Rory (In the Company of Snipers Book 6)

by Irish Winters

  She had no choice, not with his palm in the middle of her back pushing her toward the end of the motel. There sat David’s battered Taurus, still ready for flight. She grabbed the back door handle, ready to climb in and cover Nima again. A human shield. That’s all she was and she was good with it. Get us outta here!

  The handle didn’t budge when she pulled on it. “Open it!” she screamed, not wanting to climb through the broken windows.

  He grabbed her elbow and shoved her past the car toward the track. What the hell? The damned train still lumbered westward with boxcars full of who the hell cared what. Fear paralyzed her feet and legs. They were trapped. No way forward and no way back. The crappy motel had an eight-foot concrete wall on this side, the only thing on the property not decrepit and worn.

  “Don’t just stand there! Move it!” He pushed her relentlessly toward the track. The next boxcar’s side doors were wide open. Hell, no. Is he crazy? He means to board a slow moving train?

  “I can’t!” she shouted. What a stupid solution, especially with a child.

  “You will!” he shouted back, fierce and angry. “There’s no choice.”

  “No way! I—”

  “Do it!” By then he’d tossed both backpacks through the open doors of a boxcar and pulled Nima out of her arms. He was going. With or without her. In one easy leap, he was in the car with Nima. They were safe. Ember was not. A hard knot of fear choked her. He’s leaving me!

  Running alongside the train, she guesstimated the distance to the swiftly approaching stone wall. It would intercept her within forty, maybe fifty feet. To make matters worse, a semi-truck had parked on the other side of the wall. Its trailer nearly butted against the edge of the track. Holy shit! One sway of the train and the trailer would be reduced to wreckage. What was that truck driver thinking when he’d parked so close to the tracks? Better question—what was Rory thinking now?

  “Run!” he commanded.

  “I am!” Her shrill reply was lost between the roar of iron wheels on iron tracks, the crack of thunder overhead, and still exploding carnage in the parking lot. Gunfire strafed the pavement behind her. She ran, scared she couldn’t make the jump, just as scared she could.

  What if I fall under the wheels? What if I can’t run fast enough? What if the assassins kill me before I can get on board?

  Rory must have pushed Nima into the dark confines of the boxcar. He leaned out of the boxcar, one arm stretched out. “Give me your hand,” he urged.

  Her feet pounded fast and hard. She was almost close enough to reach him.

  I’m too close! It’s a huge piece of moving metal! Metal wheels! I’ll be sliced into ribbons!

  He reached farther. If he leaned any farther out of the car, he might fall. She ran faster.

  Don’t leave me!

  Just when she thought she could run no more, his arm seemed to extend another few inches. With one fell swoop, it snaked out and clutched her wrist, pulling her up and forward. She grabbed the edge of the doorway.

  The wall! The wheels! They’re sharp.

  She was off the ground now but not any safer. Her feet swung beneath the train car. Terror climbed on board instead of her. Lifting her butt, she willed herself inside.

  Up! Pull me the hell up!

  His fingertips raced over her shoulder blades, down her spine, quickly digging into her ass with one determined handful. She squeezed her eyes tight, urging her weight up and off the ground. More gunshots splattered the steel walls of the boxcar. Reason kicked in.

  “Let me go. Save Nima!”

  “Shut the hell up.” His fingernails dug into her back and butt. With a tremendous roar, he yanked her in by belt loops and backside. One split second too late. She’d reached the end of the line. Her dangling leg hit the wall. Even through the denim jeans, she felt layers of skin being torn away. The impact flung her into the boxcar to land on Rory. He fell backward and took the hit, his arms turned into steel bands that held her fast and kept her from falling. The damned train kept rolling. Good. She was safe. And dying.

  Pure shock stormed her. She’d hit a wall—not just hit it, but slammed into it like a freaking freight train! She willed herself not to scream, not to frighten Nima. The pain roared out of her mouth anyway. “Ow-w-w-w! Damn you, Dennison!”

  “I’m sorry. I know.” He rolled to his knees, grabbed her wrist to elbow and dragged her out of sight. The train lumbered westward. Nima huddled into Ember’s arm, but for once, Ember didn’t hold her. She couldn’t. She was too busy writhing as fire climbed up her leg and filled her body. Her eyes watered. She didn’t want to look like a completely helpless woman, but damn. This was a first—a painful first.

  Rory fumbled with his damned backpack and suddenly there was light. Great! He had a flashlight when she needed an emergency room. Did he have one of those in his handy dandy backpack, too?

  “You’re hurt pretty bad,” he said grimly, the light flickering over what was left of her thigh. “I need to stop the bleeding.”

  No shit, Sherlock!

  It didn’t look as bad as it felt. She’d expected to find her leg hanging by a thread, but it was only scraped. A lot. And her pants weren’t gone, just kind of embedded into the bloody meat of one damned raw thigh. She pulled the fabric away from her skin, but just as fast quit that stupid idea. It hurt!

  He leaned over her leg, his face deadly serious in the dim light of the rumbling boxcar while he tore the rest of her pant leg away. Great. By now he also knew she hadn’t shaved when she’d bathed with Nima. My hell, the stupid thoughts that run through your mind when you’re dying. Who cares about shaved legs? I don’t!

  The pain in her thigh felt alive. “You did this to me,” she hissed.

  He winced. “Yeah. It’s my fault.”

  “Bullshit! It’s not like we had much choice!” she snarled. He needed to shut up and stop being so damned responsible for a change. Tears ran down her face, making her even angrier. Now was the time to prove her superior resilience, not fall apart. Yeah. Right.

  She turned away, the desolation in his eyes stabbing her as much as the pain climbing up her leg. Adrenaline hit hard. Pushing her palms to the floor to stop the shaking didn’t work. If anything, resisting made it worse. “I’m hurt,” she ground out between clenched teeth, like he didn’t already know that.

  He eased his hand and forearm under her head and pushed several tablets between her teeth. “Here, swallow.”

  “What is it?”

  “Advil.”

  She gulped them down with the bottle of water he offered. “You got any morphine in that bag?”

  “No, but I’ve got this.” He held up a couple plastic-wrapped towels and a prescription pill bottle. “Pain we can live with. Infection is another thing altogether.”

  She glared at the stupidity pouring out of his mouth. “You learn that line of BS in the Corps? Maybe watching TV?”

  “Sorry.” He held her so she could swallow two more tablets. Another gulp of water and he turned his attention to her wound. “This might hurt.” He clutched her knee and barely touched one finger to pull something out of her wounded thigh. It stung—a lot.

  “Stop touching me. Damn it!” Instantly, she felt bad she’d hollered at him, but not bad enough.

  “You want something to hold onto?” he asked.

  “Why?” she snapped.

  “I’ll be as careful as I can, but I need to wash the dirt out before I bandage it.” He sounded so steady she wanted to smack him, and then he smoothed something over the scrape. It wasn’t so bad—at first. But by the time he was through, it was all she could do to grit her teeth and not kick him through the boxcar doors and off the train. The gentle scrubbing wrenched the living daylights out of her. Moisture trickled out of her eyes and nose in a steady stream she couldn’t stop. Poor Nima stood nearby, whimpering in sympathy.

  “There. You did real good,” he outright lied, but he made it sound comforting. A little. “Hang on. We’re almost done. Now I’m cover
ing it with a wet towel.”

  “Whatever.” Like he would listen if she told him no? The cool wet towel made gentle contact with her shredded thigh. It felt good. She took a deep breath. She might live.

  “Let’s get you sitting up and more comfortable.” Rory dragged her gently by her armpits to lean against a wooden box in the center of the train car. All she could do was shake and pant and try not to cry any harder than she already was. Sheesh. She was sweaty, blubbering like a baby, and she’d sworn in front of Nima. Damn.

  The little girl snuggled into Ember’s uninjured side like a sad little puppy.

  “Wow. You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Dennison.”

  “I kinda saw it going a little differently,” he admitted softly. Guilt darkened his expression. “It could’ve been a lot worse, but it’s a good-sized scrape. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” She was tired. The drama and trauma of the day had taken its toll. Rory positioned her where she could watch the countryside pass by. She stared out the door, determined not to cry anymore. Most of her view was nothing but dark fields, herds of dark cattle, or shadowy trees. Lightning still flashed and thunder still boomed. Rain poured in steady sheets, adding to the gloom.

  The noisy train rocked back and forth. He stood at the open boxcar door looking both directions before he came back and crouched at her side.

  “What’s up?”

  “I was looking for something to bandage your leg with when I found this.” He pulled Nima’s dress from the bag. “Here. Hold the flashlight for a minute. Shine it on my hands.”

  She did. Three oversized buttons graced the bodice of the dress. Rory peeled the cap off one of them with his pocketknife. What looked like a watch battery lay nestled inside the hollow shell. A thin silvery wire threaded back inside the lining of the bodice, then connected the other two up through the buttonholes before it disappeared back inside the lining. Rory pulled more than a dozen feet of the shiny filament from the dress.

  “Wow,” Ember whispered. “Antenna wire and transmitter. That’s how they’ve been tracking us.”

  “We should’ve changed her clothes while we were shopping. If we’d dropped them in the garbage then, we’d still be safe at Jed’s.”

  Ember bit her lip. “My fault. That dress is all she had left of her father. I couldn’t throw it away. God, Rory. What have I done?”

  “Don’t worry. Now we know that somebody close to Nima’s father planted these bugs. Someone he trusted.” Rory folded the wire back into the dress and wrapped it around Nima’s pretty patent leather dress shoes.

  Ember hugged Nima closer to her. “Maybe someone she knows?”

  “Whoever it was, they knew she’d be wearing that dress yesterday.”

  Ember turned Nima’s sad face toward hers. “Nima? See your pretty dress?”

  “Mine,” she said softly, reaching for the familiar item.

  “Yes, it’s yours. Who gave it to you?”

  “Mine Poppa.” She fingered the dress, her eyes keeping careful track of her only familiar possession.

  Ember kissed the girl’s grimy forehead. “She’s just a baby. Why can’t they leave her alone?”

  “I’ll toss it into the nearest river. Let it float east while we go west or wherever.”

  She nodded. All she wanted was to disappear where no one could hurt Nima anymore. A wave of protectiveness coursed through her, so tangible she shivered. She pulled Nima closer.

  Rory stood at the open doorway for the longest time. The train car rocked back and forth, its swaying motion a lullaby all in itself. The night was dark and she was beyond tired. Her eyes drooped. He cocked his arm, looking like a handsome baseball legend in the moonlight, strong, sure, and—

  She fell asleep mid-pitch.

  Ten

  Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

  Times that by a couple million and before long it equates to nothing more than a lot of white noise. Rory covered Ember and Nima with the two suit jackets he and Ember had worn the day before. His mind going a thousand miles a minute, he couldn’t sleep. He’d searched through the two backpacks for the burn phones and didn’t find them. Somehow they’d been left behind at the motel. Maybe Ember had taken them out to charge them. He didn’t know. Whatever. The detail added more frustration to their predicament.

  He’d just gotten his butt reamed for not contacting his boss, but here he was again, no way to let Alex know where they were or where they were headed. That was the least of their problems. Because they were safe now didn’t translate to safety in the morning. And Ember was pretty banged up. Even though he’d given her a couple of antibiotic tablets, she might still get an infection. The scrape was too large to treat lightly. Yet he’d treated it in a dirty old boxcar that could have previously hauled any number of things, maybe even animals. She whimpered in her sleep while he cursed quietly to the full moon rising behind the storm clouds.

  Plus their food was nearly gone, the bottled water, too. Until they stopped in whatever town the train was headed to, there was no way to replenish anything. By now, their room back at the motel was undoubtedly ransacked. Whoever bombed the patrol cars most likely had the burn phones and might have already tracked their last calls back to Alex and The TEAM headquarters.

  That was another problem. There was no way to alert Alex.

  In the dark exhaustion of the hopeless night, Rory thought of Tyler, home safe and sound, asleep in his bed by now. That much was a blessing and he recognized it as such. Mrs. Godfrey would have read Tyler his bedtime story and tucked him in. She’d have hugged him and kissed him and told him that hug and kiss were from his daddy. And Tyler would have asked, ‘But where is Daddy?’ And Mrs. Godfrey would’ve patiently explained his daddy had to go out of town and maybe he’d be home tomorrow.

  Rory sighed. Tyler was the perfect son, his dark blue eyes forever happy and always loving. Pure sunlight, that’s what poured out of his little boy’s eyes. It was like being loved simply for waking up every morning. Tyler was light and life and all things good in Rory’s life. And he missed him now.

  His eyes turned back to Ember and Nima snuggled together by the empty wooden freight box. His girls. The phrase came to him as easy as butter to pancakes. Nima lay on Ember under her chin, her hand across Ember’s neck and resting on her cheek. They looked like mother and daughter.

  Ember held the little girl against her good hip, the one with the little green frog with orange eyes. Rory smiled. Leave it to Ember to decorate her body like construction paper in grade school. He wanted to strip all the crap away from her. She was beautiful without embellishment. Why didn’t she see that? Heck, for that matter, how come it took him so long to notice?

  What was behind the façade that was Ember? She’d told him the line about how color improved her mood and a bunch of other psychobabble he’d listened to and heard, but didn’t believe. Maybe Ember believed it, but he’d detected something else in the depths of those emerald greens. As much as the adult demanded to be seen and heard, the little girl side of her still peeked around the mask. There was more to her than met the eye.

  He grunted to himself. He was a great one to talk. He’d been in the exact same boat only twenty-four hours ago. Uptight. Overprotective of his son. Hiding. Heck, he was no better than Ember. The real reason? Pride. His force field was more about his stupid pride than it ever was about protecting Tyler. Until Nima came along.

  Wow. That was definitely an unsettling moment. How had he not peered into those pale blue eyes until that moment at the McCormack summer home? It wasn’t that he hadn’t. It was more that she hadn’t looked directly at him—yet. It wasn’t his time.

  But when she did, it all but turned him inside out and upside down. His carefully maintained force field disintegrated. And for the first time since Tyler was born, Rory wanted to share his son with another woman. Oddly, the moment he opened up to Ember, she pulled back. One minute she was asking questions like she wanted to know him better, the next minute h
er own force field was fully charged and activated. She’d all but jumped off the couch to get away from him on the pretense of needing ice cream.

  Ember and Nima had fallen asleep. Ember clutched his jacket like she was cold. He went to her side and smoothed his hand along her bare arm. When she shivered, he lay down beside her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She still shivered. He pulled the makeshift cover of suit jackets over her and Nima. There. Now both his girls were warm.

  The noisy banging of metal on metal woke him from a light sleep. It was zero dark thirty and the train still creaked slowly along. As careful as possible, he scooted away from Ember and went back to the door. The storm had dissipated and the moon shone brightly to the south, casting a silvery light over the small town they were passing through. It was a one-stoplight kind of a town. A milk delivery truck rolled slowly along the road parallel to the track. The driver waved. Rory raised his hand in quiet salute. A train ride would be fun with Tyler at his side.

  When he lay down again, Ember nuzzled his neck, still very much asleep and dreaming. What did she nuzzle at home, a childhood teddy bear maybe? Her cat? A man? That annoyed him. He’d heard a lot of chit chat between Mother and Ember back at the office. His own workspace was adjacent to theirs’, but he didn’t recall discussions about late night dates, wild parties or other men. It made sense. Both Mother and Ember spent an inordinate amount of time at Alex’s beck and call. It was unlikely Ember had a man in her life.

  And that friend of hers who had died years ago? Junior Agent Todd Chandler, the new kid in the office and scared to death of Alex like most new recruits were. Todd was killed in the line of duty shortly after he’d joined The TEAM. Alex made sure he was buried with honor at Arlington. But Ember and Todd hadn’t dated very long before it happened. And that was interesting, too. She’d fallen hard for a guy she barely knew.

  Ember’s breath at his neck felt warm. Comforting. So did his hand at her hip. The fragrance of shampoo in her blonde braid smelled good. He closed his eyes and drifted between sleep and wakefulness. She stirred. Stiffened. Relaxed again. And then she really snuggled under his chin. He pulled her closer, his hand in the middle of her back. She came easily. Willingly. He smiled in his in-between-dream state, at last falling into a deeper sleep.