“Holy shit!” Edric exclaimed.
“So…” Alastair said, “Alfric’s organization is watching this guy trying to catch him in the act and something happens. Alfric gets drawn outside the boundaries of the sting and gets cut loose. And now he’s out there somewhere, presumably being stalked by Raia, and he has nobody watching his back.”
Edric nodded. “That’s pretty much what I could squeeze out of his guys…the ones who would even talk to me that is. Except for one last thing…”
Three pairs of worried eyes fixed on him.
Edric sighed and swiped a hand down his face. “Apparently there’s a woman involved. His team thinks he’s probably with her now.”
Chapter Six
Alfric wanted to shake her. He wanted to turn her over his knee. He wanted to scream at her…rail at her…throw things and growl.
He wanted to kiss her. In the worst way.
But she was the enemy. He had to keep telling himself that.
“What the hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea what Raia will do to you if he gets you back?”
Her startling blue eyes sharpened with anger. “He’ll probably pat me on the back and say, ‘Thank goodness you’re safe, Pleasance. What were you doing with that very dangerous man, Alfric Honeybun in the first place?’”
Alfric’s mouth dropped open in shock. He took a step back, completely unable to fathom how someone who was so obviously intelligent could be so stupid. “You’re joking right?”
Pleasance crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “In the months we’ve worked together, I have never had cause to fear Jon-Luc Raia. I’ve never felt in the least threatened. Never worried that he had anything but the best intentions toward me. You, however…you’ve threatened me and placed me in dangerous situations from the moment we met.”
Alfric’s eyes widened and his hands tightened on her shoulders. “Threatened! I’ve threatened you!” She winced and he forced himself to lighten his grip. “I’ve done everything I could to keep you safe. He blew your damn car up, woman!”
Pleasance shook her head. “Jon-Luc didn’t do that. He couldn’t have. Ever since you started following me bad things have happened. It’s all you. Not him.”
Alfric was afraid he’d start shaking her until her teeth rattled so he forced himself to let go of her shoulders and step back. Not too far. Close enough to grab her again if she tried to run. But away…so he didn’t inadvertently throttle her.
Swiping a hand down his face in frustration, Alfric took several deep breaths. When he felt as if he could speak again without screaming he looked into her hostile face. “We can continue this discussion later. Right now we need to get out of here.”
She shook her head, the silky black ponytail she’d placed high on her head, I Dream of Jeanie style, swung energetically with the movement. “I’m not going with you. I’m sick of running and I’m tired of hiding. I have no reason to hide from Jon-Luc. He means me no harm. We’re just business partners. He’d have no reason to hurt me.”
Alfric gritted his teeth. “Is that so?”
She nodded.
“Well, Ms. Pleasance Roberts, do you know what business Jon-Luc Raia is in?”
She narrowed her eyes, looking at him as if he were daft. “Of course. He’s here on a diplomatic mission to further Muslim rights.”
Alfric snorted. “What a guy. Now, let me tell you why he’s really here…”
The tree beside Pleasance’s head splintered and she yelped as something bit hard into her cheek. Reaching up she touched the spot gingerly. When she pulled her fingers away they were coated in blood. Before she could wrap her mind around what had happened, Alfric had her on the ground and he was lying on top of her.
The air around them filled with the sound of splintering wood as the tree and nearby house took several more hits. Alfric huddled closer over her and swore. “Come on! Keep your head down!”
He rolled off her, grabbed one of her hands, and pulled her toward the below-ground-level entrance at their backs. As they ran down the concrete stairs toward a badly painted white door, the concrete walls of the stairwell fractured and tiny pieces of concrete flew into the air.
Pleasance cried out as her arm was peppered with the tiny, airborne missiles.
Alfric hit the wooden door of the building hard, letting the momentum of their flight down the stairs and their combined weight carry them right through the door. It shot open, the latch shattered by the impact.
They found themselves in a dark hallway, the smell of onions and peppers frying on the stove filled the air. Alfric dragged her down the hall, toward a well-lit kitchen at the rear of the apartment. They entered the room and ran past a young woman. She was holding a baby on one hip and a wooden spoon in the other hand…and she looked surprised to see them.
Alfric dipped his chin respectfully. “Ma’am. Sorry about your door. I’ll send you a check.” And then they were past and out the back door, running toward the next building, where Pleasance hoped they could just use the doorknob.
Jon-Luc Raia spoke to his American counterpart on the phone. He frowned as the man insisted they close things down for a bit to let things cool down.
“Honeybun is legendary, Jon-Luc. He won’t let it go until he figures out what we’re doing.”
Raia shook his head. “His organization has cut him loose. He’s on his own out there. My men will take care of him.”
The man on the other end of the line sighed. “You underestimate him, Jon-Luc. He’s smart, he’s stubborn, and he has connections. He’s never alone. We need to shut the operation down for a while and go into hiding. If we don’t we’re gonna get busted. You need to understand that.”
Raia grimaced and checked his nails. The middle one on his right hand needed a little work; some of the perfect pink tinted clear polish had chipped. It was so hard to keep your hands nice when you dealt always and forever with idiots. He sighed and tossed an errant strand of blond hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. “We are too close to stop. No more talk of shutting down the operation. Tell me of the girl.”
Another sigh. “She’s on her way to Dubai.”
“And the father?”
“He’ll do anything we ask.”
“Good. Set him into motion. We need to condense our timeline.”
“All right. We’ll do it your way for now, Jon-Luc. But if Honeybun gets too close I’m out of here. You’ll be on your own.”
The man hung up and Raia looked up at his lieutenant.
Qamra Tamarat waited patiently for orders on the other side of Raia’s desk. He stood with his hands crossed in front of him, legs set in a wide stance, swarthy face expressionless.
Shark eyes.
Dead, emotionless, cold.
Raia bit his lip and twisted the diamond stud in his left ear, thinking. Finally he said, “He’s lost his spine. At some point we’re going to have to deal with him.”
Qamra dipped his smooth, shaved head. “Have you decided who will replace him?”
Raia frowned. “I have a couple of options. I’ll let you know later.”
Qamra stood silent, his mind moving efficiently over the edges of the problem. He knew the effeminate Frenchman would never make the decision he needed to make about his American counterpart. He didn’t have the spine necessary for the decision.
The French made terrible terrorists.
Blissfully unaware of his Lieutenant’s low opinion of him, Raia leaned back in his chair and considered his options. He had a senator, a police chief, a City Engineer for a major, Western, coastal city, and a federal agent in his pocket. There was more work to be done but things were running along as planned.
He just had to get Honeybun and the girl out of the way.
Pleasance’s mind was whirling. They’d shot at her! Jon-Luc’s men had actually shot at her! Before, when the shots had come from men she’d never seen before, she’d been able to convince herself they could be after Alfric. But this time…
she’d recognized Jon-Luc’s men at the mouth of that alley, and now they were shooting at her!
She leaned against the cool brick and gasped, trying to recapture the breath she’d expended as they’d run full tilt through the little town in an effort to lose Raia’s men. Okay. She had to admit being shot at was a definite point against Jon-Luc.
She glanced at Alfric. He had pulled some weird looking type of phone out of his pocket and was speaking into it. She didn’t know who he’d called but she prayed they’d come get them out of there. She needed some quiet time. She needed to think. Everything she’d thought before was upside down and backward. Everything she’d believed seemed wrong.
Alfric lowered the oversized phone, which she figured was a satellite phone of some kind. He glanced at her, his pretty blue eyes worried. “There’s a small airport not too far from here. We need to get to it.”
Pleasance nodded, feeling sheepish. She’d been wr…wr…wrong, and she needed to apologize to him. Alfric watched her carefully, waiting.
“You okay?” He nodded toward her arm, which was spotted with her own blood from several small wounds.
“I’m fine, it just stings a little.”
Alfric nodded. “We’ll get it cleaned up as soon as Godric gets here.”
“Godric?”
He grabbed her hand. “My brother. He’s a doctor. And a pilot.” He gave her hand a tug, intending to move out again.
Pleasance dug in her heels. “Wait! I want to say I’m sorry.”
Alfric narrowed his gaze suspiciously. “Sorry? For what?”
She sighed. It looked like he was going to make her grovel. “For thinking you were more dangerous than Jon-Luc. I was wr…I was wr…”
“You were wrong?”
Pleasance bit her lip and nodded.
Alfric’s intense blue gaze consumed her. She felt as if he could see inside her mind and judge her thoughts. It wasn’t a good feeling. Finally, his yummy mouth tipped up slightly at the corners. He reached over and smoothed a spot on her cheek. “You have a little bird poop right there.”
Pleasance gasped and rubbed hard at the spot.
Alfric laughed, breaking the tension of the moment immediately. “Let’s go.”
They kept to the shadows of the buildings as long as possible and then, when Alfric was sure they wouldn’t be seen, they headed away from the small town and toward a distant horizon, which looked much too open for Alfric’s comfort.
Not a lot of places to hide. Nowhere to take cover if they were attacked.
They moved fast. They had to. Alfric fully expected to hear the sound of shots ringing out around them at any moment. Crimshaw wasn’t that big of a town. It wouldn’t take long for Raia’s men to realize they’d left. And when they did, they could easily see the two of them scurrying across the open field outside of town.
He could hear Pleasance gasping painfully behind him and realized they’d have to stop and rest for a moment. He slowed and turned, alarmed to see how she stumbled. He had to give her credit though, she wasn’t complaining. He stopped and waited for her to reach him. “Let’s rest for a moment. I need to catch my breath.”
Pleasance looked at him, her pretty face filled with doubt and fear. She shook her head and laughed. “Yeah, I noticed you were having trouble keeping up with me,” she gasped.
Alfric chuckled, his dark blue gaze sweeping the area between them and Crimshaw.
Pleasance bent over at the waist and sucked air.
When she’d managed to regain some of her breath he put a hand on her shoulder and pressed her toward the ground. “Let’s sit, it will give us a lower profile.”
He felt a little better sitting down. The grass and weeds were tall enough to give them pretty good cover from anyone in Crimshaw looking out over the field.
Of course if Raia’s men brought the helicopter out there, he and Pleasance would quickly become human gopher holes.
Pleasance was lying on her back, still breathing hard, but looking as if she would live. Her bent knees touched his thigh. Alfric placed a hand on the nearest knee and she jerked.
He left it there. It was suddenly very important to him that she accepted his touch. He had a feeling he would be touching her a lot in the near future. “Feel better?”
She lifted her head and gave him a brave smile. “I’m ready to move again.”
Alfric patted her knee. “Two more minutes, then we’ll go.”
She flopped back down, still panting.
Alfric lay down next to her on his side, resting his head on his hand and looking into her face. “Apology accepted by the way.”
Pleasance shook her head and chuckled. “Good.”
He frowned at her. “Why did you run?”
She turned her head so she could meet his gaze. “Run? Because you told me to.”
“No, not right now. When I saw you at Raia’s, on the dance floor.”
She just stared at him, her wide blue eyes filled with confusion. It was obvious she still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about him. Her lips opened slightly and his gaze was drawn to them. He found himself mesmerized by her full, softly sculpted mouth.
A deep, rumbling sound fractured the sky above their heads and Alfric looked up. He grabbed her hand. “We have company. Let’s go!”
Chapter Seven
The small private plane skidded down onto the natural runway, skipping across the grass and hopping a bit before finally sliding to a stop. Alfric grabbed Pleasance’s hand and took off. “Come on. They’ll have seen the plane, we need to move fast.”
As if on cue, the sound of helicopter rotors beating the air could be heard beneath the rumble of Godric’s small plane.
She bit her lip and allowed herself to be dragged across the grass, watching the small jet make a wide turn in preparation for take-off. The jet came to a stop and a door opened just behind the cockpit area, a tall man with curly red hair dropped a set of stairs to the ground and then disappeared back toward the cockpit.
The engines started to gun as Alfric’s foot hit the first stair. He dragged Pleasance through the door. “Strap yourself in,” he said. Then he pulled the stairs back inside and closed the door, locking it. He took a seat next to the pilot and said, “Go!”
Godric pushed the throttle forward quickly and the small plane took off, bumping its way quickly across the casually groomed runway. “Pray we don’t hit a rock,” he offered in a deep, husky voice.
Pleasance, not a happy flyer under the best of circumstances, squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the plush leather armrests of the seat she was strapped into. As the wheels left the ground with a final, jarring thump, she felt herself pulling up on the arms of her seat as if to help it lift, and forced herself to stop.
“You might want to breathe now.” Alfric’s voice held a teasing note. “My brother is almost as good a pilot as he is a doctor.”
The red haired pilot glanced at Pleasance and grinned. “It’s nice of him to overlook those three people I accidentally killed on the operating table.”
Alfric grinned too, slapping his brother on the shoulder. “Awe, come on, Dric, only two. It’s not your fault that clamp thingie fell into that fat guy’s chest and got sewn in. I’m blaming the nurse.”
Pleasance whimpered and closed her eyes. “Humor…as I prepare to die. Wonderful,” she murmured. Then, suddenly her eyes popped open. “You were joking right?”
They chuckled. Pleasance suddenly realized they’d both been turned in their seats looking at her for several moments. Her eyes widened in alarm. “Shouldn’t you be watching where you’re going?”
Godric grinned. “Don’t worry, ma’am I have it all under control.”
Something whizzed by the window beside Pleasance’s head, narrowly missing the small jet’s right wing.
Like marionette puppets all sharing the same sticks, the three of them leaned forward in their seats and watched the smoke trail sail harmlessly into the horizon. “Say a prayer for all the little birdies,” G
odric mumbled.
“Shit!” Alfric yelled. “‘Dric, it’s Raia’s men. They’re shooting at us!”
Pleasance, never a particularly religious person, quickly found herself very interested in making nice with the entity up there who might at that very moment be deciding her longevity. She prayed fervently as her eyes squeezed shut again and her hands returned to holding up the plane.
“Not to worry, Alf, that helicopter can’t keep up with this little baby. The engines of the plane roared as Godric pressed the throttle forward. “We’ll just take her all the way up to twenty-five thousand and kick it into full speed and that whirly gig will be chokin’ on our contrails.”
Another rocket whizzed by and exploded in front of the plane’s nose. Godric rolled the plane to the left so it wouldn’t pass through the fiery remains of the rocket and sent it into a spiral. Above the shrieking from the back seat Alfric said, “Can this thing go any higher?”
Godric shook his head, “Won’t do any good. We won’t lose them that way.” He leveled them out and pressed the throttle full up. The plane surged forward and one last rocket exploded behind them. The plane bobbled for a moment on the back flash of air, and then settled into a fairly steady flight pattern.
Alfric and Godric did rock knuckles and Alfric turned to see how their passenger was doing.
It wasn’t pretty.
Pleasance had slid completely down so that her butt hung off the front of the seat. Her long legs jutted out in front of her, knock-kneed. She was trembling so hard she’d probably have bruises from her knee bones knocking together. The seatbelt was jammed up under her armpits. Her hands were mottled with bloodless white spots and her forearm muscles bulged from her iron grip on the seat arms. Her ponytail hung over her face, the strands sticking out in several directions with static electricity.
She had one shoe on and one shoe was nowhere to be seen.
She murmured and rocked in her seat.
Alfric glanced at Godric. “You got any Valium on this plane?”
Godric glanced over his shoulder and shook his head as if they were discussing whether to have Chinese or Italian for dinner. “Valium won’t touch that. She’s swamped with adrenaline. She needs something a LOT stronger.”
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of a Honeybun Page 5
