They moved forward as he scanned the area. Logistically, by himself, he couldn’t corner this guy with the photos. Obviously, they were important and the man was likely getting away, even as Trevor hesitated. His men were still pinned down in front of the house, there was no help coming fast enough, and if the diamonds were sold to the black market, the money they’d raise for any terrorist would be a goddamned nightmare.
“You’re thinking ‘clusterfuck’ and ‘epic proportions’ right now, aren’t you?” Bobbie Faye asked, and he cut her a glance. “If your muscles were any tenser, they’d be corded steel. Not that I mind the whole corded-steel look, because hey, kind of a fan here, but I can handle this. Unless you’re going to go all His Standard FBI Agentness on me and try to stop me.”
“I swear to God; if you get hurt, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Hey, it’s entirely possible I have a plan.”
He couldn’t resist. “You? Have a plan?”
“I thought I’d go with ‘get the photos’ and ‘don’t get dead.’ ”
“It’s focused. I like it,” he said, “especially the last part.” He kissed her, quick. “Try not to start the Apocalypse. I hate having to fill out reports.”
Lori Ann tapped her foot in the rehab rec room. All of the other inmates hunched forward, trying to see the footage on the bad excuse for a TV as Reggie O’Connor’s live Bobbie Faye report aired.
“Why is she blue?” the woman with the unicorn tattoo on her cheek asked, because unicorns on one’s face was normal. “Is it some sort of commentary on her emotional state? I think she needs a hug.”
“I’ll bet she’s joined that group,” a tall black man with basset-hound eyes said.
“What? The Blue Man Group?” Unicorn asked.
“She can’t join that group, she’s a woman,” a prim, neat little man said. (She’d learned he was an accountant.) (Rumor had it that he was really IRS.) (He had a very nasty crying habit she wished he’d break.)
“Maybe she’s going to be part-time,” Basset Hound Eyes said, “because she’s like, only half-blue.”
Lori Ann snapped, hopping up to face the group, who, as a unit, cringed. “People are shooting at my sister and all you can think of is to wonder why she’s blue!”
“Well, people are always shooting at your sister,” Unicorn said. “She’s never been blue before.”
Lori Ann glared over at the counselor, who shrugged. “He has a point.”
Bobbie Faye watched Trevor veer off to circle around behind the silos as she stepped into the shadows of the giants, grateful for the shade in the smothering morning heat. The buildings loomed, sentries for a forbidden world.
She hated these buildings. They glinted in the sun and glared at her. She shoved her imagination and memories down and focused, instead, on navigating beneath steel staircases that led to catwalks, passing enormous metal framework pedestals for various generators and heaters for the grain dryer itself.
She paused before every man-sized nook, listening for the sound of breathing, smelling the heavy humid air; she knew what the harvested-grain air should smell like—the distinct scent of rice mixed with a little bit of diesel fuel and oil from the eighteen-wheeler trucks that rolled through there from the various farms. Hot asphalt, soil, and the bitter scent of drying stalks of grass layered in with the other odors. In addition, men, God bless ’em, smelled. And since there were no other workers on the premises, and she had apparently imprinted Trevor’s specific smell on her brain, any other male scent was going to be the photo-toting jerk.
A slight crunch brushed against the silence and she recognized the sound: filmy dried rice hulls crushed underfoot. She stole behind a metal scaffold that held a generator bigger than her trailer (and thankfully, it wasn’t running, or the roar would have been deafening). She squatted there, angled to her right, and peered beneath the crisscrossed support posts through a crawl space where she’d hidden as a kid. Black rubber-soled combat boots came into view on the other side of the structure and she knew Trevor had on battle-scarred cowboy boots for his biker/mercenary façade.
Bobbie Faye palmed a pebble and tossed it away from her position to entice the photo thief to move; he inched out toward the sound. She watched his progress and then crept forward softly, careful to keep her sneakers from crunching anything and giving her away. Just as she came up behind him, keeping herself still hidden, two things happened at once: Trevor popped out, sandwiching the thief between them, and behind Trevor, a man with a sniper rifle appeared on a catwalk encircling one of the silos. Sonofabitch. The sniper moved into a position with a bead on Trevor. She felt herself go icy cold. Two thoughts ran back-to-back: Trevor could die and hell no, he’s not.
She moved. The thief held a Walther P, but it didn’t matter, and she would have to think about that later, if there was a later. Trevor’s expression as she put herself in jeopardy raced from surprise to anger to confusion all in the nanosecond it took her to raise her own gun and aim—not at the thief between them, but above and to the right of where Trevor stood. The sniper saw her, and his delay, his slight, split-second blink of noticing someone else outside of the crosshairs, was all it took for her to put a shot in his left shoulder, jerking him out of position so that the shot he squeezed off went wild and pinged off the silo.
And then a second shot rang out and the sniper’s chest blossomed red; Trevor spun to Bobbie Faye, who hadn’t shot the man again, and the thief between them looked just as shocked as they were. Trevor shot the thief, center mass, but the man dove, tumbling, and then he sprang up, running between the silos, clearly wearing some sort of body armor.
Aiden nodded to Sean: the sniper who’d been shooting at Bobbie Faye was down. He’d missed the original kid who’d taken what looked like photos from the woman. They’d had to regroup fast and hadn’t had a shot at the second man who now held the photos, but one of the snipers had been eliminated. Sean couldn’t have cared less for the woman’s welfare except the bit of skirt was his best ticket to the diamonds, but not if she was dead.
“Sure,” Sean said, “and there’s more to do.”
“You thinkin’ we end this?”
“Yes.”
Aiden and Sean were better shots than Mollie and Robbie and had left the latter to man the car and wait for their signal.
John seethed. Sending the kid, Jayden, had been a mistake—one he’d realized as soon as the kid got chatty with that freaking hurricane of a woman, and so he’d sent Alonzo in to retrieve the photos from the kid. John had been positioned where he could aim a parabolic at the house and he’d heard the majority of the conversation—enough to know the asshole Emile had hired was a Fed, working undercover. Now that was interesting, but it ultimately didn’t matter. John had hired the best hitter in the business, and he’d have nailed the bitch and the whole thing would have ended. Or should have ended, except Bobbie Faye had shot the sniper first.
But hadn’t killed him. Someone else had, and she’d looked stunned. If John had been in range, he’d have put a bullet in the middle of that stunned expression and man, that would have been the best fucking score and really, he’d have almost paid to have had that pleasure, but he’d set up too far away. He signaled his last man to go in; the last thing he needed was for Bobbie Faye or Trevor to live now. Especially now that he was close to having the clues as to where the diamonds were. Because at this point, he was realizing he could have his cake and kill her, too. All in all, an absolutely excellent day.
Bobbie Faye and Trevor shared a gaze and his was way-the-hell more furious than she’d expected.
“He could have shot you,” Trevor said, and she realized he was seething. “Dammit, you focus on the ‘don’t get dead’ part.”
“He was aiming at you, you idiot.” Where the hell did he get off, getting mad at her?
“Not the sniper—this guy here,” he pointed between them. “For the love of God, you can shout a warning, but don’t you dare put yourself at risk.”
&
nbsp; And then a man was on him, having come up behind Trevor from an angle neither of them could see, and she ran toward them, to help.
“No!” Trevor shouted. “Get the photos.” But she kept going, her gut not letting her go after something else if he was . . . oh. Okay. Maybe he wasn’t. In trouble, that is. Trevor spun and with a few simple moves that bespoke of way more experience at this whole killing-with-the-bare-hands thing than she’d thought about, he dispatched the would-be assailant. Holy shit. Trevor wasn’t even breathing hard from the exertion, though there was a moment she caught a primal look, something dark and lethal, and then he shuttered his expression back to neutral.
“The photos,” he said, and she turned and followed the thief.
Twenty-one
* * *
From: Simone
To: JT
I’ve lost her. But we hear gunshots. Investigating.
* * *
* * *
From: JT
To: Simone
I wonder what our medical coverage is for therapy? Because I am seriously going to need it. A lot of it.
* * *
The freaking thief had gone up the staircase to the catwalk three stories up on the biggest silo. Three freaking craptastic stories up. She hated heights. She was seven all over again, when she’d climbed up a silo and slipped. She would have died if she hadn’t landed in a bed of grain in a small dumptruck—would have definitely died if it hadn’t been for the fast action of that trucker who’d seen her tumbling off the catwalk in his rearview mirror. She fell through the grain with such momentum that it had seemed alive, sucking her into its belly where it was dark. She’d been screaming on the way down and her mouth had filled with rice hulls and the dust gagged her. The trucker had pulled her free.
Bobbie Faye didn’t think it would really help to say to the thief, “Pardon me, sir, would you mind terribly letting me chase you over flat ground? Thank you, most helpful, much obliged.”
Instead, she sprinted up the stairs, her thighs screaming, having shoved Trevor’s SIG into the back of her jeans (ouch, damn). The thief ran around the catwalk to a ladder, and up he went, which meant up she went, hand-over-hand. Surely he wasn’t going into the silo’s topmost door, surely he wasn’t that stupid, surely he knew how danger—
Apparently not, because the gunman scrambled from the ladder to the highest catwalk and circled to the hatch where the conveyors dumped grain inside. The hatch was used for emergency purposes and to vent the silo of highly ignitable grain dust. Bobbie Faye arrived at the dark opening the gunman had entered and waited just outside, adjusting her breathing, careful not to look down the . . . holy crap, she was at least seven stories up. Her heart started writing its Farewell Speech and it was in such a hurry, it wasn’t even bothering to spell correctly. Bravery was standing by with spare pens, so it wasn’t a helluva lot of help, either.
A distant whap-whap-whap of helicopter rotors beat the air, and she glanced around to see tiny dots on the horizon—no way to tell if they were news or police helos. Someone down below shouted something, and a slight breeze barely made the direct sun tolerable, but mostly, there was just the black maw of that hatch opening, and total silence inside the silo. Then metal creaked, and when she peeked through the opening, light filtered in from a point opposite her and she didn’t know if the asshole had run around the interior via a catwalk and found another way out. This particular ladder that she stood on ended right there; she’d have to follow inside if she wanted to keep up with the thief.
Which meant stepping into the dark, onto a narrow catwalk, into a silo full of semi-dry grain. Why hadn’t she called in sick yesterday? Better yet, why hadn’t she had that lobotomy she’d been contemplating? Anything . . . anything would be better than this. Bobbie Faye pulled the SIG out and ducked into the hatch opening, her lungs fighting the dust she’d disturbed as she felt the solid metal grating of the catwalk beneath her shoe. She sighed with relief. Safe. There was even a handrail. She wasn’t going to pitch forward into the abyss of grain.
A gun jammed into the back of her head. For the second time in an hour. Did they teach gun-jamming in bad-guy school?
V’rai’s words echoed in her head: You’re standing on a precipice, Bobbie Faye. Watch your back. Holy fucking geez. Would it have killed her to have been a little clearer?
“Got her,” the gunman said, and he relayed their location to someone, apparently talking into a cell phone she couldn’t see as he stood behind her. She heard the phone click off. “John’s on his way—he wants to do the kill himself.”
“Please tell me he’s traveling from Helsinki or something.”
“Man, he wasn’t kidding. You never stop. You just can’t keep from being you.”
“I’m seriously contemplating multiple personalities right now. I think passive is real doable,” she offered. “How about I go practice—I know! I could sit home, making animals out of dryer lint.”
She tried to step away from him and he shoved the gun harder. He apparently had taken the advanced lesson in bad-guy school: how not to be confused by random victim babbling.
“Lower the gun,” Trevor said from somewhere behind the man, “slowly.”
Bobbie Faye would have done the happy dance, if it were not for the fact that she was seven stories up on a catwalk in the dark with sure death all around. Sure death tended to put a crimp in happy dancing.
The gunman started to lower the gun, and in the next heartbeat, ducked and spun. Trevor leapt over the man’s outstretched leg, pinning his arm against the catwalk and knocked his gun down into the grain . . . just as the gunman wrenched Bobbie Faye’s ankle. She slammed against the deck of the catwalk, the momentum rolling her underneath the waist-high safety railing toward the gaping cavern of the silo, out in the big open blackness. Trevor shouted something she couldn’t hear as she pinwheeled her arms, clawing for purchase on the metal grating, the dusty surface slipping from her fingers.
Time crawled. She saw the stark shock in Trevor’s expression—that and something more. Something deeper and pure and raw and she shot an arm out, knowing she had to stay with that emotion, knowing she had to somehow allow herself to believe in it, because the connection she felt with him at that moment was something she’d never known before.
The world sped up again as her left hand, sticky with blue gel, latched onto one of the metal support braces for the catwalk at the same time Trevor reached beneath the railing and fisted a handful of her t-shirt.
“Watch out,” she shouted as the gunman tried to elbow Trevor in the back of the head. Trevor kicked with a powerful jolt to the man’s knee and the gunman crumpled to the catwalk just as Bobbie Faye groped for a handhold and grabbed the front of the gunman’s shirt where he lay on the grating. Trevor hauled her up and as he did, the gunman tried to scramble away. . . .
She had the photos in her hand. Technically still in the guman’s pocket, and she was not going to let go. He reached for a gun in an ankle holster and Trevor had his hands full, just holding her. They looked like a psychotic game of Twister—one wrong move and they were all going to fall. Trevor yelled at Bobbie Faye for her to let go of the shirt, that it wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth losing her, but her fingers had a will of their own: those photos could not go with that man. Trevor used his weight to snatch her away. The gunman’s pocket ripped and, score, she had the photos as he plunged over the rail and down toward the loose, quicksand-like oblivion of the dry grain.
The soft light from the hatch openings captured the gunman in that first second, and he had his gun up, aimed at them, and whether he meant to fire out of anger or if it was just reflex, she couldn’t tell. Bobbie Faye knew in that instant—that one-hundredth of a second which drew out into eternity—that they were so very dead.
The bullet emerged amid a flash, and even though the shot went wild, that tiny burst of flame from the barrel of the gun ignited the dust around it, and the ball of explosion rolled outward, every direction, growing and eati
ng everything in its path. Trevor yanked her up and outside the silo (which was when she had the thought that he was real pretty but maybe not so sharp because they could not fly and, hello, seven stories up, jumping was as bad as the fire). He pulled her anyway, leaping out into the fresh air, and then they fell, flailing from the seventy-foot height of the hatch as the silo exploded above and around them, the thrust of the explosion propelling them farther outward and away and then there was the baby silo below them, looming, slamming toward them faster than Bobbie Faye could fathom.
Trevor took the brunt of the landing, cradling her on top of him, and they started sliding along the angled curve of the dome roof as the giant silo next to them detonated fireballs into the sky. Sparks and burning debris rained down on the metal roof beneath them. They plunged down its slope, both of them fighting to find a handhold; Bobbie Faye toppled over the outer edge of the silo as Trevor grabbed her hand, and with his other, snagged the lip of the roof, holding all of his weight and all of hers by his fingertips.
She should be dead. Instead, she dangled forty feet above the hard asphalt, Trevor the only lifeline she had. The big silo rocked with another blast and she could see his muscles cording under the strain and she met his gaze and she’d never seen anyone look so furious and determined in her entire life.
She shoved the photo remnants—wadded in her right hand still—into her back pocket. Burning debris bounced and singed her arm as he nodded toward a catwalk below her, off to the right, and she nodded back, sickened, but knowing they had no choice. Trevor swung her from side-to-side, helping her gain momentum, and then he released her, and she flew, fell, prayed, promising God a whole lotta things He wasn’t even going to buy, not even on sale, not even at a heavy three-for-one specially discounted Deity Savings Rate, but she promised them anyway. And then that catwalk railing loomed up and up and she reached out for it, felt the now-warm metal in her palm, and she stopped falling so abruptly, it nearly pulled her arm out of its socket. She clambered onto the catwalk deck and as she looked up at Trevor, a large piece of burning debris sliced through the smaller silo’s roof. He launched off toward her and a living, breathing, fireball chased after him.
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns Page 20
