Dan & Tyler 2 - Wintergreen (14 page)

Dan shook his head and lied, just a little. "Sorry. The cabin's locked, and I don't have a key."

 

The water had been turned off, as it happened, but if he told her that, he'd also be giving away the fact that the cabin was about to be empty. Where the hell was Tyler?

 

She gave the cabin a sharp look. "Locked? How do you know? Do you live here?"

His time on the road had made him defensive; too many people saw a scruffy young man and assumed he was a thief at best, and Dan had never taken anything that wasn't his, ever. Except, maybe, for Tyler's raspberries the day they'd met, and he hadn't known they were Tyler's when he picked them.

"Yeah, I do, if it's any business of yours, but like I said, I don't have a key. The town isn't far, and there're some houses you'll pass that'll give you water if you're really all that thirsty."

 

It would be tap water, not Evian, or whatever she had in that pocket of hers, but if she was really parched, she wouldn't care.

It dawned on him belatedly that her hand was still in her pocket and that the bulge there wasn't really one that matched a plastic bottle, but when she pulled out a gun, black and small, and pointed it at him, the barrel unwavering, well, that explained that.

"You're going to join me in my hike, Daniel," she said, her voice cool and clipped. "Don't worry, we won't be going far."
He'd watched TV shows and movies and sneered when people said obvious, useless things like "Where am I?" or "You won't get away with this!" but he found that he had to bite back the impulse to ask her how she knew his name. Pointless question, as well as clichéd, because he knew the answer already. She knew his name because she wasn't a random hiker who'd wandered off trail; she'd come here on purpose. Since Dan had nothing anyone would want, and didn't have a past as a super-secret Black Ops sniper, it wasn't a wild leap of logic to assume she was after Tyler. It was amazing how a gun pointed at you sharpened your brain even as it froze you to the spot with terror.

"I'm bait," he said aloud, and watched her smile naturally for the first time, thin and fierce.

 

"Yes, you are. That's very clever of you, but try not to be
too
clever, hmm?"

His thoughts went from being flicker-fast as he put the pieces together to glacially slow as his mind finally wrapped itself around the fact that he had a gun pointed at him -- a fucking
gun
-and that the bright beginning of his journey with Tyler was about to end in pain and blood.

God, he was never going to see Tyler again, was he? Loss tore through him, a slash of emotional agony that had his arms folding across his body reflexively as it spilled from mental into physical pain. As heroes went, he was a failure. He must have watched a hundred scenes of people distracting the bad guy with a joke and then sweeping the gun away with a chop of their hand or a kick, but it was all that he could do to stay on his feet. His legs felt as if he'd run for miles, and his chest and throat were burning as he fought for breath, the unthinking rhythm of his body disrupted by the panic brought on by knowing that he was about to die.

"Don't faint on me." The woman stepped close enough to slap his face, a double insult, since he guessed that she would never have risked getting that close to Tyler. It was a firm, stinging slap, but there was no real force behind it, and it did what she wanted it do: his head cleared, and if his gut felt liquid and his throat tight with grief, the world had come back into focus.

"I won't help you to hurt Tyler," he said, and was pleased by how steady his voice was. "Forget it."

 

"Tyler Edwards…" She pursed her lips and then shook her head dismissively. "I prefer John Bryson, but who gives a shit. They can bury him under any name they like."

He wasn't going to think about Tyler cold and still and six feet under. He
wasn't
. He had to do something soon; Tyler -- not John,
Tyler
-- would be back any minute now, and if the blood wasn't pounding in his ears, he'd probably be able to hear the truck, but it was and he couldn't. Maybe he could trust that she wanted him alive and make a run for it. Once in the woods, he could lose her, get to the road, and flag Tyler down.

"Try anything brave and I'll shoot you," she said, making 'brave' sound like a dirty word, which made him realize that all those times he'd played cards with Tyler and been told his poker face was as easy to read as large print maybe hadn't been Tyler's way of psyching him out, but the simple truth. "Your arm, I think; it'll hurt like hell, and you'll never be able to use it without remembering what happened, but it won't stop you walking and you probably won't bleed for long."

"Why are you doing this?" It was another classic line, but he genuinely wanted to know. It had to be connected with the job that Tyler had done for Cole; too much of a coincidence otherwise.

 

She gave him a blank look. "Why on earth would I tell you that?" She jerked her head at the woods. "Move."

 

"No." He set his teeth and waited for the bright, hot pain of a bullet. It would come eventually; if she wanted Tyler dead and succeeded, getting rid of witnesses would be high on her to-do list.

"Why do you want to get shot?" she asked with what sounded like mild curiosity, no more than that. "It's not like the movies, you know; you'll be screaming, bleeding, bits of flesh and bone splattered everywhere--"

"Nice images. Thanks." He was feeling less terrified and more furious, which worked for him. Anger didn't make him feel as if he was about to pass out or throw up. "We both know you're going to kill me anyway, and at least this way, Tyler gets a chance to make it."

"Tyler's the kind of man who always makes it," she said. "That's why I need you."

 

Dan bared his teeth at her in something a world away from a smile, his lips curling back. "Then start working out how to drag me, because I'm not fucking moving."

"I have plans for Tyler," she said, her voice soft and dangerous. "I need him, which buys him some time, and who knows, maybe at the end of it all, he'll walk away. It's not ideal for me, but it's possible. But if you keep this up, I'll just wait for him to get back -- yes, I know where he is. I've been listening to you two for the last two days and, my God, it's pathetic what he's become-"

"Listening?" Dan gaped at her, and felt his ears burn with embarrassment and outrage. "You -that's just -- that's illegal!"

She gave an amused gurgle, deep in her throat. "Where the hell did he find you? In a cabbage patch? Let me tell you what will happen if you don't do as I say. He'll drive up that track, and you'll run to him, arms waving, yelling about the nasty lady with the gun, and he'll stop the truck. He won't get out, but he'll have to stop, and I'll shoot him in the head when he does. Want me to prove that I can?" She took a silencer out of her other pocket and screwed it onto the gun, a move that dried the spit up in Dan's mouth, because it was so casually done. "See that robin on the branch over there?"

If the gun hadn't been silenced, he might have let her do it; use up a bullet, make some noise… but he didn't doubt her skill, and the bird was doing a twittering song that bugged the hell out of him at dawn, but right now sounded so chirpy and normal that the thought of it ending hurt him. "Don't. I know you can."

"Oh, but you don't," she said. "I could be bluffing. And you don't -- not really, not deep down -think that I'll kill something just because I can. I want you to know that, Daniel. I want you to be sure of it, so that when I tell you that Tyler will be dead if you don't do as I say, you'll know that you don't have any alternative."

Her hand moved up in a smooth arc, paused, and he watched, not the poor, doomed scrap of feathers and song, but her finger. As it squeezed the trigger, he flung himself at her, not enough space between them to really build up sufficient momentum for a proper tackle, but enough to send her staggering.

The birdsong in the woods stopped, and he heard a flurried beat of wings as every bird in earshot took off, warned, not by a muted, muffled click, but pure instinct, climbing high into the sky.

 

He grabbed for the gun, his fingers closing around her wrist and cool metal, and he thought that he could do it. She was shorter than him, lighter, and she was still off-balance-

Her fist struck him in the throat, a perfectly judged blow, robbing him of breath. Dan released her wrist, both hands coming to his throat as he fought for air, pain radiating out from where her fist had landed.

"That could have killed you," she said as she walked backward with quick, graceful steps, a parody of a dance. She aimed the gun at him again, a solid shape surrounded by a whirl of black dots as Dan's vision grayed out. "An inch higher, a little harder… Lucky for you, I'm a trained professional. Don't try that one at home."

Funny. Dan swiped at his watering eyes and managed to suck in some much-needed oxygen. The dots disappeared, and he concentrated on regaining his voice so that he could tell her what a crazy, fucked-up bitch she was.

"I really don't have time for this," she said, her voice sharp now, like glass splinters scraping at his ears.

That had to mean that Tyler was coming. Yeah, he could hear the truck in the distance approaching slowly, with Tyler in no hurry and the ground too uneven to race over. Dan blinked away the last of the tears and tried to straighten from his hunched-over position so that he could see what was going on.

"You," she continued, "are annoying me."

"Bite me," he managed to croak, and then the world exploded into shards and fragments of darkness and pain as she did a perfect spin and kick, just like the movies, her boot and his head connecting.

Chapter Nine

Tyler turned off Neil Young mid-warble, the song continuing in his head for a few beats. He didn't mind having the radio on when he drove, but mostly he liked to listen to the engine and the road. He'd gotten used to tuning out Dan's choice of music -- the iPod helped -- but he had a feeling that the journey would contain a lot of moments when no music was the only compromise they'd be able to reach.

The truck eased its way over the ruts that the seasons had dug into the ground, finding a path for itself. It was going to hurt leaving his truck behind, but once their travels took them abroad, it would have to languish in long-term parking, with all the risks that option entailed. Tyler was resigned to the necessity without being too happy about it. Maybe he could leave it in a storage facility instead.

He reached the end of the track and glanced casually over at the cabin as he swung the truck around in a circle, wanting to leave it pointed back the way he'd come. Dan lay on his back in the dirt, unmoving, still, a woman, vaguely familiar, standing over him, a gun aimed at Dan's head. Shock closed his throat, but habit made him complete the turn and put the truck into park, and it didn't take him more than a moment to start thinking again. He sat still, moving only his head as he scanned the woods for an accomplice. No one was visible, which meant nothing; the trees were too bare to provide much cover above ground, but there were plenty with trunks thick enough for a person to hide behind.

Who was she? Tyler was good at assimilating a lot of detail in a single quick glance, and he played back what he'd seen of her as he tried to fit the profile to a memory. He discounted the blonde hair; hair was the easiest to change. Without a name, he still had a vague sense of a past connection, but he needed more than that. Knowledge was power, always. Knowledge of a building's layout had gotten him safely to an exit with people chasing him; knowledge of a target's habits had guided him to the perfect time and place for a hit.

There was no time to cudgel his stunned, stupid brain into coughing up the data he needed. If she decided that he was taking too long to get out and that he was maybe calling for backup or arming himself, she might put a bullet into Dan to encourage him to move faster. Closing off all his emotions, he took out the gun he wore strapped to his ankle as unobtrusively as possible and slid it into the back of his pants. She'd find it, but she'd expect it; if he didn't have a weapon to surrender, it would make her suspicious.

"Over here," she called to him, sounding amused, an arrogant lilt to her voice that told him that she thought she was in control. "Turn off the engine and toss me the keys when you're close enough."
Tyler obeyed her instructions because he couldn't tell for certain if Dan was alive or not. Driving off fast was the best option if he wanted to keep himself alive, but he couldn't do it until he was sure that Dan was beyond help. It was also in Tyler's mind that, although Dan only worked as a hostage if he was alive, if Tyler left, the woman might decide to punish him for that decision by blowing a hole in Dan's head, and that wasn't something that Tyler could contemplate unmoved.

Even so, stepping out of the truck to disarm himself in front of an enemy took an effort of will.

The keys flew through the air in a glittering arc and fell at her feet. Too risky to throw them at her; to do it with any force would require telegraphing his move, and she could duck or pull a trigger faster than the flight of the keys. She didn't make the rookie mistake of glancing down at them, and now that he could see her face, he wasn't surprised. His brain finally provided him with the details it'd withheld.

Paula Ryan. Efficient, cold, and loyal to only herself, which made Tyler wonder just what the psychologists who'd declared her a patriot who could be trusted with a rifle and a kill order had been taking in the way of drugs. She'd gone rogue five years before, disappearing, presumed dead, in a car bomb.

He'd never known her well, and he hadn't mourned her death for a moment.

 

"Looking good for a corpse, Paula."

 

"Thank you." Her gaze raked over him. "Lose the gun."

He didn't bother to argue. Not with the safety off on her gun and her finger curled around the trigger. The small, unobtrusive weapon got tossed aside, with Tyler automatically noting its position on the ground, as close to Dan as he could make it without being too obvious about it.

Paula nodded. "One more thing and then we can talk."