Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  “We found two of our guys in the woods tied to trees. Both of them say you did it and you’re in cahoots with the robbers,” Iacono said.

  “They’re lying.” Her denial was fierce. Probably, she thought as soon as she said it, she should have tried to spin a story about why she had pretended to be working with the robber (singular) when she really hadn’t been (which actually had the advantage of being kind of/sort of true), but she was so terrified by what was coming that she could hardly think straight.

  “Now why would they do that?”

  She was so on edge that she was even starting to find Iacono’s usual fishy stare unnerving.

  “How would I know?”

  Iacono smiled at her. It was, she thought, a wolfish smile. “Guess we’ll have to let the boss sort it out. He’s back in town. Pissed because somebody ruined his holiday. You’re coming with us to see him.” Taking hold of her arm, he looked at Favara, while Mick, momentarily left speechless, felt her blood run cold. “Where’s the money?”

  “In the suitcase.” Favara nodded toward where it still rested on the hood of the cruiser. “Half a million, supposed to be.”

  “That’s a million short.”

  Favara shrugged. “We’re working on it. Your cop friend there won’t talk.”

  Battling past the mind-fogging effects of rising terror, Mick found her tongue. “The only person I’m talking to is Uncle Nicco.”

  “You’re getting ready to get the chance,” Iacono promised before his attention shifted back to Favara. “You count what’s there?”

  “Just getting ready to,” Favara said. He was fanning the pictures back and forth kind of absently now, and Mick felt a fresh spike of panic as she realized that instead of the white backside of the paper being uppermost, the images themselves were visible. The way he was holding them made it difficult to tell what they were, but not, she thought, impossible. So even if Favara did forget about them, it was entirely possible that overcoat guy would spot them anyway.

  Her heart pounded. Dread formed a hard knot in her chest.

  “We’ll count it when we get where we’re going. Put it in the SUV,” Iacono directed Otis, who nodded and moved away to do as he was told.

  “You want me to go on and get the guy out?” Friedman asked from the other side of the cruiser. Mick didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry at the idea that Jason might be joining their little party. The idea of having him where she could see him, of knowing he was there and she wasn’t alone and he had her back, was tremendously comforting. On the other hand, the fact that she’d neither seen nor heard anything out of him boded poorly for the state he was in. Whatever happened, she couldn’t just leave him behind, but she didn’t know whether or not she was going to be able to save him. Hell, she thought despairingly, she didn’t know whether or not she was going to be able to save herself.

  Think.

  “Yeah,” Iacono replied. With a nod at his partner to join him, Friedman headed on around the cruiser to get Jason. Iacono’s glance flicked toward Favara. “Find out where the rest of the money is. Then deal with him.”

  “Will do.” Favara’s tone made it clear that he was looking forward to it. Knowing that Jason faced being tortured until he talked and then executed, and that her fate might well be something similar, Mick felt her clasped palms grow damp.

  “Come on,” Iacono said to Mick, tightening his grip on her arm. “Let’s go see the boss.”

  Once she got in that car she had no chance of helping Jason, and her own prospects for survival grew even dimmer.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she improvised desperately, with the object of getting one of them off by himself, which would happen if someone had to take her to the bathroom. Even handcuffed, one on one she had a chance of getting away from Iacono—or Otis. Or any of them. “Bad.”

  Iacono frowned down at her, impatience coupled with a flicker of purely masculine unease in his eyes. Before he could reply, though, Favara fanned the pictures out again and looked down at them as if he’d forgotten all about them until that moment.

  “Hey,” Favara said as Mick’s heart catapulted into her throat. Every tiny hair on her body stood upright. “You probably ought to give these to the boss.” Favara handed the pictures to Iacono, and her breathing suspended. Favara’s gaze flicked over Mick. “I don’t know where she got them, but I found them in her coat pocket. I can tell you, what’s in here is nothing that needs to be in the wind.”

  “Oh yeah?” Iacono glanced down at the pictures, a purely casual gesture. Mick could feel it as he took in what they showed, who was in them. His eyes widened, and he went suddenly completely still, except for his hand, which tightened hard on her arm. His expression seemed to freeze. His head came up, swiveled toward overcoat man beside him. Mick went cold all over. She could hear her pulse roaring in her ears. “Yo, Rossi, take a look at this.”

  The floor seemed to tilt beneath Mick’s feet as Rossi—overcoat guy—took the pictures and glanced down at them. Her heartbeat, her breathing, every single thing in and around her seemed to slow way down in this moment, which felt like it was stretching out into eternity. The others were talking, but their words came so slowly they made no sense. The very dust motes floating in the air suspended in space. On the opposite side of the cruiser, Friedman and his partner had reached the rear passenger door behind which Jason presumably was located. Friedman was in the act of opening it. His movements registered on her as if she’d been viewing them from underwater. Having retrieved the suitcase from the cruiser’s hood, Otis was halfway to the SUV. At Iacono’s words, he glanced back over his shoulder. To Mick, his action and the suddenly frightened expression that accompanied it occurred in fits and starts, like a stop motion film. Standing no more than a few feet in front of her, Favara was just beginning to frown when her attention shifted back to Rossi, who whistled under his breath.

  Rossi’s eyes came up. He and Iacono exchanged glances. Rossi nodded, a quick, curt nod.

  Oh, no. Terror rose like bile in Mick’s throat. The sudden tension vibrating in the air felt as tangible as an electric current.

  Rossi folded the pictures very deliberately and stuck them in his overcoat pocket. No longer breathing, Mick was still tracking the progress of the hand that had been holding the pictures when it emerged, gripping a Smith and Wesson automatic instead.

  Snapping it up, no hesitation at all, Rossi shot Favara point-blank in the face. Reeling with disbelief, Mick registered the flash of orange exploding from the muzzle and smelled the burning scent of gunpowder and felt her heart slam into her rib cage like it was trying to escape from her chest all in the same terrible instant.

  Bang. Even before the sound hit her eardrums, Iacono had dropped her arm.

  Then, bang again: the double tap.

  In the microsecond that it took for Favara’s brain to explode out the back of his head, Mick realized that the only reason Iacono would have let her go was to reach for his own weapon. To use on her? Cold sweat broke over her in a wave. Her life passed before her eyes. I’m going to die, right here, right now was the thought that ran with crystal clarity through her mind. It was followed by a fast, determined, No! Then, God, help me, please.

  Her eyes flashed to her Glock, still lying with Jason’s Sig on the cruiser’s hood. With her hands cuffed behind her, it might as well have been on Mars.

  Bang.

  Hit the dirt. Instinct kicked in. She dropped like a rock.

  “What the hell?” someone—she thought it was Friedman—yelled over a scream that reverberated like a siren off the metal walls. It was loud and shrill enough to penetrate even the roaring in her ears.

  Expecting to catch a bullet at any instant, Mick saw that Iacono had his weapon in hand even as she fell toward the ground. In the whisker of time that it took her to hit, all hell broke loose. Shouts and curses and scuffling movements and running footsteps underlay more gunfire and that nerve-shattering scream. Favara’s body hadn’t even hit the flo
or before Rossi shot Otis, who clearly saw it coming. Otis dropped the suitcase to throw up a protective arm and backpedal, not that it did him any good. To the sound of more bullets exploding to her left—Iacono had his weapon out and was firing, too, his target being the cops on the other side of the cruiser, who were shooting back, she thought—Mick watched Otis’s eyes widen and his mouth open in a cry that never fully emerged. Then she smacked down onto the concrete, hard because with her hands cuffed she had no way to buffer her landing. The screaming cut off abruptly. Mick only realized that the sound had been tearing out of her own throat when it stopped because she crash-landed and had no more breath. For a flash-frozen moment she was aware of little more than her own pain. With the wind semi-knocked out of her, grunting from the agony that shot through her already injured shoulder, Mick watched half-dazed as a bullet caught Otis dead between the eyes, instant black dot, and he folded downward like a collapsed house of cards.

  My God, it’s a massacre. They’re killing everybody.

  Adrenaline blew through her veins. A lightning glance around showed her that Otis and Favara were dead; their bodies lay in rapidly growing pools of bright scarlet blood. She couldn’t really see Friedman and his partner because the cruiser was in the way, but they were yelling and bullets were whizzing past in both directions overhead. Looking underneath the vehicle, she saw feet dancing around each other on its other side: two sets of cop shoes and a pair of boots.

  The sight of the boots electrified her: Jason!

  He was alive, on his feet, on the move.

  She screamed his name.

  The instant she did she heard a thud like a fist connecting with flesh and saw Friedman fall heavily to his knees on the other side of the cruiser.

  “Mick!” Jason bellowed. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Here,” Mick cried back. Then something grabbed her hair.

  Her head was yanked painfully back. Eyes watering, she found herself looking up, staring into the mouth of a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson aimed right between her eyes. Iacono was holding it. He had his fist bunched in her hair. He was going to shoot her in the face …

  No. No!

  Her heart raced. Her pulse pounded. A vinegary taste rose in her mouth. She recognized it as mortal fear.

  I don’t want to die, a voice shrieked inside her head even as the fear-induced fog left her brain in this moment of extremis and her thought processes suddenly became icy clear.

  “Move,” Iacono roared, hauling on her hair, trying to pull her to her feet. Mick didn’t dare openly resist, not with a gun in her face, but she floundered on her stomach, as if getting to her feet with her hands cuffed behind her back was impossibly hard. So maybe he’s not going to kill me right here. Maybe he’s still going to take me to Uncle Nicco, and then somebody will kill me was the thought that flashed through her mind while Iacono yelled over her head, about whom she couldn’t be sure, although he was certainly addressing Rossi, “Shoot him!”

  Rossi snapped off a couple of rounds, aiming across the roof of the cruiser. The booms bounced off her eardrums, made them throb. From the other side of the car someone screamed, obviously hit. Jason? she wondered frantically, while Rossi hunkered down not far away, beside the cruiser’s front fender.

  “Move,” Iacono repeated, yanking on her hair so hard that it hurt her neck. The gun aimed at her face quivered terrifyingly.

  “You don’t want to shoot a cop, Iacono,” she warned. Her suddenly dry mouth made it hard to get the words out. Jittery darts of panic shot through her veins like speed.

  Iacono’s mouth twisted. “Remember those assholes over there?” He gave a jerk of his head to indicate the other side of the cruiser. “I just did.”

  “Forget it. Finish her,” Rossi shouted over his shoulder.

  “The boss …”

  “Do it!”

  Galvanized, Mick moved, all right, but not in the way Iacono intended. Unable to free her hair from his hold, taking advantage of the split second in which Iacono’s eyes flashed toward Rossi, she used that point as a fulcrum for a ground-based, full-body spin. Iacono’s eyes slashed back toward her just as her legs slammed into his ankles.

  “Bitch!” Iacono screamed, and went down like an oak.

  His gun banged. The bullet shattered the floor inches from her face. Her ears rang at the force of the sound. Blowback concrete splinters seared her left cheek. She was still crying out in pain when he hit the floor so hard that he lost his grip on his gun, which skittered next to Mick. She would have snatched it up and used it to blow him to hell except she couldn’t snatch up anything.

  Instead, she kicked it under the cruiser, then rolled that way herself, meaning to take refuge there.

  Iacono lay flat on his back, groaning. His eyes found her as she moved.

  “Rossi! Grab her,” he wheezed, turning with obvious difficulty onto his side.

  Rossi jumped between her and the cruiser, snapping off shots over the car’s roof at the same time.

  Looking up at him, way, way up, it seemed, she saw that he was careful to keep his head below the roofline of the cruiser, presumably to avoid whoever was returning fire from the other side. His face twisted savagely as he aimed his gun down at her. He meant to shoot to kill. She could read his intention in his eyes.

  “No!” she screamed, her muscles bunching for another desperate kick, then flinched as she heard a gun bang. But it was Rossi who was hit, Rossi who dropped his gun and reached up to claw at his chest and stagger backward, Rossi who cried out in pain.

  At the same instant Jason darted around the trunk of the cruiser, crouched low, a gun in his hand, having clearly been the one who had just shot Rossi. He looked big and tough and formidable, and she had never been so glad to see anybody in her life.

  Chapter

  20

  “Mick!”

  “Jason!” As he raced toward her, she rolled onto her knees. Iacono was already diving for Rossi’s dropped gun. She couldn’t point, but she gestured frantically with her head. “Over there! Him! Shoot him! Quick!”

  “Get up,” Jason yelled to her, gripping his gun and looking toward Iacono as if he meant business but making no move to fire. Seeing her struggle—it really was unexpectedly hard to get from a kneeling position to a standing one without the use of her hands—he hooked his free arm around her waist the moment he reached her. Jerking her upright, he took her with him in a flat-out sprint back the way he had come.

  “Perfect timing,” she gasped out as she ran like she expected to take a bullet in the back at any moment, which she did.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “The pictures. They saw the pictures.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  “Goddamn bitch,” Iacono roared behind them. Glancing back, Mick saw that he now had Rossi’s dropped gun in his hand. If she’d been able, if she’d had her hands free and her gun on her, she would have turned and shot him dead. But she didn’t.

  “Behind us! You need to shoot him now !” Mick screamed an alert at Jason, who glanced back, too, but didn’t even slow down. She was once again referring to Iacono, who had leaped to his feet and was training the gun on them at that very second. Rossi, meanwhile, she saw in the same glance, crouched near Otis’s body with blood oozing through the fingers he had pressed to his chest. Wounded, but not slain.

  “Can’t … let them … get away,” Rossi gasped. Jason abruptly pulled her even closer to his side and curved his shoulder and upper body around her as they ran, a protective action that she understood a split second later. A gun spat—Iacono, firing Rossi’s weapon—and Mick cringed instinctively as the bullet ricocheted with a whiny screech off the cruiser’s trunk just inches away. Then, with Jason’s hard-muscled arm still tight around her, they dodged around the back of the cruiser. Bent almost double, they made it all the way around the end of the car even as a deafening fusillade of bullets whizzed overhead, slamming into walls and floor and wooden pallets and God knew what else. A
glance as she bolted past them found Friedman and his partner on the ground near the cruiser. Friedman sprawled motionless on his stomach, an oily-looking stain that she knew was blood growing between the shoulder blades of his blue uniform. Badly wounded or dead, she thought. His partner lay on his back, gasping and moving. She couldn’t see where he was hit, but he was clearly alive.

  “In the car.” Jason snatched open the driver’s door as they reached it and practically flung her through the opening even as she leaped inside. Diving headlong for the passenger seat, Mick saw through the window that Rossi was on his feet now, too. He held a weapon, presumably the one Otis had dropped, and was firing at them. Skidding across the slick vinyl like a baseball player sliding for home and crashing sideways into the door when she couldn’t stop in time, feeling Jason bounce into the driver’s seat beside her, Mick felt her stomach clench like a fist with horrible anticipation. An instant later, sure enough, a bullet shattered the passenger window just above her head, and little balls of glass rained down on her like hail.

  “Ahh!” Mick scrunched up in as tight a ball as she could curl herself into as another bullet followed the path of the first. Fortunately she was slender enough that she could fit beneath the edge of the window. She would have covered her head with her arms except her hands were cuffed.

  “Stay down!” Slamming the door, ducking as low as possible and jamming the key into the ignition all at the same time, Jason glanced her way as the engine roared to life and he jammed the gear shift into drive. “You hit?”

  “No!”

  “Your face is bleeding.”

  She would have wiped the blood away if she could have. “It’s nothing! Drive!”

  “Hang on.” Putting the pedal to the metal, he twisted the wheel hard right. The cruiser torpedoed forward, flinging her back against the seat. His Sig and her Glock, forgotten on the hood, skittered toward the windshield and flew off, useless. Mick felt a spurt of regret at losing her gun, then forgot all about it as she noticed that he gripped the wheel with both hands. She spotted the gun he had been using lying on the seat between them, and her eyes widened.