Beyond the Rules (3 page)

“Ryobe Carlsen,” Rio said in the most neutral of tones. “
Konnichiwa
. We can shake hands another time.”

Hank’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly Kimmer thought they looked nothing like hers at all. “You were there,” he said to Rio. “Leo said there was a man involved.”

“There were several, in fact. But I was one of them. I was certainly there when Leo mentioned how you planned to hand Kimmer over to him.”

Relief washed through Kimmer. Rio might not truly understand what Kimmer’s family did—or more to the point,
didn’t
—mean to her, but he knew Hank had a lot to prove. She should have known, should have trusted Rio.

Of course, that wasn’t something that came easily. Emotional trust was against the rules.

She took a deep breath, suddenly aware of just how much this encounter was taking from her. Tough Kimmer, keeping
up her tough front when all she wanted to do was ease across the swing into Rio’s arms. Except—

It was her own job to take care of herself. Her very first lesson.

So at the end of that deep breath, she made herself sound bored. “I can’t imagine how you think I can help you at all.”

“Leo said…well, hell, you made an impression on Leo. He says you took down the Murty brothers when you were in Mill Springs. And he came back to Munroville spouting stories about terrorists. He said you’d taken them out.”

Kimmer flicked her gaze at Rio. “I wasn’t alone.”

“He said they shot you, and you didn’t even flinch.”

She touched her side, where the scar was fading. It had only been a crease at that. She shrugged. “I was mad.”

“He said,” Hank continued doggedly, “that you were
connected
. That your people came into Mill Springs and did such a cleanup job that the cops never had anything to follow through on. Even those two guys you sent to the hospital—Homeland Security walked away with them.”

“Leo talks a lot,” Kimmer said. But she suppressed a smile. Damned if Hank didn’t actually sound impressed. “And you still haven’t gotten to the point.”

“The point,” Hank told her, “is that that’s the kind of help I need.”

“You want me to get shot for you?” Kimmer shook her head. “Not gonna happen.”

“You gotta make this hard, don’t you?” Hank shifted his weight impatiently, coming precariously close to Kimmer’s freshly blooming irises.

Yes.
But she had the restraint to remain silent, and he barged right on through. “Look, I’m in over my head. I let some people use a storage building for…something. They
turned out to be a rough crew, more’n I wanted to deal with. An’ I’ve got a wife and kids—bet you didn’t even know I had kids—and I wanted out. Except I saw a murder, damned bad luck. They know I want out, and they don’t trust me to keep my mouth shut.” He looked at her with a defiant jut to his jaw, daring her to react to the story. To judge him.

Kimmer sat silently, absorbing it all. Hank on the run from goonboys. Hank scared enough to track down a sister he’d abused and openly scorned. Hank here before her, asking for help she wasn’t sure she could or would give him.
Assuming I believe a word of it in the first place.
Wouldn’t it be just like her brothers to send one of them to lure her back down home where they probably thought they could control her?

Out loud, she said thoughtfully, “‘Bad luck’ is when you’re on your way to church and someone runs a red light in front of you. Witnessing nastiness at the hands of the goonboys you’ve invited into your home is more under the heading of ‘what did you expect?’”

His face darkened, something between anger and humiliation. “You gotta be a bitch about it? I’m asking for help here, Kimmer.”

“I’m not sure just
what
you’re asking,” Kimmer told him. Except suddenly she knew, and she spat a quick, vicious curse. “You want me to kill them. You actually want me to
kill
them.”

Hank hesitated, startled both by her perception and her anger, and put up a hand up as though it would slow either.

Rio looked at her in astonishment—Mr. Spy Guy, somehow not yet jaded enough to believe this to be something a brother would ask a sister.

But Kimmer, so mad she could barely see straight, still caught the unfamiliar sedan traveling too fast as it passed by
her street. She watched as it stopped and backed up to hover at the intersection.

“Dammit, Hank, did you tell anyone you were coming to see me?”

Startled, he at first looked as if he’d resist answering just because he didn’t like her tone. By then Kimmer was on her feet, now bare. Rio, too, had come out without shoes. Sock-foot. He never wore outdoor footgear in the house out of respect for his Japanese grandmother’s early teaching, even if he didn’t use the proper slippers while indoors.

Family
. She wanted to snarl the word out loud. She didn’t take the time. Hank had followed her gaze and blurted, “Just a few people, but they didn’t know why—”

“They didn’t have to,” Kimmer said, and by then Rio was beside her—and the sedan had turned sharply onto the narrow back street of wide-set houses, the acceleration of the engine clearly audible. “Keys, Hank!”

“What—”

She turned her gaze away from the car long enough to snap a look at him. “Your damn car keys. Hand them over!” She didn’t wait for compliance, but headed for him. No time to run inside for any of her handguns, no time to hesitate over anything at all.

“They’re in the—hey!”

“They’ve already spotted it,” Rio said, close behind her.

“You don’t have to come,” she told him, no sting to her words, just simple assessment of the situation as she hauled the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Coming anyway,” he said, just as matter-of-factly. And then gave Hank a little shove toward the back door on his way past. In a moment, he sat beside Kimmer. Hank sat in the back, still baffled.

“Where’s the shotgun?” Kimmer asked, cranking the engine. It hesitated; she gave it a swift kick of gas and it caught, rumbling unhappily.

“I don’t—”

“You
do
. Where?” She wrestled the gear shift into reverse, giving the approaching sedan a calculating glance.
We’re not fast enough.

“Under the seat,” Hank admitted, and Rio ducked to grab it. “Why—”

“What did you think?” She snorted, backing them down the driveway. “Have it out right here in my neighborhood, with all these innocent people going about their lives? In my own
house?
”

“I didn’t think you’d run!” Hank snapped. “But then, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

“When the moment’s right.” Kimmer cranked the wheel to catapult them out into the street, looking back over her shoulder through the rear glass of the big utility vehicle.

Too close. They’re way too close.

She couldn’t make herself feel any particular concern about her brother’s safety, but this moment didn’t have to be about Hank. It was about the goonboys, who were now chasing not only Hank, but Kimmer and Rio. Rio, whom she wouldn’t allow to be hurt again. With the vehicle still whining in reverse, she locked her gaze on the rearview mirror. There they were. Goonboys, to be sure—guns at the ready, assumed victory molding their expressions.

She wasn’t in the habit of letting the goonboys win.

Kimmer jammed down the accelerator and watched their eyes widen.

T
he crash resounded along the street. Mrs. Flint popped up from her flower garden next door, horror on her face. Kimmer didn’t wait for her rattled head to settle or her vision to clear. She ground the balky gears from Reverse to Drive and jammed her foot back down on the accelerator, bare foot stretching to make the distance.

The bumper fell off behind them. “Son of a bitch!” Hank groused, scrambling to find a seat belt that had probably disappeared between the seat cushions years ago.

Kimmer glanced in the rearview only to discover it had been knocked totally askew, but Rio saw it, too. He looked back and then turned a grin on her. “Nice,” he said. “They’re stalled and steaming.” He racked the shotgun with quick efficiency, counting the cartridges. “Four. And here I was thinking you might have bored out the magazine plug.”

“That’s not legal,” Hank muttered, still in search of the seat belt as Kimmer bounced them along the uneven street, discovering waves in the pavement she hadn’t even considered before.

“Oh, please,” she said while Rio loaded—one in the chamber, three in the magazine. “You just haven’t done it yet. Got more ammo?”

“’Course. Under the seat somewheres.”

“Find it.” She hit the brake, found it soft and unresponsive, and stomped down hard to make a wallowing turn uphill. “This thing drives like a boat.”

“Needs new brakes,” Hank said. He pawed through the belongings in the backseat, tossing take-out food wrappers out of his way.

“Needs brakes,” Kimmer repeated. “You don’t say.” And to Rio, “How’s it look?”

A glance, a resigned grimace. “They’re on the move again. You have a plan?”

“One that doesn’t include outrunning them?” she said dryly, glancing at the speedometer. Just forty miles per hour—fast enough in this rural-residential area. “Yes. Get the high ground. Pick them off if we have to. Hope my neighbors called the police.”

“I love that about you,” he said. “So efficient. Bash the bad guys—”

“BGs,” she reminded him.

“—and get the cops in on things at the same time.”

“Cops?” Hank popped up from his search. “If I’d wanted to go to the cops, I woulda called ’em from my place and saved myself the trip!”

“Quit whining,” Kimmer said shortly. “And find that box. Unless you just want to get out now? I can slow down—”

“This isn’t my hunting vehicle, you know. Dunno that I’ll find—whoop!”

Kimmer had no doubt that without his seat belt on that last hump of road, he’d been riding air. White picket fence flashed by the side windows as they hit a washboard dirt road and another incline. She spared a hand to grab quickly at the rearview mirror and straighten it. The road made perfection impossible, but now she could get her own glimpses of their pursuit.

Too close
. She made a wicked face at the mirror. “Dammit.”

“Still going with Plan A?”

“There isn’t a Plan B. Besides, the last little bit is completely rutted—” this as she manhandled the Suburban around a turn that took them from dirt-and-gravel to dirt-and-grass—“and I don’t think they can make it.” They’d left the last farmhouse far behind and now climbed the road over a mound with picturesque spring-green trees. At the crest of that hill the road faded away into a small clearing, one that bore evidence of being a lovers’ lane, teenage hangout and child’s playground. Condoms, beer cans and a swinging tire.

On the nights when Kimmer couldn’t sleep, she found it the perfect target for a fast, dark training run. Less than a mile or so from home, a good uphill climb and at the end a perfect view of the descending moon on those nights when there was a moon at all.

The Suburban creaked and jounced and squeaked, and then abruptly slowed as Kimmer carefully placed the wheels so they wouldn’t ground out between ruts. A glance in the rearview mirror and…
ah, yes
. The sedan had lost ground. Pretty soon they’d be walking, unless they didn’t realize this road dead-ended and gave up, thinking the Suburban would just keep grinding along, up and over and down again.

Though if they stuck around long enough, they’d hear the Suburban’s lingering engine noise.

Kimmer crested the hill, swinging the big vehicle in a swooping curve that didn’t quite make it between two trees; the corner of the front bumper took a hit.

“Hey!” Hank sat up in indignant protest, scowling into the rearview mirror when no one responded to his squawk. Kimmer finally put the gearshift in Park, unsnapped her seat belt with one hand and held out the other for the shotgun. “Keep looking for those shells,” she told Hank.

“And Plan A is…?” Rio asked.

“I can get a vantage point on them. See if you can find something else in this heap that we can use as a weapon. Tire iron, maybe. Any other nefarious thing Hank might have collected. I’ve got my club, too.” She twisted around to look at Hank. “I changed my mind. Get your ass up here and turn this thing around. It’s going to take time we won’t want to waste if they do come up here on foot.”

“Jeez, when did you get to be such a bitch?” Hank gave her a surly look. “I came up here for help, not to get pussy-whipped.”

“You’ve got help.” Kimmer assessed the semiautomatic, a gun made for a bigger shooter than she’d ever be. No surprise. “You just thought you were going to call the shots. Well, guess what? Wrong.” She slid out the door. Rio was already out and at the back, rummaging around. “Watch your feet,” she told him. “There’s broken glass up here.”

“Got it. And got the tire iron. I’ll keep looking.”

With little grace, Hank climbed down from the backseat and up into the driver’s side. With exaggerated care he began the long back-and-forth process of turning the SUV around.

Kimmer took a few loping steps to the nearest tree, the
maple with the tire swinging from a branch made just for that purpose. A lower branch on the other side acted as a step. She pulled herself up one-handed, climbing the easiest route to the branch from which the tire hung. From there she looked down on the road they’d just traversed. It passed almost directly beneath the tire before the hairpin turn that ended at the top of the hill. From there the area spread out before her—small farms and then the smaller tracts of her neighborhood in neat, topographically parallel streets.

The pursuing sedan sat barely visible through the trees, not moving. With the grind of the Suburban swapping ends and gears in the small space behind her, Kimmer couldn’t hear anything of the men who’d been in the sedan, and she couldn’t yet see them.

She waited. Her toes flexed on smooth maple bark, her fingers warmed the wood stock on the shotgun, and she waited, plastered up against the tree to put as much of herself behind the trunk as possible. Beneath her, Rio came to stand beside it—a second set of eyes. And Hank finally finished turning around and cut the engine.

Blessed silence. And then in the roadside not far below them, a flock of kinglets exploded into noisy scolding, flittering from bush to bush like parts of a perpetual-motion machine. Kimmer rested the shotgun barrel on a tree branch and snugged it into place against her shoulder as Rio eased back behind the tree. She raised her voice to reach those slinking below. “That’s far enough.”

The birds hopscotched away through the brush. An annoyed voice asked, “Who—
what
—the hell are you?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I’m still young,” Kimmer said airily. “Hank will tell you I’m a bitch, though, and I suppose that’s really all you need to know. Plus I bashed up your nice
car. I also have you in my sights and this is double-ought buckshot, too. It’s gonna sting, boys. Where do you want I should aim it?”

The reply came as something inarticulate and disbelieving, a strong Pittsburgh accent in play. Kimmer glanced down at Rio, who looked up with perfect timing to raise an eyebrow at her.

“Hunter’s going to hate this,” Kimmer told him. “They really want us to play nice in their backyard.”

“Look, sputzie,” said one of the BGs. “We only want the scrawny guy we followed here. There’s no need for you to get hurt.”

“No need at all,” Kimmer agreed, hoping she heard the sound of small-town-cop sirens in the distance. Unless these suited goonboys took off across country on foot, they couldn’t leave this little section of Glenora without meeting the cops on the way out. And Kimmer would be on their tail…squeeze play. She saw a rustle of movement and carefully sighted a foot in front of it, squeezing the trigger of the twelve-gauge.

The spring brush exploded in bits of leaves and twigs.
Damn, that thing has a kick
. But she’d been prepared and stayed firmly in position, braced between the spreading limbs. The goonboys scrambled wildly into the bushes, cursing copiously. Kimmer saw a glint of metal. “Here it comes.”

A quick volley of shots from someone who obviously felt he had ammo to spare, and Kimmer ducked behind the tree trunk. She was sure they were out of pistol range, but even goonboys got lucky. They’d take turns laying down cover to dart up the side of the road, getting closer…maybe getting close enough.

Rio knew it, too. “I’m going to draw them off,” he said. “I doubt I can get their interest more than once…better not waste it.”

Blam! Blam!

“Won’t,” Kimmer told him.
Won’t waste anything
.

“What the hell?” Hank growled loudly from the SUV between gunshot volleys. “Don’t play games with these people, Kimmer! Just…
do
something!”

Blamblamblam!

“Nice,” Kimmer told him, her cheek still pressed against smooth bark. “You don’t even have the guts to say it. What is it you want me to do, Hank? Exactly?”

Blam! Blamblamblam!

“Whatever it takes!” Hank’s voice crept toward panic. “Just stop them!”

Uh-huh.

Blamblam—click!

“Reload,” she said, but Rio was already away, running crouched just behind the crest of the hill and heading for another tree. He made a god-awful amount of noise and then took position behind the tree, holding the tire iron up to his shoulder so the sun glinted along its length.

They took the bait. They turned toward him, revealing themselves to Kimmer, and as one BG slammed a new magazine home, the other raised his pistol at Rio.

Kimmer aimed between them and took a deep breath. No turning back now. Once she drew blood, she’d be explaining herself to the local law; she’d also drag Hunter into the mess. From this distance the pellet spread meant she’d hit them both without truly damaging them. It wouldn’t end this confrontation unless they took it as the warning it was and withdrew.

If only the cops were closer
.

But now it was more than Hank in trouble. Rio stood within their sights, drawing fire for her. Drawing it from Hank, who deserved no such sacrifice.

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

They both went down, tumbling away in surprise, losing ground downhill away from the road. Good. That bought some time for the cops to close in. Not much time, but—

She and Rio startled in unison as the Suburban’s engine revved.
Hank! That puny-assed
—

Rio reacted immediately, running for the vehicle with long strides, dirt sticking to his socks and the tire iron in hand. The SUV swung past him, building speed, and with a grunt of effort he managed to draw even to the open tailgate and fling himself into the back. For an instant Kimmer thought he’d bounce right out again, but he must have found something to grab on to; his feet disappeared inside.

And that left Kimmer. Kimmer, sitting in a tree and staring stupidly at her stupid brother’s stupid break for it. So much for the plan to sandwich the BGs between Kimmer and the cops she’d so fervently hoped would arrive in time.

No way in hell was she leaving Rio to take this one alone. Not when she had the only gun.

Though maybe while he was bouncing around in the back, he’d find those shotgun shells they needed so sorely.

The shotgun had a sling strap. She pushed the safety on and ducked through the strap, freeing her hands so she could climb swiftly out on the branch and then down the rope to the tire. She could just barely push off the side of the hill while crouching in the tire and she did it, swinging back closer to push harder, propelling herself into the open air over the road as the BGs struggled to pull themselves together, smarting and bleeding but still well-armed.

And here came Hank, hauling the Suburban around the hairpin turn from the clearing, forced to slow down for the rutted section. Kimmer adjusted the arc of her swing, lean
ing to the side and pushing the tire around until she hung precariously out over nothing, high enough to see nothing but sky.

Time to let go. And if her timing was off, to go splat.

Kimmer landed with a painful klunk, denting the roof under the luggage rack. The shotgun smacked her in the back of the head, the metal smacked her bare feet and palms, and her forehead made contact with…something. She squinched her face up as if that would clear her head, clinging to the luggage rack as the vehicle bounced beneath her.

“Kimmer?”

That was Rio’s voice, filtered through metal and glass and creaking shocks, and she thumped the roof twice in affirmation. She wanted to bellow to Hank that he should slow down—hell, he should just plain stop—but he’d already scraped the Suburban by the sedan in a painful screech of metal and she knew better than to think he might give her shouting a second thought. Best to just hang on.

Yeah. So much for Plan A.

The road grew a little smoother, giving Kimmer the wherewithal to turn around and watch their back.

And here came the sedan. Backing down a road it hadn’t been built to climb in the first place, and doing it with the careless haste that said the driver had already decided it would be sacrificed to the cause.

Which was killing Hank. And now, killing Kimmer and Rio.

She flattened out over the luggage rack, wrenching the shotgun around into a useable position. Eventually the road would get smoother. Eventually she wouldn’t have to hang on with all her fingers and toes just to keep from being jounced over the side.