Bounty Hunter Honor

by Kara Lennox

  “Of course.” And Craig looked far too happy about the prospect, Rex thought, but he didn’t have time to play guard dog.

  “Then I’ll let Nadia stand watch with me. She could spot her own child a lot faster than any of us could. If any action goes down, though, the ladies stay put. That’s a condition of them coming along.”

  “Goes without saying,” Craig said. But an uneasy silence followed, and Rex wondered if Craig was thinking the same thing he was—that it was damned hard to order around females like Lori and Nadia.

  Rex left Craig at a corner gas station, where there was a mini-mart and a café. He could sit there for a few minutes without arousing any suspicion. After informing Beau of the change in plans, Rex headed back to Lori’s apartment. He realized he was speeding and slowed down. Was he that anxious to return to Nadia? He felt uneasy being separated from her, but that was only because he was worried about her, he reassured himself.

  When he knocked on the door of Lori’s generic apartment, it was Nadia who answered, and she looked troubled. “I’m so glad it’s you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Lori. I’m afraid I’ve upset her. She pretended she was okay, but she went to take a shower and she’s been in there thirty minutes with the water running.”

  “How did you upset her?” He tried not to sound as if he was accusing her of anything. But his protective instincts were suddenly at war. He wanted to keep both these women safe—from everything. The last thing he needed was for one to attack the other.

  “I should let her tell you.”

  Rex strode through Lori’s living room toward the bedroom and paused in front of the bathroom door. The shower was running. He knocked loudly. “Lori?”

  The pipes shrieked as the water was turned off. “What? Rex, is that you?”

  “You okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She sounded belligerent.

  “Nadia said you’d tell me.”

  She opened the door and barreled out, followed by a cloud of steam. She had on a surprisingly feminine pink silk robe, and her hair was wet and sticking out in all directions. “I’m fine and there’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Okay. Whatever.” He returned to the living room, where Nadia sat on the sofa all but wringing her hands. Rex would be the first to admit Lori’s behavior was peculiar. She’d never been the kind of woman who threw hissy fits or cried over anything. Even when their father had been murdered, she hadn’t cried, at least not publicly. But if she wanted him to know about what was bothering her, she would tell him.

  “Is she okay?” Nadia asked.

  “She’s fine. Why do you think you upset her? She said everything’s okay.”

  “I decoded your father’s ledger book,” Nadia said quietly. “It appears he might have been involved in something illegal. And that his partner in this illegal enterprise was Ace—your boss.”

  Rex sighed. “Oh, boy.”

  “She and Ace are close?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How close?”

  “Not romantically involved, if that’s what you mean. Ace is more like a father figure to her, but a friend, also.”

  “And your friend, too,” Nadia concluded.

  “Yeah. Ace taught me how to shoot.” Finding out Ace might be involved in his father’s murder, even in some minor way, was distressing news, but now wasn’t the time to deal with it. Rex had more urgent matters.

  Lori reappeared shortly, dressed in her usual low- slung cargo pants and a loose, army-green T-shirt. She exchanged a look with Rex. “Nadia told you?”

  “It’ll be all right, sis,” he said. “Whatever it is, we’ll work through it.”

  “No,” Lori said, “you’ll pat me on the head and tell me not to worry about it.”

  “I won’t, I promise. After we get Lily back, I’ll look at whatever you have, and together we’ll decide how to proceed. But right now, I need you a hundred percent. Can you put this thing about Ace out of your mind for a while?”

  Lori straightened, looking determined. “Of course I can.”

  “Good. The surveillance is more complicated than I thought, and I need both of you to help. Lori, you’ll partner with Craig. Nadia, you’ll be with me. Lori, did you get the information I asked for?”

  Lori perked up at the news that she would be included in the operation. She handed Rex a list. “Three Russian names. Nadia started with those, and then she called everyone else. No one who answered sounded Russian, but several houses didn’t answer at all, not even with an answering machine. And one of them didn’t have a phone.”

  “Which one?”

  “Forty-two seventeen.”

  Rex remembered it instantly—a gray house in need of paint with a weedy yard and a vacant look. If it was vacant, that would explain why it had no phone. On the other hand, a vacant house would be a good place to hide out.

  “Thanks, good work. Let’s roll.”

  NADIA WAS GLAD to be moving again. She hated sitting around waiting, feeling powerless. She was surprised, though, when they stepped outside, to see that the sky had grown overcast and the temperature had dropped by ten degrees. Normally she made it a rule to watch the weather forecast, but obviously weather had fallen low on her priority list.

  “A ‘blue norther’ is blowing in,” Rex said as they trotted down the outside stairs of Lori’s apartment. “Blue norther” was how Texans referred to a dramatic cold front from the north. Sure enough, the clouds on the northern horizon had taken on that characteristic bluish tinge. “It’s supposed to rain some, too. Are you okay in that jacket? Lori could probably lend you something warmer.”

  Nadia was cold, but she didn’t want to take the time to borrow a coat. “We’ll be inside the van, right? I’ll be fine.”

  “There are always extra clothes in the van if you need layers.” He opened the passenger door and helped her up. During the drive back to the working-class neighborhood, he conferred briefly on his cell phone with Craig and Beau about surveillance strategy.

  “My grandmother lived down that street,” Nadia said as they passed Blossom Lane. “When I was a little girl, almost every family on that street was Russian or Polish or Croatian. The ladies came out of their houses every morning and swept their porches and walkways. They painted their houses pretty colors and grew flowers in boxes and pots.”

  “Why did so many immigrate here?” Rex asked. “Instead of to the big cities, I mean.”

  “I think the university offered opportunities. Many of them were highly educated but not allowed to teach in the communist countries. There’s also a lot of factory work available here for the less well educated—the bottling plant just south of here, and the fertilizer plant a little farther out of town. Now the families have completely assimilated. The neighborhood doesn’t have the identity it once had, and that seems sad.” Newspapers blew across the unkempt patches of grass and bare dirt that passed for yards on Dupree Street.

  “It certainly seems sad to me that no one keeps their yards up here,” Rex said, apparently noticing the same dismal lack of pride.

  Rex pulled onto a side street, turned around and parked. Nadia was disappointed when he turned off the engine. “You mean we can’t keep the engine running?”

  “Only if we want someone to call the cops on us.”

  “No, we don’t want that. Okay, what do you want me to do?”

  He indicated which were the target houses, touching her arm as he pointed. She was responsible for watching the five that were closest to them. Rex watched the ones farther down the block, which included the vacant house. Lori and Craig were responsible for the next block. They all had binoculars and headset walkie-talkies so they could respond quickly.

  “Surveillance takes a helluva lot of patience,” Rex said. “I probably should have explained to you what would be involved before I drafted you. It’s dull and boring, but you can’t—”

  “My grandmother told me stories,” Nad
ia interrupted. “She once hid in a barn for three days with no food and little water, waiting for someone to arrive at some farmhouse. Then she had to kill him. She said she was so hungry she stood over the dead body and ate a chicken leg.”

  “Good Lord. Your grandmother sounds like one interesting lady.”

  “She was complicated. As harrowing as the stories were that she told me, I think she saw things as a child that were so horrible she couldn’t even speak of them. I don’t know what happened to her parents, only that they died when she was very young. I expect it was during World War II, and that it was very bad.”

  Nadia flashed an unexpected smile. “I bet Nana would have hated Peter. She would have seen into his black heart. She was uncanny at reading people, and it’s unfortunate I didn’t inherit that same ability.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. A good sociopath can fool anyone.”

  “I’m not sure he is a sociopath. A sociopath has no conscience, no sense of right and wrong, no interest in anything but himself. Peter cares about Russia and hates the United States. He has a moral compass, it’s just incredibly skewed.”

  “I bet he’s in this for the money.”

  “Let’s hope we’ll get the chance to find out. When we catch him, I want a crack at him before we turn him over to the authorities.”

  “A crack at him?” Rex repeated. “You mean with a hot light and a rubber hose?”

  “No, I find bamboo under the fingernails works best.” At Rex’s shocked expression, she had to smile. “Don’t be silly. Although the thought of breaking his jaw like he did mine has a certain appeal, I don’t subscribe to torture or violence. But I would like a chance to talk to him. He has volatile emotions and a terrible temper—his one true weakness. I know how to push his buttons, and he might tell me things he would never tell a cop.”

  “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try to honor your wishes.”

  She shouldn’t be asking for anything, she realized. If she could just get Lily back safe and sound, she didn’t care about anything else, and Rex was already doing so much. Of course, he expected to be paid for his services. But he hadn’t mentioned money since their first conversation yesterday morning. Didn’t most bounty hunters require some sort of down payment?

  Nadia kept her gaze resolutely on the five houses that were her responsibility. She scanned them back and forth, over and over. Most people would get tired or bored by such an activity. But she knew patience, understood tedium. When she was on the brink of an exciting advance in one of her scientific projects, she never begrudged the painstaking repetition of her work. And she knew Peter and Lily were nearby—she could almost smell them. The thought that either of them might emerge from one of these houses at any time kept her on edge and alert.

  “You look cold,” Rex said.

  Nadia realized she’d drawn her knees up to conserve body heat. She’d also unconsciously migrated slightly closer to Rex on the van’s broad bench seat, perhaps drawn by his body heat. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Well, I’m freezing. Why don’t you crawl into the back and see what you can find? I can watch your houses for a couple of minutes.”

  Nadia pulled down the center armrest and crawled through the gap to the back of the huge van, which had been outfitted with custom storage cabinets and spaces to set up video cameras, though the cameras weren’t here at the moment.

  At first she only found wigs, glasses, hats and scarves. But then she hit pay dirt—a muffler, a pair of mittens, a woman’s quilted jacket that had to be warmer than the light jacket Nadia wore and the pièce de résistance, a thick wool blanket.

  She announced her finds to Rex as she uncovered them.

  “Damn. Sure there’s not a cappuccino machine back there? Hot coffee would be nice.”

  “No, but I found this.” She held up a strange contraption. “What in the world is it?”

  Rex glanced back. “It’s a portable potty. Essential for a woman doing surveillance alone when she absolutely can’t leave.”

  Ack! Nadia hadn’t even considered what to do about using the restroom. But she damn sure wasn’t using this thing. She put it down, got the warm clothes and the blanket and returned to her position in the front seat. Since she had the nice quilted jacket and the gloves, she gave the blanket to Rex.

  “You can keep it,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “You just said you were freezing.”

  “I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I took the only blanket.”

  “You never claimed to be a gentleman.” And thank God for that. If he’d refused her sexual invitation last night, she’d probably be a blithering idiot by now.

  “Why don’t we share it?” Rex asked. The question echoed in the big van, oozing with suggestion.

  Chapter Ten

  Nadia groaned. “Oh, Rex, don’t do this to me. I’ve spent all day trying to separate what happened last night from the reality of today. I’ve been telling myself it was a onetime thing, and I’m lucky to have the memories. But it’s very hard. Harder still if I get within touching distance. And cuddling under a blanket…”

  “I know. I’ve had similar thoughts. I know we don’t have the future, maybe not even tomorrow. But we do have right now. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but you must need holding.”

  Rex was right. They were stuck in this van together, possibly for hours to come, and so long as they both knew the rules, what would it hurt to take small comfort from each other?

  Tossing caution onto the floor and stomping on it, she scooted closer to him and he put his arm around her shoulders, tucking her snugly against him. They worked together to arrange the blanket around their shoulders and drape it across their laps, leaving them each one arm free to use binoculars.

  “Did your grandmother ever say what caused her PTSD?” Rex asked a little too casually.

  Nadia’s breath caught in her throat. The fact that he’d reopened that line of conversation could only mean one thing—he was looking for a way to open up about his own experiences. Big, strong men often had more trouble dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder because they didn’t like sharing their experiences aloud. They seemed to think it wasn’t manly to open up and prided themselves on keeping everything inside and dealing with it alone.

  “I’m not sure there was any one thing with Nana,” she said. “Her life in Russia is something we pampered Americans have a hard time understanding. Even the poorest of our poor don’t live like she did, alternately freezing and starving. When she was four, her own grandmother froze to death during the night while Nana slept next to her. The ground was frozen so hard they couldn’t bury her, they had to just leave her out in the snow. She saw death, violent death and a lot of it, her whole life. It was why she was able to be trained to kill. She became…what’s the word? Inured. Inured to the violence and death.”

  “Numb on the outside,” Rex said in a way that let Nadia know he understood exactly. “But on some level she did feel it. Because she’s human.”

  “The ones who cease to be human—those are the ones with real problems. They emerge from the killing fields and become mindless slaughter machines, disorganized serial killers.”

  “It sounds like you’ve done some studying.”

  “I thought at one time I might become a psychiatrist. I got my undergrad in psychology and even went to medical school for a year. But the hard sciences pulled me in. The physical world is a big enough mystery for me. The human mind, a little too scary.”

  “Mine certainly is.”

  “Your mind doesn’t scare me. Nothing about you scares me.”

  Rex blew a breath out in a gusty sigh. It was cold enough now even inside the car that their breath was steaming. “Maybe it should.”

  “Why? Why do you say that?”

  He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “You never saw me when I had my meltdown. I was a certifiable, gibbering idiot requiring a straitjacket.”

  It upset Nadia to picture that, bu
t not for the reasons Rex thought. She didn’t believe he was incompetent now, and she certainly didn’t fear for her own safety around him, no matter what his past. She simply felt his pain. She knew it intimately. Nana had shared so much of her own guilt over the things she’d done, and they’d cried together. “This meltdown. Was there anything in particular that set it off?” He’d said it was a mission that went wrong but hadn’t given any details.

  Long, long silence. Nadia didn’t push him. He would tell her when he was ready, or perhaps never. Finally, “My last assignment, I was ordered to kill a woman. A young, pregnant woman.”

  Now Nadia did react. She hadn’t expected that. Intellectually she knew women could be as evil as men, that if they engaged in warfare and espionage they risked dying by the sword.

  “We were in Korea, the Demilitarized Zone. There was a sniper who was picking off our men, and my job was to take him out.” He took a deep, shaky breath and continued. “I didn’t know my target was a woman until I was ready to pull the trigger. Then she turned, and I saw her belly—but by then it was too late to stop.”

  “So you killed her?”

  He shook his head. “I learned later that she didn’t die. But I did hit her. It was the first time I’d failed to make a kill—and the last time I ever tried. When I saw her fall, I dropped my gun, remembering the name and face of every person I’d killed, all piled on top of one another, and I thought about their loved ones left behind, wives and children, children they would never have, and…”

  “You lost it.”

  “That’s one way to put it. I’m lucky I had friends who were able to get me out of there, because I was in no condition to get out on my own. The Marines put me in Bethesda, gave me an honorable discharge. When I got out of the psych ward, I had a nice hunk of change waiting for me in a numbered Swiss bank account—a bribe to keep my mouth shut. And I have. Not even Lori or Ace know the details of what I did overseas. You’re the only person I’ve ever told.”

  “Had you made a mistake? Or was this pregnant woman the sniper?”