Beyond the Rules

by Doranna Durgin

  All the way to the back door they went, and Kimmer’s careful silence might as well have been stomp dancing for all the occupants of the Quonset would have heard. Torque wrenches, the compressor…even the spit and sizzle of something being welded. Those inside couldn’t possibly hear what was happening on the outside.

  Someone shouted from the other side of the door—he had to be close, and he was certainly frightened—“You’ns oughta check it yourself!” he shouted. “I’m just here for the effin’ cars, man!”

  Kimmer exchanged a quick look with Rio, got raised eyebrows in return, a mutual sense of aha! She flattened herself behind the door, while he crouched against the building on the other side, one hand groping for a rock or piece of wood to block the door open. The man coming out that door was also their way in….

  And out he came, wary and staring hard into the woods, never suspecting that those he looked for were actually behind him. He clutched a cheap knock-off automatic, but not in a position that would do him any good unless he had a wicked snap-shot. Through the crack at the doorjamb, Kimmer saw Rio give up looking for his solid object and stick his foot in the doorway. When the carboy finally released the door it swung gently closed on that foot and stopped, leaving Kimmer to handle the carboy.

  She let the war club swing from her wrist and pulled the SIG from her sling. “Hey,” she said quietly, moving a step closer behind him. Close enough. He froze, looked over his shoulder, and found Kimmer—and then found Rio aiming at him from his crouch. He swore in a most heartfelt way. His gaze darted for the door and hope lit his face when he saw he wouldn’t even have to turn the knob, but could just grab and fling the thing open. Maybe even just shout loud enough for someone inside to hear. He didn’t seem to remember he had the gun.

  “Shh,” Kimmer told him. “If you call for them, you’ll give us away. And if we’re already given away, then there’s no reason not to make noise with our nice guns. Hell, we’ll probably both shoot you just because we’ll be pissed off.”

  “True,” Rio agreed. “I’d shoot him, that’s for sure.”

  “I’d shoot him first.”

  “Look,” the carboy said, clear desperation on his grease-smeared face and a twitch jerking his cheek, “this isn’t my thing. I’m only here for the cars. They just sent me out to see what Jared had found, that’s all.”

  “They sent you out with a gun,” Kimmer noted, the accusation implicit.

  “They gave us all guns when we left the city!” He looked down at his, held it out. “I don’t even know if it’s ready to fire, man.”

  Kimmer moved another step, never taking his surrender for granted. Just because he meant it at the moment didn’t mean he wouldn’t change his mind.

  But then she quietly twisted the gun from his hand and defeat etched his features, a young man’s features with faint petulance softening his chin and mouth. “What about the others? Did you kill them? Will you kill me?”

  Kimmer snorted. “What have those goonboys been telling you? They’re stashed.”

  Rio cleared his throat. “Well, except for that one—”

  Irritated, Kimmer briefly glared. “Not on purpose. How about you find a rock for that door and truss up this one?”

  She turned back to the carboy, finding him bemused and ignoring Rio’s muttered, “Touchy, touchy.” This one looked more like he’d talk—like he resented being sent up to handle stolen cars and finding himself handling guns and determined good guys. She said, “How many in there came along as muscle? And how many of your friends were eager to get the guns?”

  He shrugged, an eye on Rio as Rio found himself the necessary doorstop and pulled tough hay twine from his pocket. “Some of them. There’s only one guard left. They normally only send us up here with one, but—” Oops. He realized he’d been chatty and shut up, offering her a glimmer of defiance.

  “Oh, give it up,” Kimmer said wearily, shifting her arm within the sling and ready for this to be over. Ready to shut this place down and walk away with the girls. “I can break your kneecap without firing a shot. I don’t really feel like playing games. Are you sure you do?”

  “Um,” he said, and then made a somewhat more gurgly noise as twine settled around his neck.

  “Don’t mind me.” Rio had the damnedest way of sounding casual regardless of circumstances. “Just tying things up.” And he was—the man’s wrists behind his back, attached to the noose around his neck. “Of course, just how I tie things up probably depends on what I hear next.” He tightened the arrangement slightly just in case the carboy didn’t get his meaning.

  The carboy got his meaning.

  A moment, a faint disgusted expulsion of breath, and a quiet curse. “Look, we don’t normally get the guns. We don’t normally get here in broad daylight, either. I don’t know what’s going on. You think anyone tells me? Work the damned cars, that’s all I get told. We weren’t even expecting trouble on arrival, but Bruce called that bitch to let her know we were coming early, and she knew you were here. She doesn’t even try to come visit those little girls. Bitch!” He nodded to himself, as if pleased to have found someone he could look down upon.

  Not entirely useless. He might not know why their schedule had deviated, but he’d confirmed Kimmer’s supposition about Susan’s betrayal, and how she’d done it without lying. Bruce had called her. And as for that schedule…

  “Maybe Dave’s been more effective than we think,” she said to Rio.

  “Sounds likely.” He finished tying off the last knot, having loosened the length between the neck and wrist ties in reward for the carboy’s cooperation. “Go over there and sit down.”

  Kimmer moved so she could keep an eye on the door and an eye on the carboy. “Bruce is the guard left inside?” If he was the head goonboy, he’d probably have stayed behind and sent out his feckless troops.

  Carboy nodded, sitting awkwardly against a tree near the back corner of the building. Rio tied him there, then withdrew his trusty duct tape and stood poised, waiting to slap the gag into place.

  “And who bosses Bruce around?” Kimmer lifted her chin a fraction, an indication for Rio to wait.

  “Lots of people in the city.” The carboy’s expression grew sly. “You want me to give up the chief, that’s what.”

  “Yes,” Kimmer said. “I want you to give up the chief.” And if nothing else, she at least had the nickname for the goonboss.

  He shook his head. “No one knows that. I mean, no one.”

  Of course not.

  “All right,” she said, not surprised to see the carboy’s relief that she believed him. “Does the chief know what’s going on here? Does he know he’s lost men?”

  The man hesitated, glancing at the noisy building as though someone within would reach out in retribution.

  Looming over him, Rio said, “Won’t matter if you tell…either they’ll go down and won’t ever know, or they’ll take us down and won’t ever know.”

  “Agency teach you to think that way?” Kimmer asked him, but didn’t wait for an answer. “C’mon, c’mon. I’m in a bad mood. Be smart.”

  Carboy shrugged, a sudden capitulation. “Bruce hasn’t called anyone. He wants us to clean up this mess first. Get the cars done…get rid of you. He wants to be able to say he handled it. He let us all know we’d be the ones to pay if he couldn’t.”

  “Nice guy.” At Kimmer’s fractional nod, Rio applied the duct tape and left the carboy to return to Kimmer’s side. He ducked his head for a sideways sort of glance, one that might have looked coy under other circumstances but this time just highlighted his attempt to remain casual through his concern. “You doing okay?”

  “You’re kidding, right? The burnt-up house, the mad boss, the big hole in my arm that really, really hurts and leaked all that blood besides?”

  Rio looked at his toes in a thoughtful way and added, “Yeah, not counting the whole family crapping on you and the odds against getting those two little girls out of there.” He glanced sideways at
her again, but couldn’t hide his glint of amusement at egging her on, or at the anticipated reaction.

  “And that just makes me mad,” Kimmer said. “As if you didn’t know it. What a brat. Let’s just go get ’em.”

  “I’ll take point,” Rio said. “I’ll play the hero and distract them from you so you can grab up the girls.” And when Kimmer hesitated, thinking about the interior of the building and the best way to go in, he said, “You are going to let me play the hero, aren’t you? A guy needs a little ego booster now and then.”

  “No problem,” Kimmer told him. “Just thinking about the best way to go in, so we don’t throw away your heroic gesture for nothing. Dead heroes. Very messy.” She shuddered delicately.

  Rio straightened with an indignant expression as the carboy made an incredulous, muffled noise. And then they got down to business, and Kimmer sketched him a quick dirt map of the interior—of the available cover, of the work areas, of the office she would be targeting. They discussed drawing the goonboy and his wannabes out to the side, decided it would be too obvious, and settled quickly on barging forward as much as possible to take the action out in front of the office.

  “You’ve got two guns,” Kimmer told him. “Use them.”

  “That’s a plan.” Rio removed the second gun from his jeans and flicked the safety. “Collecting more guns…also a good plan.”

  Kimmer held out her SIG, and when Rio started to shake his head, hiked up a warning eyebrow. “I’ve still got the .38. If things go as planned, I won’t even use it. Just don’t throw this one away when you’re done with it. I want it back.”

  He took it. He gave her a quick, hard kiss, then took the gun and extra magazines, and he headed for the door and into the thick of the enemy.

  Chapter 16

  Kimmer slipped into the building in Rio’s wake, the periphery of her vision full of welding sparks and busy bee carboys…and of Rio moving stealthily closer, gaining all the ground he could before being noticed. She eased toward the office, striking a balance between casual and an eye-catching slink. Next time she’d find a sling in camo colors. She made it past the painting booth, the jumble of pressure hose, the barrel of rags dirtied and torn beyond redemption, full of grease and just waiting for a careless match. Someone’s cigarette smoke drifted her way, cutting through the sharp odors of paint and grease and solvent, the hot metal. Wheels were stacked up in rows along the wall, past the supply shelves that had served her so well earlier in the day.

  The first shout rang out. Someone dropped his wrench with a clatter of metal against concrete. Just a single shot and then silence, followed by quick, harsh demands by a confused goonboy who assumed Kimmer was causing the fuss.

  Kimmer smiled at the protests that the carboy had seen a man, not a woman, and trusted Rio to be behind cover, not hesitating in her own mission. She slipped around into the open office—Bruce had been in here, it seemed, filling it with the cigarette smoke she’d smelled. Behind her, a flurry of shots rang out. It was impossible to tell who was doing the firing, except that she heard someone scream and it wasn’t Rio.

  She closed the door partway behind her, crouching now that it wouldn’t draw attention—and now that the visibility through the office windows could do her in. She duck-walked to the blinds, cheap plastic things already yellowing with age, and twisted the rod to close them. A good number of the slats had been bent or twisted, but it was enough. She handled the other blinds and stood, and when she looked over to the desk again, a carboy popped out of the foot well, a cash box in his hand and astonishment on his face.

  Caught looking for candy, are you? Kimmer took a long step, swung her leg into an arcing kick, and connected toe-to-chin; the man’s head cracked against the desktop and he dropped to the dirty linoleum with a clatter of the metal cashbox. A quick frisk proved him without a gun. “Careless of you,” she murmured, and relieved him of the giant ratchet wrench he’d stuck into the side cargo pocket of his coverall leg, tossing it far out of reach. Then she jammed the desk chair back into the foot well. It wouldn’t keep him there, but he’d make plenty of noise getting out of it. If he was smart—with the gunfire spattering to life in the garage and Kimmer’s ire awaiting him from the office—he’d just play possum and stay safe. “Be smart,” she told him, just in case he could hear her. “Stay put and stay out of my way.”

  When she jerked open the correct desk drawer, she found the key to the little prison right where it had been. Goonboy of very little imagination, that was Bruce. Like his friends who’d come after Kimmer in Watkins Glen, they’d underestimated her. Big surprise. All they knew of her had come from Hank, until their pals had started dropping off the radar in the southwestern tier of New York. And Hank, no doubt, had colored his descriptions of Kimmer with a smear of disdain.

  Which suited Kimmer just fine, if it gave her any advantage at all. She slipped a hand into her sling, checking the exact position of the S&W and its hollowpoint load, and slipped into the nook that led to the tiny back room. She fumbled slightly with the key—losing that second wind—and cracked the door open just enough to say, “It’s That Bitch Kimmer. I’ve come back for you.”

  After the slightest of hesitations, Karlene’s voice said, “Okay.”

  Ohh, yeah. Definitely cut from the same cloth as her Auntie Kimmer.

  Kimmer found them behind the cot, which they’d tipped over to act as a shield against stray bullets, the blanket spilled across the floor before it. They peered up above the mattress, regarding her warily, flinching at the continuing if sporadic gunfire and the goonboy shouts that were slipping from demand into panic. She gave a nod of approval at their thoughtfulness, even if that paper-thin mattress wouldn’t have stopped a bullet thrown by hand. “You wanna get out of here?”

  “Where’s Mommy?” Sandy asked.

  Not a question Kimmer cared to contemplate, since in handcuffs and custody was the only acceptable answer. “Safe,” she said. “All the way back at the house.” Best guess, anyway. But at the look of woe on Sandy’s face, Kimmer added, “If she’d come here herself, these men—”

  “Big smelly men,” said Karlene.

  True enough. “—would have hurt you. She’s trying to keep you safe.”

  “That’s why she never came!” Karlene exclaimed, standing up from behind their shelter.

  “That’s why,” Kimmer agreed. So the carboy had been right. Susan had lied and she hadn’t even cared enough for the lie to trigger Kimmer’s knack. Chimera, do your thing. Make these kids believe.

  And though they both squinted at her for a moment, hesitating as though there wasn’t a gunfight just beyond this stinky little room, in the end they crept around the tipped-over bed and stood obediently before her. Karlene wrinkled her nose. “You smell, too.”

  Kimmer stifled a laugh in spite of the anxious circumstances. “Don’t I, though.” Blood and sweat, both dried now. “I think we could all use a bath.”

  “And a Band-Aid.” Such wise children.

  “Maybe two Band-Aids.” She herded them around with her good arm, peeking out the door. From the darkness of the desk foot well, the pale whites of the carboy’s eyes flickered; she barely made out his hunched figure, arms hugging his knees. She pointed a finger at him and said in a low voice, “Stay put.”

  The blinds worked both ways. Kimmer had no idea what was happening out in the garage, other than that she hadn’t heard Rio shout for help and she hadn’t heard him cry out in pain. He could be dead on the floor.

  She wasn’t prepared for the gasp of pain the thought wrought, and she bit her lip, closed her eyes and gave herself a mental slap. That sort of thinking wouldn’t help anyone. She eased to the office door, her hand held out behind her to stay the girls at the little entry nook. From there she saw…

  Nothing.

  Everyone had taken cover, aside from one who sprawled across the floor in so much blood he couldn’t possibly still be alive. Kimmer heard a few desperate whispers and smiled; inexperienced shoot
ers wasted bullets fast, and these wannabe-goonboys had shot themselves out of ammo.

  And Rio was still out there, or they wouldn’t care.

  She briefly contemplated calling to him, letting him know she was on her way out, getting a quickie report…but she’d give herself away if she did. She’d give the girls away. She looked back at them—huddled in the relative safety of the nook, their eyes big and faces pale beneath grime, their chins set and their quivering lips giving away the game.

  They’d think of this as the day they grew up.

  With a swallow against the tightening anger in her throat, Kimmer gestured them forward, and then herded them before her. “We’re going to walk down low, like ducks,” she said to them, whispering. If she’d heard the desperate exchange about empty guns, they could hear her just as well. Outside the office, the stalemate held; if anyone had ammo left—and she’d bet that at least Bruce the boss did—they weren’t ready to give themselves away, but they’d sure be alert to any sign of movement. Kimmer and the girls would take the slinky way out.

  She crouched, showing them the duck walk posture. With mock sternness, she whispered, “No quacking.” And then she herded them out, a duck chivvying her ducklings.

  They didn’t get nearly far enough.

  Halfway to the shelves, a gunshot shattered the stalemate. The girls jumped, losing their balance. Kimmer hustled them behind the barrel of rags and looked out to see, if not what she dreaded most, a near thing.

  Bruce turned out to be a wiry man, tall enough so it didn’t look good on him, in slacks and a crew neck shirt instead of coveralls. A multitude of short black braids sprang from his head, gathered in a thick, barely there stub at the back of his head. His skin and hair texture weren’t quite dark enough to support the look. But with the gun in his hand, none of that mattered. With Rio slowly rising to his feet from behind several free-standing car seats, the SIG in his hands in the middle of reload, none of that mattered. A carboy appeared on the other side and held out his hand for the SIG.