by Michele Hauf
“Yeah, but do you see me?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I may be, but at least I’m not wearing blinders.” He breathed lowly. “The Faction does want you dead. And me. So play this one close, and don’t let your anger get the better of common sense. Jamie! Look at me.”
I knew that behind us, on the other side of the wall, stood my nemesis. Max’s murderer. A man who would toy with human lives for reasons I had yet to completely understand. All I wanted to do was wipe those dimples from Kevin’s face—with a bullet. I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, but in this case I wanted an eye for an eye.
But Sacha was right. I had to settle down, calm myself.
“Take a deep breath,” Sacha directed. He leaned in so the robe dusted my leg and one of his sideburns tickled my forehead. Too gentle a touch, ridiculous for this moment. “Focus.”
I pressed a hand against his chest to keep him at a distance. “I’m breathing.” A few demonstrative inhales.
“Yeah, well try this.” He dug in his pocket and presented the stone, holding it between two fingers before my eyes.
For a moment, we both just stared at the stupid gray thing. Then I smiled and nodded. “I’m chilling. I’ve started to coast.”
“You sure? Be one with the stone, baby.”
I gave him a shove and smirked. “I’m cool. How many do you think are inside?”
“Likely two or three, beyond Eight. They’ll all be armed, that’s a given. Are you an expert shot?”
I didn’t answer.
“Jamie, give me the gun.”
“But you’re the prisoner.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just give it to me.”
I pulled it from the back of my waistband and handed it to him. It was difficult, handing over a portion of the control. But, I knew it had to be done. I wasn’t an expert marksman. I didn’t know if Sacha could pull it off, either, but right now, I was willing to place my bets on the boy who’d grown up in a household focused on the criminal and the bizarre.
He stepped back to give me some room as he checked the magazine for bullets. “Do you have any skills beyond your driving expertise that can save our asses?”
“I can street fight.”
“Really? That means you’ll have to get close enough to connect, and I don’t think I want you doing that.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re not calling the shots. This is my game now. You remain back by the door.”
I watched as he swept back the robe and tucked the gun in the waistband of his boxers. The front of the boxers sagged to reveal dark hair. He tugged out the gun and tried it behind him. “This isn’t going to work, I’ll have to keep it in my pocket.”
“So long as you stay by the door, I can distract. I’m good at distraction.”
“Oh, I know it, sweetie, I know it. Hey, Jamie, can I tell you something before we go inside?”
A glint of sun on steel caught my eye. Just outside, the Audi hung precariously. If the princess was in there, she had to be freaking.
Please, let her be freaking, because that would mean she wasn’t dead.
“Make it quick,” I said.
“Okay.” Eyes half-green and half-blue fixed me like no factory-new shiny red Porsche 911 (with a race button) ever could. “I think I like you, Jamie.”
“Like?” I feigned being affronted. “No love?”
“I’ve only known you a few days. Give the guy a running start. You…want me to love you?”
“No,” I blurted. “I was just checking the waters. You wouldn’t say something unless you mean it.”
“Damn straight.”
“Like is fine. And a hell of a lot safer than love.” Shrugging a hand along my arm, I wondered if I should reciprocate the warm huggy compliment—and then decided, what the hell. “I…like…you.”
“Yeah? Well, I like kissing you.”
“Oh yeah? I like…having sex with you.”
“No kidding? I promise a repeat performance should we get out of this alive.”
“I thought we were doing spaghetti?”
“That, too.”
“But according to Mister Macho, who pushed me away from kissing him, I wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with your nasty self.”
“Yeah, well, you know, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“So that little speech about me not calling you a bad guy was hot air?”
“No. I’m trying, Jamie, I really am. But I’ll always need my stones.”
Who wouldn’t smile at such a confession?
He leaned in and kissed my forehead. “You’re only interested in the sex anyway, right?”
“Don’t forget the spaghetti.”
“Sounds like a date to me.”
Chapter 24
I opened the door carefully and walked inside the upper-floor room which was as vast as a warehouse. Twisting Pa’s ring about my thumb, I surveyed the scene. Wall-to-wall windows surrounded an open floor. Sunlight beamed ultrawhite swaths across the dusty hardwood floors burned black by decades-past machinery. No machinery now; the place was empty, save for three figures fifty paces away from me.
Kevin stood in the center, hands on his hips. He wore a suit today, no jeans, but not your standard thug couture. Cream linen, like something you’d wear to the beach, hung from the man’s frame, and a peek of light blue shirt popped between the crinkled lapels.
To his left, a thug wielding a freakin’ machine gun and looking as if he could eat VWs for breakfast sneered. To Kevin’s right, a smaller version of the VW eater assumed a stoic, thug pose. He didn’t hold a weapon, but I guessed he was packing somewhere in that ill-fitting black suit. I recognized them both. Things One and Two.
Just because they were bigger than me didn’t give them the advantage.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Kevin announced with a grand splay of his arms to encompass the room. “So glad you could make it, la lapine. And Sacha Vital, in…a hell of a bit more flesh than expected.”
“He stays by the door,” I interrupted Kevin’s glorious speech. If you let the villains go off on their wicked I-rule-the-world spiel, the whole day can be ruined—not that it hadn’t already reached suck status, but I was holding out for a brilliant finale. “Let me see the princess.”
“She’s close.”
“You promised a trade.”
I stopped about a quarter of the way into the room. Kevin stood a good ten paces from me. Even from here his dimples broadcast loud and clear. Thing One and Thing Two flanked him at ten paces each. Everyone was too spread out. Not good.
“I don’t hand over my prize until you show me your prize,” I said.
He slid a hand inside his suit coat. I wished I had a weapon. If he wasn’t armed, I could take out Kevin, or at the very least, incapacitate him. But could I count on Sacha to back me up? Could I really rely on the man?
Why, oh why, was I even thinking this now? Of course I could trust angry OCD Boy.
Slowly, Kevin drew out a walkie-talkie from his inner suit pocket and displayed it before him.
“Not good enough,” I said. “How do I know you haven’t prerecorded something?”
“It’s a monitor,” he explained. He clicked a button and a static distorted buzz echoed in the room. “You there, sweetie?”
A female scream was abruptly cut off with a flick of Kevin’s finger. He nodded toward the window and the car dangling outside.
“I think you’ll recognize the vehicle,” he added. “She’s in the trunk. You play me wrong, she drops. You hand over Vital, and I order the crane operator to set her down nice and gently.”
I glanced back at Sacha. He stood before the closed door, legs spread and hands inside the bathrobe pockets. Now was the time to play it stone-cold serious.
“Nice look, Vital,” Kevin said with a cool sneer. “You’ll have to hook me up with your designer.”
Those dimples were so wrong on his face now. I mentally kicked myself for ever considering having sex with the man.<
br />
Sacha didn’t return the remark. Smart man. My man.
Yes, well, a girl goes there when she’s under duress.
“Let’s cut the crap,” I said. “You put the car down gently, and then I’ll step aside and let you do whatever you wish with Mr. Vital. But you must realize that I know you’re not going to let me out of here alive. I know as much about what Max had going on with Vital as he does. I’m dangerous to you, Kevin.”
“So good of you to remind me. But I beg to differ. I’ve been on a joyride with you, if you’ll recall. I know you pack heat. But I also know you won’t shoot, because you haven’t got it in you.”
Gulp. He had an advantage, knowing that about me. Fine. Game tilted in his favor. Now, to pass him along the outer edge and take the lead.
“But I have made a deal,” Kevin continued, “and I’m nothing if not a fair dealer. You’ll walk away from here, princess in hand. I promise.”
“Yeah? How far will I get before Thing One puts a bullet in the back of my head?”
“You’re worth more to me alive than dead, Jamie. I know you don’t have any direct contacts to the Network now. But Vital does.”
I flashed a wonky look at Sacha. Couldn’t be helped. In that moment, I was so startled by what Kevin had said, I dropped all pretense. Sacha held my gaze, not moving. He wasn’t going to give me anything.
Kevin was playing us against one another. He had to be.
“I’ve had enough.” I swung around and stepped forward—but two strong arms grabbed me from behind.
Ah, merde.
With a gun barrel firmly pressed to the underside of my chin, I managed to mutter, “What the hell?”
Myriad thoughts raced through my brain, the strongest being, Did he really know more about the Network than he had let on?
“She gets it if you don’t set that car down nice and easy,” Sacha commanded.
“You’re not going to kill her,” Kevin challenged. “Besides, my men can put a bullet through your brain as fast as you can put one in her mouth.”
Double gulp.
“But then you’ll have no one to lead you to the Network,” Sacha said. “That is what this is all about. The boys in the Network wouldn’t let you join their club, so you took one of them out. Now you hope to find them and finish them off. I’m guessing the princess either didn’t talk, or didn’t have the information you need. Now, you can’t do it without Jamie’s help. She’s your only connection to the Network. So what’s it going to be? We make a fair trade, the princess for the driver. Or do I splatter her brains?”
Yikes! Right now I was beginning to think my trust-o-meter had never worked properly. Sacha sounded dead serious. And the gun barrel pressed hard against my jaw brought the meaning of serious to a whole new level. With his other arm wrapped around my chest, I wasn’t about to struggle free.
“I don’t need the driver,” Kevin said. “I know exactly where to find the Network, and Ava is going to lead me there.”
Sacha breathed, “Fuck”, but it wasn’t loud enough for anyone but me to hear.
So the princess had talked. And she’d had information about Sacha’s sister. A name? How would the princess know the name of her alleged assassin?
The gun barrel was momentarily removed from my jaw.
“Tell me what you know!”
I bit my tongue as the gun slammed back into my flesh. It was hard to believe Sacha was on anybody’s side but his own right now. Rage clenched his fingers into my ribs. I stumbled as he stepped and brought me forward a few paces. My fingers slid over the robe belt, and I tugged it, gently.
“So that brings the fire to your eyes,” Kevin said, ever so calm. He hadn’t moved an inch at Sacha’s outburst. “I shall take great pleasure in killing you, Vital. And then I’ll tell your sister all about it.”
Kevin hadn’t just pressed Sacha’s anger button—he’d stomped, beaten and whacked it beyond recognition. And not a stone in sight—thank goodness.
Sacha shoved me. Robe belt running through the terry cloth loops, it detached from the robe, and I stumbled toward Kevin. From the corner of my eye, I saw Thing Two kept a keen bead on me, but Thing One concentrated on Sacha. Good, they were divided.
Now to conquer.
Knowing a thug wouldn’t risk taking out his own boss, I lunged and snapped the robe belt before Kevin, wrapping it about my hands to use as a weapon. I pressed it to his neck and we went down. Thing Two hissed out an oath, but he didn’t fire.
Gunfire rattled from the machine gun. A body dropped, a gun clattered. As I struggled with Kevin, I allowed him to roll me to my back. Keen. Now his back was to Thing Two, and that provided protection for me. I had the belt around his neck and pulled both ends tight.
“Sacha?” I called.
Kevin’s fist barreled into my gut. I choked but directed a wodge of spittle at his chest. I didn’t let go of the belt, only tightened it.
“Get Vital, I’ve got her under control,” Kevin ordered Thing Two. He choked and his face turned purple.
If I could just pull harder, but the soft terry cloth wasn’t proving too dangerous to the man’s breathing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the massive body of Thing One lying inanimate on the floor.
Snapping up my knee clocked the back of Kevin’s thigh, setting him off balance. Releasing my shoulders, he wobbled, and slapped a hand to the floor. My grasp on the belt slipped free.
I shimmied away from his grip and stood, snapping the belt like a whip. “Why Max?”
Kevin jumped up, holding his fists in front of him like a boxer. He must not have been packing heat, because he would have pulled it on me by now. The playing field was level. So long as Sacha kept the remaining thug busy…
A bullet whizzed so close to my cheek I felt the heat of its wake. Taking advantage of my surprise, Kevin delivered a high kick that skimmed my jaw much closer than the bullet had. The move made me flinch, but I shook it off like a pro. Bending, I swung up my right leg and kicked out behind me, using the force of my body. Kevin ran right into the kick. His body bounced off the attack, but he didn’t fall.
“So the Faction isn’t as benevolent as I thought?” I asked, rhetorically.
“It’s the Faction’s rule to keep the bad guys under our thumb,” Kevin said. “Max was a bad guy. End of story.”
“The only bad guy I’ve met in the past few days is you.”
I winced when another gunshot seemed to connect with Sacha’s shoulder. His left arm flew back and he hit the wall by the door where we’d entered.
Too late, I saw the fist as it zoomed toward me, blocking my vision.
Stumbling backward to take the blow and not allow it to fell me, I saw Sacha fire again. Thing Two took a bullet, his body doing a dancer’s pirouette toward Kevin and me as he went down.
Thing Two fired, not aiming; it was a dying reaction. Even as I tried to move, I knew it would be too late. The bullet burned through my hip, like a million iron particles prickling my flesh. My stance wavered.
Kevin lifted a hand greased with my blood and grinned. Caveman-like and with dimples deepening, he stumbled before me.
“You should have left Vital and walked away.” He pulled the walkie-talkie from his inner pocket. “First your mentor. And now you lose again, Jamie.”
As Kevin spoke into the walkie-talkie—” Let her drop,”—Sacha fired.
Kevin’s body took the bullet in the back. Arms flying out to his sides, he stood there momentarily, poised like a manic savior prepared to deliver a mass, staring at me. Then he dropped.
Gripping the pain at my hip, I felt for the wound. It had ripped through my jeans, but it didn’t feel deep. There was blood…
Let her drop?
I jerked my head toward the windows facing the river at the very moment the Audi was released from the crane’s magnetic boom.
“No!”
Chapter 25
Sacha stood in the doorway. Blood dribbled down his left arm, bright
against the white terry cloth. He straightened and spread out both arms to me as I charged toward him.
“No time!” I shoved him out of the way, dashed down the hall, and took the iron stairs at autobahn speed.
“Oh shit!” Sacha took up behind me, obviously having seen the car drop, as well. “Jamie, there’s nothing you can do!”
I pushed open the building’s doors and hit the cobblestones at a run. “The river isn’t that deep. The car won’t sink fast!”
“The windows were open!” Sacha called. “I’ll go after the crane operator. Maybe he can hook the car and pull it out.”
Out was the last word I heard as I scrambled down the stone stairs to the river’s edge and dived into the water. I hadn’t come all this way just to watch an innocent drown. Didn’t matter what the woman was worth to Sacha or Kevin, or even me—I’d somehow been responsible for getting her into this mess; I was going to get her out. Alive.
The tail of the Audi slipped under the surface as my hands cracked through the sun-silvered waves and my body swiftly submerged. The water was cold, shockingly so. Surprising, for a French summer. I had always thought the river would be warm. Pity I had to find out like this.
If I got too close to the car, would the downward motion suck me along with it? That suddenly became the plan.
The water was murky, but I could see the chrome glinting in the sunlight that broke through the surface. Water entered the car, filling up under the wheel wells and gushing into the engine.
Kicking, I swam to the car, and though I was close, the suction did not tug at me as I’d hoped. Slashing my legs and pulling myself through the water with the breast stroke, I finally reached the vehicle.
The windows were down, but the princess was in the boot. A plan instantly formed in my mind, and I dove for the open passenger window.
I gripped the metal rim and poked my head inside the car, but had to wiggle to get inside. My body wanted to float and rise to the surface. Using the headrest as an anchor, I pulled myself in. I choked and exhaled.
Panic trilled in my chest. I wasn’t an expert swimmer, and I really did like to breathe.