Crazy Sweet

by Tara Janzen

  There were men coming up behind her. She could hear them now, when she hadn’t been able to hear them before. The clatter of their feet through piles of trash, the laboring of their breath through the pace Angel was setting. They wanted her the same way she wanted Royce.

  She wiped at the rain on her face and kept running.

  When they reached the low bank at Enright Street, the two of them scrambled up onto the ditch road. It was a dangerous crossing, where they would be exposed for precious seconds until they reached the darkness and cover of the buildings on the other side.

  The men were very close now. She could almost smell them.

  Angel dropped to one knee at the edge of a junked car and fired off a short burst.

  A man cried out, but Gillian just kept running. Once on the other side of the road, she dropped to her knee and provided cover for Angel. They were a team.

  When he caught up to her, she rose to her feet again, and in the split second between when she stood up and turned to run, something slammed into her. She stumbled, but then righted herself and kept going.

  At the corner of the street, she glanced up and read the words “Enright Street.” They were on track. All she had to do was run.

  CHAPTER

  29

  THIS IS A DONE DEAL, Dylan,” Hawkins said, his voice no more than a whisper into his mic.

  “Where are Travis and Gillian?”

  “Don’t know, boss. I heard gunfire one minute ago, and Travis confirmed another of Royce’s guys hit. He thought it was a good hit and the guy was dead. A few seconds later, there were more shots fired, but I didn’t hear from him on those. I should have a visual on them real quick. He didn’t answer my last signal.”

  “Do you have Royce and Lowe in sight?”

  “Affirmative. Both targets are inside the SUV.”

  “Then do the CIA a favor.”

  Hawkins wiped the rain from his face and moved across the alley to improve his firing position. He’d always wanted this moment to be a little more personal, but he wasn’t going to complain. Royce was his.

  Tucking himself up against a brick wall, he raised his HK UMP45, automatically adjusting his point of aim to take the car windows into account. He was going to take Lowe out first, because he was the driver, then Royce’s choices would be narrowed down a bit. He could sit in his seat and take what happened next, or he could bail.

  Either option worked for Hawkins.

  His first burst went as planned—almost. Without being able to see inside the darkened windows through the rain, even though he’d prayed for a direct hit on the bastard, he didn’t get it. The windshield shattered, and the car lurched forward.

  Hawkins rose to his feet, still shooting, but didn’t leave the cover of the building. Without the windshield his chances of hitting Lowe had improved, or they would have if Royce’s lieutenant hadn’t floored the Expedition.

  He immediately adjusted his aim to the tires, and took two of them out in seconds. Then he shot the rest of the windows.

  He could hear Travis on his headset again, trying to confirm his position so he could add more firepower to the situation as soon as they got within sight of the parking lot.

  Enright Street was to Hawkins’s left, and he moved in that direction, still firing on the Expedition. There was still one other of Royce’s men out in the night, and Superman didn’t forget it for a second.

  The car was not only still moving, it was picking up speed, and headed down Enright. Goddamn Lowe was proving hard to kill, and if Hawkins didn’t get the job done pretty damn quick, he was going to find himself out of this fight. He really needed to hit something significant in the next couple of seconds.

  He must have, from the rear, no less, because the SUV made a sudden right turn and plowed into a truck parked on Enright.

  “Coming down Enright,” he said into his mic. “Hugging the walls on the south side. The SUV is crashed on the north side, the passenger door opening.”

  He gave it a burst, and then a barrage of gunfire came pouring out of the SUV. Hawkins slid back behind a wall. As soon as the firing was over, he took a quick peek, and realized things were going to get a lot more personal than he’d thought.

  “Lowe heading in your direction. Do you copy?”

  “Affirmative.”

  And Royce was his. The bastard had just disappeared up the alley between Geiss Fastener and a boarded-up hardware store.

  “Where’s the last guy who followed you into Sand Creek?” It would be a good thing to know.

  “DEAD.” Travis said the word into his headset, and Gillian knew he was talking about the man she’d just killed. It had been one shot, center chest, at fifty meters with her TC.

  They ducked into the nearest alley, and that’s when she realized she’d been hurt. Her left shoulder was almost numb, and yet it ached.

  She looked at it and saw blood staining her assault vest.

  “What happened?” Travis asked when they stopped. He looked both ways, up and down the alley, and so did she. There was nothing at either end.

  “I got hit,” she said, leaning against the wall. Her stomach was churning, and sweat was pouring down her face, mixing with the rain. She wasn’t feeling strong now.

  “When?” They both knew the guy she’d just killed hadn’t gotten a shot off.

  “At the ditch road, when we crossed.” When she’d felt something slam into her.

  He swore under his breath.

  “Stay put here,” he said, slinging the shotgun off from over his head and handing it to her along with a handful of shells. “You’ve got plenty of ammo, right?”

  “A lot,” she confirmed, and wondered what in the hell was happening to her. She was really cold on the outside, and really hot on the inside, and it was making her feel sick.

  But then she thought maybe she didn’t want to know what was happening. Or maybe she did know, and this was it, and Angel was going to lose her while he was still so angry with her.

  “I didn’t do it to hurt you,” she said. “None of it.”

  His gaze met hers, but it was hard to read, and that hurt as much as anything.

  “I know,” he said, but it didn’t sound like it made any difference. “Look, Lowe and Royce are still out there, to the west of this position, and Lowe is headed this way. I’m going to cut him off.”

  “Was that the crash we heard?”

  “Yeah, the SUV. That’s why the two of them are on foot.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Stay put.”

  He moved back down to the end of the alley, and slipped back out onto the street.

  God. She leaned her head against the brick wall at her back. The whole world was going black and white on her, and with every passing second, her left arm felt more and more useless, but maybe, if she got to the end of the alley, she could still provide him with some cover.

  That was her plan.

  But she’d no sooner pushed off the wall and taken a couple of halting steps than she was grabbed from behind by someone huge.

  “You stupid bitch,” a man’s voice said, his arms tightening around her like a giant vise.

  Geezus! Where in the holy hell had he come from?

  She struggled, but the guy was a behemoth, lifting her off her feet like she was nothing, and that fact alone told her who had her in his grip: Zane Lowe, Royce’s beast. He’d outflanked them, and it felt like he was planning on squeezing her to death. She could hardly breathe, and her left arm felt leaden. Geezus. He was like a freaking boa constrictor.

  She wasn’t used to feeling helpless, not anymore, not now, and it started a curl of panic inside her. She wasn’t Gillian Pentycote. She was Red Dog, but it didn’t matter, because the harder she struggled and the more she tried to fight, the tighter he held her. Fuck. She was seeing stars.

  And then she was seeing Travis, and she no sooner saw him than she saw him draw his Glock and start down the alley, pistol raised. The whole action, from his first step until
Zane Lowe dropped like a stone with her still in his arms, took less than a second.

  Head shot. Clean. Fast. Deadly accurate.

  It had to be, and if she’d had an ounce of strength left in her, she would have turned to look, but the night was closing in.

  God. She dragged a breath into her lungs—and it hurt, just like everything else.

  She’d failed.

  Pushing herself off the dead mountain of a sonuvabitch, she rolled onto the ground. If she could just get to her feet, she thought, then she could breathe, she could steady herself.

  But no matter what she did, she knew she wouldn’t be killing the monster tonight. She was coming to an end, and he’d eluded her, like he always did in her mind, slipped behind one of those walls that she could never get around. Those walls hid his lair, and it was inside her, the place where he lurked and schemed and sent out his screams of pain.

  God. She let out a gasp and rolled her shoulder into the wall.

  If she could just get to her feet.

  Pressing herself against the brick, she dug the fingers of her other hand into the mortar and dragged one of her feet beneath her.

  Inside her. Oh, God.

  She slid her fingers up into the next line of mortar and pulled, using her leg to lift herself. With each inch she gained, she pressed herself harder into the wall, using it, and she gasped with the pain building up inside her.

  “Shhh, baby. Shhh. I’m here.” A pair of arms came around her, strong but gentle, helping her, sliding behind her back and under her legs, lifting her off her feet, away from the wall, and holding her close.

  “Travis, I—” She wanted to hold on, to hold on to him, to hold on to herself, but she couldn’t.

  She was sliding inside, slipping away. She started to tremble—tremble and shake, right down to her veins, right down to her pulse, and her heart, and her bones.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, tightening his hold on her, his long strides taking her out of the alley and into the openness of the street.

  “N-not this time, Angel.” She was on her own, heading straight to hell. She could see it out there on the horizon, in stark black and white, waiting for her, beckoning, and Royce was waiting for her there.

  Oh, God.

  “I-I can’t . . . you can’t, I—”

  “Fuck can’t, babe,” he growled. “Maybe you are going to run out on me again and again, and maybe I won’t be there every time—but this time, Red Dog, this time, I’ve got you.”

  Her body started to spasm, the pain twisting inside her.

  “Skeeter,” she heard him say. “Skeeter, get me a medevac. One patient, adult female, semi-concious. Single gunshot wound, upper left thorax. Code red.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  ORPHANS, MY ASS, Smith thought, looking through a window into the St. Mary’s sacristy.

  If her butt hadn’t already been hurting, he’d paddle her until she couldn’t sit for a week, and why that was his responsibility, he didn’t have a clue.

  Except they’d had sex, great sex, and somehow, sometimes, that made him feel like he had a freaking relationship with a woman. It shouldn’t.

  Especially when that woman was handing over a quarter of a million dollars to a guy dressed in jungle BDUs, which just begged the question of what in the hell she was up to in the middle of the night in San Luis. He didn’t really care what she did with her money, but if that guy was what he looked like, and people usually were, throwing it away on a Third World rebellion that was only going to get people killed and probably not accomplish a whole helluva lot of anything else pissed him off.

  To her credit, possibly, and he was being generous here, she wasn’t the one actually giving the guerilla the money. Stack by stack, it was going around the table from Honey, to a young woman who could only be Sister Julia—the resemblance was startling—to a priest, probably the Father Bartolo she’d mentioned, who was making notations in a ledger book, to the guy in green camo.

  Yeah, it was just a simple, covert operation with a lot of money changing hands, just a little under-the-table funding of a bunch of thugs who didn’t have any other way of making a living except to foment rebellion. If it had just been Honey, Julia, the good father, and the guy in green camo, Smith might have walked away and gone back to the Palacio to wait out the rest of the lousy night, until he could get on a plane out of San Luis and out of El Salvador.

  But there were two other guys in the room, and if Honey wasn’t nervous, she should have been. One of those guys hadn’t taken his eyes off her since Smith had been watching through the window, and the other goon had an M4 carbine cradled in his arms, his finger damn close to the trigger.

  The whole setup sucked.

  And she’d stolen his gun.

  So he was standing in the dark outside a Catholic church full of rebels, with nothing but an ancient pistol loaded with a single cartridge to keep bad things from happening.

  It wasn’t much.

  Inside the room, the conversation seemed to come to a stop. The guy with the M4 gestured toward Honey’s tote bag, and she responded by holding it close to her body, which was a real bad sign, and probably not the wisest course of action.

  If she’d talked this whole thing out with him, instead of lying about little orphans with broken arms, he would have told her to never take anything into one of these meetings that you weren’t willing to give up or put on the table. Clutching goodies to your chest only made the bad guys want them all that much more—a point proven when M4 guy started around the table, heading for her.

  He didn’t get far. Both the nun and the priest rose to their feet in protest, gesturing, and the guy in green camo said something that stopped M4 guy in his tracks.

  Smith didn’t move, just watched.

  With the money already on the table, even if the guy grabbed her tote, Honey would only be out some fingernail polish and half a dozen melted candy bars. The problem would be if the guy with the M4 grabbed her, because then, standing around outside and watching was not going to be an option.

  The door at the far end of the room opened, and Smith tightened his grip on the ancient pistol, bringing it to a low ready position. During his years with the DEA, he’d been in a few situations with piles of money on a table and a bunch of bad assholes standing around counting it. Some of those situations had not turned out well.

  So he was ready for anything.

  Ready for anything except the little old nun who came into the room carrying a pot of food.

  Okay. He could do nuns and food. He lowered the pistol back to his side but stayed on alert.

  When a priest came in with a steaming casserole dish, he relaxed another degree. By the third nun with food, he’d uncocked the pistol.

  The situation inside the room was starting to look like a family gathering, and he liked it. He liked it a lot. Food was a good thing. So was smiling, and green camo guy was smiling. M4 guy still looked pissed, but he was eating, and eating was good. Most people did not start shooting things while they were eating, even guys with M4s. The guy who couldn’t take his eyes off Honey was still staring at her, but he was eating, too, and he could look all he wanted.

  He could not touch.

  Touching was no good.

  Smith didn’t let anybody touch him, and he wasn’t going to take it too kindly if the jerk touched Honey. It was really none of his business, except the guy had no business touching her.

  Come to think of it, Smith probably hadn’t had any business touching her himself. That was a quarter of a million dollars that had just changed hands, and she’d dragged it into the country like a handful of pocket change.

  No, he was pretty sure he hadn’t had any business touching her—and he’d done a whole lot more than that.

  Given half a chance, he’d do it over again, all of it, but he really didn’t see half a chance anywhere on the horizon, and he wasn’t going to get maudlin about it.

  He was going to think about it, though, proba
bly quite a bit in the next few months, and he knew he was going to wish it had all taken a whole lot longer than it had, and that they’d had a chance to put their heads together and come up with a few shameless, sorority girl sex games to play.

  That would have been fun.

  Hell. He leaned against the wall and checked the room again. She and her sister were sitting close together, holding on to each other, with Honey’s arm wrapped around the younger woman’s waist while they ate, and smiled, and talked. Every now and then he saw Honey reach up to wipe a tear from her face, which made him damn glad all he had were a bunch of hard-ass brothers to put up with. A do-gooding saint for a sister sacrificing herself in a Third World country would have tried his patience to the breaking point.

  Dessert was brought out next, and coffee, and the food was looking really damn good to him, especially the coffee.

  When they brought the orphans in, though, that’s what really tore it for him. One after another, the kids trooped in under the guidance of a nun who looked like keeping children in line was her calling, and one by one, they all went up and said something to Honey. Shy, cute, and scrubbed clean, watching them introduce themselves to her shot him right back into that Shirley Temple movie. As each one finished, they went straight to Julia, and he could tell by the expression on her face, and especially by the expressions on the children’s faces, that she was telling them how well they’d done, and how proud she was of them, and he knew for a fact that every little girl in the room wanted to grow up to be a nun, and every little boy was in love with her—especially the one with his arm in a cast.

  No shit, even that had been true.

  Hell, by the time the last child had trooped back out, he was half in love with Sister Julia himself. She was Honey’s sister, no doubt, with a sweetly delicate pixie face and green eyes—and when the light caught her just so, she looked radiant, like maybe she really was a saint, which he figured pretty much finished up the night for him.

  Honey was fine, and he was done. Nothing in that room was going to hurt anybody tonight. A quarter of a million dollars could do a lot of good, or a lot of harm, and it wasn’t always easy to see which way it was going to go with money and good intentions—but none of that was going to happen tonight.