Beyond the Rules (24 page)

The goonboss shot her own goonboy.

Rio flung himself aside in reaction, but Kimmer was already in motion, somersaulting backward and ignoring the blaze of fiery pain in her arm as she came back to her feet. Still crouching, the gun still in her hand—now aimed at the goonboss. She should have taken her shot right then, should have given this cruel, cold-hearted woman no chance at all.

If only the dark eye of the little SIG hadn’t been pointed straight at the girls.

In that moment of hesitation, Kimmer lost her advantage. She didn’t know where Rio was, couldn’t tell if he had any kind of angle on the woman. And though she’d normally count herself able to drill her target right through the eye at this range, these circumstances were far from normal. Her thighs burned from her awkward position, fast heading toward rubbery. Her hand…

It trembled.

And the goonboss saw. She smiled. She nodded imperiously to Hank, gesturing him to join the girls, both of them now crying and desperately trying to hide it, to be silent. “A father should be with his daughters.”

At first Hank took the direction as triumph. So deluded…so full of his own cleverness even as his world fell apart around him. He tossed Kimmer an “Oh, well, too bad for you” look and started to move the girls out of there.

“Not yet,” the woman said.

Hank frowned at the aim of her gun, the first doubt crossing his face. “Look,” he said. “We gave you a place to work. We’re no part of the rest of it.”

“You became a part of ‘the rest of it’ when you tried to deflect your punishment to your sister.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m the only one who’s allowed to kill my people.”

“It was an accident—”

She cut Hank’s bluster in midword. “Don’t bother. I can’t believe a word you say.” And then she turned to Kimmer. “You see the situation, I think. Behave yourself, or the girls die. Let me walk out of here, and you can lick your wounds and fume over letting me slip through your fingers.”

“I still don’t understand why you walked into this place at all.” Kimmer slowly shifted one knee to the dirty concrete. Her pulse pounded faster than the situation demanded. Weakness. Loss of blood. What energy reserves she’d had were quickly slipping away.

The woman’s face twisted in an expression of pure disgust. “Why do you think you didn’t hear me coming? Even with the idiocy going on in here, someone would have noticed if I’d driven up to the front. Car trouble, that’s what. And so I need the keys to something that works.”

The carboy made a stuttering noise. A raised eyebrow encouraged him to use actual words. “Everything’s torn down,” he managed. “Except what’s out front. And that’s all—”

“Stolen,” the goonboss finished for him. “Well, we’ll just have to do something about that.” The look she shot Kimmer was less conversational. “Now it’s time for you to hand over your gun. And for your friend to slink out in the open.”

“Actually,” Rio said, his voice coming from an angle that made Kimmer give an internal cheer, “I like it where I am. And I can see you just fine.”

“Oh, please.” She snorted delicately. “You hero types don’t shoot anyone in cold blood, never mind a woman.”

“There’s always a first,” Rio suggested.

But Kimmer didn’t believe him. And she knew the goonboss didn’t, either. She shifted uneasily, equally aware that this woman had no such compunctions. As for Kimmer…
she’d do it. If only she had the aim. If she wasn’t about to pass out. She’d do it.
Oh, yes
.

“Game over,” said the goonboss. Her face grew hard, her voice likewise. “The guns. Now.”

Kimmer hesitated. She was loaded with weapons; giving up the gun didn’t mean that much. Except that the gun was the only thing she had the strength left to use at all.

The goonboss lifted her gun slightly, off the girls and onto Hank.

She pulled the trigger.

Kimmer startled at the sound, stared aghast as Hank fell into the barrel of rags and slid to the floor.
In front of the girls. She did that right in front of the girls
—

But no sense of loss. Nothing but that strange, empty place she’d felt with the news of her father’s death…the realization that the void within her would never be filled. Not that particular void. She made an unconscious move toward the girls, their small forms flung over their father’s, sobbing, trying to pat him back to life. Then Kimmer froze, suddenly aware of the goonboss again. Equally aware that her actions would have released Rio to make his own shot, but not certain he had the range to make a clean one. To keep the girls safe.

“No,” she said, loud and clear—and talking to Rio even as she met the woman’s dark, hard gaze. “I have car keys. It’s my car. It’s not stolen, but there’s a warrant out for it. You should know all about that. All you have to do is make a phone call and pull that warrant. Unless you’ve lost even that much influence.”

The woman’s face opened with surprise. “I can’t say I expected this of you. Not after what I’ve heard. What I see.”

“There’s a catch,” Kimmer told her bluntly. “The girls stay here. Everyone stays here. You’re on your own. No hostages. No more dead bodies in your wake.”

“Kimmer…” Rio said, and then stopped himself. She knew what he had to say. That this woman needed to be caught. To be stopped. But Dave had flushed her out, hadn’t he? And Kimmer and Rio had destroyed what was left of her operation here, leaving her no bolt-hole. Nowhere to hide, not even for the time it took to prepare a real escape. Her life, like Kimmer’s, had been torn down to its roots.

Not complete justice. But a form of it nonetheless.

And one that would keep the girls safe.

The rest could come later.

It’s about who you are
. And even with the need for retribution burning in her chest and throat, even with years of swift, ruthless action and no regrets, Kimmer found she was not someone who could put these girls in danger.

Her nieces.

The goonboss watched her, suspicion writ clearly on her face. “The girls come with me as far as the door.”

But there were other things written on her face, too, written where Kimmer could see them clearly. “Didn’t Hank tell you?” she said, a soft, menacing voice, resisting another glance at her dead brother. “There’s no point in lying to me. In trying to fool me.” In planning to jerk at least one of the girls through the still-open door with her. “Take one girl. Five feet from the door. Then you let her go. If you scuttle down real low, she’ll still be good cover while you run off to save your sorry ass.”

The woman hesitated.

“Five feet,” Kimmer repeated.

And Rio said nothing, knowing he didn’t have to. Knowing that they’d both open fire if it came to that. Trusting Kimmer to read this woman right.

“It’s what you want,” Kimmer said. “True, it leaves me alive. But I could say the same about you.”

The woman took a deep breath, letting it trickle out again through those flared nostrils. “Another time, then.”

“Probably.” Kimmer watched her another long moment, waiting for the acquiescence. The truth of defeat. Then she said, “The keys are in my pocket. I’m going to get them with my left hand.” Pulling the arm from the sling popped sweat out on her face, felt like she was tearing the limb in two. It took several tries for those numb fingers to extract the keys without bringing an incidental weapon along. Finally she tossed them out on the floor, offering quick instructions as to the car’s location.

The goonboss instructed Karlene to bring the keys. Karlene glanced uncertainly at Kimmer, her face tear-streaked among the filth. Kimmer said quietly, “She chose you because she thinks you’re the easiest,” and was rewarded with a glint of defiance. Steadily, Karlene retrieved the keys and handed them to the goonboss, standing just within reach. It didn’t stop the goonboss from grabbing her hand along with the keys, or from pulling her along to the door, her gun held far too close to those grimy curls.

“There,” Kimmer said, loud and clear, as the woman closed in on the door.
“Now.”

The woman hesitated—of course she hesitated, calculating her odds. Kimmer raised her pistol, both hands to steady it this time. “Do you have any idea how easy it is to read you? Try returning the favor. Take a good look at me and ask yourself if I’m going to let you get through that door with her.”

Shaky. Pale. Bereft of the life she’d built and standing on nothing but the decisions that had brought her here—here to help family, because it was the thing to do regardless of who those people really were. Here to save her nieces even if it meant losing the quarry she’d come after. Finally certain of herself.

Solidly Kimmer.

The woman’s face changed. “Another time,” she said, and abruptly pushed Karlene away as she leaped for the still open door.

And Kimmer let her go. She turned instead to the angry, crying and grieving youngster between them. She met Rio there and gathered Sandy up along the way.

Time to start again.

T
hey took her by surprise
.

They grabbed her while she checked the mail in the early dark of midwinter. Leo Stark’s muffler-challenged car started up and swooped in behind her as her oldest brother popped out from behind the huge maple and snatched her arms behind her back. He kept his face averted from her instant reaction, having learned from experience that her head was harder than his nose and lips. “Let’s go, Kimmerbitch,” he said, grunting as she slammed a sneakered foot back into his shin but not loosening his grip. “Time for you to become a woman.”

She froze in an instant of animal fear, knowing things had been building to this moment. She recalled Leo Stark’s increasing leers, the escalation of his attempts to grope and fondle her, his easy recruitment of her brothers. In that moment, they tossed her into the backseat of the big old Ford. It wal
lowed on old shocks beneath her, then sank into the laboring acceleration.

She didn’t bother to demand where they were going, even had she the breath. She knew well enough she couldn’t afford to arrive there, wherever it was. Someplace with a dank mattress, probably out in the woods. One of their spots. Boys will be boys, her father always said when they came home reeking of beer and strutting their stuff.

Leo must’ve been in the back already. As Kimmer struggled to sit up, already fumbling for the door handle in spite of their speed, he threw himself on her. Already aroused, already pressing against her. Kimmer wanted to spit.

But her mouth was dry.

“Don’t bother,” he told her, jerking his head at the broken door handle, his blond hair reflecting dully in the dash lights. The car bounced over a dirt road pothole, jostling them into even closer contact. Kimmer squirmed beneath him. He thought it was an attempt to get away; he grabbed her hair to pull her closer, promising crudities and thrusting at her through their clothes
.

It suited her fine. He never realized what she was really doing—that she’d grabbed her unblooded war club. That even as he licked her neck, she pulled the weapon free
.

She jammed the handle into his ribs, three fast hammer blows and by the last he was retching atop her. Her brothers—all four of them, planning to watch, no doubt—turned to check on this unexpected noise
.

If they’d anticipated screaming, they’d been so wrong. Kimmer flipped the club around and bashed it backhand, up and over her head, hunting window glass. The first blow cracked it; at the second, it collapsed on itself and rained glass along the road. One more blow to Leo, a hard smack
with the business end of the club somewhere on his back, and Kimmer shimmied out from beneath him. By then the car was slowing, and that, too, suited her fine. She snaked out the window and landed hard on the dirt road, trying to roll but losing every bit of air from her lungs anyway
.

She scrambled to her feet still gasping for air, heading for the woods. They’d never find her, no matter how quickly they followed. She’d make it back to the house, grab the stash she’d packed months ago and make her way out of this place
.

Free.

Finally free
.

Free
.

Of what, Kimmer wasn’t entirely sure. Not of the interrogations still ahead and the two-state investigation still going strong, hampered and slowed by the need to ferret out the goonboss’s many associates. Not of the sling around her arm, torn muscle and impinged nerves healing just fine but not fast enough to suit her. Not of the trouble the situation had caused Hunter, even if fingering Paula Romajn—high-powered criminal attorney in high-powered city society—as goonboss offset much of the bad PR. Rio had even signed on the dotted line the day before: part-time operative.

Certainly not free of the knowledge that Hank’s girls had seen their father killed, seen their mother taken away in handcuffs as Dave—a tad battered himself—arrived on the scene with his trusted police detective friend. The girls were in foster care now, but reportedly happy to see the letters Kimmer sent them while she investigated other possibilities. Closer to home possibilities.

Family might just be a part of her life after all.

And meanwhile the world went on. Shara Ingleswood at
WEFL was happy as a pig in slop, following the dots she’d been given to build a big-crime story with connections to Watkins Glen—the Hunter Agency had been kept out of it, but not Hank. Not Susan.

Hank had done it to himself. So had Susan. Their decisions…their consequences. Kimmer had merely tried to make the right choices in their wake. Her own choices.

Free.

That was it.

Free to make her own decisions untainted by her family past. Redefining herself on her own terms. Kimmer, showing herself a different way to live.

She sat against the hood of Rio’s Element, went to cross her arms, and compromised by tucking her good arm under the bad. Rio settled onto the hood next to her and gazed up at the house in whose driveway they parked. “Well?”

“I haven’t even seen the inside.”

“You can’t just tell?” He pretended astonishment.

“That’s with people,” Kimmer informed him, haughty as she surveyed the place. Not nearly as old as her old home. Big enough for two.

Big enough, actually, for four. It needed landscaping, and it needed to lose that wretched fake well out front. She’d wait till her arm was better and take an ax to it. Kimmer fished for her camera.

“Aha,” Rio said, straightening to attention.

“Doesn’t mean anything.” Kimmer moved off to better frame the picture.

Their real estate agent, hanging quietly in the background, stepped forward. “Why don’t you let me take it—then you can both be in it. Even if you don’t like the interior of the house, it’ll make a cute picture.”

Cute. Just like the woman, a petite, rounded person with a pixie-short haircut and an ever-present cell phone. Maybe she’d give Kimmer tips on keeping it charged. Or on keeping it away from goats. Maybe she’d know of a cute replacement for that last one.
Cute
was one of her favorite words.

But Rio cocked his head and gave Kimmer a nudge, one of those guileless and unselfconscious things he did. Goofball-speak. “C’mon,” he said, and the sunlight hit his brown eyes just so, to light them up from the inside out.

She returned his look most thoughtfully, enough of a smile coming through so he grinned back, and finally nodded. “Okay,” she said.

Maybe one day they’d even make a memory book.