good guy.”
I clench my jaw as I recall how Izzy looked the last time I saw her.
“When you work cases like this, day in and day out for as long as I have, you learn to keep an open mind,” Sooner continues. “Most detectives, myself included, sink the majority of their time and energy into the most plausible leads. It’s a sound strategy that gets results. Unfortunately, this can also cause a bad case of tunnel vision. Without even realizing it, you start automatically dismissing information that contradicts your theory. Some detectives, myself not included, will even knowingly reject tips that go against their preferred narrative, even if the tip is plausible.”
Jesus Christ. Now Sooner is trying to make me feel like he’s pulling me into the fold, giving me inside information because he trusts me so much. Naturally, I should trust him too, right?
Does he really think I can’t see through all these bullshit tactics?
“Many investigators will dismiss leads that don’t sound likely,” he continues. “Not me. Even if a lead doesn’t sound plausible, if someone tips me off — points me in a certain direction — I do my due diligence.”