Plain Sight

by Katherine Rhodes

  I sliced his ropes and pulled the gag off. His arms were around me almost before I could get the ropes away.

  “Daddy,” he breathed.

  “Come on, Dylan. We have to get out of here.”

  I looked back into the room where there was gun fire and grunts, the sound of fists and flesh. I couldn’t see Bridget, Gail, or Bradshaw, and I didn’t know what to do to help.

  Starting to head for the main stairs to the front door, I halted when I saw Bradshaw heading that way. He had his stump hand under his arm, and a gun held in his left with an unsteady grip.

  “Find Willard and kill him!” he screamed, the words echoing in the hall. “Don’t spare the kid if you have a shot!”

  I stepped back and knew there was no way we were getting out that way.

  Dylan pulled my hand and pointed.

  There was a window. It was a low window, but it was clearly designed as an emergency egress, because it sat well below ground level and still tried to be large and noticeable.

  I grabbed him around the waist and in one stride, wound up across from where we were. I hoped no one saw me. Running to the window, I pulled the sheer curtain back and found a massive lock on the window.

  “Cover your ears,” I whispered to Dylan as I lifted the gun. I shot the lock off the window, and frankly the window off the track, and put the weapon in my waistband. Jerking the window out of the frame, I quickly lifted Dylan into the window well, and followed him out.

  I really hoped Bridget would forgive me for leaving her. I’d come back if I could make sure Dylan was safe.

  The well was deep, but not so deep that I couldn’t hoist my son up and out and jump up to hoist myself clear. Pressing us both back against the wall, I pointed him the opposite direction of the front door.

  We snuck along quietly, my hand resting on the gun at my back, and the dagger clenched in the other. I felt like some kind of crazy man, but I would do anything to get this kid away and clear.

  There were a few shots still ringing in the air behind us when I saw someone drop out of a tree with a sniper rifle and scope. He motioned us to the tree line, and clearly wanted us to run like hell while he covered us.

  “Dylan?”

  “I see him, Daddy. He one of the good guys?”

  “I sure hope so, dude. Climb up on my back,” I said, pulling the gun out. “Make like a koala and hold on tight?”

  “You got it, Daddy,” he answered, wrapping his arms and legs around me.

  “I can’t hold you because I have to use my arms to run. So just hang the hell on, Dylan.”

  Watching the man at the tree, he held up his hand telling us to wait just a moment. As soon as he dropped it, I took off like a bat out of Hell.

  The trees were about a hundred yards and I probably set a land-speed record running it, even with my son on my back. I saw him with the sniper scope, watching behind us, and as soon as we cleared him he dropped it and ducked us behind a tree.

  “Hi. Vaughn Willard?” He stuck out his hand.

  “That’s me,” I answered, shaking the hand offered.

  He pressed an earpiece. “Big and little targets acquired. Safe at the back.” He let it go. “Theo Livorno. A friend of Nolan’s.”

  “Thank you,” I said, letting go of the hand. “Can you take Dylan—”

  “You’re not going back in,” he said. “Come around the front. You’re going to want to watch from there.” Theo looked down at the gun I was holding. “You can use that?”

  I nodded once.

  “Good. Let’s go. Things up front are about to get really interesting.”

  “Bradshaw?”

  He winked. “Follow me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bridget

  Assessment:

  Len was on our side. For good or temporary, who the hell knew.

  Bradshaw was now missing a hand. Good. Fucker.

  Dylan was out of the room, with Vaughn. He’d better not try to come back.

  Snipers. In trees. If this was Nolan and Farida, they were all over the house, each watching a window.

  Chaos. The lieutenants had no idea what was going on, and I liked that.

  I need a phone to contact Nolan. I dove behind the couch with Gail, who shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry that bitch did this.”

  “Shut up and grab the knife at my ankle.”

  Her eyes went wide as she pulled it out. “They didn’t check?”

  “They apparently didn’t recognize me, at all.”

  “Fortuitous,” she said, holding the blade out.

  Slicing through the rope, I grabbed the handle and cut her free. “Idiotic.”

  “It’s the advantage of having boobs.” Gail smiled. “They never think we’re smarter than they are.”

  I reached into my pants and pulled out my little Ruger. “Fuck this thing is uncomfortable.”

  She laughed. “Can you get me one?”

  Glancing around, I spotted an idiot on his phone peering out the window, looking for something. I popped up and shot him right in the shoulder. The gun and the phone went flying and I walked over.

  Two more idiots turned around with their guns out, and I just picked them off. As I grabbed the gun and the phone from the first guy, I turned in time to see the tail of the coat that Bradshaw had been wearing disappear around the corner.

  Handless bastard.

  I tossed the gun to Gail and she picked off someone behind me. I nodded my thanks, and we hurried over to the stairs back to the upper levels of the house.

  “Find Willard and kill him!” Bradshaw screamed, the words echoing in the hall as he staggered up the stairs. “Don’t spare the kid if you have a shot!”

  “What about the women?” someone screamed back.

  “Just fucking kill them! They’re useless! And blow the tires on my bitch of a wife’s car!”

  I dialed Nolan’s number on the phone.

  “That you?” he asked.

  “It’s me. They’re going to blow the tires on Bobbi-Jo’s car.”

  “Jammed.”

  “Thank you,” Gail said.

  “You both need to get the fuck out of that house. We’ve been planting explosives for a week. He has a sub-basement where he has the fentanyl stored, and you all need to be way the hell away from there when it goes. That shit will kill you.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said. “Any suggestions?”

  “Front door?”

  “You mean where Bradshaw is staggering out right now?” Gail snapped into the speaker.

  “Just get out. Please. I’m not going to call back the detonation. You have like three minutes. We have Dylan and Vaughn. Get out.”

  That lit a fire under my ass. Gail and I booked it for the stairs and tumbled up them as fast as we could, and got dumped right into the middle of the foyer.

  And in the sights of a dozen different guns, all around the area.

  “Guns,” Bradshaw said. “Drop them and kick them away.”

  I swallowed and put it on the floor as Gail did the same. I pushed it toward the door with my foot. I did like that little gun, so I was hoping to recover it.

  “Be polite,” Gail whispered, “be courteous, and be prepared to kill every motherfucker in the room.”

  “My motto,” I answered quietly.

  Bradshaw walked right up to her, and stood in her face. “You have been nothing but a pain in my ass since I met your useless sister. And it will give me every pleasure in the world to shoot your ass and have been done with you.”

  He moved over and stared at me. “I know you, you useless whore. I don’t know why I know you, but I do.”

  “Wittesburg,” I answered.

  His eyebrow twitched.

  That had been a total guess on my part, but Wittesburg had been a huge gun supplier, and there was a good chance that he’d been forwarding money to the asshole to get the guns to the Sudan.

  “What do you know about Wittesburg?”

  �
�I smeared him and his friends all over the fucking Autobahn. You might have heard about that.”

  His eye grew minutely larger. “You’re a liar, too.”

  “Am I?”

  “Wittesburg died in an auto accident.”

  “Yeah, his driver accidently ran into one of my bullets.”

  He reached up and snatched the wig off my head.

  “Ouch!” I yelped. “That hurt!”

  “Well, well.” Bradshaw grinned. “You are McInnis, aren’t you? Oh, the price on your head, little girl. I will never have to worry about money again.”

  There was bang, and one of his lackey’s fell over the railing. Another bang, another lackey, like dominos on the stairs.

  “What the fuck!” he screamed, and pulled out his own gun. I dove away from him at the same as Gail did and we both managed to grab our guns.

  While we were turned away, he made a break for the front door, so the two of us started firing at some of the other lackies who were trying to figure out where the shots were still coming from. I took out two, she took out two, and it became clear who was firing.

  Len.

  He’d somehow made it up to the third floor and was taking them out one at a time.

  I rolled and aimed for Bradshaw at the door. He stepped out just as I got a bead on him.

  He stopped dead as the back of his head exploded into the foyer.

  Then, he fell backward, and his head hit the tile with a loud, wet thud.

  “Someone solved that problem,” I mumbled standing up.

  Gail stood up next to me, and Len was running down the stairs. “Come on, come on, leave him there! We have to get out of here. The place is rigged! We have less than thirty seconds.

  Oh, shit.

  Gail, Len, and I started running. We vaulted the dead bodies in the way and I really hoped those snipers knew who we were and had our asses covered.

  As fast as we were running, it seemed to take forever for us to cross the huge front lawn and hit the tree line. Just as we did, the detonation went off. The pressure wave tossed us all onto our faces in the driveway.

  When I looked up there was someone standing over me with a sniper rifle.

  Vaughn

  By the time we got around to the front we had seconds left to the implosion, and they were ticking down quickly.

  Theo held out his snipe rifle. “Ever used one?”

  “No, I abhor guns.” I laughed, hard, remembering that I was wearing a loaded weapon in my waistband.

  Shoving the hardware into my hands, he smiled. “This close, it’s easy. Find the target through the scope and let the fingers do the walking.”

  I shouldered the weapon—and even I had to admit it was elegant and light. Probably the deadliest thing I’d ever pressed against me.

  Save Bridget herself.

  Peering down the scope, I found the doorway immediately. I could see things going on inside and I was amazed at how sharp the scope was.

  “It’s a powerful piece of weaponry,” Theo said. “It’s also not cheap, nor cheaply made.” He looked around at the group of men and women gathering around us, just behind the trees, and coughed. Another woman came forward and ushered Dylan back further from the impending disaster. “Feel free to try it out.”

  I raised my eyebrows but kept my eye peering through the scope. Theo made a few adjustments to my stance, and leaned in close as he did.

  “Bradshaw has only one way out.”

  As he spoke the words, the door swung open and Bradshaw appeared dead center of my scope.

  Time stopped.

  He stood in his prim suit, his fucking pocket square and polished shoes. His drugs killed people, and his money went to kill more. He’d raped and shot my wife. I didn’t care if he actually did the rape or not—he’d allowed it. It was clear he was the only one who had the final say in the place.

  He was not a sloppy criminal, as witnessed by the months he’d spent stalking me and my son, and the people he had sent after me, Dylan, and Bridget. A criminal mastermind? No, but not sloppy, not stupid.

  Bradshaw would never stop. His lieutenants took orders from him, and he wouldn’t ever stop attacking me and Dylan. He would come after us again and again, and anyone else who dared to get near us.

  All because I’d accidentally found a pattern in a bank account.

  The crosshairs were on his chest, and I ever so slightly lifted the gun, so they landed between his eyes. I aimed and I pulled the trigger in that frozen moment, and the sharp jerk of the gun snapped time back into working again.

  The bullet flew true, and all I saw was a small, round entry wound on his forehead.

  The door next to him, swung wide, wasn’t quite as neat, now coated with his brain and skull gore.

  I felt exactly nothing in that moment.

  Childress Bradshaw was dead.

  Good.

  A moment later, a trio of people tumbled out, then more a few seconds later. I lowered the rifle to see who was running.

  Len, Gail…

  …And Bridget.

  She was the most beautiful mess I had ever seen.

  They ran like the Devil himself was chasing them, and sprinted away from the implosion that was about to happen.

  The detonation happened just before they could reach the tree line and tossed the three of them forward, hard. Bridget rolled to stop at my feet, and she gasped when she looked up at the sniper rifle.

  I turned and chucked the rifle back at Theo and reached down to pull Bridget to her feet. I didn’t give her a chance to say a thing, I just planted my mouth on hers and stole her taste.

  It took me a moment to pull back from her—she wasn’t complaining at all—and she smiled at me.

  “Happy to see you too, Vaughn. I guess Dylan is safe?”

  “Ew!” Dylan called from behind us somewhere. I turned and looked and found him with his hands over his eyes. “Kissing.”

  We chuckled, and I turned to the man I knew had blown Bradshaw’s hand off. “Thank you.”

  “My job.” he smiled.

  “Who are you?”

  He stuck his hand out for a shake. “Nevada Jennings, CIA.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Bridget said. She stepped out from me and shook his hand.

  There was a strange, hot sensation that took over my chest, and I rubbed my hand across the source of the pain.

  Wet?

  I looked down. My hand was covered in blood. I looked further, and my shirt was staining with it. The red was blooming out.

  “Vaughn?!”

  “Daddy?!”

  Things started to sound funny around me, like there was cotton in my ears. The world got a little wobbly around the edges.

  “You lose!”

  I looked up to see someone actually walking toward us, from the direction of the house with a gun in her hand. “You lose!” she screamed again. “I win. I get it all! It’s all mine!”

  Bridget was suddenly holding on to me and lowering me to the ground. Things got a little gray.

  “He thought he could cut me out!”

  Gail moved into view and grabbed the sniper rifle out of Theo’s hand. “Stop, Bobbi! Stop! What have you done?”

  “You think that I wasn’t a part of this? Ha! You’re an ass, Gail. An ass.” She held up the gun and pointed at us, generally. “Now it’s all mine. I get the empire and I get the money and my kids will have everything!”

  “Stop, Bobbi,” I heard Gail whisper. “Please stop.”

  Bobbi fired the gun.

  Gail took the shot.

  The gray quiet washed over me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bridget

  “Birdie?”

  I snapped my head up and found Killian standing in the doorway. I launched myself across the room and wrapped myself around him. “Oh, God, deartháir.”

  “Deirfiúr,” he breathed, the sound utterly relieved. “Are you all right? God…”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’
m not fine.”

  The tears and sobs just exploded out of me, and Killian—my big brother—just held me. Cece wrapped her arms around me as well, and we stood there.

  “What happened?” Cece whispered.

  “Too fucking much,” I answered. “And I was good all the way through it, until last night.”

  “Is that Dylan sleeping over there?” Victor was standing in the door watching us.

  Stepping away from my brother, I walked to the big, dark-featured man and wrapped my arms around him for a hug. He seemed shocked, but melted a moment later.

  “It’s Dylan. Michelle and David are supposed to be here soon to pick him up,” I answered. “They’re going to stay nearby for a while, at least until we know more about Vaughn’s condition.”

  “Birdie, what happened?” Cece said. “We got a call that you were here, and he was in trouble.”

  “The short version is, he was shot in the chest last night. We got Dylan out, we got ourselves out, we got the agent out and then…Bradshaw’s fucking wife shot him.”

  Gail choked, and I felt terrible that the words had escaped me. I’d forgotten she was there. The twins were with her mother for a little while.

  “Gail—”

  “No, you’re right. She was married to him, and even though she was held hostage, she was just as greedy as he was. I…”

  “Where is Vaughn?” Victor pronounced each word.

  “They’re operating on him. The shot hit his lung and nicked his heart,” I managed to get out. “They’re pretty sure it’s survivable.”

  The tears took me down again.

  I’d killed men without a second thought. I destroyed drug rings, and arms deals. I saved sex trafficked children, and destroyed the networks that took them. I ruined the empires of evil that dotted the world, and did it all for Queen and Country.

  But this man, this one man had my whole life turned upside down and I didn’t know what the hell to do if he left me.

  I just sobbed into my brother’s shirt, and he held me. His wife was there again, wrapping her arms around us as well.

  At some point, Michelle and David appeared and Dylan went running for them as soon as he saw them. He started chattering incessantly about the adventure he’d been on and I could see his grandparents growing more than mildly concerned. I tapped Victor on the shoulder, and motioned him over.