Kiss Across Chaos

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Through the closed and curtained window, another gun fired. It was close, this time, but Barbieri didn’t even twitch. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, making the leather squeak. “Do you like stories, Mrs. Gallagher?”

  She held in her surprise that Barbieri knew her name in this time. The jeweler Aran had bought the diamonds from, Einaudi, was mobbed up—Aran had told her that. Einaudi got himself killed…or he would get himself killed, rather, because he had been shorting Barbieri’s take, or something like that. Barbieri’s men would use a riot as cover to burn down the building with Einaudi’s body inside.

  Jesse nearly gasped. A riot. Could that be the same thing as a gang war?

  Too many seconds had gone by while she puzzled things out. She said in a meek tone, “I like fairytales.”

  Barbieri smiled, showing yellow teeth. “A fairytale like the one Federigo told me about how you and your husband bested one of my strongest men with your bare hands?” He held up a peremptory hand for silence, even though Jesse had not intended to speak. “Your husband has been buying diamonds from Signore Einaudi for some months now. Far too many of them, with merely a deposit to secure the transaction. The last time I attempted to settle that outstanding balance, you attacked my man.”

  “He had a gun. What else was I supposed to do?”

  She heard the men behind her shift. Even Stinky gawped at her. She’d used the clipped and to-the-point way of talking she had left behind with her battle fatigues.

  While Barbieri stared at her, blinking, Jesse tried again. “You’re looking at the wrong person if you want to square away your books, Barbieri. You should be talking to Einaudi, not me. That’s where you’ll find the hole.”

  She could feel the sudden snap of attention in the room. She’d surprised them. Good.

  Barbieri shifted his attention to Stinky. “Is this true, Federigo?” His tone was mild. Too mild.

  Stinky shifted on his feet. He shrugged, but the attempt to look unconcerned failed. Jesse could see his wariness building. “How would I know, Mr. Barbieri? I just do what you say. I take care of little matters for the jeweler when he needs them done.”

  Like stealing back a pair of uncut diamonds after they’d been honestly sold.

  Barbieri raised a beringed hand and smoothed it over his hair. She’d unsettled him.

  Then Jesse realized what she had really done. She had raised Barbieri’s suspicion about Einaudi. It was she who had pushed Barbieri into taking care of the jeweler.

  Sickness swirled in her gut. This was what Veris meant about time twisting back to bite at you.

  Beyond the closed doors behind her, Jesse heard thudding and raised voices. The men in the room shifted again, their attention caught. The commotion was coming closer.

  Barbieri spoke fast Italian. Two of the men pulled out their handguns and aimed at the door.

  Now was not the moment to act, not when there were two weapons already out and ready to fire, even though everyone in the room had forgotten about her. Even Stinky’s grip on her arm had loosened.

  Scuffling sounded just outside the door. The doors opened—burst open, really—and three men staggered into the room.

  Aran was the man in the middle. His arms were hiked up high, in the hands of the two on either side of him. They’d split his lip and his chin was bloody.

  The two dropped Aran on the carpet before Barbieri’s desk. One drew a gun and rested it against the back of Aran’s head.

  Jesse drew in a hard breath, squashing down the flare of panic.

  Barbieri was on his feet, but he clawed back his dignity and considered Aran while stroking his chin. “You are a difficult man to find, Mr. Gallagher. I have been anxious to speak to you for some time now.”

  “I can’t say the same, Barbieri.” Aran’s voice was rough. He couldn’t raise his head because of the gun pushed against the back of it.

  “Your wife has informed me of something that I was not aware of,” Barbieri continued, as if Aran had not spoken. “If you can confirm that it is true in a way that can be demonstrated, then I may be moved to consider the matter that lies between us as concluded. Do you understand?”

  Aran didn’t move.

  Barbieri snapped something in Italian and the man with the gun stepped back a half-pace, taking the gun off the back of Aran’s head and letting him lift his head, so he could look at Barbieri.

  Aran straightened and put his hands on his worsted-covered thighs. The fingers were together. He looked Barbieri in the eye.

  Jesse kept her gaze on Aran’s hands. Her heart rate elevated. The moment was coming.

  “Tell me about the jeweler,” Barbieri demanded of Aran. “Is it true that he has been stealing from me?”

  Aran considered Barbieri. He showed zero surprise. No fear or wariness was in his face or body language. He might have been sitting across the dining table from the mobster, instead of being on his knees with a gun to his head. “Stealing?” He gave a soft laugh. “Einaudi has been skimming from you in so many different ways, a prostitute would blush because she didn’t think of it herself.” And the three outer fingers of his right hand shifted away from the forefinger and thumb.

  Jesse wanted to roll her eyes. Three of them? There were five men in the room, plus Barbieri, and she was the one no one was watching. It should be four and two, with her taking the four, including Barbieri. She wasn’t in a position to argue, though. Aran couldn’t look at her, so he had to call the shots.

  Barbieri’s face turned red. He didn’t wave his hands or scream, or bite his knuckles, the way they did in the movies. He just buttoned his jacket with slow, deliberate movements. “How can I establish that this is true, Mr. Gallagher?”

  Jesse shifted her feet, centering her weight. Preparing.

  Aran’s jaw worked. Then he leaned forward and spat a wad of blood upon the carpet in front of the desk. He straightened up once more. “There’s two sets of books,” he told Barbieri. “He keeps the real set inside the potted plant on the table where he deals with customers. The round table at the back.”

  The one where she had drunk tea.

  “The plant lifts out,” Aran continued. “The journals are underneath the false bottom. I found them one day, while he was in the back. I knocked my knuckle against the bottom of the pot and it sounded hollow, which made me look closer.” He shrugged.

  Jesse knew the last part was false. Aran didn’t accidentally find the second set of books at all. He would have been looking for them because he already knew Einaudi was a crook.

  Barbieri’s face grew thunderous. Everyone watched their boss, waiting for him to explode so they knew in which direction to duck.

  Jesse dropped her gaze to Aran in time to see him surge to his feet. She didn’t wait longer than that. She spun to her right, toward the still open double doors. Barbieri could wait. He didn’t have a gun. Instead, she took out the man with the gun pointing at Aran. All it took was a single step. She brought her knee up, skirt and petticoat making it a nice thick blunt instrument that she drove into the man’s crotch. She thrust her left hand up, her thumb outstretched and shoved the man’s wrist up into the air as he doubled over. The gun jarred out of his fingers and flew up into the air.

  Jesse dropped him by driving her knuckles deep into his throat, stepped over his sagging body and caught the gun by the barrel as it tumbled back down. A half turn to the right, then she hammered the butt of the gun into the temple of the guard at the door, who was only just turning to check what was going on behind him. He dropped heavily. No sagging for him.

  That was her two, leaving only Barbieri himself, but Aran’s third was the other guard at the door, who was already bringing the gun swinging around toward her.

  Jesse ducked under the gun and let her momentum slide her forward feet first. She used the handy-dandy built up narrow heels on her boots to ram up against the side of the guard’s knee and heard something crack.

  He cried out and dropped his gun, which she caught in her r
ight hand, as he folded and clutched at his destroyed knee, his chest hitching in pain and panic.

  Jesse flipped the gun in her left hand and caught it by the butt, spun on her ass to face the desk and raised the guns.

  Barbieri raised his hands.

  Aran was using his double Vulcan neck pinch thing to block the artery of the man he stood behind. The man closed his eyes and dropped. Aran lowered him to the floor and plucked his gun from his nerveless fingers. He didn’t aim at Barbieri, because the man was watching Jesse.

  “Time to go,” Aran said.

  “There are five men in the corridor,” Jesse warned.

  “When I find out who you people really are,” Barbieri told them, his hands still up high, “I will destroy you for this…this insult. In my house! In my very own house, with my wife and children downstairs!” His face was back to purple again.

  Jesse got to her feet. “You’re the one what brung us here,” she reminded him. “We haven’t shot anyone yet,” she added. “Don’t make us do that.”

  “Lead the way,” Aran told her.

  She stepped over the groaning men and through the doorway, her guns up. The five on the landing all had their guns out, but when she gestured with the barrels of hers, they dropped them and backed up. Only, they didn’t lose the dangerous light in their eyes. These men, the closest to the inner sanctum, would be the relentless ones. The hardened ones, who didn’t give up at the first opposition.

  “To the stairs and up,” Aran said quietly, behind her. “I’ve got your back.”

  “Up?” she repeated, trying to keep her voice down. She moved forward along the carpet, heading for where the stairs begun, leading up to the third floor. “We’ll be trapped up there.”

  “Up,” he repeated.

  The men watched them pass with narrowed eyes and she was very glad Aran was behind her, even if he wasn’t in favor of guns and didn’t practice with one. These bruisers didn’t know that.

  She took the first step up the stairs and felt Aran’s hand on her back. Jesse turned and climbed sideways, so she could keep the gun in her left hand trained on the men below. It slowed her down, doing it that way, but it let her also keep an eye on the flight of stairs coming down from the third floor, on the other side of this flight. There was no one on those stairs.

  They reached the landing and Aran stepped up next to her. They both aimed at the men, who had gathered at the foot of the stairs and were watching them. Jesse knew they would come after them the moment they turned their backs.

  “Ready?” Aran whispered.

  “Yeah,” she murmured back.

  “Go.”

  She lowered the guns, gripped her skirts and lifted them high, then sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  Aran had longer legs and could have climbed three at once, but he stayed behind her.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Jesse heard the thudding steps of Barbieri’s men on the other flight. They were in pursuit, as advertised.

  At the top of the stairs, she paused. “Which way?” This was his grand plan, after all.

  “Pick one!” Aran shouted.

  She turned right and ran. The corridor was empty, with doors on either side. Bedrooms, she guessed. Maybe a bathroom, or maybe they were still using pitchers, basins and chamber pots.

  The thudding grew louder.

  “Pick a room!” Aran shouted.

  Jesse took the next door on the right, gripped the knob and twisted as she rammed her shoulder against the solid door. Behind her, she heard Aran’s breath expel and the smack of flesh upon flesh. The fastest of the men had reached Aran. Jesse didn’t turn to look, because that would slow her down. She scanned the interior of the room. Bed. Closet. Bare boards. Night table. Lamp. Nothing useful. Maybe the lamp as a cudgel…

  Aran shut the door and turned the key in the lock and spun to face her. He held his side, breathing hard. He had a stitch. “Window,” he said breathlessly and put his hand on the door, as if he could hold it closed.

  “What?”

  “Open the window.”

  Her puzzlement hung in her mind like a neon question mark, but she lunged for the window, snagged the catch open and shoved the bottom pane up. It shrieked but rose.

  Heavy bodies rammed against the door, which creaked and made the frame shiver. A couple more of those and the lock would give, or the frame itself…

  “Stand in front of the window,” Aran told her.

  Jesse stepped into the middle of the window. “What the fuck?”

  “Trust me,” Aran said and ran at her.

  The question mark in her mind flashed and boomed, as Aran took her off her feet, his arm around her. They fell backward through the window.

  Jesse shrieked.

  The bedroom door behind them burst open, but they were already falling.

  “Trust me,” Aran breathed once more, as they plunged toward the earth.

  Time swiped at them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The living room with the old hearth and the armchair was still turned away from the window had never looked so sweet. Jesse untangled her arms from around Aran’s neck, as the post-battle adrenaline surged. She put her face in her hands and breathed hard. No words came to her.

  Aran was still breathing hard. Too hard.

  Jesse lowered her hands in time to see him pull up his sweater.

  There was a neat two inch slit in his side. Blood poured from it.

  Jesse froze, fear stealing every thought, every instinct she’d carefully honed for moments just like this one. She’d applied field first aid dozens of times in her life. She’d rallied her unit, got them back on their feet and fighting. This moment was no different, only it was, because it was Aran who buckled while she got over herself.

  Jesse managed to get her arms around him. He was a dead weight and she nearly went down with him because of his size. She got her foot underneath her and thrust. “No, no, no…Aran!” She couldn’t shake him because she was holding him up.

  With Herculean effort, she staggered over to the armchair and dropped him into it. He fell back.

  She leapt to the hooks by the front door and snatched the wool scarf hanging there and returned to the chair, folding the scarf. She pushed the wadded scarf up against his wound. “Aran, listen to me. Aran?”

  He stirred but didn’t answer.

  “Aran!” She gripped his jaw and shook him with her spare hand. She slapped his cheek, not lightly. “Aran, wake up! You can’t pass out yet!”

  He stirred and his eyes opened, narrowed in pain. She saw the glittered black of his pupils, behind the lashes.

  “Are you listening?” She kept her voice sharp and commanding, even though it shook as she spoke. “Aran, can you hear me.”

  His throat worked. His lips formed a ‘yes’ even though no sound emerged.

  “I’m going to pull you out of the chair,” she told him. “All you have to do is jump. For once, I’m going to steer the jump, okay? You just have to make the jump. Got it?”

  Nothing.

  “Aran! Do you understand?” She patted his face once more.

  His chin lifted and fell.

  Relief touched her, but a new worry gripped her. She’d never steered a jump. She’d never controlled one in any way. But she had heard everyone at the big house talk about steering jumps, more than once. It was a matter of concentrating on where you wanted to be. Forming a picture, if you could. Reaching out with your mind and your heart, with all your being…

  Jesse focused on keeping the scarf up tight against the wound and wrapped her hand around the back of Aran’s neck. “Hear me?”

  Again, the tiny movement of his head.

  “Ready…one…two…three!” She hauled on his neck, bringing him toppling toward her and slapped her arm over his shoulder as his weight shifted forward. At the last second, she felt Aran grip the back of her coat in a tight fist. He was taking her with him…

  The black nothingness that she some
times glimpsed during jumps enveloped them now, as she realized that the success of this jump was up to her. She gathered her breath—not that she could really breathe, here. She couldn’t feel Aran here, either, but she knew he was with her. She gathered her energy and her will, everything she had, and thought of the big house in Canada. Of Taylor and Brody and Veris. She reached out toward them and in her mind she shouted to get their attention, to warn them.

  They fell. She could feel them falling. Falling…

  Aran was too heavy for her to hold up under the impact of their landing, which was hard and jarring. She dropped underneath him and threw out a hand to catch at the window seat beside her.

  “Jesse! Jesse!” Taylor was right beside her. Jesse could feel Aran’s weight shifting against her. Taylor had the abnormal strength needed to lift Aran. “Veris! Get in here!” she shouted.

  “Mom! What the hell..?” That was Marit’s voice. Jesse wondered what she was doing here, but not for long. She fought to keep the scarf against Aran’s side as he was lifted from her. It meant springing to her feet without pushing with her hands, but somehow she managed it.

  “Jesus Christ on a pony!” Alannah’s husky voice. “Who was yelling at me? Aran, what the fuck!”

  Heavy footsteps. Running.

  “Here, let me take him.” That was Veris.

  “The wound, keep the scarf against it,” Jesse said, struggling to manage that for herself.

  “I’ve got it, Jesse,” Brody said, his tone calm. “You can let go.”

  “Veris, Sydney just pulled me out of the study…”

  Jesse looked around. Alexander was coming through the door, wearing jeans, bare foot, with a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which was incredibly casual for Alex. He halted when he saw Veris lift Aran up in his arms. “I’ll go ahead and prep,” Alex said, his tone smooth and devoid of any emotion. He spun and left.

  Brody was doing what Jesse could not. He was keeping the scarf in place.

  He and Veris took Aran out of the room, heading for the well-equipped little surgery on the other side of the stairs. When they were through the door, Sydney moved into the room, glancing back at them. She spotted Taylor and raised a brow. Then she saw Jesse. “Was that you shouting at me in the timescape?”