Exception to the Rule (18 page)

He’d bought some time.

He glanced up; for a startling instant he looked directly through the window and into Kimmer’s enormous eyes.
She’s here. She’s still here
. The relief almost wrenched a groan from him. But then she ducked and spun away, and then Rio felt the prongs of the stun gun, again wielded by the boss’s sidekick, and had only enough time to wince as they dug into the inflamed skin on his back and discharged into white fire along every nerve and muscle.

Clever Rio. He’d pushed them into putting him out, giving Carolyne a break, giving Kimmer more time…but until Slick left Carolyne on her own, Kimmer had nothing to do with that time.

At the moment she crouched just around the corner, waiting to see if anyone had spotted her when Rio had taken the action so close to the window, trying to settle the sick, heavy feeling in her stomach at what she’d seen.

You’ve seen worse
.

True enough. But never anyone she knew. It made her wish someone
would
come after her. She’d offer him a silent demise, and then if she picked the right moment, she’d have a decent chance of extracting Carolyne—now, before this went any further.

But no one came. They’d been watching Rio, not the window.

Perhaps it was time to attract some attention. Divide and conquer.

But Carolyne screamed, an arrow of sound that startled Kimmer to her feet, ready for action. And then Carolyne screamed again, and again—it sounded like fighting and protest as much as fear, and Kimmer returned to the window with a combination of haste and caution to find Carolyne struggling to escape Slick, lost in hysterical anger and fighting so hard that most of the time her feet didn’t even touch the ground. She lunged at Boots like a wild woman, kicking out at every opportunity and not seeming to notice how short her blows fell or how easily Slick restrained her.

Because in the middle of the floor, still groggy and helpless from a second encounter with the stun gun, Rio could do nothing but offer up the clumsiest of protection as Boots beat him, his blows brutal and his face savage. Rio already bore the marks, skin abraded from the basket-weave leather, split and bleeding over ribs, over haunches, over his poor wounded back, over the arms that gave his head the only cover he could offer—

City Shoes interfered only so much as to remove the leather sap, a wise move for a man who wanted to keep his whipping boy alive. Boots resorted to fists and feet, and Kimmer snapped out of her horrified daze, reaching for the Ruger—and again stopping herself. She didn’t have the height; she didn’t have the angle. She’d do nothing but break glass and damage furniture, if she didn’t manage to hit Rio or Carolyne outright.

Coward!
She couldn’t want anything more than she
wanted to break into that building and put Boots in serious pain—to watch that snarl on his face turn to fear, to move in close and let him see her satisfaction in doing it. But she was afraid—not for herself, but for Rio and Carolyne. That she wouldn’t be fast enough, that she’d regret her rash interference for the rest of her life.

She squeezed her eyes closed and fought for some sort of control. Inner balance. And found it in that which she’d already decided. Time to attract some attention.

Kimmer whirled and sprinted for the path, the rough oval around the central part of the camp. She knew the trip lines and aimed for them, evading whipping branches, sprinting onward to leave a cacophony of alarm in her wake. She triggered all the alarms between the nurse’s station and the camp entrance, and then she poured on the speed to return to the woods behind the station, crouching there with the exertion steaming up her vest and muted flannel shirt and just in time to see Boots running heavily down the path toward the noise she’d made.

But only Boots.

Dammit.

She didn’t care so much if he returned quickly and found her—it would only be an excuse to deal with him, and she’d already alerted the others that someone was out here. She moved quickly around the back side of the building to creep up on the open door, crouching half beside and half on the steps themselves to peer through the opening in the door—larger than usual with Boots’ careless exit.

Not much had changed inside. Carolyne sagged, crying, in Slick’s ever tenacious grip. City Shoes crouched
in the middle of the floor to shove Rio from a curled fetal position to his back; Rio moved loosely, limbs flopping, and sprawled into his new, more exposed position with the deepest of groans.

Kimmer’s hands clenched into fists; she looked at Slick and once more contemplated her odds as Carolyne renewed her struggles to reach for Rio. Surprisingly, City Shoes gave a little nod, and Slick released Carolyne to rush to Rio’s side, where she ran her hands over his shoulders in a frantic attempt to find something to fix and ended up snatching his shirt from the small pile of clothes on the floor and throwing it over him.

Dart in, fling Carolyne out of the way, two quick shots and the goonboys are out of it—

Except she had no experience with going in after people she cared about; no one ever got that close. She did a job; she found it satisfying, a way to prove time and time again that she could outwit and outscuffle the best of them. A way to save her once abused self, over and over and over.

This was entirely different. This made her tremble; it made her doubt herself. And the doubt alone meant no one could count on her, least of all Kimmer herself.

For the first time since she’d first left this rural Pennsylvania area as a survival-driven young teen buffered by her mother’s guidelines, Kimmer simply didn’t know what to do. This situation wasn’t covered in maternal words of wisdom, in crooning words deeply memorized in rare, precious moments of huddling together in privacy. This situation was outside her rules altogether.

Belatedly, Kimmer got a sense of the conversation, saw the signs of impending decisiveness and change.

“He’ll break,” Slick was saying. “Everyone does.
Give him a few moments to get his wits back, keep our local friend under control and then start in again.”

“Of course he’ll break.” City Shoes glanced at Carolyne and Rio, at Carolyne’s attempt to rouse her cousin, her urgent whispers. “Sooner or later he’ll beg her to spill what she knows. But he’s obviously had resistance training, so I do believe it’ll be
much
later…late enough that we no longer want to be here.”

Slick looked impatient. “This place is perfect—and every time we move, we expose ourselves.”

“We’re already exposed here—isn’t that obvious?” Shoes waved a hand in the general direction of the noise Kimmer had just created. “We know Hunter has someone lurking, even if Hawkins did lose her trail in New York. I suspect we’ve just been found.”

“Damn bungler,” Slick muttered. “He never even got a good look at her.”

Kimmer smiled to herself. Hat and plastic, shapeless raincoat. Way to go, ugly things.

“Still,” Slick added, “that ruckus could just be kids playing around.”

“And they might just go home and tell Mommy and Daddy that someone’s here, yes? Meanwhile we’ve got no idea when Carlsen will start his begging—and I know someone else who’s not likely to be nearly as resistant—or unpredictable.”

Carolyne’s head shot up at that; she regarded them with fearful trepidation. City Shoes gave her an affirming little nod. “Your lover’s not quite so cut out for this kind of thing, is he? And I bet he’ll come running if we give him a little call, tell him we found you. In fact, I think he’ll run right into our hands.”

“Don’t.” Carolyne shook her head, a helpless gesture. “Haven’t you done enough?”

“In point of fact, we have not,” City Shoes said calmly. “Or you would have told us what you know, yes?”

“I can’t do that,” she whispered, her voice so strained Kimmer barely heard her. “No matter what. Do you think I would have let you lay so much as one finger on Rio if I had a choice?”

“Choices sometimes become apparent as events transpire.” City Shoes looked pleased with his little declaration as he took out his cell phone. “Close up her laptop, get her ready to go. And you, Miss Carlsen—you’d better visit the young ladies’ room, yes? Once we hit the road, we won’t be stopping until we meet up with your Scott.”

Carolyne mustered a glare. “What if I told you that Scott and I are no longer together? And even if we were—”

“I am very sorry to say I would disbelieve you, and that even were it true, you would certainly still respond to his cries of pain. Unlike your frustrating cousin, I expect him to beg quickly and loudly. Now do as I say.”

Carolyne held on to her glare, but she slowly stood up away from Rio. After which she’d go in the back, where she’d be separated from Slick and Shoes and safe from any action—

Kimmer tensed, finally drawing the Ruger as she shifted her weight, readying to thrust forward and up and through the door.

“Mr. Boyle?” Shoes said into his phone. “I believe we have a matter of mutual interest to discuss.”

Careless noise from the woods caught her attention,
and she gave the most emphatic of inward curses—Boots hadn’t spent much time checking for the source of the ruckus. No doubt he didn’t want to miss any of the action at the nurse’s station, or any chance to whale away on Rio. Kimmer did a rollback from the stairs, a quick duck around the side of the building before he came into sight. And then, when she saw he wasn’t nearly so careless as to skip inspecting the clearing, the woods around the clearing and the building itself, she ran around back and into the woods, putting distance between them. Only after he’d disappeared around front and stayed gone for some moments did she again approach the clearing.

Just in time to see Carolyne being dragged toward the entrance road, offering enough resistance to annoy them but not enough to do any good. Slick and City Shoes and Carolyne…

Bad feeling bad feeling bad feeling
—

Kimmer ran to the building’s door, found it open, found Boots standing with his back to the door, a safe distance from Rio, gun out and aimed but pointing not at Rio’s head or heart, but his knee.

“Sick bastard, are you?” Rio asked, his voice gritty. He sat up on his own now, looking stiff and awkward, one knee raised and the other in a half lotus before him. He wore his shirt, still unbuttoned but hiding much of the damage done to him.

“I know opportunity when I see it,” Boots replied. “Stupid of you to make me look bad in front of those two.”

“It was stupid, all right,” Rio agreed, though he wasn’t referring to himself.

Oh, God, don’t wind him up!
Kimmer looked at
Boots’s back, looked at Carolyne disappearing through the trees, looked at Rio on the floor—he
had
to have seen her, he had to have—looked back at Carolyne, almost gone now, looked at Boots and the slight tension in his gun hand, the shift of his aim to something more precise, Rio’s blood about to spill—

Decision
.

S
urprise flickered in Rio’s expression, enough to warn Boots as Kimmer palmed her little war club and launched herself up the steps—but not enough so he had the chance to wrench around and face her. As he turned she slammed into his shoulder and brought the weighted club down on his arm. The gun clattered to the floor—
no gunfire to alert the others, very nice—
but Boots was quick enough to snatch her wrist with his other hand, engulfing the bones in his hammy grip and twisting.

She didn’t even try to resist. She went with the brute force of it, but she kicked him behind the knee on her way down, then rolled around her own arm to come up in front of him, levering her arm against the weak point of his thumb and popping free to snake a hand into her vest pocket. He tried to grab for his gun; she kicked it aside. He lunged for Kimmer instead, scooping her up
over his head like a pro wrestler, raising her up even higher so he could dash her down against the floor, his hold awkward with the injured arm but enough to do the job. He seemed to think she wiggled in fear, and so had no warning when she yanked her Mini Talon free of her pocket and jammed it into his thick, deliciously exposed neck, giving him a long three-second shot of juice.

He gurgled a harsh cry, arching back as Kimmer brushed the ceiling. He collapsed beneath her, falling on top of Rio to make her the top layer of a three-person pile.

She didn’t hesitate there. As soon as the world stopped heaving beneath her, Kimmer scrambled to solid ground, grabbed Boots’s gun from where it had rebounded off the wall and headed for the door—where she almost missed Rio’s gravelly, breathless call. “Wait!”

It was enough to make her hesitate, if barely. “I don’t have time—”

He pushed Boots aside, freeing himself. “That’s the point. You don’t. To catch up with them, maybe. Not to stop them. But
I know where they’re going.”

She did more than hesitate then, but didn’t move away from the door. “Maybe I’m faster than you think.”

“Maybe. Listen.” He took a breath, trying to marshal his thoughts, his gaze on her not entirely focused. “They’re going to the rest stop just south of Erie. They’re waiting for Scott there—he thinks he’s coming to the rescue with ransom. Idiot. It’ll take them three hours…it’ll take him five. You see? We have time to get there. Both of us.”

She raised an eyebrow in highest skepticism, but relaxed slightly. “The naked, beaten person being one of the ‘we’?”

“I can—” He tried to get up, failed and subsided with a noise between a curse and a groan. Bruises darkened his chest behind the unbuttoned shirt and blood spotted the back of it, also trickling down the side of his face from a scalp wound; he’d managed to scoot back against the filing cabinet, mostly freeing himself from Boots. “I
will.”

“Big on bouncing back, are you?” With a last, reluctant look at the direction in which Carolyne had gone, Kimmer set Boots’s gun aside and secured her own. She withdrew a handful of large cable ties from her inside vest pocket and bent to capture Boots’s hands and feet. Because it pleased her, she also tied his shoelaces together most thoroughly, with many inventive knot combinations. Then she hauled him over to the edge of the room, out of the way, and put her hands on her hips to regard Rio. Stunned, beaten, stunned again and then ending up at the bottom of the pileup, he looked every bit of it. Except for his eyes. Warm, rich dark chocolate eyes, still not focusing, but as determined as she’d ever seen him. A belated flush of relief ran through her body.
He’s okay. Well, not right at the moment. But he
will
be.

And he’s right.
They had time to take a breath. For Kimmer to make sure that in this tangle of unexpected feelings and muddled emotions, she was doing the right thing.

“I can do it,” he said, and then closed his eyes to admit, “Maybe with a little help.”

She tipped her head up, acknowledgment without commitment. “We’ll see.” And then, unable to hide a slight blush of embarrassment, she said, “Do you have a cell phone? Or does the line to this building work?”

He gave a slight shake of his head without opening his eyes, his head leaning back against the file cabinet. “Landline is turned off. My cell is in the bedroom, if they didn’t take it. You don’t—?”

“Not at the moment,” Kimmer said, and bit her lip in consternation. “It’s a battery thing. It’s
always
a battery thing.” She stepped into the bedroom, doing a quick search; she found Rio’s modest shoulder duffel and hunted through it, pulling out a fresh set of clothes while she was at it. But no phone. “Where?” she called out to him. No response; she left the duffel and brought the clothes out into the living room, where he’d lost his battle to focus and had drifted off into his thoughts somewhere.

“Way to bounce back,” she told him, and couldn’t help but glance at her watch.
We have time. Scott’s arrival gives us time.

“All part of the process,” he murmured. He shivered in the cold draft from the open door, and Kimmer felt something in her give in—the part that was trying not to get drawn into his pain, that had tried to stand aloof and matter-of-fact in order to get them past these moments of dependence and intrusive intimacy. Barely looking at the door, she took a step aside to kick it closed, and at the same time tossed the clothes, still folded, to land neatly beside the recliner.

“Come on,” she said, moving in beside him, trying to find a place that might be safe to touch—and more to the point, to tug and haul and lift. “On your feet, and then in that chair. This floor’s too cold, and it’s a long way from soft.”

“I’d noticed that.” He opened his eyes, caught her
hand. “I’m not kidding. I’ll pull it together. I can help you stop them. You’re damn sure not leaving me behind.”

She looked down at him, belatedly realizing that the strong words hid a question—to which, after a moment, she gave a nod. “All right,” she said. “Then let’s start pulling you together. I didn’t find a phone, so until we find something roadside, we can’t count on any help from Hunter.”

“Unless Scott calls them,” Rio said, slowly rearranging his legs so he could push himself off the ground, his hand warm on Kimmer’s wrist as he used her arm—first to pull himself up, and then to lean on, making the few steps to the recliner. “If he called them in the first place to hire you, maybe he’ll have the wits to call again after hearing from the mercenaries who have Caro. And what is the Hunter Agency, anyway?”

“Small,” Kimmer said, kneeling before him to check the extent of the damage to his legs—first visual, then a quick hands-on, searching for lumps and bumps and abrasions. She kept her touch light and professional, but careful enough. Sympathetic, and with enough firmness to comfort. She added, “Also private. And effective. And waiting with a safehouse not far from Buffalo, if we can just get her there.”

He hissed and flinched as she found a bad knot above his knee, one already hard in the center and gone white with the extent of the swelling. “That’s a sap mark,” she said, and her fingers trembled a little, passing over it but this time not actually touching it. “I’ve got to run back to the cabin. I’ve got a first-aid kit—”

Rio laughed, and instantly winced. “Ow.” He took a
more careful breath. “We’re in the nurse’s station, you know. There’s bound to be something here.”

“No doubt.” She sat back on her heels and regarded him. He did indeed look brighter than even a few moments ago, stronger and more able to concentrate, his expression taking a curious turn that she damn well wished she could read. “But I’ve got drugs the friendly nurse would never leave around here. Nice painkillers, for one. Some strong anti-inflammatories, which could save you a lot of grief if you take them now instead of even a couple hours from now.”

“Spoken like a woman who knows.”

“Yes.” She picked up the jeans, shook them out, and lifted a foot to aim it down the proper pant leg. The same with the second foot, and she pulled the jeans up to his knees, met his somewhat bemused gaze and then jerked her thumb toward the ceiling. “Stand up.”

He gave a little smile. “As bedside manners go, yours is…unique.”

“I never did learn how to croon soothing nonsense. Up.” But she stood first, and she offered him both hands, providing most of the lift. Then she swiftly bent and pulled the worn jeans up, easing them over the worst of the marks on his thighs and deftly fastening the top button. “Given the things that can go wrong with men and zippers, I’ll leave that part to you,” she said, as if she did this all the time. As if she’d ever physically ministered to anyone beyond the moment she pulled them out of the line of fire instead of handing them off to someone else. And as if it didn’t make tiny goose bumps run from the back of her neck all the way down her arms.

“Unique is good,” he said, fumbling a little with the
zipper; one hand was swollen and purpling, evidently from its work as a shield.

Unique is good.
Huh. It stopped her, halting her brusque movements long enough to absorb the way he looked at her, that he truly saw her—as though she mattered as Kimmer, not just as another operative here and now. As though the moment between them mattered, and was more than just another moment along the way. He held her with a black-rimmed brown gaze close enough to show little flecks of darkest brown, filled with a wry self-awareness and surprising vulnerability. Angled features drawn with pain held a confusing subtlety of messages, unspoken words that Kimmer normally heard unbidden and now couldn’t translate at all—except to know that he’d somehow stepped away from what had happened around them to turn inward, so only this sunlit spot in a cold little room in the fall-bright woods mattered at all.

She blinked, pretending she didn’t notice. She’d given Rio more space than she ever offered anybody, allowed him to affect her—allowed herself to notice. Nothing in her life had prepared her to go beyond that, not even when something inside insisted that he deserved it. Just for putting himself on the line, he deserved it.

She retreated to action. She pulled off the dirty, blood-spotted shirt he wore and took a quick look at his torso and arms…and his poor, poor back. “This looks terrible.” She strove for that matter-of-fact tone, and ended up with something slightly huskier. Her hand hovered over the reinflamed scar, and he stiffened against the pain of impending touch. She looked up at him and shook her head. “I won’t. I just wish—”

I could make it better.
Yeah, that fit into her set of survival rules just fine.

“Yeah,” he said dryly. “I wish, too. But otherwise I don’t think we’re looking at anything but ugly spots. Maybe a cracked rib.”

“
Likely
a cracked rib,” she amended, and threw the discarded shirt on top of Boots. She produced the clean one, a buttery hunter-green chamois that would be gentle against his abrasions. First one arm, then the other, and as she came around front to work on the fake bone buttons, his hands landed at her waist, pulling her in a step closer.

“What—?” she said, though she knew what, and she didn’t stop it when she could have. And there it was, just a soft touch on her lips, and then another, a little more firmly, a little more deliberate, nibbling against hers just long enough to get past her surprise and make way for response. When he pulled away, Kimmer followed—even though she still couldn’t quite believe it had happened at all. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, leaving her space for her inner confusion, and then he kissed her eyebrow and straightened.

Kimmer discovered her fingers still at his shirt button, now shaking visibly. She jerked them back. “What—?” she demanded again, unable to find any more words but making herself clear enough.

“Because I wanted to,” Rio said, giving her a little half smile that might have been sheepish if it hadn’t been so honest. “Because I think I’ve wanted to ever since I realized the strange dichotomy of Bonnie Miller, even after she turned into Kimmer Reed. Besides, I was weak. We have this moment…we might not have another.”

“Dichotomy,” she said flatly. “Such words of woo you pitch, Mr. Carlsen.”

“Carolyne says I do too many crossword puzzles,” he responded, quite seriously.

“I think maybe you do.” But it was an automatic response, meant to cover the instant flush of fear at her own surge of response to him—and at the way she yearned to feel it again. The vulnerability it brought her with this man she couldn’t read and all the rules such feelings broke. Her fingers were brusque as they again took up the chore of buttoning his shirt. Done, she pointed at the chair and retrieved his socks and sneakers, dressing him in a way that felt far too intimate, taking a determined breath, excruciatingly aware of the impact he made on her senses. All of them. The faint rustle of material as she moved his jeans up to wiggle his sneakers on, and the flex of his calves as he settled his feet into place. The catch of his breath, caused by his own attempts to loosen his swollen hand into functionality. The lingering taste of him on her lips, which she really hadn’t meant to lick just now. All her life she’d kept herself removed from people and their physical needs. She’d never been a caretaker; she’d taken lovers more as opponents than companions, and rarely at that.

No, this situation—this
man
—didn’t fit into her rules at all.

Urgency sang through Rio’s body. Urgency and fear and pain, all mixed in with adrenaline of another sort altogether as he watched Kimmer disappear into the woods, headed for her tent.

Her surprise at that kiss had been real, but so had her response. For all he’d startled both of them with his timing, for all the moment had been wrong, it had also been just as right. Right enough to pierce through the throb of his ribs, the burning lumps and bumps of his flesh and the trip-hammer beat of pain in his back. Dichotomy, he’d said, and wondered if she didn’t see it herself. Edgy, capable Kimmer Reed had something else altogether going on beneath the surface. Something he’d rattled.