Chapter 29
Leo crouched by the silver car. He felt nervous. It was an unfamiliar, but unmistakable, emotion. The pit of his stomach was squeezed tight by it and his heart hammered in his chest.
He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt this way. Not when Sasha had pointed his own gun at him; not when he’d confronted a dirty air marshal in a back alley; and not when he’d traveled alone as teenager to Vietnam to track down his father and tell him he was his son.
But, now, he was definitely nervous. He was, after all, about to break the law. He had dug around in the loose gravel on the side of the parking lot, hoping for a brick, willing to settle for a large rock. Found nothing suitable.
He eyed the door lock. As he’d suspected, it wasn’t pickable. Not without a set of tools and a lot of time. He knew how to pop a lock with a pocketknife, or scissors, or even a tennis ball. But, those skills were fast becoming party tricks, as newer model cars became more sophisticated.
It’d be handy to have his service weapon right now. He could shoot out a window or just crash it into the glass. Everyone said the Sig Sauer was a big, heavy handgun. But he was a big guy with huge hands and hadn’t ever really noticed. Not until Sasha had been clutching his gun in Warner’s apartment. It had looked cartoonishly large in her tiny hands.
He paused to wonder why he had given it to her. She didn’t have a license to carry. He could be fired or even prosecuted for lending his weapon to a civilian. Especially a pain-in-the-ass, argumentative civilian. Even a little tiny one whose hair smelled like ginger and honey when he bent over to whisper in her ear.
He didn’t fully understand it, but he felt a strong urge to protect the woman who had assaulted him just one night before. When he’d walked into her office and seen her battered face, he’d been flooded with worry, rage, and shame. As though he had failed her.
He needed to get the drop on the guys who wanted to hurt her. Step one was to get into their car and see if he could find out who the hell they were. He felt better leaving her with a weapon.
He swept the lot with his eyes. The five p.m. crowd had trudged into their cars and joined the sea of taillights heading home to make dinner and fight with the kids about doing their homework. A handful of cars remained in the fading light. No people. The attendant’s hut was closed up for the night.
He checked the street. No foot traffic. Pittsburgh had one of those downtowns that rolled up the sidewalks in the evening.
He stood, ducking low, and took off his jacket. Went down into a squat and wrapped it around his bad hand. No sense hurting the other one. He made a fist and rocked back on his heels.
Do it. Now.
He shot to his feet, putting as much force as he could behind his fist, and collapsed. A wave of pain swelled across the back of his head. He fell headfirst into the car door, bounced back, and landed in a pile on the ground.
Irreparable Harm (A Legal Thriller) Page 42
