I twisted my fist around the leather of the steering wheel. “Not…exactly, no. I more…borrowed it. Firmly.”
She snickered. “Which means you bashed some poor asshole over the head and stole his very nice Jeep?”
I pretended to bluster as if I was offended. “I would never bash some poor asshole over the head and steal his very nice Jeep.” I affected an arch tone. “I have standards, I’ll have you know. For your information, I held him up at knifepoint and stole his Jeep. But I was polite.”
She raised both eyebrows. “You politely stole a vehicle at knifepoint?”
“Yep. Didn’t even hurt him—” I tipped my head to the side with a shrug of one shoulder, “—much. Just a little tiny, itty-bitty spot where I pricked him with the knife. Won’t even need a Band-Aid.”
She eyed me. “Well. I certainly wouldn’t like to know what it looks like when you’re not being polite about something.”
I shot a glance in the mirror, checking for our pursuers; they looked a tad bored. I’d have to make things interesting for them, at some point.
“You’ve seen it,” I said. “It can get…messy.”
That silenced her for a moment. “I see. I guess I can understand why you’d be upset, all things considered.”
I laughed outright. “Upset? I’m not upset at all. This is a bit of fun, so far. It’d be better if I hadn’t gotten shot, but then these are the same guys who put the bullets in me in the first place, and I did a number on them during the last op, so I’m kind of looking at this as…retribution, for both sides.”
A few more moments of silence went by, and then she glanced at me again. “What was the op? I mean, if I’m gonna get dragged into some shit out of a Jason Bourne movie, I might as well know why.”
I debated about what to tell her, and then figured she deserved to know the truth for the reasons she gave. “First, when I said I was a security contractor, I really did mean that. We generally provide personal security for high-profile clients on an event-by-event basis. Like when some A-list celebrity is doing some big flashy event and they want to beef up their normal security, they’ll hire us. My job is usually to be big and scary and intimidating, honestly. So, for the most part, I’m not a mercenary, I’m a security contractor.” I paused to change lanes, accelerating around a slow-moving RV. “But sometimes a job comes our way that’s…not as simple.”
“Like killing people?”
I didn’t have to affect the offended tone of voice. “I’m not a fucking assassin, Lola.”
“Well shit, Thresh, I know next to nothing about you, so how am I supposed to know? You killed that guy with laughable ease. You don’t even seem affected. I didn’t mean to offend you but, if you look at it from my perspective for a second, it’s not a completely outlandish assumption.”
“I guess you have a point,” I said. “The jobs I’m talking about are things that go beyond the bounds of basic security. We’re not contract killers, we’re a threat-removal team. An insert-and-extraction team. If someone needs security against an active threat, where there’s real possibility of danger, you call us. The job that caused all this fuckery was…different, even for us.”
Lola pivoted in her seat so she was partially facing me, openly and avidly listening, now.
I sighed and drove with my knee while I rubbed the back of my neck, then re-took the wheel. “You know the actors Jon Lonigan and Callie MacPhereson?”
Lola snorted. “Um, duh?”
“Right. Well, they have a daughter, three years old. Cleo. Cute little thing, blond hair, blue eyes, innocent, and sweet as sugar.” I let out a breath. “She got kidnapped. It was…messy. The guys who snatched her did it in broad daylight, nearly killed the nanny in the process. Sent a ransom note with a photograph of some asshole with a big fuck-off knife to this little girl’s throat. Harris did security for a friend of Lonigan’s, so Harris got the call. Go get the girl. Cost was no object, and he didn’t want to know the details of how we did it. Just get his little girl back. So we did what we do: we got the girl back.
“Only, it wasn’t exactly simple. The tangos who snatched Cleo weren’t just some hack thugs. It was a professional job—people Harris ran into back in his black-ops days. Evil fuckers, and smart ones to boot. Coordinated, well-armed, trained, and with serious numbers. The guy in charge found out Harris was involved, and it turns out the two had bad blood between them. They planned to ambush us, so we set up a counter ambush—” I waved a hand, not wanting to go too heavy on the details, for both our sakes. “Things got hot, and fast. The whole thing went sideways. We barely got away, and we took out most of Cain’s guys in the process, but not Cain himself, and Cain never got his ransom money. So now we have one seriously pissed-off European mobster, and this guy…he has money, he has connections, and he’s just arrogant enough to think he can take on Harris and win.”
Lola was taking all this in stride, so far, but then she was proving herself to be fairly unflappable. “Can he? Take on Harris and win, I mean.”
I laughed, hard. “Sweetheart, Harris makes both Rambo and Chuck Norris look like pussies. Put them together, and they’re still pussies compared to Harris. Cain doesn’t stand a chance. And now that he’s gone after me? Shit, the motherfucker’s signed his death warrant, and I ain’t even pissed off yet.”
“Just out of curiosity…what would happen if you got pissed off?”
I thought for a second, trying to figure out how to answer that. “I’ve only lost my temper once in my life. I’ve always been bigger than everyone, and my old man, sadistic fuck though he may have been, made sure I knew I had to keep a lid on my shit. He drilled self-control into me from a very young age. So…I don’t get pissed off too easily.”
Lola frowned. “It happened once, though?”
I sighed. “Yeah. But that’s…not something I like to talk about. It was a bad time.”
Lola turned back in her seat to face the front. “I see. Well, I’m sorry it happened, whatever it was.”
“So. This plan of yours, to disappear into the swamp…”
“First, it’s not really a swamp, it’s a wetland forest. It’s a very complicated and very special place.”
I rolled my hand in a keep-going gesture. “Okay, so how do we get into this very complicated and special wetland forest of yours?”
She sighed. “It’s actually one of only three locations in the world to be declared—”
I cut her off. “Tell me when we’re in there, babe. Let’s get to the part of the explanation where I can plan how to lose these two assholes behind us without getting you killed.”
“Or you. We don’t want you killed.”
I guffawed. “Sweetheart, there’s only two of them. They couldn’t kill me if they had a goddamn bazooka. Pretty sure I can handle two little Euro wanna-be thug fucks.”
Lola rolled her eyes at me. “Okay, tough guy. Point is, you’re my protection, so I need you in one piece.” She eyed my cast-wrapped, sling-bound arm. “Or, at least, in the number of pieces you’re already in.”
“I’d like that too. Despite what you may believe, getting shot ain’t fun, so I’d like to avoid it if I can.”
“So the plan is to use Dad’s extra boat.”
I gaped at her. “Extra boat? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because you distracted me with your I politely stole a Jeep nonsense.”
“You started that, honeybuns.”
“Honeybuns? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means tell me where this fucking boat is so we can go get it.”
She hesitated. “Well, the thing is, getting to it is the easy part. Actually getting into the boat and on the water? A little more difficult.” She gestured behind us. “Especially since I’m relatively certain they’ll try to stop us.”
“Relatively certain,” I echoed. “Yeah, I’d agree with that.”
She tapped at the GPS, inputting an address on Plantation Island, wherever that was—whatever
that was. “First stop, Uncle Filipo’s.”
“What’s at Uncle Filipo’s?”
“The boat.”
“I’m confused.”
She rolled her eyes at me. Seemed like she did that a lot. “I know, it’s complicated. Further complication is that Uncle Filipo isn’t really my uncle. He’s the friend of my dad’s who brings him supplies. He has a boat—well, actually it’s Dad’s boat if you want to be technical about it, but he’s letting Uncle Filipo borrow it more or less permanently, so Filipo can bring Dad food and propane and whatever else.”
I frowned. “So it’s Filipo’s boat?”
She shook her head. “Filipo is very particular on this point. It’s not his boat, he’s just using it.”
“And what does this have to do with our plan to borrow the boat?”
“Well, it’s next to Filipo’s trailer.” She did that hesitation again, the one that meant I wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “It’s on a trailer, and we have to tow it to the water.”
“Which means we have to lose the dudes behind us.”
“That would make it easier, yes.”
“This place of your dad’s…is it listed? Like, is he on the grid?”
“On the grid?”
“Searchable. Utilities, address, cell phone records, credit cards?”
“Oh. No, he’s off the grid, then. No electricity or running water, no cell phone, obviously. He has a bank account with his savings in it, but he doesn’t use it. He’d have to leave the mangroves, and that’s not happening. I can’t think of anything that would lead to him. To the world at large, after Mom died, he just disappeared. I even changed my last name to Mom’s maiden name after she died, so it’s not easy to tie me to Dad that way. Only Filipo and I know how to find him, or that he’s even still alive.”
I nodded. “That’s good. You might be able to hide out there until I can get you off Cain’s radar.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“By being charming and persuasive, of course.” I said it with a grin, hoping she got my meaning without having to have it spelled out.
She shook her head with an amused sigh. “I see.” She held up her fists, shook the left, “Charm…”, then the right, “…and Persuasion?”
I laughed. “Exactly. You get me, Doc.”
She twisted in her seat to look back at the Range Rover, still following two car lengths behind. “Any ideas how to take care of them?”
I drove with my knee, pulled my Sig out, and laid it on my lap. “Yeah—shoot ’em.”
She glanced out the windows at the freeway. “What, here? Now?”
I shrugged. “Now that we’re out in the country and away from traffic, we’ll switch seats, and I’ll take care of the assholes behind us.”
“That easy, huh?”
I bobbled my head side to side. “Easy? I wouldn’t say easy, exactly. I’d say it’s simple. Which ain’t the same as easy.”
She sighed. “I have a feeling this is going to get interesting.”
I grinned. “Lola, babe, when you’re with me, everything is interesting.”
Yet again, she rolled her eyes at me. “So I’m discovering. Funny thing is, I was perfectly content with my boredom.”
To prove a point, I used my knee on the steering wheel, reached out, traced my fingertip over her knee, down to the inside of her thigh, then dragged my finger slowly up the length of her thigh, slowing as I neared the juncture of her thighs. “Lola, sweetheart. You suck at lying.”
“I—I…I’m not lying,” she stammered as I drew my touch to within an inch of her pussy, and then backed away. “What would I lie about?”
“You were so not content with your boredom.” I teased closer again, and her breath caught. “You were dying for someone to force you out of your rut.”
“I wasn’t in a rut.”
“Were too.” I moved my finger to the other thigh, teased up the inside from knee to pussy and back.
“Well if I was in a rut, there was a reason for it.” She was trying to act casual, as if she was unaffected.
She wasn’t, though. She was squirming. Fighting to keep breathing normally, to stay in her seat.
“Oh? What reason would that be?” I trailed my hand over her core, a light, teasing touch.
“Stop that.” She grabbed my wrist, but didn’t apply any pressure to stop me as I cupped my hand over her, rubbing the heel of my palm against where her clit would be, beneath the yoga pants and the underwear.
“Stop?” I kept rubbing, a little harder now, in slow circles, and her hips began to mirror the movement. “You sure you want me to stop?”
“Yes…” she said, but her hand told a different story, doing more to guide my motions than halt them. “God…you’re an asshole…you have to stop—”
I pulled my hand away, then. “If you insist.”
She moaned, writhing in the bucket seat. “Damn it, Thresh.”
“What?” I cupped her again. “Maybe you’d like to revise your request that I stop?”
I rubbed against her clit in slow deliberate grinding circles, just enough to get her going, to hint at what I could do.
She leaned her head back against the seat rest, flexing her hips in time with my movements. “I hate you.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
“Why?” I moved a little faster, now. “Why do you hate me, Lola? Is it because you like the way I’m touching you, but you don’t want to like it?”
“What are you doing, Thresh?” She gasped as my touch sped up. “God, what are you doing to me?”
Fuck, she was so goddamned responsive. I was barely touching her, not even touching bare flesh. She was moments away from coming and I’d only touched her over her clothes. Jesus, the things I could do to this woman if I had her naked and the time to do them all. I found myself wondering if she was a screamer. If she’d rake her nails down my back. What kind of a gag reflex she had.
I realized that we had little or no traffic behind us. The Rover was right behind us now, but still staying fifty or so yards back. Now was the time, if I was going to make a move.
Problem was, now I had Lola all worked up.
What’s a guy to do?
I glanced at Lola. “Take the wheel, babe. We’re switching spots.”
“NOW? You do this now?” She released her seat belt and grabbed the steering wheel, even as she shouted at me.
I grinned at her. “What?”
“You know damn well what! You can’t leave me like this!”
“Like what?”
“All…you know. Worked up.” She seemed sheepish, for some stupid reason. Embarrassed. Which was weird, considering how shamelessly she was into it only moments ago.
“You gotta trust me, Doc. I’ll take care of you, don’t you worry.” I levered the seat back as far as it would go, set the cruise control, and then worked my bulk across the console, behind Lola, and into the passenger seat. Which makes it sound a lot easier than it actually was. “I’ll take such good care of you, you’ll be begging for more. Now…drive. Keep it floored, and hold it steady.”
I hung out the window, the stolen Glock in my good hand, angling backward, drew a bead on the driver, squeezed the trigger twice—BANG-BANG!—the windshield spiderwebbed as my bullets smashed through, but the Rover kept on after us—I’d missed. I sent two more rounds at the windshield, aiming for where the passenger would be, if he was idiot enough to still be sitting there. I didn’t think he was an idiot, necessarily, but it never hurt to try.
There was return fire then, a hand gripping a pistol appearing out the passenger window, bucking, gunshots echoing, and the Jeep shuddered as bullets thunked into the rear bumper; they were trying for our tires, I realized.
Hell no.
I drew a bead on the hood this time, and squeezed a few more shots off. Smoke billowed from under the hood, the Rover swerved, skidded, slewed sideways, and then juddered to a halt.
“Pull ove
r,” I told Lola, and she obeyed immediately.
As soon as we were stopped, I shoved open the door and leapt out, leveling my gun at the Rover. A gun barked from the driver’s side, and I returned fire, sending the round at the windshield, which shattered completely, then. The driver was slumped over, still alive but bleeding, and the passenger was nowhere to be seen.
I moved forward in a low crouch, reached the hood, circled around to the passenger side, crouching low automatically, keeping my barrel trained on the passenger window. I inched closer, lifting up to peer over the lip and in, intending to plug him sudden-like.
A shot blasted at me and the round buzzed past my ear, missing me by a matter of centimeters, if that. When a bullet goes snap past your head, you’d better duck; if a round goes buzzzzzz like an angry bee, you’d better thank sweet baby Jesus, ’cause that one almost had your name on it.
I cursed under my breath, took a second to slow my heartbeat, and then crouched, inched forward, peered around the side of the Rover. Squatting, I put my back to the Rover, waited another couple seconds…raised up a few inches to peer into the windows, caught a glimpse of him in the rear of the Rover, trying to flank me via the trunk. I ducked back down, waited for the sound of the hatch opening. Waited for the sound of feet on concrete. He appeared from around the rear; I pulled a bead on his chest, and squeezed off a round.
He took the round dead center mass, red blooming on his shirt. He stumbled backward, his grip on his pistol going slack, and then he sat down hard, clutching his chest in confusion. I waited until I was relatively certain he was past the point of being dangerous, and then moved out from beside the Rover. I kicked his gun away and kept mine trained on him as he toppled to his back, clutching his chest with one hand, gasping, blinking.
He had a cell phone in his hand. He was fading fast, beyond talking already. His hand unfurled, showing the screen of the smartphone. The name at the top read “Cain”, and listed the duration of the call as being just over five minutes…and counting.
Cain was still on the line.
Thresh: Alpha One Security: Book 2 Page 7
