Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  Ian turned to Deb. “I can trust you not to drive off without me, right?”

  “I’d prefer it if you waited in the car until Yashi got here,” the federal agent said tightly.

  “What, do you think I’m going to run away?” he asked.

  Deb cleared her throat delicately. “I think anything is possible, now that you’ve got your brother-in-law back.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Phoebe volunteered. “Babysit.”

  Ian shot her an exasperated look in the rearview mirror, and she smiled.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t make me happy,” Deb said with a frown.

  “Too bad.” He disconnected the wires and the engine went dead. “I gotta whiz.”

  “Just stay close to the sleeping baby,” Phoebe advised Deb as Ian got out of the car and stretched. “If you’ve got Rory, you’ve got Aaron and Shel. And if you’ve got Aaron and Shel, you’ve got Ian. And yes. It’s adorable.”

  Shaking his head, Ian didn’t wait. He headed for the distant building, scanning the structure and open parking lot around it, making sure they truly were alone. He didn’t slow even as he heard Phoebe running with a weird, scraping shuffle to catch up. “Adorable,” he repeated.

  “Well, it is,” she insisted. Everything she was wearing—not just her footwear—was too big. Still, he couldn’t shake that image of her on the boat, in only his T-shirt and her panties, hair loose around her shoulders. Magnificent.

  She’d found a ponytail holder of some sort at Zebra, which was a shame.

  He focused on watching the single 18-wheeler that was idling out in the truck parking area. Otherwise, the place was quiet; the filling pumps, both gas and diesel, were deserted.

  “Just a few hours ago, you accused me of having too much fun,” he said. “I now think you’re enjoying this a little too much.”

  Phoebe snorted. “Yeah, because back at the Apocalypse Hut, while you and Aaron were packing up your armory, I took a moment to talk to Deb. Who let me know that, no, I will not be able to call my mom to tell her I’m okay, nor will I be able to provide my new bosses at BH and S with the reason as to why I’m blowing off my fabulous new job over the next few workdays. So my mother is going to think I’ve been murdered, and I’m going to be fired. On my personal fun index that’s a negative five, thanks so much.”

  Phoebe had a mom. Ian had never actually thought about that. Most of the people he dealt with didn’t have moms, or any kind of normal family life. Or if they did, they didn’t talk about it.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he told Phoebe as a somewhat stout middle-aged woman—the truck driver—came out of the building and headed for her rig.

  “I know,” she said. “After this is over, I’m going to make Deb call the law firm and get me my job back, and apologize to my mother, too. She’ll do it. She’s pretty nice.”

  He glanced at her, but she said nothing about asking him to make a call—either because she thought Ian’s request might hurt more than it would help, or she was convinced that the second this mission was over, Ian would vanish into the night.

  “What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?” Phoebe asked, as if she’d been thinking the very same thing. “With Aaron’s criminal record cleared, you could finally leave the country. Get away from Davio Dellarosa, once and for all. I hear New Zealand’s nice. Probably a fair number of jewels to heist there, too. That was a joke,” she added as Ian glanced at her again.

  “When we get to Miami,” he told her, “you can help with the research if you still want to—”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Good,” he said, opening the door and going in first. Manners were put on hold when crazy assholes were gunning for him. But the convenience store was empty with the exception of a longhaired, tie-dye-wearing kid working the cash register. “Thanks. But other than that, your primary job is going to be to keep your head down, be quiet, and stay out of the way.”

  “I’m good at that,” she said.

  He looked at her.

  “I am. Excuse me,” she called to the clerk, in a southern accent that was pure coal miner’s daughter. “Does your men’s room have windows or …?”

  “Oh, come on,” Ian said. “That’s what you call being quiet?”

  “You didn’t say I was supposed to start now,” she countered quietly in her regular voice, putting the sugar back in when she raised it again. “Or any kind of exit, maybe a back door …?”

  Doh-ahr. She made the word have two syllables.

  “Um, no?” the kid called back. “I mean yeah, there’s a window, but it doesn’t open.”

  “Thank you,” she called. “It prolly does, so FYI, I’m just going to stand in the doorway, with the door propped open. No worries, nothing funny or freaky going on.” She laughed in a southern accent, too. “You know how it is. Just keeping my eye on my man.”

  “Really?” Ian said as she leaned back against the open men’s room doh-ahr, waving cheerfully at the wide-eyed clerk. “You mistrust me that much? What about that whole adorable If you’ve got Rory, you’ve got Aaron and Shel thing?”

  She smiled sweetly up at him. “For all I know, Rory’s been trained to crawl out of his car seat after hypnotizing whoever’s watching him, and he, Aaron, Sheldon, and Francine are already halfway to Contact Point Aquarius, where you’ll meet them after escaping through the bathroom window, riding away on a bicycle that you stashed back behind this facility four years ago, in anticipation of this exact scenario.”

  “Except if your theory’s right and I’m just a con man, I wouldn’t have to do all that. Instead I’d merely say that I did.”

  “I’ve been told by a very reliable source,” Phoebe said, “not to underestimate you. Don’t assume that you know what I can or cannot do.” She lowered her voice in an imitation of Ian that was significantly better than Aaron’s had been. “And I know. I’m paraphrasing. But that was the gist of it. So this is me, not assuming.” She gestured for him to go in. “If you’re afraid I’ll peek, feel free to use a stall.”

  Ian had to laugh at that. “You are funny.”

  “And yet my earlier joke about the bike fell decidedly flat.”

  “Ah, fuck it,” he said. “I know we had a deal and that I’m not supposed to, but—”

  He kissed her.

  And it wasn’t a repeat of the dry little peck that he’d given her back on the yacht, but rather a great, huge, tongue-in-her-mouth, full-body contact, souls-are-probably-about-to-touch event as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his knee between her legs. At least that’s what he hoped it looked like from the cashier’s perspective.

  Sadly, Phoebe didn’t melt against him, which was a shame, since he would’ve loved a reenactment of that kiss beneath the dock. Instead, she said, “Wait! Don’t! Gahhh!”

  But he kissed her again and again, and in doing so swallowed her words—at least he thought the last one was gahhh—as he lifted her up so that she was straddling him in a most suggestive way, even as he pulled her with him into the men’s room. The doh-ahr shut behind them with a solid-sounding clunk.

  Only then did he put her down, albeit reluctantly, because she was warm and soft in all the right places, and although she was a larger-than-average woman, her butt fit damn near perfectly in his larger-than-average hands.

  Plus, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and having her pressed up against him was, absolutely, as fantastic as he’d imagined.

  “You asshole,” she started, but if she’d said anything more, it was drowned out by the sound of the clerk hammering on the door.

  “No sex in the bathrooms! No sex in the bathrooms!” the kid was shouting. “You come out here right now, because I will not hesitate to call the police!”

  With one last exasperated look at Ian—because she clearly knew right from the start that this was why he’d kissed her and pulled her in here—Phoebe yanked open the door. “No one’s having sex in here,” she told the boy.

  “Damn straight,” the kid s
houted, “because you are out of here! Both of you! Right now!”

  Phoebe held her hands up as she went out of the bathroom. “All right, all right, calm down, it really wasn’t what you think,” she said, adding, “What? No!” as she turned around.

  No doubt she’d expected to see Ian right behind her. But Ian had already moved so that he was standing in front of a urinal, where he was taking that leak. Obviously it was now or never.

  “Sorry, can’t stop once I start,” he said. “And I sure don’t want to piss on your floor. All the way from here to the front door? Hate to make you clean that up.”

  “Don’t you dare leave without me!” Phoebe said.

  And as Ian looked at her over his shoulder, right before the door swung closed, he caught a flash of real fear in her eyes as she added, “Please, Ian …”

  Shit. He’d pushed it too far. “I’m not going anywhere,” he called, even as he heard the clerk berating her out in the hall.

  “This is a family-owned establishment,” the kid—who was actually older than he’d looked from a distance—was informing her.

  “Still not going anywhere,” Ian called. As he flushed and zipped and went to wash his hands, he whistled loudly, so that she could hear him.

  “You get your skanky ass off this property,” the kid said. “I don’t want to see you in here again.”

  “I’m the one with the skanky ass?” Phoebe asked, apparently reassured enough by Ian’s whistling to take umbrage. “Why am I the one with the skanky ass? Are you going to give him the same warning?”

  “Yes, I am,” the kid said.

  And sure enough as Ian shook his hands dry—no paper towels—and pushed the door open with his shoulder, the kid turned his venomous glare onto him. Ian stopped whistling and looked back at him, eyebrows raised.

  “Get your skanky ass off this property,” the kid said. “Sir.”

  “Hey,” Phoebe said. “Why does he get a sir?”

  Ian grabbed her arm, and pulled her, with him, out of there. “This is what we, in the con business, call making a spectacle of ourselves. Let’s try to avoid that from now on.”

  “Except if Davio or his men do come here, looking for us, they’re going to be looking for a giant, two gay guys, a baby, and a really gorgeous blonde. Mr. No-Sex-in-the-Bathrooms is going to describe two probably drunk people who staggered in. Plus, he thinks I’m a prostitute. We can double down on that by …” She stopped him, glancing back into the store through the big plate-glass windows. Ian looked, too, and sure enough, the clerk was still watching them warily.

  “Perfect,” she said, and then made what was, absolutely, the international two-handed gesture for sexual intercourse. She then added a couple of exaggerated hip thrusts, saying, “I want to make this absolutely clear, because this guy’s kind of an idiot.” She then rubbed her fingers together, after which she held out her hand, palm up, as if to say Pay me.

  Ian cracked up. “That’s actually kind of scary. Sex with a mime. Do I have to pay extra to make sure you don’t do the trapped-in-a-box thing while we’re doing it?”

  “He’s still watching,” she said. “Maybe we should shake on the deal.”

  “Shake? I don’t think so.” He picked her up in a firefighter’s hold, her belly against his shoulder, his hand, again, against her ass.

  Phoebe whooped her surprise, but then laughed, as he carried her around the side of the building.

  He put her down carefully, which meant that the entire front of her body slid against his chest, which made her T-shirt ride up—and that meant his hands were now against the soft, warm smoothness of her waist and back.

  Which made his mouth go dry, especially when she locked her arms around his neck instead of stepping back and putting proper distance between them.

  “Thanks for not leaving,” she said quietly.

  “And put you in danger? You didn’t ask to be here. Frankly, I didn’t either,” he said. “But this is what it is, and … I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

  Her face was in shadow, but still, somehow, he could see her eyes behind those glasses. He could see that she believed him. Believed, and trusted, and …

  Maybe even, despite everything she’d said through the course of what had been a very long day and night, maybe she wanted him to kiss her, too.

  But Ian couldn’t kiss her. He wanted to, but God, he couldn’t. Not after what he’d just told her. Instead, he said, “Also? I figured it was probably best for me to leave that bicycle back there for a real emergency.”

  She blinked, but then she laughed as she understood, and she finally stepped back. Realizing her shirt was askew, she used both hands to pull it down, making that strip of skin disappear.

  But the joke he’d made wasn’t enough to soften the impact of his macho promise.

  And as they walked back toward the cars—Yashi had arrived, and the team was transferring their supplies out of the stolen vehicle and into his SUV—Phoebe must’ve sensed his unease. She glanced at Ian and said, “Rash?”

  He met her eyes only briefly as he nodded, because yes, things had gotten much too serious. “Little one,” he lied.

  Phoebe nodded and didn’t call him on it. But Ian caught her watching him, oddly subdued, as they organized who was going in what vehicle—Yashi taking the stolen car back to Sarasota to return it, get another, and pick up Martell—and he had a strong suspicion that she knew the truth.

  Ian drove on to Miami with Aaron, Shel, and Rory, and put Phoebe in the other car with Deb and Francine.

  As if, somehow, that would help.

  Thursday (Three days later)

  Ian was still sitting in front of his computer when Phoebe went downstairs.

  “Morning,” she said.

  He barely glanced up, his full focus on the screen. “It’s afternoon.”

  He was right. It was.

  “Have you slept?” Phoebe asked. “Like, at all, since we got here?”

  He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on when she’d finally gone up to bed at dawn.

  It was day three of this little locked-in, cabin-fever-inducing safe house adventure. And ever since they’d arrived here in Miami, Ian had been avoiding her. Not only was he taking care to never be alone with her, but he evaded any and all of her attempts to have a real conversation.

  At least not one that didn’t start with Will you check out this file for me? and end with Thanks.

  Phoebe now knew way too much about the Kazak tribe, and how international law dealt—poorly—with outliers who refused to acknowledge the existence of any law other than their own.

  She’d also spent a significant amount of her downtime researching the Dellarosa “tribe.” She’d discovered that both Manny and Davio seemed to be Teflon when it came to deflecting criminal cases. Prosecutors could never find anyone willing to testify against them. Even convicts facing decades in prison couldn’t be flipped. Whatever system the Dellarosas had in place for ensuring that kind of lasting loyalty and silence—it was rock solid.

  As Ian now finally looked up, both at her and around the room, Phoebe saw him register the fact that they were alone. The uh-oh that flared in his eyes was quickly covered by the detached, too-polite smile that she’d come to despise.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he pointed back at the computer. “I’m right in the middle of …”

  “Of course,” she said, going into the kitchen to get some coffee. Time of day didn’t matter for that—the pot was always fresh. “Sorry. Carry on.”

  She couldn’t really complain. She was the one who’d pushed to keep their relationship as mere friends. And Ian certainly wasn’t being unfriendly.

  He was just using his intense focus on the job at hand to keep her at a safe distance.

  Safe distance, safe house.

  Phoebe was pretty certain, after nearly three days of confinement, that staying in an FBI safe house in Miami was exactly the same as staying in an FBI safe house anywhere else in the world.
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  The house itself was comfortable enough, with plenty of beds, a kitchen to cook in, and a large combined dining and living room that Ian had turned into his war room.

  The place was well stocked with both food and computers—plus they had access to the full arsenal of weaponry and equipment that Ian had brought with them from Zebra.

  The blinds and curtains were all tightly drawn, so the house was lit with electric light rather than sunshine—which gave the place a vaguely Vegas casino feel. Miami’s legendary humidity and heat weren’t a problem since the house was climate controlled. In fact, the AC was up so high, Phoebe kept a sweatshirt close at hand.

  Thankfully, she had a sweatshirt. In fact, she had an armload of clothing in her size—jeans, T-shirts, Bermuda shorts, underwear!—plus a pair of flip-flops.

  And if she needed anything else, Yashi would get it for her.

  The FBI agent was their conduit to the outside world. Yashi, and Yashi alone, went and picked up anything that anyone added to a list that lived on the counter in the kitchen. Not only had he gotten them clothing and food, but he’d also procured two pristine white cargo vans and an array of expensive-looking surveillance equipment.

  And even though today Phoebe was tempted to put diamond bracelet or perhaps Ryan Gosling at the bottom of the list to see what Yashi might bring back, she’d settled for less problematic and easier to obtain items like deodorant, laundry detergent, and last but not least, a bit of makeup.

  Because, truth be told, sharing a house with Francine’s flawless perfection was daunting. Even Deb made the effort to put on lipstick whenever the blonde came into the war room.

  Which, thankfully, wasn’t often. Francie didn’t spend much time in the main part of the house. Ever since their late-night arrival, she and her computer-genius brother, Sheldon, spent every waking moment in the huge five-bay garage, transforming those two newly purchased vans into high-tech surveillance vehicles, complete with an array of cameras—some infrared—and supposedly super-accurate long-distance mics.

  Shel and Francine were installing those fancy microphones because Ian flatly refused to wear a wire when he contacted the Dutchman. That had set off some fireworks as he’d argued with Deb.