Blood Heat (Dangerous Ground 3)

by Josh Lanyon

  “Good.”

  Taylor’s face was unreadable behind the shades, but Will had the sense that Taylor wanted to tell him something.

  He raised his brows. Taylor gave a slight shake of his head.

  Will asked, “Do we have time for lunch?”

  Hedwig looked up in surprise.

  “Why not?” Taylor picked up a menu.

  The waitress arrived, and Hedwig, presumably eating for two, ordered a Monte Cristo sandwich, a strawberry milkshake, onion rings, and fried shrimp. Even Taylor, who most often had an appetite like a young wolf, seemed in awe over the fried shrimp. He opted for the Santa Fe salad with chicken, black beans, and tortilla chips. Will ordered a burger and fries.

  The business of ordering taken care of, Hedwig folded her arms on the table and scrutinized Taylor and then Will. “Do you two live together?”

  “Not your business, is it?” Taylor said, checking e-mail messages on his BlackBerry.

  That was the correct answer, so Will was startled to hear his own voice simultaneously answer, “Yes.”

  “Yes?” Taylor questioned, looking up as though someone else had answered.

  “Half my stuff is at your place. My dog is at your place.”

  “That’s not the same as living together.”

  “According to Riley it is.” Will was trying to joke, but Taylor was unsmiling.

  “You have to hide your relationship,” Hedwig deduced.

  “Not anymore,” said Taylor.

  Apparently the truce Will thought they’d reached earlier that day was already at an end. “Wait a minute.”

  Taylor’s gaze was cool. “Our relationship won’t be a problem once we’re not partnered.”

  That was true. Will hadn’t thought about it before. He said staunchly, against the sinking sensation in his belly, “That’s one of the positives then.”

  “Yeah.” Taylor returned to studying his e-mail. “I know I’m thrilled.”

  Will folded his lips against all the things he wanted to say. He needed to be sensitive to Taylor or this long-distance thing was going to rip them apart, and he had no intention — regardless of what Taylor believed — of letting that happen. So he would bite his tongue and keep biting his tongue, and eventually Taylor would get over his insecurity and they’d be okay again.

  “How’d you get involved with Bashnakov?” He thought Hedwig looked mildly disappointed at his change of subject.

  “I met him when I was an exchange student in Moscow. I was friends with his son Alexi. Mikhail and I…there was an instant…connection. The age difference meant nothing.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I was in high school. When I came home, I wrote him. He wrote back.” She shrugged. “One thing led to another.”

  “Those must have been some postcards.”

  “Then, when I was at Barnard, Mikhail bought an estate in New York —”

  “You went to Barnard?” Taylor interrupted.

  “Yes. Why not? Oh. Because I don’t fit your preconceived notion of what a Seven Sisters graduate is like?”

  “You don’t fit my preconceived notion of what a junior college graduate is like. Or a normal high school graduate.”

  “Okay,” Will said. “Don’t make me separate you two.”

  Hedwig gave Taylor her bared-teeth expression. Fortunately, their lunches arrived, ending further civilities. Hedwig tore into her plate of shrimp with the savage satisfaction of a great white.

  When the meal was over, Will went to pay the bill. He was replacing his credit card into his wallet when he spotted a familiar figure heading in to the Mountain Inn next door.

  Of course it was possible there was a dog show in town, but somehow Will suspected Reuben Ramirez might have another reason to be wandering around Carrizozo. He returned to the dining room.

  As he reached the table, Taylor, apparently reading his expression, hooked a hand around Hedwig’s arm and drew her to her feet.

  “I have to use the ladies’ room.”

  “You’re going to have to hold it,” Will told her.

  “I can’t hold it!”

  “Make it snappy.”

  She yanked her arm away from Taylor and sailed off to the restrooms.

  “We should have left her handcuffed,” Taylor said.

  “The idea was to avoid attracting attention. That might be academic now. I just saw Reuben Ramirez go in to the Mountain Inn lobby.”

  “That’s quite a coincidence. Here’s another one. There’s an automotive repair shop next to the car rental place. Guess who I spotted getting a tire replaced on his SUV?”

  “Our friend with the Mohawk?”

  “Da.”

  “Great. The sooner we get out of town, the better. Hopefully Ramirez and Nemov will stake out the airport. Or each other.”

  “I’ll go watch the rear in case Mother Russia decides to climb out the bathroom window.”

  Will nodded. Taylor disappeared through the crowded tables of diners and exited through the glass door.

  A few minutes later, Hedwig pushed out through the bathroom door.

  Will hustled her to the parking lot. Taylor joined them, and they piled into the rental SUV.

  Nobody appeared to be following them as they left Carrizozo in the red dust and started the drive to Sierra Blanca. Nor did anyone have much to say. To fill the silence, Will turned on the radio, and they listened to weather and traffic reports. There was an update on the flash flood cleanup efforts. It seemed that their rescuer in the Hummer had been correct. No lives had been lost, though property damage had been considerable. That section of the national forest was currently closed to visitors.

  “Have you ever been with a woman?” Hedwig asked suddenly from the backseat.

  Pop goes the weasel. She had to be doing it on purpose, Will decided. Either because she liked mixing things up or because she believed she could gain some advantage by keeping them distracted and on edge.

  “What is it with you?” Taylor asked, possibly reaching the same conclusion.

  “I’m curious. In the Mafiya, it’s one of the four unforgivable transgressions. It carries a death penalty.”

  Taylor made a sound of amused disgust.

  “Anyway, how do you know you wouldn’t like sex with a woman if you’ve never tried?”

  Will said, “I have tried.”

  The words just…popped out. Seeing Taylor’s astonishment, Will wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

  “You have?” Taylor was frowning. “When?”

  “Back in high school.”

  “High school? You never mentioned it before.”

  Will shrugged. That was one thing that had always surprised him about Taylor. For all Taylor’s sexual adventures, one thing he’d never tried was intercourse with a woman.

  Hedwig asked, “You didn’t like it?”

  “I liked it fine.” Will was a little irritated at the way Taylor was staring at him — as though Will had confessed to having an extramarital affair. It was kind of ironic coming from a guy who’d had intimate acquaintance with such items as butterfly boards and piercing needles.

  “Did you only try once?”

  “Mind your own business,” Taylor told Hedwig. To Will he said, “How many times?”

  Will sincerely wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “I don’t know. A few. I had a girlfriend.”

  “A girlfriend? A steady girlfriend?”

  Will nodded. Why the hell was this a big deal? For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine, but he could feel Taylor’s shock like an electromagnetic field.

  “Why’ve you never mentioned this?”

  “I have.” Will knew he hadn’t, actually, but not because it was some deep, dark secret. It was just a long time ago and…well, a little painful.

  “No you haven’t. I’d have remembered.”

  Will glanced in his rearview mirror. Hedwig was staring out the window as they wound higher up into the trees and hills. Apparently she’d lost inter
est in the conversation. Nice. Had her only purpose been to wind Taylor up? If so, she’d succeeded.

  Seeing that Taylor was still waiting for a reply, he said mildly, “Why would you? It’s not a big deal.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Madonna.”

  “Madonna? What kind of a name is that?”

  “Catholic, I guess. Her family was Catholic. You’re acting kind of weird about this, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Taylor sat back in his seat. He was still eyeing Will narrowly.

  “So…you consider yourself bisexual?”

  “No, I don’t consider myself bisexual. What are you talking about? Because I had a girlfriend in high school? A lot of people have girlfriends in high school and college.”

  “And college? Were you still seeing her in college?”

  Will could happily have bitten his tongue out. “It’s just a…an example.”

  “Were you still together in college?”

  Goddamn that persistent, ruthless investigative streak of Taylor’s.

  “For a little while,” Will admitted.

  “Well.” Taylor had that huffy, irritable tone he got when he was edgy or nervous. “This is certainly an interesting development.”

  Will looked away from the road to throw him an exasperated look. “Why would it be? It’s nothing. It was a million years ago. A lifetime ago. I can’t figure out why the hell we’re even still discussing it.”

  “So this is why I’ve never met your family?”

  The sheer breathtaking illogic of that jump was only secondary to the deadly intuitive accuracy of it. Until Taylor had put it into words, it had never occurred to Will that it was one thing to admit to your all-American, red-blooded, manly man family you were gay. It was another to bring your male lover home to meet the folks. And maybe that difference was one reason he’d always managed to arrange visits to his family when Taylor couldn’t go.

  “That’s the most fucking ridiculous thing I ever heard!”

  Taylor said with infuriating calm, “Okay, okay. Just asking.”

  From the backseat, Hedwig suddenly sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Now what?” Will growled.

  Her wide bespectacled gaze met his in the rearview. She swallowed. “I-I think… I’m not sure… Could you stop the car?”

  “No,” Taylor and Will answered in unison.

  “But I think the baby is coming!”

  * * * * *

  The middle of nowhere. That’s about as close as Taylor’s trusty GPS seemed to be able to narrow their location down to. A small grassy knoll in the middle of nowhere. On either side they were surrounded by hills and trees. Behind them, the clearing fell away to a long series of steep slopes covered in more rocks and trees.

  Hedwig was walking a big circle around the glade, hand pressed to her bulging belly, taking deep, distressed breaths.

  Standing by the car, watching her, Will said, “Maybe she’s just carsick. Considering what she put away at lunch…”

  Taylor was scowling at his BlackBerry. “I still can’t get a signal.”

  “If she is in labor, we could have hours, right? It can take hours.”

  Taylor shook his BlackBerry. In a minute, he’d be knocking it against a boulder.

  “Don’t you think?” Will persisted. “It’s not like in the movies.”

  “True. I guess.” Taylor scowled across the clearing at Hedwig, who continued to make her big slow loop. “She’s got to be faking.”

  “I know. But for the sake of argument, let’s say she’s not.”

  Taylor shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “We’ve had training on this.”

  “Good. You can deal with it.”

  “I can’t remember anything about it except how to tie off the umbilical cord.”

  Taylor looked horrified. “Her…uh…water has to break, right? I don’t think it did.”

  “How would you know?”

  “She’d have said.”

  Will nodded, relieved. That made sense. “Should we head back to Carrizozo or try to make it to Sierra Blanca?”

  “I say we try to make it to the airport.”

  “The airport?” Will was doubtful about that.

  “Maybe not the airport itself, but Ruidoso. She’s got to be faking.”

  “Okay. They’ll have more extensive medical facilities, anyway. It’s —” He broke off as a long black sedan with tinted windows pulled off the road, tires shelling rock as it drew into the turnout.

  “I don’t like this,” Taylor remarked, planting himself squarely in line with Will. “Is this somebody we know?”

  Will cast a quick look back at Hedwig. She had stopped circling the mini meadow and was standing in a pose that conveyed a creature at bay. At his quick gesture, she moved toward the stand of trees. One thing he couldn’t fault was her instinct for survival.

  The passenger door of the sedan opened. A short, slender form emerged. A man with cropped, fair hair. He wore dark sunglasses and a black tailored suit.

  “Is everything all right? Can we offer assistance?” Not a man. A woman. It wasn’t just the voice. Unless Will was very much mistaken, there were small breasts beneath that sexless suit.

  Will politely waved her off.

  “Does she look familiar?” Taylor inquired out of the side of his mouth.

  “The car does.”

  “It does?”

  “Classic movie villain wheels.”

  “True. So are the threads. They scream ‘Hit Person.’”

  Will grunted a laugh. He sobered as the driver’s door of the car swung open. “Here we go.”

  A man got out, blond counterpart of the woman.

  “They could be feebs.” Taylor looked back at where Hedwig was hiding, then looked at Will.

  “I don’t think so. They’d have identified themselves by now.” Will called to the woman, “Thanks again. It’s under control.” Under his breath, he said to Taylor, “Shit. They’re not going to buy it. Move.”

  He was aware of the man reaching beneath his blazer. Hip holster, probably. He was aware of Taylor leaping for a cairn of rocks. That was all there was time for; Will himself was already moving. He raced for the edge of the hillside to his right, throwing himself down behind a shoulder of rock and grass, drawing his weapon. What he wouldn’t give for one of the standard issue Colt SMGs or even a Remington 870.

  “We just want the girl,” the woman yelled.

  “We’re federal agents,” Will shouted back.

  “Give us the girl, and no one has to get hurt.”

  “You’re not getting the girl.”

  A granite splinter just missed the tip of his nose, and he heard the familiar whine of a bullet ricocheting off stone. In reply came the brisk, untroubled bang of Taylor’s SIG.

  Will rolled over and risked a quick look. The female shooter was situated behind a boulder near the edge of the road. The male shooter was behind his vehicle, wasting ammunition like it grew on trees. He was focusing his firepower on Taylor’s position, but Taylor was safely dug in and not easily flustered.

  Will fired a succession of rounds at the car to give Taylor a little breathing space. He hit the gas tank twice, but of course it was only in movies that cars conveniently exploded. He nailed the front right tire and, with grim satisfaction, watched the front half of the vehicle sag.

  Dropping back, Will ejected the SIG’s magazine, replaced the empty clip with a full one, slapped the magazine back into place.

  Taylor was conserving ammo, laying down just enough fire to keep the other two from advancing toward the copse where Hedwig hid. The female shooter was equally conservative, biding her time, watching closely for a clear shot.

  Two on two. Well, they’d certainly had worse odds. With the road in front of them and the downside of the knoll to their rear, they were in pretty good position. If they had to fall back, the trees and vegetation supplied plenty of camouflage. Yes, it could definitely be worse
.

  And it could definitely be better. Will was disgusted with himself for missing the fact that they’d picked up a tail. Even if they had been keeping well back — a big black sedan? It didn’t get more in-your-face than that. How long had he and Taylor been followed? He’d been so preoccupied with Taylor and keeping an eye out for Nemov, he’d missed the obvious. And what was Taylor’s excuse?

  The male shooter made an attempt to get to the rocky incline to the right of the car, but Will held him off with three well-placed shots. The woman directed her attention his way. Taylor revived her interest in him with resumed fire.

  The male shooter scrambled back into the car and blared the horn loudly. The female left cover and ran for the car, firing off a few wild shots and throwing herself inside.

  The black sedan roared forward, knocking the silver SUV rental a few feet to the side and plowing past. The sedan fishtailed, screeching up the road several yards and disappearing around a bend. The engine died.

  They weren’t going far. Even if they wanted to, a couple of holes in the gas tank were sure to slow them down.

  Taylor was up and running for the stand of junipers. Will started for the SUV. If it was still functional, they’d head back for Carrizozo rather than fall into whatever trap the suits in the black sedan were planning.

  “Brandt!”

  He turned. Taylor reappeared, shaking his head.

  “Is she hit?” Will gasped, sick at the thought. “She’s not dead, is she?”

  “Gone.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Signal?”

  Taylor shook his head. He resisted the temptation to hurl his BlackBerry at the nearest mountaintop. “We didn’t run them off. They’re either blocking the road ahead or going for a better position.”

  “Or both.”

  “Or both. Either way, we can’t retreat. Not without the Bionic Baby Maker.”

  “She’s not going far.” Will ejected his pistol magazine, checked the clip, reinserted the magazine. That would be his second and last clip. At a rough estimate, Taylor guessed Will probably had six, maybe seven, rounds left. He hadn’t been planning to go to war. Neither of them had. He reached in his pocket, tossed Will one of his extras. It wasn’t regulation, but Taylor always carried extra extras.