by Billi Jean
DeRoy nodded, but the kid mumbled he was ‘on board for that’ under his breath.
Walters rolled his eyes at the heartfelt declaration. He’d removed his white camouflage gear but still held his rifle. Walters levelled it on DeRoy as soon as Robert unzipped and took off his jacket and snow pants. He shoved them and his rifle behind the couch.
“Now, we wait,” he said, settling on the desk again.
“Two minutes, sir,” Taylor sounded winded, but Robert didn’t answer, not wanting the senator to know he had a link to the outside beyond his phone.
Bryson could have changed positions because of the weather, or he could have moved because of the incoming copters. They’d assumed the buyers would arrive in a truck or SUV, not helicopters. Bryson and Jansen would have to relocate or chance being spotted.
“Hand me the copy and put this fake in the briefcase,” he instructed Benjamin, handing over his own flash drive.
The kid scrambled to the briefcase, dropping it off the couch in his hurry. DeRoy was too quiet.
“If DeRoy blinks wrong, shoot him in the head,” he told Walters.
Walters grinned lazily and crossed his arms over his chest hugging his gun in a casual display of power. He was in a tan sweater and jeans, his sun-bleached blond hair hanging down over his forehead but his all-American looks were deceiving. He could kill DeRoy without his gun just as well as with it and probably not have a single qualm about it.
So could Robert. He took out his knife and flipped it a few times, watching the kid get the flash drive out, turn and face him, freezing with a look at the knife.
“Just hand me the file.”
Benjamin caught his toe on the Asian carpet, but couldn’t hand the flash drive over quick enough.
Robert pegged him for seventeen no matter what he’d said about twenty. No way was he old enough to vote.
“Now close the briefcase,” Robert told him, putting the flash drive in an inside pocket of his BDUs. He speared DeRoy with a look. “You remember our deal. You live if you do your part. You die if you don’t.”
“I understand completely,” DeRoy responded, but Robert, Walters, and possibly the kid, knew he’d try something. Benjamin moved over on the couch and made himself as small as possible, which wasn’t hard since the kid was all arms and legs. But Robert couldn’t help but feel as if he was up to something too.
The whirl of helicopters suddenly became loud enough that even DeRoy seemed to make them out with his hearing aid. He straightened in his seat and a calm demeanour settled over his aged face. He folded one leg over the other, as if he was having drinks with the good ol’ boys, and was stupid enough to let a smirk cross his face before he schooled himself into a bored expression. He also avoided all eye contact with Benjamin.
God damn what I wouldn’t give to have more time.
Walters glanced at Robert and went to stand by the door. The old man wasn’t going to survive this mission. He would try something and because of it, screw things up, possibly get himself and everyone else killed. Making a quick decision, Robert pocketed his knife and turned to the sneaky old bastard.
“We answer the door, isn’t that right, DeRoy? But we have to confirm these are the men, how will we do that?”
DeRoy stayed silent obviously hoping they’d miss this part of whatever scam the man had going on.
“Answer me. Now.” Robert didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t need to. The old man was smart enough to know when his life on this planet had been broken down to heartbeats.
“They will have a man with them, tall, silver-haired, and he will introduce himself as Mr Butler. He’ll hand over a red silk scarf with a golden dragon in the exact centre. You have to hand them this,” DeRoy said and picked up what Robert had thought was a coaster for his drink. He held it up and Walters walked over and took it, handing it to Robert with a roll of his eyes.
“Damn Hardy Boys.”
Robert kept in his snort at the stupidity of the wealthy. “Head up there and welcome our guests, would you?”
“Will do.” Walters set his rifle by the door on his way out. He had several other weapons on him, Robert knew, but through their com, he muttered for him to watch his back.
Nerves bunched up in Robert’s shoulders and down his back, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
Too easy. This was too easy.
Nothing is ever easy, boy.
Sarge, his dad, used to say that.
The reminder pissed him off. Life could be easy. It would be, too. As soon as he finished this and cleaned himself out of the drug’s influence. According to Kylie, it would take a few days, three tops. He found that hard to believe, but damn he hoped it was true. He’d tried once to break the influence of the genetic serum and had felt like his skin had caught fire. All he could think about was the drug, how he’d needed it, until he’d rationalised himself into taking more. It was one of his darkest moments out of a lifetime of them. A failure. He wasn’t used to failure or giving up. But he’d given up. He’d damn near jumped at the first mission that made taking the drug again possible.
“We could cut a deal. You know we could,” DeRoy suddenly said.
Robert tensed, only then aware he’d been lost in his thoughts. That happened more and more frequently. He glanced at his watch, heard voices coming down from the hallway and turned to the old man.
DeRoy looked frantic. “You know this formula will make whoever sells it richer than anyone alive, you realise that, don’t you? We could split the money evenly and still walk away with enough to keep our great-great-grandchildren happy.”
DeRoy hissed through his too-white teeth in frustration when Robert simply stared at him. A man like DeRoy didn’t understand how good he had it. How truly good his life was. He wanted more, and more, and more, never satisfied with what freedoms he had that others—Robert included—wanted. The nightmares DeRoy suffered were his own creations, and not forced on him by situations that men should never have to face.
“I never plan to have children, DeRoy, so your offer holds little worth for me. Not compared to honour and integrity.”
DeRoy’s face grew cruel, his age making his expression into something evil, bordering on insanity. “You’re a fool if you think those things are more important than the kind of money you are turning away from,” he snarled.
Footsteps sounded down the hall at the same time as his com link sparked to life. “Shit, trouble, fucking trouble. Get out of there. I repeat, get out of there!” The link suddenly blared with gunfire and static at the same time as the room went to shit.
Robert had barely enough sense to turn and face the door just as Sonya—an agent he thought was on their side—walked in, her gun up, and fired point blank at his chest.
Chapter Two
Kristen blew her hair off her face and tried to remember all the reasons she lived alone in the mountains of Wyoming. The snow kept everyone away, for one. It took a four wheel drive vehicle to reach her cabin from Laramie and the Internet was spotty. The cell service laughable to the point that she couldn’t have found where she’d last seen her phone if she’d been held at gunpoint. All in all, she couldn’t have had as much solitude if she’d relocated to the moon.
“Kristen, it’s just not healthy for you to hide away out here,” Sam grumbled, jacking his too large and way too old jeans up his hips. His suspenders held his ancient pants up, but because he had a belly Santa would envy, the old cowboy had no chance of keeping his clothes in order.
“I’m not hiding, Sam. I’m out here because I love this place,” she said. A lie but only partially. She had loved this place at one time. “Besides, it’s my choice,” she reminded him gently.
He huffed out a breath and settled his big frame at her kitchen table. She poured him his cup of Folgers, handed him the sugar and watched while he added two heaped spoonfuls like he was considering the life and death of the stuff. She preferred her whole bean fresh ground coffee and hadn’t given that up out here in the middle of n
owhere. Sam earned his Folgers because he simply wasn’t about to try her ‘fancy city stuff’ when cowboy coffee was perfectly fine and American to boot.
She smiled when he glanced up after taking a sip with relish. “Best damn stuff, this coffee, Kris.”
Sam was harmless. And lonely. Maybe even as lonely as she was and maybe that was why she had him over and listened to his lectures on her poor excuse for a life these past two years.
“I like living here, too, have my whole life, but you’re not living, Kris, you’re hiding.” He held up a weathered old hand at her immediate reply and shook his balding head. “It’s okay. Hell, I’ve been hiding out here too, but you’re young, you’ve got your life ahead of you. You can’t hole up here forever. Some man will change your opinion, you wait and see. We aren’t all bad men. Hell, I’m one hell of a good guy, you just ask anyone. If I was forty years younger, you’d be happy as pie.”
Kristen laughed and served him a piece of carrot cake she’d made just for him. Sam had lost his wife five years before and hadn’t known what to do about that. He’d always had his Grace. Even during the war, she’d written to him, never far from his thoughts. If Sam hid, it was from her loss. In that way, she and Sam were more alike than anyone else she knew. He had experience losing someone essential. So had she.
“Now take this cake. You could damn near market this and make millions. What man wouldn’t see the gold mine he had with you?”
“True.” Why argue? Sam knew her very well and his teasing was from the heart. He truly did care about her and while she hadn’t replaced his Grace, she had helped him through her loss. The couple had never had children, and for as long as she’d known them, which was most of her life, they’d never been separated. Grace’s death had devastated Sam, just as Kris’ loss had destroyed her. She shut those thoughts down and focused on a less sensitive topic. “So this storm’s going to be a bad one, huh?”
Sam cut into his cake before he gifted her with a squirrelly look for changing the topic. He grunted and she relaxed back in the seat. The lecture would be over until he got up to go and started in again.
Rowdy, her blue Australian cattle dog, settled down next to his Shepherd, Sadie, with a soft woof and crawled closer on the cabin’s wooden floor reminding her that she’d not given them a treat. Kris laughed at his antics and got up from the butcher block table to get them both a strip of rawhide from her ceramic jar full of the stuff.
“You’ll spoil those dogs with that,” Sam commented around a sip of coffee as soon as she sat back down.
“True, but better rawhide than my saddle or boots,” she said, grinning when Sam winced. Sadie had gone through two saddle harnesses before she’d ended her teething period.
“Yeah, that’s true. Hell, your rawhide looks like jerky. I might have to try some myself someday.”
They both laughed over the comment and Kris poured him more coffee.
“Carson says there’s a big one coming, whopper. Maybe a couple of feet of snow. You got the generator all set up?” Sam asked.
“Yep. Generator, canned food, and I heard more than a few feet. Harry says nearly five feet if we include what we’ve already had.”
Sam shook his head and waved off her words with a look only an old cowboy could master with his mouth full of cake. “Heck, that old geezer wouldn’t know five feet of snow if it piled on top of him.” He took another big bite of cake, chewing quickly so he could point at her with his fork and continue with his disparaging remarks against his oldest friend. “Heck, we’ll be lucky to get a foot. All talk, these forecasters included. My leg says no more than a bit more and that damn war wound is better than any weather station.”
“Mmm, well, just in case, I have all I need. I don’t expect to hear a knock on my door and open it to your smiling face in the middle of a blizzard, all right?”
He snorted and cleaned his plate off to the last crumb before he set his fork down and leant back with his fresh coffee. He narrowed his old blue eyes on her and whistled through his teeth. “If I do find myself over here, it’s because I just happened by.”
“For some coffee in a blizzard?”
Sam laughed making the sturdy wood creak in protest. Rowdy lifted his head from his rawhide and gave her a quizzical look but Sadie got too close to his prize and got a snap for her interest.
“Damn, that dog of yours is mean, huh?” Sam grinned and petted Sadie. He might be nosey and always dropping by, but Sam Sheffield was good people. Dogs knew people.
“He’s not mean, he’s protecting his own.”
Sam laughed again at that and stood. “Yeah, he is a good pup even if he is mean.”
Sadie moved closer to her master, already done with her rawhide and looking for cake, no doubt. Sam sneaked a crumb to the dog and Kris pretended not to notice.
“This storm will be bad, though, Kris. Make sure you keep shovelling it out as soon as it gets—”
“Every few hours or I’ll be snowed in until spring. I know.” She smiled to soften her words. “This isn’t my first winter. Besides, I could use the exercise.”
“Ah, hell, you’re too thin. You need this cake more than I do.” Sam hitched his jeans up, and winced. “You gonna be all right then, you think?”
“Sam, I’ll be fine. I have work to do, so don’t worry over me being bored.”
“That computer stuff, huh?”
“My computer stuff pays the bills.” She wrote programmes, using code, and took them to the local university for them to use on their website. It didn’t pay much, but when she had Internet, she could manage a few other income sources too. Even without it she did pretty well. Sam didn’t understand, but liked getting packages in the mail from her Internet shopping instead of driving to Laramie to a store big enough to sell the things he liked. Or stamps for his collection.
“Each to their own. I have plenty to do on my stamp collection. I got those ones from Germany yesterday. They should sell for a pretty penny at the next show.”
“That’s good, Sam. I’m glad that’s working for you. Did you convince Harry to sell a few of those books of his?”
Sam snorted. “Not a chance. That man loves those books more than his grandkids.” He grabbed his cowboy hat from the table where he’d taken it off earlier and gave her a searching look. “You sure you don’t want me to move my snow plough up here?”
She patted his big shoulder but shook her head at his concern. She wasn’t using a plough to shovel snow. The exercise always wore her out and helped her sleep. “Not a chance.”
“All right then, you be good, girl. I’ll see you when the snow melts a bit.”
“All right, Sam. You be easy on Harry and his weather prediction, okay?” she teased, grinning when her remark brought a big yellow-toothed smile to the old cowboy’s face.
“I reckon I’d better, that man is as sensitive as a girl on her first date” he said with a tip of his cowboy hat. “Best carrot cake in the county, Kris.”
She handed him the boxed up cake, minus the slice he’d wolfed down. “You just make sure not to sit on the rest of it, okay? And don’t give it to Sadie, she’ll get sick.”
Sam took the cake and tried his best to look innocent. The dog would have half the cake before Sam made it down the mountain. The man spoilt her endlessly.
Rowdy barked beside her leg and she reached down to pet his thick fur. “Good boy, say goodbye to Sadie, we won’t be seeing them for a while now.”
As soon as Sam lumbered up into the truck, she waved and waited until the Ford had made it down the steep driveway before she turned away to study the heavy snowfall. A snowstorm always looked so magical, she thought. At least five inches, possibly closer to eight, already covered the ground. It was that wet, dense snow that would weigh a ton after an hour of shovelling it, but looked like Christmas morning.
Silliness, she thought, eyeing the snow already waiting for her.
She had a lot to do still in preparation for the storm, but by nightfall she n
eeded the path from the cabin to the barn as free of snow as she could get it. This was just the beginning. Soon they’d have high winds, and maybe even an icy mix to add weight and that dangerous slippery consistency that caught a person by surprise. Still, she could handle it. If all went well, she’d have her chores done and a hike in as well before the real storm made them homebound for who knew how long.
The horses neighed from the small barn, reminding her that they’d want feeding soon, too.
“Come on, boy. We have work to do, huh?”
Rowdy tilted his head quizzically and gave her a soft woof, no doubt of anticipation.
* * * *
Robert sized the situation up in the den and made a dive to the left, managing to squeeze by with one hit to his shoulder instead of the killing shot Sonya had aimed at his chest. He crashed into the small coffee table and two leather chairs, but managed to stay alive.
Walters yelled something above the gunfire, exploding plaster, and wood chips raining down but he couldn’t quite catch the words. He thought he’d said ‘what the hell?’, but Robert didn’t worry over making sense of it. Instead he rolled to his feet and immediately spotted Benjamin. The kid was bleeding from his nose and mouth and his head was twisted at an odd angle.
DeRoy was on the leather sofa, a bullet hole in the exact centre of his forehead.
Sonya crouched down behind the bar, firing at Walters, who had tossed the other leather couch onto its side for partial cover.
Two men broke past Walters’ barrage of bullets and ducked down on Robert’s side of the room. Sonya kept Walters busy but the other two fixed Robert in their sights and circled to get around behind him.