“Yes. I’m always going to have her back.”
“Okay, then.” Another pause extended over the wire, this one sending the hairs on the back of Gamble’s neck on end.
“What?” he asked, swinging toward Capelli. But the guy had already switched him and Xander back to the main channel on the coms and started clacking away rapidly at his keyboard, and Xander’s barely there voice on the line clued everyone else in to the not-quite-right.
“Rusty’s here, and he’s early.”
“Only by fifteen minutes,” Sinclair said, his voice as steady as a metronome. “Hang tight and play it cool. You’ve got this, and we’ve got you.”
Gamble looked at the sturdy black Luminox strapped to his wrist, reaffirming that it was twenty-three forty-five. Damn it, this didn’t feel right. They were prepared, sure—it was why they’d set their own gears into motion early in the first place.
But why had Rusty done the same?
Rusty pulled up next to Xander’s POS clunker of a car that was, in all likelihood, older than he was, and rolled down his window.
“Get in,” he said, keeping his expression dialed down to the most bored setting he could manage. It wouldn’t do to blow his load, so to speak, by getting too jacked up, too early. The night, after all, was an infant.
And he was juuuuuuust getting started.
Although Xander looked surprised, his black brows kicking up at Rusty’s terse order, he didn’t argue. Another twenty seconds had the guy buckled into the passenger seat of the nondescript, milk-toast-on-wheels sedan Rusty had stolen a few hours ago, and he pulled a U-turn to head toward the main road leading out of North Point.
Quiet filled the sedan’s interior, punctuated only by the whoosh of the occasional passing car and the intermittent siren noise that signaled that all was status fucking quo in The Hill.
Rusty had to hand it to Xander. He wasn’t all antsy or twitchy, like Billy Creed had been before the jobs they’d done together. And seriously, every single one of those had been finger paintings in comparison to the masterpiece that would go down tonight.
On second thought, Rusty grinned to himself, maybe he would get a little jacked up.
“You’re early,” Xander finally said, the way he might say, “dude, pass the ketchup” if they were out grabbing a bite to eat, all no-big-deal.
Rusty’s heart pumped faster, his adrenal gland picking a wicked fight with the rest of his central nervous system, which was trying to keep it cool. “No time like the present, right?” he asked, driving for another minute before pointing out the obvious. “Plus, you’re early, too.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t help it. Guess I just want those fancy developers to get what’s coming to them,” Xander said on a shrug, and aw, social justice was just alive and kicking, wasn’t it? “So, you got a new ride, huh?”
Xander gestured to the sedan, which had all the get-up-and-go of a goddamned go-kart and the sexy-factor of a turnip.
“Can’t be too careful,” Rusty replied, and oh, wasn’t that the truth.
Xander nodded dutifully. “So, since we’re on our way and everything, how do you want to play this, exactly? What’s the plan?”
“That is an excellent question.”
Without warning, Rusty wrenched the wheel to the right, screeching the stolen car to a halt on the shoulder of the dead-empty road and pulling out the Glock 19 he’d hidden between the console and his seat.
“First, I’d like to start by saying hi to the intelligence unit. That is who’s listening in on the other end of your wire, right?”
At least Xander had the good graces to look shocked as fuck. Too bad for him, he replaced the expression with one of denial in less than a blink. “What the hell, Rusty? You’re pulling a gun on me? I—”
File that under nope. “I really don’t think you want to insult me by pretending not to know what I’m talking about right now, do you?” Rusty asked, jabbing the Glock in Xander’s traitorous face. Admittedly, there were only a small number of things that would make Rusty forego his dead-bodies-are-a-messy-pain-in-the-ass rule of thumb enough to create one. Money was definitely on the list, and hey, as much as he hadn’t specifically planned on any of those teenagers at that warehouse cashing in their chips, sometimes shit happened. But disloyalty? Enough to not only try to back out of a promise, but to go to the cops?
This was going to be worth the mess.
Rusty looked at Xander, who had thankfully abandoned his knee-jerk reaction to protest with a lie. “Take the earpiece out of your ear and hand it over,” Rusty said. “Don’t make me blow your head off to prove it’s there,” he added, because if he was sure of anything, it was that those fuck-tarts from the Thirty-Third had wired Xander up like a forty-foot Christmas tree.
Xander huffed out a breath and tilted his head to the side, plucking the earpiece from its resting spot and handing it over. Daaaaamn, those boys in blue must’ve had one hell of a budget increase. The department-issued listening devices Rusty had researched online yesterday to prepare for this little soiree—thank you, public library—had looked like brontosauruses compared to this baby. Nonetheless, he’d known Xander would be wired, so he’d needed to know how to proceed.
Oh, hey, segue. “Next, I’ll be needing your cell phone and all your clothes and jewelry.” Rusty eyed the pair of piercings in Xander’s left ear. Really, you could never be too careful.
“You want me to get naked?” Xander asked in disbelief, and Rusty rolled his eyes.
“You’re not that cute,” he shot back. “But I’m sure you’re wired in more places than this earpiece, so yep. Your stuff’s gotta go. You can change into the clothes in that duffel.” He flicked a nanosecond’s worth of a gaze at the bag sitting on the floor at Xander’s feet. “I’m not taking any chances. Now, hurry up.”
The RPD’s response time wasn’t spectacular, but those patrol officers weren’t complete sloths, either. He figured he had a few minutes, tops, before whatever GPS Xander had been tagged with would triangulate a location that the cops could close in on.
To Xander’s credit, he didn’t slow-roll things. “There,” he said, looking down at the baggy sweatpants and the stained T-shirt with disdain. “Happy?”
“Very, thanks for asking. Into the bag they go,” Rusty prompted, waiting for Xander to load everything up. “With your cell phone on top. Good! Now, we get to take a ride.”
“You made your point,” Xander snapped, and huh, backbone in the face of fear. How refreshing from a guy who had been such a hopeless pussy just a few weeks ago. Not that it would help him any now. “You figured out that I went to the cops. So, go ahead, shoot me. Get it over with.”
Rusty’s laugh echoed through the interior of the car. “No can do, my traitorous friend. See, you tried to back out of our deal, and then, when you realized that wasn’t an option, you crossed me. People who do that don’t just die. They suffer.”
Then, he held the earpiece up to his mouth to add, “Have fun finding him, assholes”, tossed the earpiece into the duffel, made Xander throw the whole thing out the window, and sped off toward the city.
29
For the first time ever, Kennedy was glad business at The Crooked Angel was dead. Granted, it was after midnight, so that wasn’t a huge surprise considering how many folks were scheduled to do the wakey-wakey in just a handful of hours to be behind a desk or get their kids to school or punch a clock somewhere to make ends meet. Such normal things, she thought, dread dumping into her gut. Those same normal things had been her focus just a couple of weeks ago, too, and God, right now she’d give her left arm to worry about bar inventory and employee schedules and overhead costs.
Please. Please don’t let Xander or Gamble die.
Swiping a hand through her hair, Kennedy looked around the empty dining room from her position behind the bar, and fuck it. She’d already sent January home hours ago—her best friend’s eyes were all too keen, and Kennedy had run out of busywork that would keep her in the ba
ck of the house and away from scrutiny—and the kitchen had closed at ten, so Marco was also long gone.
The soles of Kennedy’s boots clipped the hardwood floors in a brisk riot of noise as she crossed to the front door and locked up early. Repeating the process with the side door by the pool table, she finally came face-to-face with the giant pile of emotions she’d been trying to juggle ever since Gamble and Xander had left to meet up with Sinclair at the Thirty-Third a couple of hours ago. It was a true testament to how far gone she was for the firefighter that she couldn’t decide which one of them she was more scared for. But Gamble had promised her he’d do all that he could to keep them both safe. It wasn’t a guarantee, she knew—not that there ever were any in life, especially hers—but it was close, and she trusted him. She believed him. She loved him.
She had to believe they would both come home.
Her cell phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans, scaring the ever-loving crap out of her and drawing an involuntary yelp past her lips. Xander and Gamble hadn’t been able to tell her any of the specifics for tonight’s takedown, and even though she’d hated it, she’d understood the need for absolute discretion. Could they really be done already? Was Rusty already behind bars?
Kennedy frowned down at the words unknown caller flashing over her screen. “Hello?”
“Well, well. There she is. The infamous sister.”
Her heart catapulted against her sternum, her knees simultaneously threatening to go on strike. “Who is this?”
Sharply edged laughter filtered over the line in reply. “Now I see where your brother gets that annoying habit of insulting my intelligence from. Come on, sweet cheeks. You know exactly who this is, don’t you?”
Oh, God, she was going to vomit. “Rusty.”
“Give the girl a gold star. Now that we’re all on the same page, I think a little meet and greet is in order. I’m already with your brother, and we’ve ditched those pesky cops. I know you’re all ride-or-die with them and everything, but they’d only get in the way of what I have planned. So, what do you think? Do you want to save your brother’s life tonight?”
Kennedy’s pulse thundered in her ears. Think, think, she had to think. “I do,” she said, forcing her brain to do something other than drown in panic. “I’ll meet you right now if that’s what you want, but I need to talk to my brother, first.”
“You’ve got more brass than a marching band, don’t you?” Rusty snorted.
She pressed the phone to her ear so hard, the contact was nearly painful. Come on, come on, give me a clue. A sound, a sign. Anything. “I need to know he’s alive and okay.” The words felt like razor wire between her teeth, and somehow, she managed to make her legs start moving to the back of the bar, where she’d stashed her jacket and keys in the office.
“Oh, Christ, fine. Say hello to your sister and tell her I haven’t put a scratch on you, yet.”
“Ken, don’t do this. Don’t meet him,” came Xander’s voice, tight and urgent. It sounded off over the line from a short distance, as if Rusty had held up the phone rather than handed it over, and Kennedy’s exhale released in a huge rush.
“Hey, Xander.” She would not let her voice waver. She. Would. Not. “I’ve got your back, okay?”
“Kennedy, don’t—”
“Annnnd that’s enough of that,” Rusty said, returning to the line. “So, here are the ground rules, and you will follow them unless you want me to give your brother a Viking burial while he’s very much alive. You will not call the cops. You will leave your cell phone in that shitty bar of yours and you will drive to Skyline Tower.”
“Skyline Tower?” Kennedy asked, her thoughts sticking on the nearby high rise. “Isn’t it under construction?”
“No questions,” Rusty snapped. “You’re a smart girl, you’ll figure out how to get inside. Be there alone, in five minutes, or your brother dies. And if the cops show up instead of you, I’ll make sure he doesn’t go slowly. Are we clear?”
“Yes.” Although Kennedy’s hands shook at the knowledge of what she had to do to save Xander’s life, she made certain her voice didn’t betray her.
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
That whole time-was-relative-on-an-op thing was coming back to bite Gamble on the ass in fucking spades. The last thirty minutes had both crawled and cracked like a lightning strike, the former in that it had felt like an eon for a patrol unit to find the duffel bag that had been discarded by the side of a semi-desolate road in North Point, the latter in that every member of the intelligence unit had rendezvoused at the surveillance van, all of them scrambling to locate Xander and Rusty on traffic cams, or at the very least, figure out where they might be headed in order to try to track them down.
So far, they’d come up with jack with a side of shit.
“Fuck,” Gamble snapped, stabbing a hand through his hair for the hundredth time. “Tell me we have something.”
Capelli, whose fingers had been a complete blur over the multiple keyboards in front of him ever since Rusty had pulled a gun on Xander and turned the night into a shit-show, shook his head. “We don’t know what kind of car they’re in, or at this point, if they’re even still in transit. Xander was smart to try to get Rusty to talk about the car, but…”
Gamble had been listening. He’d known, just as everyone did, that Xander’s ploy hadn’t worked. “Rusty’s too far gone not to try to set something on fire tonight. Something big. Coming here to the Rosemont was obviously a ruse. So, what about the other buildings on the list?”
“There are eleven of them,” Garza pointed out, and funny, Gamble wasn’t deterred in the least. He opened his mouth to tell Garza as much, but he was cut off by the buzz of his cell phone.
“Wait,” he said, hope shoving his shock aside as he flipped the thing into his palm. “This could be…shit, it’s Kennedy.”
Gamble knew he was going to have a hell of a time masking his dread, but he had to make sure she was safe. “Kennedy?”
“Gamble, listen to me,” she said in a garbled rush. “Rusty has Xander.”
It was on the tip of Gamble’s tongue to tell her he knew, except… “How do you know that?”
“Because he called me. He knows Xander is my brother.”
“Capelli,” Gamble grated, his protective instincts slamming to life. “Get Kennedy’s phone tapped up to your coms. Now.”
“There’s no point,” she said, although Capelli—smart guy that he was—did it anyway, and Gamble put her on speaker. “Rusty told me to leave my phone here, and I can’t risk having it on me when I meet him.”
The words what? and oh fuck, no collided in Gamble’s brain. “Kennedy—”
“I don’t have time to argue! He told me to meet him at Skyline Tower in five minutes, and it’s going to take me that long to get there. He told me not to call the cops, either, but…I can’t do this alone. I need help, and I don’t know what else to do.”
“Okay,” Isabella said, leaning in from the bench seat in the van. “We can help you, but we’re on the other side of downtown from Skyline Tower.”
Gamble’s chin whipped up in realization. Of course they were clear across downtown from where Rusty had gone. He’d baited the trap perfectly, hadn’t he?
Hollister’s nod said he was all-in on whatever plan Isabella was spinning up. “We can be there in—” He swung a look at Capelli, who shook his head and flashed both palms twice in rapid succession—“twenty minutes. Just sit tight.”
“No,” Kennedy argued. “Rusty said it has to be me, alone, in five minutes, otherwise he’s going to kill Xander.”
Before Gamble could launch the chain of no, hell no, and over my cold, dead body, did I mention hell no that had formed in the primitive part of his brain, Sinclair spoke.
“Kennedy, this is Sinclair. We can send patrol units to the building to keep Xander safe until we get there. But you cannot go into that building alone.”
“I have to! Look, I’m wasting time. You k
now Rusty means what he says. Either I’m there in five, or Xander dies. You send patrol units to that building that Rusty can see, Xander dies. I’m not letting that happen. Not on my watch. I’ve got Xander’s back. I need you to have mine. Please, Ian,” she said, the words arrowing directly to the center of his chest. “I’ll go stall him for as long as I can until you get there. But I’m going to get my brother.”
In that moment, realization settled into Gamble’s bones, turning him cold and numb. She wasn’t backing down. She was going to walk into that building no matter what any of them did or said. And oh, the irony was enough to slide under his skin like a knife, slicing him deep and clean.
Kennedy had been so worried about losing either him or Xander that it had never occurred to Gamble that she might be the one who never came home.
30
Rusty stood in the open space of Skyline Tower’s lobby-to-be and grinned from ear to ear as best his scar would allow. Actually, if he wanted to get technical about it, he and Xander were in the lobby that wouldn’t be—or, at least, it wouldn’t be what the current developers intended. Rusty didn’t really know if McCory would follow through on trying to buy the place after all was said and done. After all, the building would have one hell of a stigma to overcome, and most rich folks kind of shied away from living at the scene of a brutal double murder. But he wasn’t going to stick around to find out. He’d spent the day clearing out what little stuff he’d had in his apartment and all the various hidey holes where he’d stashed his chemicals and supplies, terminating his lease agreement and erasing all the connections he’d created over the past two years. After he watched this place burn tonight, he’d slip on out of the city just as quietly as he’d come, letting the cops sift through the ashes to try and find him.
They wouldn’t. But they’d talk about him for a good, long time. Hell, he’d be the stuff of fucking legends in this city, and people would watch the footage for years. Remember that guy who burned down Skyline Tower? Biggest blaze in the history of Remington. They never did catch him…
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