Beyond the Rules (22 page)

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

A warning glance. “Right.”

“You’re worse on phones than
Star Trek
landing parties are on communicators and transporters.”

“It’s never their fault, either.” But she gave him a more intent look, one that said some thought had finally caught up with her. “What do you mean, Dave’s in Pittsburgh?”

“Just that. Owen sent him. He’s using the names you came up with and a new head shot of Hammy Hands to—”

“I told Owen the cops aren’t secure!”

“Tsk,” he said, enunciating the word instead of making a clicking noise. “He’s working with someone Owen trusts, all quietlike.”

Instead of looking relieved, Kimmer’s expression came much closer to baffled. Stumped. Faced with something beyond comprehension. “I didn’t expect…I mean, I thought—”

And though she interrupted herself, Rio caught that glimpse of little girl hurt that so often lurked beneath the edgy strength of this woman, the dichotomous streak that had caught his attention from the very start. And he knew. “You thought you were alone.”

Alone with the loss of her home, the continuing betrayal of her family, Owen’s stiff-necked reaction to the impact on Hunter…with a lover who couldn’t understand or accept the nature of her early life and her response to the notion of family. Alone, stuck in the woods bleeding from more than a little flesh wound, all the bad guys left to fight and two girls left to rescue. Alone. Of course that’s how she’d felt.

Now she looked at him with massive annoyance, never accustomed to his ability to suss her out when their close relationship denied her the use of that amazing skill of reading people. Beneath the annoyance, her eyes shone suspiciously bright. “Dammit,” she said, and that was enough to confirm his words.

Rio just grinned at her. “Get used to it.”

“Dammit,” she said again, this time reacting to this backassward reassurance that he not only understood, he was sticking around. She’d been worried, all right.

He hadn’t meant to do that. To give the impression that their differences were such a struggle. But he thought of Sobo and her quick understanding and he suspected that in this case hindsight was a little blind. That he hadn’t really been fair, as much as he thought he’d tried.

Because now, he began to understand. Hank and Susan had set her up for a fall, possibly a fatal one, with less concern than Rio would have felt for a complete stranger.

“Okay,” he said, watching her comprehension as his expression hardened, as he came back to the matters at hand. “Let’s show these bad guys a thing or two.”

“Because it’s who we are,” she said, and her voice was as strained as her face. Until she blinked and the thought of something else crossed her face, and she began groping in her various pockets until she finally slipped a hand up the black plastic of her sling and pulled out a package of—

“No!” he said, startled on an entirely different level at the crinkly wrapper of the snack food she held. “Since when?”

“I just happen to have them,” she said with some dignity, handing him the Twinkies.

He wasted no time, pulling the wrapping apart to hand her one of the cakes. He raised his own in a toast and said, “To beating the bad guys.”

Kimmer wasn’t slow on the uptake. She tapped her cake against his in the imitation of clinking glasses and said, “To beating the bad guys
together.
”

“Oh, God,” he said. “I think I have to kiss you.”

He didn’t mean to drop the Twinkie on the way, or to get so caught up in the taste of her or the sudden redistribution
of blood flow. He didn’t mean to kiss the living daylights out of the both of them.

But that’s the way it was with Kimmer.

“I
can’t believe you ate it anyway.” Kimmer wrinkled her nose at the thought of Rio brushing the Twinkie clean and taking that first big bite.

“It wasn’t on the ground all that long.” He slapped a piece of duct tape over their most recent captive and moved on to binding his hands.

The man’s look—until now merely stunned—grew trapped and cagey, and Kimmer lifted her chin to get his attention. “Be still,” she said. “I might forget I’m set to single-action and think I’ve got another eight pounds of trigger pull.”

“That’s much more creative than ‘my finger might slip,’” Rio said in approval, but he didn’t hesitate to jerk the man’s hands around into the twine Kimmer had provided, securing a third goonboy to his own sapling. This one had been as Kimmer expected, someone coming out specifically to check
the area. Next time, they’d know something was up; they’d bring more firepower, and they’d be prepared to use it.

“I wonder if that back door is still open.” She looked off in the direction of the Quonset. “They’d never hear us.”

“There are nine of them.” Rio stood and dusted off his hands. “Even if this one’s provided me with a nice Browning, it’s still nine against one and a half.”

And a half? She gave him a sweet smile. “Oh, is your back bothering you?”

He made a face and said nothing, not pushing the point. He’d made it well enough. By tacit consent, they moved away from their small gathering of captives.

“Seven of them are carboys,” she said after a moment.

Rio shook his head in a fractional movement. “I feel like being devious. Let’s lay us a big clumsy trail back around to the barn, double-back and see who comes along.”

“A really clumsy trail,” Kimmer said. “If they couldn’t follow the one I left when I was on the run from their ambush, they’re not going to manage anything short of blazing trees.”

“We’ll break a few obvious branches,” Rio said. “Because you’ve been hurt and you’ve collapsed and I’m heroically carrying you to safety.”

“We’ll break a few obvious branches,” Kimmer agreed, “because we’ll be herding our little goonboy prisoners along with us. Otherwise they’ll be found and we’ll end up fighting them all over again. And this time they’ll be mad.”

Rio winced at that thought. “We’ve only got ninety minutes of daylight left. If we lose too much time, they won’t be able to follow the trail at all.”

That made it a decision. They freed the captives from their respective saplings and Kimmer stood watch while Rio tied them together at the ankles. “Don’t worry,” she told him, as
he assessed the remaining supply of twine. “Hank’s barn is the repository of old baling twine. We’re good.”
And these goonboys are so totally transparent
. She stepped in to smack one of them lightly over the ear with the pistol, a smooth efficient movement and then out of range again even as he yelped through taped-closed lips. “I saw you thinking about kicking him. Don’t do it. I don’t have to make a lot of noise to take you down—I sure won’t give us away. You’ll just go down, and no one else will be the wiser. Your friends won’t have a clue.” At the sullen look she got in return, she cocked her head. “Speaking of clues, you have any idea who the big goonboss is?”

At their befuddlement, Rio added, “The top dog. The first banana. Your CEO. Who calls the shots, boys?”

And one of them swore behind his duct tape and the other two exchanged a nervous look and none of them made any attempt to answer the question or even to indicate he wanted the duct tape removed so he could.

Clueless. Kimmer shook her head. “No point,” she told Rio. “We probably know more than they do.” Which admittedly wasn’t much. Only the sense of cold ruthlessness, the efficiency, the organization and manpower involved. The identities of a few deceased goonboys.

How very much she wanted to catch the goonboss and make him pay up.

Kimmer took point, her arm tucked safely away and the SIG secure in her hand, safety off but first two fingers resting securely on the outside of the square trigger guard. Her job was to scout ahead, to be alert for signs of goonboys…to take them by the most secure route. Rio’s was to keep the captives in line, stumbling noisily along—too noisily, but nothing to be done about that, not with their ankles tied to one
another and their attitudes set to “bad”—and a decent distance back from Kimmer.

It was only after they’d gotten halfway around to the barn that Kimmer realized there’d been no discussion. That they’d just done it, taking up their logical roles and moving on. She bit her lip on the tiniest of smiles and got back to work.

And in spite of the throb of her arm and the growing awareness of the odds they faced—no room for mistakes, not this time—Kimmer hid another smile at the barn. She said, “I told you.”

This time Rio caught her, in the midst of his happy discovery of just how much twine they had at their disposal. “Yep,” he said, not the least discomfitted. “And now even if these fellows are found right away, it’ll still take an hour or so to free them.” He grinned with intent and got to work.

Well, maybe not an hour. But the extrication wouldn’t be a swift one. Kimmer tucked herself just inside the big main doors and watched the brush, quickly losing the quick flash of humor as her sense of urgency ticking up to wind her tighter and tighter.

Take out the goonboys. Save the girls. Catch the goonboss. Put my life back together. Do it before sunset.

And oh, yeah—don’t get killed in the process.

Right.

Kimmer shifted uneasily, reaching the limit of her ability to be still. To wait, when everything about this moment said
run far, run fast
. She barely glanced back as Rio came up behind her. He lifted a hand, caught her changed mood and let it drop away before it landed on her shoulder. Smart man. He said, “Ready to ramble. It’d be good if we call Owen while we have the chance and—” he lifted his cell phone between two fingers, letting it dangle “—a phone.”

“Do it, then.” She kept her eyes on the foliage. This whole plan would work only if they got back out there to lurk in wait, and that meant getting
out
there.

“Hey,” Rio said, no apparent care in the world as he hit the speed dial and put the phone to his ear, “we’re good. We’ve got some of them and they don’t have us. We have a plan.”

“They have two little girls.” Kimmer was surprised at the bitterness in her own voice. “They have my life.”

Rio’s voice got hard. “No,” he said. “They don’t.” And then, “Hey, Owen. Yeah, found her. This is big…the bad guys have Kimmer’s nieces stashed away. We’re going in after them, but this place is crawling. What’re the chances—”

Owen had anticipated him, cut him off. This time Kimmer did glance back, and Rio made a face at her. After a moment he said, “We need the backup, Owen. There’s no way we can handle this quietly without it. Maybe even with it.” Kimmer knew just what he meant. With just the two of them, they’d have to take the chances they got, whether it meant taking someone down, or simply tying them up.

And personally, Kimmer thought they’d used up their quota of
easy
. Not to mention
quiet
. Things were going to get messy.

Rio told the phone, “Okay. I hear you. But it’s going to get messy.”

Kimmer grinned. Oh, yeah.

Behind her, the phone beeped a muted acknowledgment of the severed connection. Rio moved in close and leaned down slightly, putting the side of his face up against the side of hers in a connection that should have and could have led to kisses in tickly places but instead resulted in the quiet matter-of-fact statement, “Dave’s tied up in Pittsburgh. The Big Bad Guy is better than expected at obfuscation.”

“Say that again,” Kimmer murmured back, not taking her eyes from the woods over which she stood sentry.

Rio obliged, not pretending he didn’t understand her dark, deadpan humor. He moved his mouth against her ear. “Obfuscation.”

“Szzzt,”
she said, a sizzling noise. “Ooh, baby,” as if she wasn’t truly absorbing the impact of his original words. That they were on their own.

“He’ll come when he can.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If it helps any, I’m pretty sure the obfuscation involves gunfire and blood. Owen’s being cagey, though.”

Great. That meant things had really gone to hell for Dave. No wonder the goonboys were unsettled.

Kimmer shifted her arm in the plastic sling, wiggled her fingers to assess their grasping power, and sorted through the interior pockets of the jacket to find the S&W. She tucked it away in the numb fingers, bringing the edge of the plastic up to hide it. She snugged the SIG in there as well, using the sling as a holster. But they wouldn’t want gunfire…not until they couldn’t help it. So she slipped the thong of the war club over her hand and closed her fingers around the familiar shape of the handle.
Here we go again, you and I
.

She’d found the red oak root tangle, perfect for setting the scrap iron she’d gotten from the local farrier, watching him—bemused but willing—as he shaped it down into a misshapen ball. She soaked the wood and set the ball and wrapped the whole thing in place. Easy enough to drill a few holes in the end and lash a thong through it.

And when it was done, she hefted it against bales of hay, getting the feel for it. She learned to flip it into her hand from
the thong around her wrist. She practiced against the makeshift kick-bag until the day the bag burst, raining dirt and moldy straw down around her. Then she moved to wood, targeting knotholes. Backhand, forehand, sideways flick. She learned to let the club do the work, trading precision and finesse for brute strength. She carried it with her always, hiding it in baggy hand-me-downs, learning the best ways to conceal it while keeping it within reach.

Then she thought she might be ready
.

The goonboy came silently along the trail, feeling the lack of a buddy at his back and showing it with nervous glances behind, frequent halts to search through the woods ahead and his gun at the ready.

Not that it would do him any good.

Kimmer lurked in the shadow of a thick white oak, glad for her petite frame and for the dark taupe of her jacket.
Woodsy brown
, the catalog had probably called it. Fanciful but accurate. The goonboy passed her by without looking, then jerked to attention as Rio released a swatch of branches just ahead. Even before the whipping leaves settled to silence, she stepped forward and tapped the goonboy on the head, just as he jerked back to look at her. She couldn’t pull the blow fast enough. He went down with a grunt and thrashed briefly on the ground, his fingers curled in a spastic movement.

Damn, that wasn’t good.

Rio stepped out of the woods to look down at the man. Thinning of hair and thickening of paunch…not a kid, but still with the potential of many years ahead. “He’s posturing.”

“It’s not a science, this head-clonking thing.” Kimmer scowled down at the man and his jerking hands and feet.
“Might as well leave him there. Maybe someone will find him before it’s too late. He’s no threat to us, either way.”

Rio agreed by way of scooping up the injured man’s gun, decocking it and snicking the safety on before he jammed it into his jeans waistband at the hip in a cross-wise draw beneath the drape of his cable sweater. “Move on?”

“I don’t think they have many goonboys left, just carboys. Doesn’t seem like they’ll keep sending them out.”

“Smart thing to do is hunker down in their shelter,” Rio agreed.

Kimmer looked at the fading goonboy and his gently arching back, making his deathbed on their newly broken trail. “Maybe they’re already hunkering,” she said. “Or they wouldn’t have sent him alone.”

“Let’s find out.”

Kimmer let Rio lead the way this time, hanging back to assess her own condition, deciding that the food and rest and company had given her a second wind. Not a miracle cure—not even fully functional—but ready to bare her teeth at the enemy.

As they neared the back of the Quonset building, Rio let Kimmer take the lead, Kimmer and her hard-learned silent movement. He did nothing more than glance at her for confirmation and then moved in to cover her back, and Kimmer felt a little thrill of satisfaction.
Two. A team. Partners
.

Now let us get through this so we have a chance to prove it
. To Owen, to Kimmer herself.
And a chance to live it
.

All the way to the back door they went, and Kimmer’s careful silence might as well have been stomp dancing for all the occupants of the Quonset would have heard. Torque wrenches, the compressor…even the spit and sizzle of something being welded. Those inside couldn’t possibly hear what was happening on the outside.

Someone shouted from the other side of the door—he had to be close, and he was certainly frightened—“You’ns oughta check it yourself!” he shouted. “I’m just here for the effin’ cars, man!”

Kimmer exchanged a quick look with Rio, got raised eyebrows in return, a mutual sense of
aha!
She flattened herself behind the door, while he crouched against the building on the other side, one hand groping for a rock or piece of wood to block the door open. The man coming out that door was also their way in….

And out he came, wary and staring hard into the woods, never suspecting that those he looked for were actually behind him. He clutched a cheap knock-off automatic, but not in a position that would do him any good unless he had a wicked snap-shot. Through the crack at the doorjamb, Kimmer saw Rio give up looking for his solid object and stick his foot in the doorway. When the carboy finally released the door it swung gently closed on that foot and stopped, leaving Kimmer to handle the carboy.

She let the war club swing from her wrist and pulled the SIG from her sling. “Hey,” she said quietly, moving a step closer behind him. Close enough. He froze, looked over his shoulder, and found Kimmer—and then found Rio aiming at him from his crouch. He swore in a most heartfelt way. His gaze darted for the door and hope lit his face when he saw he wouldn’t even have to turn the knob, but could just grab and fling the thing open. Maybe even just shout loud enough for someone inside to hear. He didn’t seem to remember he had the gun.