He ran to the top of the incline.
A Jeep Cherokee, descending the twisting mountain road, was coming into view around the curve a short distance below him. Not short enough for Joe. Gallo would have to come around the next curve at an angle closer to where Joe stood for him to use the Beretta.
That meant Joe had to get at least fifty feet down the mountain to reach that next twisting level of the road.
He threw himself off road. He skidded down the loosely packed rocks of the slope, falling, picking himself up, and skidding again.
Twenty feet.
He slipped and rolled down the incline until he was stopped by some low shrubs.
He caught his breath and jumped up.
Ten more feet.
Not as slippery as the incline above. No falls.
He was there.
And Gallo was coming around the curve only twenty feet below him!
He had him.
Go slow. He had maybe a minute until Gallo was out of sight again. The shot had to be right. He aimed carefully at the right-rear tire.
He started to squeeze the trigger.
Pain.
His arm jerked as a bullet tore through his forearm!
Shit.
Not from Gallo.
The shot had come from above.
Rage tore through him as he saw Gallo disappear around the curve.
Another shot. Grazing his ear. He had to get out from the middle of the road and into the pine trees on the slope.
He glanced up the mountain as he dove into the trees.
Two men. One short, thin, the other taller and burly. They were separating, fading into the trees on the slope, and coming down the mountain after him.
Good.
He was bleeding. He took off his shirt, tore it in two, and wrapped one piece tightly around his forearm. Now forget it and go on the hunt.
* * *
WHERE WAS THE BASTARD? Hanks wondered. He knew he’d hit him with that first bullet.
Hanks’s phone vibrated.
“He’s disappeared,” Brock whispered. “Dammit, Hanks, I’ve searched this slope, and he’s not here. Did you see him? Maybe he’s unconscious or something and fell off the slope.”
“No, keep looking.” He was uneasy. Quinn was more than they’d bargained for. He’d been seconds away from putting a bullet into Gallo’s Jeep, and now they couldn’t locate him. “I saw him go into those trees, and he’s wounded. He can’t be moving fast.”
“All I can say is that I haven’t seen him, I haven’t heard him and I’m damn spooked about— Shit!”
Hanks stiffened. “Brock? Are you—”
The sound of metal on shale. Brock’s phone dropping? He didn’t know, but he’d better get over there.
Fast.
When he reached him, Brock was lying crumpled on the ground.
Dead? No time to check. Hanks moved into the trees, his gaze searching the darkness.
“Quinn,” he called. “This isn’t necessary. We don’t want to kill you. We had orders to stop you, and we did it. Give up, and we’ll talk. That’s all I—”
Quinn dropped down from the trees, knocking him to the ground.
Hanks struggled desperately beneath Quinn’s weight, trying to position his gun to fire.
“No way.” Quinn’s left arm was around his neck, jerking his head back. “Now we’ll talk.” His voice was low, fierce. “Tell me where Gallo was heading.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not the answer I want to hear. I’ll give you thirty seconds, then I’ll break your neck.”
“I don’t know. John never told—”
“Fifteen seconds.” Joe jerked Hanks’s head back farther and angled it. “I’m pissed. Can you tell? I’m not—”
“Let him go, Joe.” Eve Duncan came into his line of sight. “You don’t want to do this.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“Then I don’t want you to do this,” she said. “Everything is crazy, but I don’t want more violence added to the pot.” She suddenly saw the bloody shirt wrapped around Joe’s arm. “And you’re hurt, dammit.”
“Let him go.” Catherine stepped out of the shadows, her gun aimed at Hanks. “I’ll take care of it. He won’t be a problem.”
Joe hesitated, then reluctantly released Hanks’s neck. “He’s already been a problem.” He got off Hanks. “I would have been able to stop Gallo if he hadn’t interfered. I had that Jeep in my sights.”
“And John’s Jeep might have gone off the road and tumbled down to the valley,” Hanks said as he sat up and scooted quickly away from Joe.
“I was aiming at the right tire. Gallo could have controlled the Jeep if he didn’t lose his head. I didn’t want him dead … yet.” He turned to Catherine. “You said you’d take care of him. Get him out of my sight. My arm’s hurting like hell, and I want to make him hurt, too.”
Catherine gestured with the gun. “Move, Hanks. I need to get you away from here.”
Hanks didn’t move. “Did you kill Brock, Quinn?”
“Brock?” Joe gave him a cold glance. “He’s the other one with you? No, I had to work quickly, and I didn’t want to shoot and give away my position. He’ll be waking up soon.”
Hanks felt a rush of relief. He had had an idea that they had barely tapped the skilled savagery in Quinn, and they’d been lucky. Damn lucky. “Then I want to take him back with me.”
“You’re pushing your luck, Hanks,” Joe said. “Get out of here.”
Eve was standing next to Quinn. “You should be the one getting out of here. I need to take a look at that wound as soon as we get back to the house.”
Joe nodded absently, his gaze still on Hanks. “Don’t let him go anywhere until I can talk to him, Catherine. He might know where Gallo was going.”
“I don’t have any idea,” Hanks said roughly. “Do you think John would tell me? Not likely. Not that I’d tell you if he did.”
“Go,” Catherine said. “You’re being stupid, and I’m through with dealing with stupid, macho men tonight.”
Hanks hesitated, then strode up the path.
* * *
“HOW BAD IS IT?” EVE ASKED, as Catherine and Hanks disappeared in the trees.
“I could function,” Joe said. “Probably not too bad.”
But he wasn’t sure, Eve thought, and she’d seen Joe close out pain and focus efficiently many times before. It was part of the discipline and experience of his SEAL training.
And the instinct of the warrior in battle. “Is it still bleeding?”
He impatiently shook his head. “Stop fussing. I need to get back to the house and search it. We may be able to find something there that will lead us to Gallo.”
“I’m not fussing.” She felt a ripple of irritation that overcame the concern and worry she had been feeling. “By all means, let’s go back and search. I want to find Gallo as much as you do.”
He shook his head. “No you don’t.”
“You listen to me, Joe,” Eve said fiercely. “No one wants to talk to Gallo more than I do. I know nothing about Paul Black, and John seems to be the only one who can tell me anything about him. I might have had a chance of persuading him to talk to me, but you put him on the run. Do you think I won’t do anything on earth to find him and make him tell me everything he knows? Bill Hanks isn’t going to be able to help. He as much as told me when I first met him that John didn’t often confide in him. And Hanks preferred not to know.”
“He could have been lying.”
“I don’t believe he was.” She took his elbow and nudged him forward. “You and Catherine are both working and analyzing this as if it were an objective problem. Well, I’m not objective. So you do your thing, and I’ll do mine. But don’t expect me to approve when you go running down a mountain and get yourself shot and then—” She drew a deep breath. “To hell with it. Let’s get back to the house and take care of your arm.”
* * *
JACOBS WAS S
CARED, NATE Queen realized, as he held the phone a few inches away and listened to the spate of curses and questions. He should have expected it. Thomas Jacobs always fell apart when the going got tough. Queen sometimes wondered why he still kept Jacobs on as a minor partner instead of ridding himself of the coward. But Jacobs had been with him a long time, even at the initial recruitment of Gallo. He knew more than was comfortable for Queen. Besides, he was willing to set up all the little deals with which Queen didn’t want to bother.
“I know all that,” Queen said. “I didn’t handle it well. But are you telling me you would have been able to handle Catherine Ling and Quinn? They were nasty as hell, and there was no way I was going to end up dead.”
“Of course not. But there should have been a way to stop them.”
“It’s done. I only told them what I had to tell them.”
“You said you gave them the map.” Jacobs paused. “What are the chances they’ll get into the compound?”
“I wouldn’t bet against them. They disabled my security system, and it’s fairly sophisticated. They’re both tops in their fields, and they work well together. After they get in, it’s a different proposition. They’ll have to deal with Gallo.”
“But you said Quinn is lethal. That could be a problem. We can’t afford to have Gallo dead before we get our hands on the ledger.”
“I’m sending a team to Utah to move into the compound if we hear Gallo has been killed.”
“It may not even be in the compound. Gallo warned us it would go straight to the Washington Post if you moved against him. It may be in a damn lawyer’s office somewhere. You blundered big-time, Queen.”
The prick. He was getting pissed. “How was I to know that he’d go after Eve Duncan after all these years? He kept talking about Ling. Who the hell could tell what he was thinking? Ling is CIA. Duncan was no threat.”
“Then why did he take her?” Jacobs was silent, thinking. “Was it to frighten her into keeping silent that he was still alive and might be a suspect? Or was it something else? As you say, he’s unstable. Who knows what’s going on in his head?”
“Frighten? Gallo doesn’t bluff. She may be dead by the time Quinn gets to her. Serve the bastard right.”
“And if she is dead, we’ll have to do a cleanup for Gallo. You’d better hope that she’s still alive. So what do we do?”
“We find out what’s going on in the compound. Who’s our man on the payroll there?”
“Lon Davarak. He’s a perimeter guard. It’s as close as we could get to Gallo. Hanks is damn careful of the guards for the house.”
“Then call Davarak and get him to scout around and see if he can find out what the hell is happening.” He was silent again. “Eve Duncan…”
“What are you thinking?”
“He had a kid with Eve Duncan. When he made no attempt to approach her after Korea, we assumed that she was nothing to him, just a good lay. Even the reports on her he demanded could have been just to protect himself.” He paused again. “But we know he’s emotionally disturbed. What if those emotions are focused on Eve Duncan? It could be an Achilles’ heel.”
“I don’t think so. He’s not vulnerable in that way. He’s cold as ice.”
“You have no imagination. We have to accept that Gallo’s temperament can change like a weather vane and take advantage of it.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“Why, if Gallo hasn’t already cut her throat, we might do well to look deeper into the possibility of Eve Duncan.”
* * *
JUDY WAS IN THE STUDY, emptying the contents of desk drawers into boxes, when Eve and Joe came into the house.
“What are you doing?” Joe asked.
“What I’ve been told to do.” Judy glanced at his blood-soaked arm. “Got yourself hurt, didn’t you? It wasn’t Hanks’s fault. He was only protecting John.”
“Where are Catherine and Hanks?” Eve asked.
“In the living room. She tried to stop me from packing up, but I told her she’d have to shoot me. I do my job, and Gallo told me he wanted these out of the house before those military guys decided they’d come calling.” She straightened her gaze on Joe’s arm as she added grudgingly, “But I guess I could bandage that up for you first. There’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen cabinet.”
“I’m going to do it.” Eve’s eyes were on the boxes. “Why doesn’t he want Queen to see those records?”
“We’ll see for ourselves,” Joe said. “And the only thing in which I’m interested is Gallo’s name and address.”
“The only names and addresses you’d find are banks and account numbers,” Judy said. “John spread his funds in banks all around the world. He said that as long as Queen and his buddies didn’t know where it was, they couldn’t find a way to confiscate it.” She looked him in the eye. “I’ll let you take a look if you don’t believe me. I don’t think you’d tell Queen anything about the banks. You want John, not the money.” She turned away. “I’ve got to finish up here. John said that if they found out that he’d gone on the run, Queen would move in quick.” She glanced at Eve. “And to tell you that you should watch out for them.”
“I’ll watch out for them,” Joe said grimly. “And John Gallo.”
“Come into the kitchen and let me clean that arm,” Eve said. “You can go through those boxes after I make sure that wound’s taken care of.” She suddenly turned back to Judy. “You talk as if John’s been preparing to go on the run for a long time. Why? And why now?”
She shrugged. “I just know that he told me right after I came to work for him that there was a good chance that it would happen. He told me what to do. I’m doing it.” Her lips tightened. “He told me to take care of Hanks, too. If you hadn’t gone running after John, this would never have happened. Are you going to have Hanks thrown in jail?”
“Maybe. It depends on what he can tell me.”
Judy shook her head. “He’s a good man. You shouldn’t have—” She stopped and opened another drawer. “Talk to him, Eve. It’s your responsibility. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come here.”
“She hardly had a choice,” Joe said dryly.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Judy said. “But John didn’t hurt her, did he? Everything’s okay.”
“Come on, Joe.” Eve knew she’d better get him out of there before Judy’s simplistic approach to the situation made it infinitely worse. “And a wounded arm isn’t exactly okay, Judy,” she said as she drew Joe out of the room.
“The place seems to be reeking of Gallo’s fans,” Joe said sarcastically. “Everything he does is just fine as long as no one is dead.”
Eve pushed him down in a kitchen chair. “You didn’t hear that from me. I’m a Joe Quinn fan.”
“Are you?” He watched her unwind the bloody shirt from around his arm. “That’s nice.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” She examined the wound. “It’s a flesh wound, but it’s not pretty. I’ll clean it up as best I can, but I want a doctor to give you an antibiotic.” She went to the sink, filled a bowl of water, then searched for and found the first-aid kit. “We’ll get out of here as soon as we can and find a hospital.”
“After I take a look at the documents in those boxes,” Joe said. “Though I’m not sure it will do me any good. Gallo’s cook-slash-majordomo was being very careless about throwing everything in those drawers into the to-go stacks. No selectivity. She may have been telling the truth.” His gaze was on Eve’s fingers as she carefully washed the wound. “But money is important to most people. Maybe I can use those records as bait for Gallo.”
She opened the first-aid kit. “No.”
His gaze lifted to her face. “You object?”
“I’m just telling you it wouldn’t work. It would hurt him, but it wouldn’t bring him back.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you know? Have you become an expert on Gallo in such a short time?”
“He has a purpose.
He wouldn’t let himself be distracted.” She put antiseptic on the wound and flinched as he inhaled sharply. “Sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His gaze was on her face. “What purpose, Eve?”
She was silent as she began to wrap the wound.
“Eve.”
“You won’t believe me any more than Catherine did.”
“What purpose?”
“He’s trying to find Bonnie’s killer,” she said quietly.
Joe began to curse beneath his breath. “He gave you that bull, and you—”
“There are two cars coming up the mountain.” Catherine was standing in the doorway. “Hanks got a call on his phone from one of the perimeter guards, and I let him take it. Hanks thinks it may be MI. He said Gallo warned him to expect a call from Army Intelligence if anything disrupted the status quo.” Her lips twisted. “I think we may constitute a disruption. They may not know Gallo has flown the coop, but they must know we’re here and are using it as an excuse to invade the property.”
“Queen.”
Catherine nodded. “That’s my bet. He’s sent out the troops.” She looked at Joe. “So what do we do? Stand our ground and take whatever they want to throw at us? Or take off and avoid the confrontation until we’re on our own turf?”
“How much time do we have?” Joe asked.
“Hanks says ten minutes.” She paused. “He said Gallo told him it wouldn’t be pretty. There would be interrogations. He gave him orders to take off and have everyone at the compound spread to the four winds.”
Joe thought about it. “Where is Hanks now?”
“Living room. I left him tied up.” She paused. “I talked to him, Joe. I believe him when he said he wasn’t trying to kill you. He was just trying to do his job and protect Gallo.”
“He may know where Gallo is.”
She shook her head. “He might, but I don’t think so.”
Joe glanced at Eve. “Do you know where he is?”
Her eyes widened. “No, I do not.”
He shrugged. “It was a possibility.” He pushed back the chair. “Let Hanks go. Tell him to get the hell out of here and take Judy and anyone else in the house with him. We’ll take that passage back down the mountain and circle down to where we parked the car.” He stood up. “You get Eve down the mountain, Catherine. I’m going to go take a quick look at those records in the library, and I’ll follow.”
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