A Shot at Love

by Peggy Jaeger

  “We need to keep pressure on this.” A shaking warble drowned her voice. “I hear sirens. That means help’s on the way.”

  “You’ve got to get out of here.” Jon laid a hand over the one she held across his wound. “They know where you are.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  Jon shook his head. His color paled even more and a swift gasp shot from him.

  “Don’t move,” Gemma said. “Please.”

  “Papps?”

  Ky looked down at his partner.

  “Take her out of here.

  “Jon—”

  “I’ll be fine. But if they found her once…”

  He didn’t need to finish. Ky nodded, hating to leave his partner, but it had to be done. They were sitting targets.

  He grabbed Gemma’s upper arm. “Let’s go.”

  She snapped it out of his hand and screeched, “Get your hands off of me!”

  The sound of sirens was louder now, almost on top of them. They didn’t have much time.

  “If we don’t leave right now we won’t be able to once the police get here. Now, come on.” He tried to tug her again.

  “Gemma, go with him, please,” Jon said. His breathing sounded wet and harsh. “I’ll be fine. Go.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  Her indecisiveness was costing them valuable time. Ky gripped her arm again and lifted her up, giving her no recourse.

  She didn’t resist when he pulled her from the room, jogged them through the destroyed kitchen and out the back door.

  He stopped, once, to listen. The sirens were blaring from the front of the property. Assessing their best route of escape, he tugged her hand and brought her through the backyard, around the garage and toward the parallel street.

  Gemma stayed silent, one hand secured in his, the other wrapped around her camera strap.

  “We have to get out of this neighborhood,” he told her. “Can you keep up with my pace?”

  “Yes.”

  He stole a quick glance at her, then nodded. It was apparent she was terrified. Her hand shaking beneath his proved it. But he could tell she was angry as well, and knew he was the cause.

  Fine. He’d deal with her anger later. For now, he had to get her someplace she’d be safe.

  Chapter Six

  Gemma stood behind Ky, quiet and composed, while he paid for their room in cash. The motel manager, an e-cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, brought to mind every seedy film noir character she’d ever seen. Balding, the tufts of his sparse comb-over greasy and wispy, he wore a drab sweater an eclipse of moths had eaten holes into, his baggy pants were held in place with a belt almost wrapped around him twice, and she could tell what he’d had for breakfast from the egg-colored crumbles stuck to the stubble on his jaw.

  What kind of person greets paying guests looking like this?

  And didn’t he think it unusual they had no luggage, no bags? He hadn’t even asked Ky for identification when he’d requested a room.

  When the man opened his mouth and said, “Twenty bucks an hour,” the e-cigarette glowing as it bounced with his words, “a hundred for the night,” she knew why he hadn’t.

  They weren’t exactly checking into a five-star hotel. She had no idea how much Ky paid him.

  The manager handed over a worn key card, his eyes never wavering from the cash now secured between his fingers. Gemma bit back a swell of bile at the clutter of dirt under his fingernails.

  With a firm hand placed at her back, Ky ushered her from the lobby without a word.

  He kept them close to the outside wall while he brought them to the room, his gaze darting all around, never stopping, watchful, on edge.

  The moment he secured the lock behind them, Gemma took her first full breath since fleeing the house. She leaned back against the faded wallpapered wall and swiped one hand down her face, the other still clutching the straps of her camera. She hadn’t let go of it once since running from the safe house.

  Ky made a show of closing the blinds and the dingy curtains over them, then moving to the room’s small bathroom, checking behind the door, the shower, then the tiny closet.

  When he looked convinced they were truly alone, he turned to her.

  “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer him, fearful the moment she opened her mouth she’d let loose all the pent-up anger, rage, and heart-stopping panic she’d been forced to curtail during their flight. She didn’t want to lose control. Not here, not now, and certainly not with him.

  He crossed the small expanse of the room to stand in front of her. She wouldn’t look at his face, couldn’t allow him to see the weakness or the total fear she knew was swimming in her eyes.

  Ky tipped his head to try and establish eye contact. In a feeble attempt to divert his attention, she said, “You have blood on your shoes.”

  She should have realized he wouldn’t be distracted.

  Gently, so gently the move made her want to weep, he lifted her chin with one finger.

  “Look at me,” he told her, leaving his hand in place. It was as if he’d hypnotized her with the sound of his soft, warm voice. Gemma was unable to resist the command.

  “Breathe.”

  Her shoulders lifted as she inhaled deeply, then let it out.

  “Answer me,” he said when she focused on his face. “Are you all right?”

  Her lips trembled and she bit down on them to quell their quaking.

  “No,” she confessed, the word small and hollow to her ears. She swallowed, her gaze glued to his. She hated she’d admitted it. Experience had taught her to never show or admit any frailty. Never give a man the power to see you as weak. It was a rule she’d lived by all her adult life. Trapped in the searching heat of his gaze though, she found she couldn’t hide the horror pounding through her. “This is all my fault.”

  The words caught in her throat, a sob mortifyingly breaking through.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes. It is. Can’t you see that? Jon got shot because of me.”

  “Not because of you. Jon got shot doing his job. A job he agreed to. A job he loves.”

  How his voice stayed so calm and even she couldn’t begin to fathom when every inch of her being wanted to scream and rail.

  “What else can I think?” she yelled, her raw nerves finally snapping, the emotions she’d curtailed unable to be contained now. She knew she was in danger of becoming hysterical, but couldn’t find a way to restrain herself. “If Jon hadn’t been protecting me from a maniac, he never would have been shot. I’m the reason. Me. My God, if he dies—”

  She choked on the word and pushed against him, forgetting what a solid wall of concrete he was made of. Ky’s hands gripped her upper arms and gave her a shake.

  “Lower your voice.” His clipped command snapped through her, anger at him now clawing through the fear. His fingers squeezed through her skin, a single stab of pain shutting off her words. His eyes were flat and hard as he continued to look at her. “You’re not responsible for any of this. Not for Jon getting shot, not for witnessing the execution, nothing. Do you understand? Ritandi is. This has his stench all over it. He’s responsible for it all, not you.”

  She glared at him, tasting bile again as she tried to clamp down on her fury.

  “I need you to calm down and focus,” Ky said, freeing her arms. He stayed rooted, in front of her, his expression tight. “Jon will be taken care of. It’s you I have to worry about.”

  He turned away from her, went over to the window, and pulled the curtain back a little. He dropped it back in place after a moment. “We can’t stay here. I don’t think we were followed, but I can’t take the chance. It’s impossible to keep you safe here.”

  “Then why did you drag me to this dump? Why didn’t we just stay p
ut?” Her voice rose again as her anger overtook her fear.

  “I asked you to lower your voice. These walls are paper thin.”

  Gemma’s mouth clamped shut.

  He stared at her a moment, as if waiting to see if she’d comply. “We couldn’t stay at the house. I had to get you out since I had no way of knowing if more of Ritandi’s men were coming. Jon and I took out two of them. Would you have preferred to wait and find out if there were more?”

  The words sliced through her like a hot serrated blade. Not trusting her voice, she shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Why didn’t we take the car, then? Or call someone to pick us up? It would have been faster and we wouldn’t have to be…here.” She swiped her hand around the room.

  “Think that through. If they knew where we were keeping you,” he shook his head, “they probably knew what our vehicles looked like, or even the license plate numbers. I couldn’t take the chance we’d be followed by using one of our cars.”

  It made sense. She hadn’t considered there might have been more men in the background waiting for them.

  A deadly chill iced down her spine.

  “Now, please just give me a minute,” Ky said. “I need to think.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through his hair from temple to nape. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, hands crossed together, almost in prayer, lost in thought.

  Gemma’s adrenaline surge finally wore off. Her legs began to tremble and she was afraid she’d slither down to a puddle on the floor if she didn’t sit. The sparsely furnished room was devoid of a table and chairs. The only place to sit was on the bed next to Ky.

  Without saying a word, Gemma crossed to the bathroom.

  “Are you okay?” he asked again.

  Gemma folded her arms across her chest, cast a quick glance his way and nodded. She moved into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  The room was no larger than a cabinet. A single shower stall covered with a plastic liner scattered with dots of mold took up most of it; a child-sized toilet and sink completing the windowless room. Two, threadbare, once white towels, were haphazardly folded on a wall rack. She shivered at the thought of who had touched them before her. Gemma turned the sink water on, then sat on the closed toilet lid. Her legs were shaking in a disjointed rhythm, her hands now following suit.

  This made the second attempt on her life. A life that, up until three days ago, had been normal, happy, and safe. Happenstance had placed her on a city street while a heinous crime took place and turned her world on its axis.

  It wasn’t fair. She’d done nothing wrong, but fate didn’t seem to care.

  She dropped her head into her hands and let the tears finally come through. The running water would silence them from the man on the other side of the door—a man she refused to let see her as weak. More times than she could remember Gemma’d locked herself in a bathroom, running from her mother’s angry shouts and her father’s profanities, seeking refuge from the war raging through the house. The sound of her father’s deep and menacing voice as it bellowed over her mother’s shrill and emotionally raw one was a sound Gemma could still hear in her dreams to this day.

  No longer a child, Gemma now faced her fears with fortitude and resilience. Locking herself away in a bathroom wasn’t who she was any more. She wanted her life back. Her normal, happy, and safe life.

  She ran a finger under the running water to gauge the temperature and then tugged one of the threadbare towels from the bar and wet the edges. When she pressed the cooled cloth to her closed eyes she sighed.

  No, she wasn’t a child any longer, and the need to hide from fearful and upsetting things had long since passed. Her life was her own, her choices, her desires, her every action, hers alone. Staring at herself in the faded glass mirror, she took a deep breath and raised her chin. She wasn’t going to allow a madman to play with her life.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  She was taking back her life. Starting right now.

  She heard Ky talking when she turned off the water. The walls truly must have been paper thin because she could hear every word distinctly.

  “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ky said in that same firm, intractable voice he’d used on her. “Because there’s obviously a leak.”

  He was quiet, apparently listening.

  “Let me take care of this. I have an idea.”

  Gemma opened the door to find him at the window, peeking out, his cell phone at his ear. He nailed her with his intense gaze the moment he saw her. A quiet gasp broke from her when she caught the heat in his eyes as they zeroed in on her face. She’d come to recognize the subtle changes in his expression over the past few days. The way he looked at her now she’d categorized as his cop face. Eyes flat and filled with icy calm, mouth set into a determined, take-no-prisoners line that brokered no arguments. Chin firm, jaw immovable.

  A different look from when he’d shoved her under the kitchen table and thrown his body over hers to protect her from the hail of bullets. Then he’d looked like a warrior, eyes glazed with the heat of battle, focused and hard, intent on his attackers, his full mouth drawn into a tight and narrowed line, preparing to defend, to kill. One look at his steadfast expression, one feel of the furnace of scorching heat pouring off him as he covered her body with his, and Gemma had likened him to a god of his origin, preparing for a battle of epic size.

  Her fingers itched to film him just this way.

  “Yes. Soon.”

  He never stopped looking at her as he ended the call.

  “Are you okay?”

  “You don’t have to keep asking me that.” She moved into the room, her gaze locked with his. “Who were you speaking to?”

  Ky’s eyes tightened at the corners as he considered her. After a moment, he slipped the phone into his pocket.

  “My boss.”

  “Does he know how Jon is? Is there any…news?”

  Ky nodded. “The bullet tore through the fleshy part of his arm and stuck. He’s heading to surgery, but it’s expected to go well.”

  Gemma swallowed. “So he’ll be okay?”

  “Yeah. He should. But LaRoux and Coble are dead.”

  He was trying to control his anger and again, if Gemma hadn’t been such a keen observer, she would have missed the slight hitch in his voice, the tightening around his mouth and jaw. He’d balled his hands into fists right before sliding them into his pants pockets.

  “And Ritandi’s men?” she asked.

  “Dead.”

  “Good.” It was her turn to nod now. “They deserve to be, working for such a monster.”

  Ky cocked his head at her. “The house has been secured already.”

  “What’s next?” she asked. “As you’ve said, we can’t stay here.”

  “No, we can’t. We have no resources, and I only have a few dollars in cash with me. We can’t use any credit cards, anything where we can be tracked. Ritandi shouldn’t have been able to find us.”

  “And yet, he did.”

  Ky stayed silent, then repeated her words back to her. “And yet, he did.”

  She moved to the bed and sat. Since Ky was at the window, she wasn’t as concerned about sitting on it now.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  Ky didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled back a corner of the curtain and took a quick peek outside. Gemma remembered seeing an empty parking lot as they’d made their way to the room and she wondered what he was looking for.

  “Wait.”

  “For what? Another attack?”

  He sliced her with an annoyed flick of his eyes, but didn’t respond. Instead, he stayed vigil at the window, his gun drawn in his hand.

  Suddenly, he dropped the curtain edge. “Come on. Our ride is here.”
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  Without a word, Gemma rose from the bed, then halted when he motioned for her to stand behind him. She couldn’t see what was waiting for them through the dirt encrusted curtains, but apparently she didn’t need to.

  “Ready?” Ky asked.

  When she nodded, he slid a hand around her upper arm, his grip firm and, oddly, comforting. Easing the door open he slipped through it first, then tugged her with him.

  A midnight-black Escalade was parked, the engine running, right outside their door. Two men in nondescript dark suits stood on either side, automatic weapons drawn, sunglasses covering their eyes. As soon as they spotted Ky, one of them pulled open the back passenger door.

  Gemma took it all in as Ky hustled her into the back seat and climbed in after her.

  In the blink of an eye, they were speeding from the parking lot.

  “Flight leaves in twenty, Sir,” the driver called back to Ky.

  “Flight? Where are we going?” Gemma adjusted her seat belt and shot her gaze to Ky.

  Cop face stared back at her: hard, focused, lethal.

  “The safest place I can think to keep you right now.” He turned and looked out the window. “The FBI.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ky closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. The dull thud of the headache that had started right before they’d taken off from the private New York air strip had metastasized into a roaring earthquake, pounding and pummeling behind his eyes once they’d landed in DC. Being screeched at by the assistant State’s attorney for the past fifteen minutes hadn’t helped ease the pain one bit.

  “What kind of a shit-show are you running, Pappandreos?”

  Ky met the ASA’s disgusted glare and counted to five. It wouldn’t do to give into the anger raging within him and flatten the man where he stood.

  Davison Barly, all six feet, six inches of him, used his substantial height and width to intimidate and bully all those around him. He ruled his office with a fist encased in iron, brokered no excuses, and was rumored to have lofty political aspirations. All of the people assigned to him came to work daily in a state of nervous tension.