by Anne Stuart
“Good grief,” Mia said sweetly. “Afraid I’m going to smack you with my little ol’ purse?” But she obediently moved a few feet away from Jack and kept her hands up. “My mother always said some day the Sex Police would come. I guess she was right.”
Jack noticed with approval that she’d managed to unsnap the little pearl clip on the small purse for easy access to her weapon. Hell, she could reach inside and fire right through her purse. The hell with pulling it out.
“That’s up to these two guys, darling. Well, fellas, what do you say? Now that you’ve caught us in flagrante delicto, may we go?”
Both men kept a wary eye on Jack, clearly believing Mia to be no trouble. Jack resisted smiling. Mia in a temper was a sight to behold. They had absolutely no idea that she was the really dangerous part of this team. He kept his expression bland, and mildly respectful. These guys were obviously low on the food chain. He didn’t want to do anything to set them off.
“Gimme the disk.”
“Disk?” Mia asked, feigning puzzlement.
Unibrow waved his H&K at Jack. “The disk you took outta the safe in the wardrobe.” He waved his weapon wildly in the direction of the closet behind them.
How the hell did they know that anything had been removed from the safe? Jack wondered. While he and Mia had been voyeurs had someone been watching them? Not that that little detail mattered right now.
Jack shrugged and said, “Didn’t see a safe in there, pal. We just dashed in there to avoid being caught in an embarrassing position. Hey, man, can we put our hands down now? This is—”
He saw the punch coming and moved his head in time to avoid it, at the same time he brought his raised hands down in a neat chop to the guy’s gun hand.
The gun stayed clenched in the meaty fist, and the guy swayed but didn’t fall. Jack sharply jerked up his knee, knocking out a few of UniBrow’s teeth in the process. Damn. The dry cleaner was going to bitch about the blood on his fine wool pants come Monday morning.
In one continuous motion, Jack grabbed the guy by the hair, pulling him upright. Unibrow came surging up like a monolithic tidal wave, grabbed Jack’s throat with both hands and shook him like a rat. Blood poured from the guy’s mouth and the missing teeth made him look like a demented seven-year-old on steroids.
Jack bit his tongue a couple of times before he managed to seize his opponent’s right elbow from underneath and turn rapidly to release the guy’s hold. He followed that with a chop to the man’s bull-like neck.
Uni rocked back on his heels like a drunk trying to look sober, and it was only quick thinking on Jack’s part that he stepped away before Uni grabbed a leg and turned him over like a frigging turtle.
Mia used her long legs to kick Mullet-head in the jaw with full force while he was watching the stuffing being beaten out of Uni. He crashed onto the edge of the bed with a very surprised expression on his face.
“See what I mean, Jack?” she said, only slightly out of breath. “You’re a crappy liar.” She removed the .22 from her purse and got a solid two-handed grip on it. “And everyone knows it—” Weapon raised, she spun on Mullet-head who’d immediately staggered to his feet, his weapon aimed at her heart. “Would you quit pointing that thing at me? It’s damn rude.”
They stood there like cartoon characters. Four pissed off people, four weapons. Eight steady hands.
Who was going to yell chicken first?
“Tell you what, guys,” Jack said, knowing the odds, and knowing he wouldn’t risk Mia. Not even for his country. “Let’s all just put our toys down and call it a draw, huh? Whaddya say?” His prime directive was to get this disk to HQ. More important was getting Mia out of the mix.
“Give us the computer disk,” Mullet-head snarled, “and you can go.”
Yeah, right. The good news was the ambassador apparently wasn’t in on this. The bad news was they were standing here at gunpoint.
“If we only had the disk,” Mia said, “we’d be happy to oblige. As it is…” She shrugged.
Jack glanced at Mia, noticed she suddenly looked shorter, and realized she’d kicked off her shoes. She wanted to be barefoot for the five-yard dash to the closed bedroom door. Only problem was, she’d get shot in the back before she made it. He gave her a warning look.
“Remember when we went to that cute cabin in the Poconos for the weekend last year?” Mia asked in a dreamy voice. Scary when she was standing there, feet braced a shoulder’s-width apart, arms extended, and holding a fully loaded weapon aimed at a man’s balls.
Cabin? Yeah, he remembered. They’d fought like two hellcats in a bag over her wanting to get married, and him wanting things just the way they were. Pissed, and with nowhere to run to, Mia had locked herself into the bathroom. And hadn’t been able to unlock the door. Opting not to break it down at midnight, she’d had to…climb out the window.
No way. They were on the second floor. Snow was flurrying out there. They weren’t dressed for the weather—
“Yeah,” he warned. “You were stupid.”
Her beautiful eyes widened. “Stupid?” she asked dangerously.
“Stop dickin’ around,” Mullet-head snarled, taking a step closer. “You two are pissing me off. Give us the disk. Now.”
“Do you have a disk?” Jack asked Mia.
“Nope. You?”
“Na-ah.”
“We don’t have this disk you want. Sorry.” Mia took a step back. Since both men were watching Jack with eyes like raptors, she took another. These two weren’t likely to chase them down the stairs and through the house. Not in front of hundreds of witnesses. There were only two ways out. She preferred to do it through the nice warm house with lots of people around.
They could dump the disk and retrieve it later—
“Look,” she said into the thick silence, “this is really freaking me out. Why don’t you call the ambassador or his wife? They’ve both known us for years. They’ll vouch for us.”
“Don’t know them. Don’t care. I’m givin’ you to three to hand it over. One. T—”
Lying bastard.
He shot Jack on two.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JACK FLEW BACKWARD, crashing into the wall behind Mia with such force his head bounced twice before he slid down to the floor in a boneless heap. Stunned, unable to catch his breath, he sprawled with his head on the wall and his body stretched out on the floor, beside the bathroom. What in the hell had just happened?
He blinked to clear his vision. Other than the screaming pain in the back of his head, his arm felt arctic cold and the breath was knocked out of him. He still couldn’t figure out quite what had—oh, Christ! That hurt!
The pain from the bullet wound in his left shoulder suddenly hit and he gasped like a fish out of water with the shock of it. But the white-hot agony in his upper arm wasn’t what concerned him.
Mia. Where the hell was Mia? Struggling to rise, he fell back, dizzy and still incapable of dragging in a lungful of air.
Then the fog in his brain lifted and he heard her yelling. He smiled in brief celebration that she was all right, then rolled his head enough to see Mia and the two men. The men had their backs to him—apparently, they no longer considered him a threat. Thanks for the vote of confidence! He watched Mia’s face as she berated them. She was on a tear.
And while she kept them occupied— Where was his own weapon?
“Low-life, lying pieces of crap! When you say you’re going to count to three, you’re supposed to count to three. Or maybe you can’t count— Is that it?
“Shut up, lady.”
She paid no attention. “Let me show you. One, two—” She closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.
There was a pop followed by a shrill scream of agony. Jesus Christ! She’d blown out Mullet’s knee cap!
Nobody was more surprised than Mia.
She’d never been a big fan of guns, though she’d been trained and coached on the range until she was a decent, if not always accurate shot. But a
s far as he knew, she’d never pulled the trigger on a human target. He looked at her with new respect.
“Oh my God,” she said big eyed and stared at Mullet who—after catching sight of his own blood—grabbed his leg, which required him to drop his weapon. The gun skittered behind Jack as Mullet collapsed on the floor with a bellow in a tangle of bedspread and bright red blood.
“My bad!” she said unsympathetically. “I was never very good with firearms.”
Jack had to get to Mia before the Unibrow got over his surprise and started shooting back. Ignoring vertigo and nausea, he pressed a hand over his own sticky wound and crawled to his pistol a few feet away. He tried to pick up the gun with his right. He couldn’t get a good grip. Damn it to hell. He tried again. His hand was red, slippery with his own blood, his grip iffy. He scrubbed his palm on the carpet, got a better grip and staggered to his feet. When he’d started this little adventure it was to prove to Mia that they were made for each other. It wasn’t supposed to be a dangerous assignment. Just a prelude to what he wanted to do and say later at his apartment.
“Stop moaning,” Mia ordered the guy clutching his shattered kneecap. “You started this, remember? I always did find it hard to judge the amount of pressure to put on the trigger.” Then she lifted her gun and focused on the wounded man’s partner. “You better not make me nervous,” she warned. “If I’m nervous, there’s no telling what I might do and you already shot Jack and that doesn’t exactly make me like you, you know.”
“Shut up!” Uni yelled, his cheeks puffing in time with his angered breathing.
“Being rude is not going to improve my mood,” she chided. “I’m still not finished punishing you for shooting my fr—”
“Shut up!” he tried again. “Shut the hell up!” Uni scratched his temple with the butt of his weapon in sheer frustration. Jack knew how the man felt.
Mia was having none of it. She continued to berate the guy as if the guns were mere props.
Unibrow tried to shut her up by talking over her. He’d shoot a man without provocation, but apparently was loathe to shoot a woman. Or so Jack hoped. Keep him talking, sweetheart.
Stealthily Jack walked up behind the man, then quickly struck him sharply on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol still clutched in his right hand. Unconscious, the man went down like a sack of potatoes.
“About time, I was running out of nonsense,” Mia said briskly. “What can I do to help?” She talked a good game, but her skin was pearly white, her eyes worried, as she scanned his bloody arm without seeming to.
“Two choices,” Jack told her, retrieving Uni’s weapon from his limp fingers then straightening with difficulty.
“The first one being I check that wound,” Mia told him briskly. She pulled back the lapel of his jacket to see the damage and whistled. “Ow.”
Jack gave her a lopsided smile. “Slight understatement, but yeah. We aren’t hanging around here though. These two are going to wake up pretty soon. When they do we’ve got to be across town.”
“First let me just find something to dam up the bleeding, okay?”
“No time. Come on.”
She shook her head, already headed for the closet. “I’m not coming to identify your body in the morgue, Jack. Half a minute won’t make any difference. Keep an eye on those two while I find something.”
“Make it snappy.”
She disappeared back into the closet. Jack glanced at the two lumps of lard on the floor. Not a lot of action from these two, although Uni looked as though he was thinking about waking up soon— “Get the lead out, sweetheart. Grab whatever it is you— Geez, not again! Bathroom. Now!”
The footsteps approaching were heavy, in motion, and close. Odds were, this time it was the good guys coming in response to the noise. And, by the sounds of it, excited party guests followed in hot pursuit.
This was not where they wanted to be seen, nor something they could be associated with. Time to split.
Jack grabbed Mia by the arm with his good hand and hauled her helter-skelter out of the closet, then whipped her into the bathroom. He slammed the door behind them, locking it just as he heard men’s voices at the door to the bedroom.
Mullet was stretched across the doorway. His presence would give the arriving cavalry pause, at least for a bit of time.
“Your wish is my command.” Jack raced to the sunken tub, clambered in, slipping on the slick, pale pink marble, and shoved aside the sheer, miles-long draperies concealing the window.
“I was kidding, Jack! Kidding. We’re two stories up.”
He grabbed her hand and hauled her in after him. Not the kind of romantic after-dinner soak he’d anticipated. He shoved open the window. Half the fairy fabric of the drapes fluttered out and drifted on the night breeze. The air coming in was arctic cold.
A shoulder slammed into the bathroom door with a loud thud. The lock was flimsy, wouldn’t hold long. Another thud. A foot this time by the sound of it. Jack grabbed Mia by the waist and pushed her toward the window. She hooked a leg over the sill and slipped from view. He held his breath and hoped to God he wouldn’t hear a thud as her body hit the patio below.
“There’s a ledge about six feet under the window. What are you waiting for?” she growled, out of sight.
Indeed. Jack slung his legs over and dropped. He hated heights. Heights in the pitch-dark when it was snowing, and when he had a bullet in his shoulder, he hated even more.
Mia grabbed his hand as he joined her on the narrow, snow-dusted ledge. “Don’t look down.”
No problem.
Her fingers, gripping his tightly enough to cut off circulation, felt warm and steady and so damn right.
“Shuffle about ten feet to our left,” she said, through chattering teeth. “There’s a balcony over there. I think if we climb up—”
Suddenly a chunk of stone flew off the facade of the house right beside Jack’s ear. Someone was firing at them. At least their assailant couldn’t see them any better than they could see him.
But their assailant was standing inside a nice warm room. Not balancing on tiptoes on a fourteen-inch ledge dusted with snow.
It was pitch-dark. Snow fell softly against his face. He pressed his back against the wall behind him and placed one foot firmly on the ledge before he picked up the other one. Mia was moving across their narrow balance beam at the speed of light.
“Not afraid of heights, are you?” Jack whispered as their feet slid in a strange kind of shuffle dance across the narrow ledge.
“Uh-uh. You?”
He swallowed hard. Not just yeah, but hell yeah. He managed to keep his tone even. “Can you see the balcony?”
“No, but I remember where it is from last time. How’s the bleeding?”
Nice and warm. “Okay.”
“Okay you’re bleeding to death, or okay it’s stopped?”
“Okay, can we please climb up that balcony and get inside?”
“Tell me if it gets bad. Don’t lie to me ever again, Jack.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Silence as they shuffled sideways several feet, the only sound the crunch of their feet and their breathing. “Were you really in the system?” Mia asked very softly.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me all that before, Jack?”
“Because you were falling in love with the man you believed me to be. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”
“You were afraid that I wouldn’t accept who you really are?” She sighed. “Oh, Jack.”
“Mia?”
“What?”
“Much as I want to finish this all-important conversation…have you noticed that we’re precariously perched on an inch-wide piece of building twenty-five feet off the ground in the pitch freaking dark?”
There was a long pause. “The balcony isn’t here.”
“What? You said—”
“I think it’s on the east s
ide of the house. This must be the south.”
Jack squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment. “We have to go around a corner.” It wasn’t a question.
A chunk of the building fell with an ominous thud, to the ground far below them. Jack froze. The scrape of feet. Heavy breathing. He held his breath. Nope. Not his own breathing.
Crap.
Someone else was on the ledge with them.
CHAPTER NINE
MIA’S STOCKINGED FEET were numb with cold, but impending frostbite was the least of her problems. She cast a worried glance to her right where she could hear, but not see, Jack beside her. His breathing was labored. His footsteps unsteady.
This was completely insane. What were they thinking climbing out of the window like that? Jack was bleeding like a stuck pig, and neither of them was dressed appropriately for scaling the side of a house.
Snow began to blow around them in a blinding rush. Thick, fluffy blobs of icy white fell faster and faster.
To make it worse, there was at least one someone else on the ledge with them. Left hand on the rough, cold stone wall, Mia took small, shuffling sideways steps and wracked her brain for a solution to their dilemma.
In the snow-blanketed garden below them prowled the ambassador’s security force, as yet unaware of the drama being played out directly above their heads. But they’d likely wise up soon. Then how long before they joined their pals up here on the roof?
Even if they could figure out a way to slide down a drainpipe, or swing down on a nonexistent vine, that would be a bad idea. Hard to look innocent and innocuous if they landed bleeding to death in the garden.
The solution would be to find a window—unlocked of course—and climb inside. Then they’d slip out a back way somehow.
While the answer seemed simple enough, Mia knew nothing in life was that simple. It was winter. Windows would not be left open on a night like this. Besides, nobody left windows unlocked anymore.
And the simple truth was, she was terrified Jack would bleed to death up here on the ledge while they went around and around the upper floor of the house like moons orbiting Jupiter.
